power

The great white environmentalist sharks smell blood in the water. It’s gushing from mortally wounded US coal companies that the Obama EPA has gutted as sacrifices on the altar of “dangerous manmade climate change” prevention and other spurious health, ecological and planetary scares.

During March 22 hearings before the House Energy and Commerce Committee, under questioning by West Virginia Rep. David McKinley (R), EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy admitted (once again) the Obama administration’s climate efforts will do nothing to protect public or environmental health. McCarthy instead acknowledged the efforts are merely a symbolic attempt to get other countries’ leaders to join the Paris climate agreement.

Everything in Washington, D.C. established to do X – ends up doing X, Y, Z, and triplets of every letter in the alphabet. This anti-federalism is fueled by several basic precepts. Of course DC wants as much power as it can grab. The more power it wields – the more it can lord over us and the more favors it can dole out. And the more coin it can spend – and the more coin it can justify taking from us.

The news is filled with the everyday zigzags of those competing against each other for the Democrat and Republican Party nominations to run for the presidency of the United States. But one of the most important issues receiving little or no attention in this circus of political power lusting is the long-term danger from the huge and rising Federal government debt.

In “Court and Democracy” Jeffry Rosen speaks of the Supreme Court as playing a paradoxical role in American democracy. He states: “Americans think of the Supreme Court as the least democratic branch of the federal government, designed by the framers of the U.S. Constitution to ‘protect vulnerable minorities’ against the tyranny of the majority.”

As noted in our collaborative article published Monday, Nov. 9, 2015 in Illinois Review, “Supreme Court to Adjudicate Mandatory Union Fees”, Rebecca Friedrichs is the lead plaintiff, an outspoken opponent of her teachers’ union who agreed to let her name become identified with the case. Friedrichs has taught elementary school for 28 years, mostly in the Savanna School District in Anaheim, Ca. You can listen to her discuss the case here, read a Q&A with her here, and a commentary by her in the Orange County Register here.

In what has been a rough couple of months for the Obama administration on the regulatory front, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit has issued a temporary nationwide injunction halting the controversial new Waters of the United States rule (WOTUS) of the Clean Water Act. The U.S. District Court in North Dakota had already issued a preliminary injunction against the rule in late August, but the Obama administration claimed the injunction applied only to the 13 states bringing suit. The nationwide injunction is a significant setback for Obama and his Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

In today’s edition of The Heartland Daily Podcast, we listen in as Research Fellow Heather Kays joins the Freedom Foundation’s Freedom Daily Podcast with host Jamie Lund. Kays joins the podcast to discuss education policy and the top five reasons teachers unions must change.

What this amusingly quantifies is that money is a vital component of any and everything we do. Certainly for how we (allegedly – used to) organize our economy. “Capital” is the fundamental element of capital-ism. It is the engine that drives our yachts – right up alongside the happiness we all pursue.

A hundred years ago, teachers first formed unions in the United States. At that time, too many teachers lost their jobs for reasons such as an unplanned pregnancy or gaining too much weight. Wages and working conditions often were substandard.

In today’s edition of The Heartland Daily Podcast, H. Sterling Burnett, managing editor of Environment & Climate News speaks with Amanda Maxham. Maxham, a writer and research associate at the Ayn Rand Institute, is a physicist who became a policy wonk. Maxham joins Burnett to discuss how alarmism regarding climate and science is preventing society from thriving.

Green zealots believe that we can and should run modern societies exclusively on “Green” energies, and they have embarked on a war on hydrocarbons. They need to be told that their green energy favourites are just stealing from the biosphere – they are not as green as they claim.

Everyone who owns a car, truck, tractor, quad bike, bobcat, forklift or other mobile machine is hoping that the fortune being wasted on green energy may produce just one real benefit – better batteries. We want batteries that are cheap, light weight, charge quickly with no losses, last forever and store a large quantity of energy. Nothing close is on the market yet.