Economics · Environment/Energy · Featured · Government · Regulation
After six years of dithering, the Keystone pipeline project has finally cleared both the Senate and the House with strong bipartisan support—mere percentage points away from a veto-proof majority. Now it goes to the White House where President Obama has vowed to veto it.
Education · Featured · Podcast
Joy Pullmann, managing editor at The Federalist and education research fellow at the Heartland Institute discusses some of the top education policy stories of 2014 with Heather Kays, managing editor of School Reform News. Pullmann and Kays also discuss what’s to come in 2015.
The 2010 introduction of Common Core, a set of requirements for what elementary and secondary school children should know in math and English language arts, has turned schools in one state after another into battlefields as its complexity and other factors led to protests against it. Even so, by mid-2014, a NBC/Wall Street Journal poll found that very nearly half of those asked about it hadn’t even heard of it. A number of states, such as Missouri, Indiana, Oklahoma, and South Carolina have withdrawn from it.
The New York Times’ utterly ridiculous Editorial Board recently as one addressed Title II Internet regulatory Reclassification and Network Neutrality – and they did so in utterly ridiculous fashion.
Every year, countless employees across the country pay union dues without knowing about their right to opt out partially or completely. National Employee Freedom Week lets them know it’s possible and provides them with the understanding of how it’s done.
Could one ruling by one Los Angeles Superior Court judge free public education from the stultifying grip of the teacher tenure system and lead to widespread use of incentives to reward excellent work by teachers and students alike?
To briefly summarize Common Core, the decision to adopt the Common Core standards was left almost exclusively in the hands of the governors and the state boards of education. The public was not made aware that our education system was in the process of being changed, and certainly we were clueless that all states had been asked to accept an education system initiated at the federal level, something our forefathers prudently warned against. However, forty-five states committed to those standards, and did so even before the standards and/or accompanying curriculum were completed.
Economics · Education · Featured
Matt Damon made headlines a few years ago when he went on an expletive-laced screed about teachers’ poor (not his word, but close) salaries. It’s personal to him because Damon’s mother is an early childhood education professor.
Let’s agree with Damon that good teachers should earn a lot. The job can be very demanding, and it is crucial to society. So what would it take to pay teachers a great salary — say, something around $90,000 a year or more? That’s actually possible, without raising taxes or adding to the great American debt mountain. Here are three major barriers to that.
“Canada is a sovereign nation and we will develop our resources with appropriate regulations and enforcement to protect the environment,” said Paula Caldwell St-Onge. The Consulate General of Canada, St-Onge was in Albuquerque to talk up, and answer questions about, the Keystone pipeline.
Budgets/Taxes · Economics · Featured · Politics
Frequently, humans need lessons to be very expensive in order to learn them — for politicians and liberals, that seems to be doubly true.
Education · Featured · Liberty · Regulation
The Douglas County election results can and should sow similar efforts around the country to reclaim local institutions to protect freedom and demonstrate effective self-government.
Education · Featured · Liberty · Regulation · Taxes
Even if Randi Weingarten isn’t NYC’s next school chancellor, she might as well be.
Featured · Legal Affairs · Liberty · Media · Podcast
Steve Stanek interviews co-author, Machael Lafaive, from the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, regarding his recent study entitled, “Economic Growth and Right to Work Laws”. The study contains an analysis[…]
Instead of supporting minimum wages, we should support free wages—the freedom to decide for ourselves what wage we’ll accept to do a job.
Budgets/Taxes · Economics · Featured · Politics · Taxes
Detroit was not a victim of the free market, it was built by the free market — but torn down by welfarism, interventionism, and cronyism.
Budgets/Taxes · Economics · Featured · Liberty · Politics
The much bigger problem facing America is that the policies of Detroit have now gone national. What day has Barack Obama talked about the economy when he has not talked about increasing taxes, federal spending, deficits and debt, regulation, and other anti-growth policies that worked their devastation in Detroit?
Education · Featured · Podcast
Christian D’Andrea, an education policy analyst at Madison’s MacIver Institute sat down with Heartland’s Education Research Fellow, Joy Pullman to talk about how union limits in Wisconsin have helped positively influence education in the state.
Budgets/Taxes · Economics · Liberty · Politics
“Do not blame Caesar, blame the people of Rome who have so enthusiastically acclaimed and adored him and rejoiced in their loss of freedom and danced in his path and[…]
Budgets/Taxes · Economics · Liberty
I could cite a boatload of figures showing states with “right-to-work” laws have been better economic performers than those where people can be forced into labor unions as a condition[…]
[First published at the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review.] The largest affiliates of the United States’ largest teachers union are deeply in debt, largely because they have lavish pension and health-care systems, according[…]
NEWS: The Heartlander
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