In less than two weeks, thanks in no small part to your hard work and efforts, we expect a great number of newly elected individuals to head to Washington and to statehouses across the country. At that point, the question they and we have to ask is: what do we do now? At the Heartland Institute, we’re committed to presenting ideas founded on a proper | Read More »
A new report from the non-partisan Congressional Research Service, commissioned by Republican Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma and others, finds astounding proof of the total administrative failure of the administration in implementing Obamacare. According to the report, HHS has missed one-third of the deadlines contained within the legislation for the first six months under Obama’s new health care regime. Coburn, who last week introduced an | Read More »
When it comes to solving the multi-billion-dollar challenge of Medicare and Medicaid fraud, Oklahoma Senator (and physician) Tom Coburn has led the way in calling for innovative approaches to fraud prevention. Now he’s introduced legislation focused on addressing the problem. It may not go anywhere in this Congress, but expect it to get a lot of consideration early next year. “This act does several things | Read More »
If sophistication is the ability to understand different kinds of people and grapple with different ideas, Matt Taibbi’s latest Tea Party bashing piece in Rolling Stone can best be read as an expose of the provincial unsophistication of Taibbi, his editors, and any readers who take his article seriously. Taibbi’s piece is a slovenly mess of leftist tropes, with his usual lazy approach to basic | Read More »
Christina Bellantoni, who I’ve been told is the most fair person working at TPM, has a real stretch of an attack on Christine O’Donnell today which uses the candidate’s LinkedIn page to suggest she lied about where she attended school. Yet there’s a real flaw with this argument. Depending on when O’Donnell created her LinkedIn profile, at one point you could only enter educational programs | Read More »
In today’s edition of Coffee and Markets, we’re talking about the Tea Party Movement, the Republicans’ latest pledge to America, and the upheaval in the White House’s staff. We’re also talking to Weekly Standard senior writer Jonathan Last about his powerful new piece on America’s One Child Policy. We’re brought to you as always by BigGovernment.com and Stephen Clouse and Associates. We’d also like to | Read More »
Texas Governor Rick Perry discusses shooting, his new book “Fed Up!”, the Tea Party movement and solving the entitlement and spending crisis in an interview with Benjamin Domenech, research fellow and managing editor for The Heartland Institute. We welcome you to discuss this video at FreedomPub, check out the Tea Party Toolbox, and pre-order Gov. Perry’s book, Fed Up!: Our Fight to Save America from | Read More »
For Constitution Day, the Heartland Institute is providing a look at what the Constitution actually says about some of the key policy areas we deal with today — read what the Constitution says about Education here. Needless to say, when the United States Constitution was ratified in 1788, the concept of health care was very different than it is today. Standardized treatments for diseases were | Read More »
Clearly, the image above is evidence that James Taylor knows how to blend in at an environmental protest. He’s got friends in every town and village from here to San Francisco, he speaks a dozen languages, knows every local custom, he’ll blend in, disappear, you’ll never see him again, etc. He gave me a long, skeptical look. I told him, honestly and with sincerity, that | Read More »
Self explanatory. Credit not just to Erickson for his acumen in picking candidates to support, but for all of you who’ve actually made that support count.
Thanks for the kind comments on my thoughts on Delaware. But I wanted to add a brief note about the views of Karl Rove, who blasted away at Christine O’Donnell before the votes were even all counted. It’s an instructive moment about how the old guard is failing to adapt to this new environment. It’s been a rough cycle for Rove. He’s provided behind-the-scenes consulting, | Read More »
As an observer, primaries like the sort just concluded in Delaware are incredibly amusing. It’s an opportunity to see bloggers, reporters and flacks who’ve never won anything anywhere declare emphatically that someone will definitely or can’t possibly win in a state they’ve never run a campaign in, and in some of the more absurd cases, have never even been to. The best part is, a | Read More »
A slight break from politics for the moment — until the end of the interview. Listen to hear how Drew Brees answers the last question. Even highly paid athletes aren’t invulnerable when it comes to economic downturns. Over the past few years in the National Football League, we’ve seen a long list of players experience the ramifications of poor financial decisions. According to a report | Read More »
I’ve said that Chris Christie losing out on $400 million over four years in federal grant money on Education could be a blessing in disguise–and I wanted to explain why that is. So this week Education Secretary Arne Duncan announced $3.4 billion split between ten “winners” under their Race to the Top program, with the overwhelming bulk of the remaining pool of money (yes, that’s | Read More »
Several state legislators have reached out to me recently with questions about the nature of severability and Obamacare. Since some Redstaters seem to have questions as well, I thought I’d explain a bit about what this means. Most laws of large size and scope have something called a “severability clause” attached to them. Essentially, this means that if one part of a piece of large | Read More »
The White House’s announcement today that they will bypass the nomination process of the United States Senate to recess appoint Donald Berwick as head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) is an act of unconscionable hubris. The White House claims this act is in response to “Washington game-playing”, accusing Republicans of planning to “stall the nomination” as long as possible. This is | Read More »
Let’s hear it for freedom! Ain’t it grand? Let’s hear it for all those old souls who died to give us this nation, where we can be free from want, worry, fidelity, and responsibility. Where we can be free to expect a self-affirming career and a McMansion, free from the stress of competition or struggle, free to demand what’s coming to us. Let’s cheer for | Read More »
Redstate’s own Cpa Charlie wrote a post in early June about his experience with the false promises of Obamacare, and learning how it wouldn’t help his small business. Read his original post here. After talking with him, I asked if he’d like to write a more formal column about his experience for Health Care News. Thanks to that, yesterday this story was retold on the | Read More »
Rob Long uses two datapoints — the stunning decline of Barack Obama’s popularity, and the rise of Hillary Clinton’s — as the basis for a timeline of the unthinkable: could Hillary Clinton challenge Obama in 2012? There’s certainly space for a McGovernesque movement here — I think the important datapoint here is the activist left’s fundamental rejection by the White House, borne out in the | Read More »
We’ve been talking a lot about the NRA today, and that brings to mind this video from my colleague at the Heartland Institute, Zach Christenson, posted over at Freedom Pub. Watch the whole thing, but particularly the part with Otis MacDonald, the man behind the Chicago gun case, explaining why he needs to own a gun: MacDonald’s story is moving, and it certainly makes me | Read More »
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