Posts belonging to Category Syndicated Postings

What Liberals Don’t Understand About Business and Profit

How’s this for a nicely polished gem of irony? Matthew Yglesias, a liberal blogger today authored a piece poking fun at Barnes & Noble for attempting to diversify its bookstore model by venturing into the world of digital with its “Nook” e-reader. (Stay tuned for the irony, below.) For Yglesias, the notion that a corporation wants to innovate and change in order to survive is a laughable one: Barnes & Noble the organism doesn’t want to die, so it makes a desperate effort to launch a new book-related businesses (sic) [...]

Chart of the Week: U.S. Presidents Ranked by Budget Deficits

Over the past 50 years, 10 U.S. presidents have made annual budget requests to Congress, projecting deficits both big and small. But no other president compares to Barack Obama when it comes to the size and scale of the current budget deficit facing the United States. The country is facing an 8.3 percent estimated average national deficit of a two-term Obama administration — the biggest of the past 50 years. By comparison, the current estimate for Obama is nearly double the percentage under Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush [...]

Top 10 Worst Federal Rules of 2011

Hindsight is supposed to be 20/20, but looking back on the past 12 months, it’s tough to see any sense in many of the Administration’s regulatory missteps. Of course, there are bound to be a few howlers when government churns out more than 3,500 rules in a year, including dozens unleashed by Obamacare, Dodd–Frank, and the perpetually errant Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). But by any standard, 2011 brought forth a remarkable number and variety of regulatory blunders. Fair warning: Our Top 10 list may prove fatal to any bit of [...]

South Carolina and Voter ID: When Politics Drives Law Enforcement

Attorney General Eric Holder put a lump of coal in South Carolina’s Christmas stocking on Dec. 23 when he objected to the state’s new voter ID law. By ignoring inconvenient facts and clear legal precedent, Holder showed once again that politics and ideology—not the rule of law—drive his law enforcement decisions. Given the power of the Justice Department and its potential for abuse, this should worry all Americans, particularly when that abuse has the potential to affect the outcome of next year’s election. South Carolina passed a voter ID law [...]

North Dakota’s Job Creation Formula

When it comes to creating jobs, North Dakota has found the right formula. The state has the largest percentage increase in employment over the past year and was the fastest of all 50 to recover from the recession. The reason is simple: energy production. “North Dakota has been the poster child for what can happen when we unleash free enterprise and allow states to develop and commercialize their resources,” Heritage’s Nick Loris wrote recently on The Foundry. “North Dakota is drilling at record pace.” The state’s unemployment rate is 3.4 [...]

EPA’s “Sustainability” Agenda: Vast Power Grab

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is on a mission to further unilaterally expand its already vast regulatory powers in the name of “sustainable development.” Congress should take action to rein in the agency before it’s too late. An EPA-requested report issued in August by the National Research Council (NRC), a private nonprofit, lays out “an operational framework for integrating sustainability as one of the key drivers within the regulatory responsibilities of EPA.” The NRC and the EPA held a meeting on the report just last week. The exact meaning of [...]

Gingrich’s Past, Our Future

If Newt Gingrich were being nominated for sainthood, many of us would vote very differently from the way we would vote if he were being nominated for a political office.

What the media call Gingrich’s “baggage” concerns largely …[...]

The Middle Class Tax Relief and Job Creation Act

On Friday, December 9, 2011, Representative Dave Camp (R-MI), with several cosponsors, introduced H.R. 3630, the “Middle Class Tax Relief and Job Creation Act of 2011.”  The 369-page bill consists of six titles, main elements of which are discussed below. Title I of the bill gets the government out of the way of a pipeline project so the private sector can create some jobs.  The bill provides a mechanism for prompt approval of the Keystone XL pipeline project, to allow oil to flow from Alberta, Canada to U.S. gulf coast … More

Chart of the Week: Where Does the Federal Government Get Its Revenue?

President Obama and Republicans in Congress continue to wage war over an extension of the payroll tax cut. But missing from the debate is any discussion of comprehensive tax reform that would eliminate payroll taxes altogether. Social Security and Medicare payroll taxes are the second-largest source of federal revenue, surpassed only by personal income taxes. This week’s chart from Heritage’s 2011 Budget Chart Book depicts federal revenue by source. That chart would look quite different if Heritage’s tax-reform plan were enacted into law. That plan, part of the Saving the … More

Morning Bell: Whitewashing History, Obama Style

If U.S. history is a painting on giant canvas, President Barack Obama’s speech this week in Osawatomie, Kansas, is a thick coat of whitewash layered all over it, and the failure of the last three years lies underneath. The President’s pretense is that, no, it’s not Obamanomics that has caused persistent unemployment, stunted growth and record deficits–it’s supply side economics! Talk about audacity. The President’s speech was a naked portrayal of his vision of America–one where inequality runs rampant, where the American dream is nearly dead, where the rich oppress … More