If you don’t visit Freedom Pub and the Heartlander digital magazine every day, you’re missing out on some of the best news and commentary on liberty and free markets you can find. But worry not, freedom lovers! Heartland Weekly is here for you every Monday with a highlight show. Subscribe to the email today, and read this week’s edition below.
Single-Payer Health Care Is Only Good for Government, Not the People It Serves
Peter Ferrara, New York Observer
What does the term “single-payer” even mean? It’s inside-the-Beltway jargon used to describe a government monopoly over health care. How can it be good for anyone to give the government control over health care? Doctors and hospitals can only be paid what the single-payer, government monopoly decides they should be paid. There would be no one else a doctor or hospital could turn to in order to maintain a first-rate health care facility. The single-payer government monopoly would even have the power to decide what health care doctors and hospitals could provide. READ MORE
Wisconsin Found the Antidote to the Disease of Over-Regulation
H. Sterling Burnett, The Hill
Under the leadership of Republican Gov. Scott Walker, Wisconsin has taken the lead in giving power back to the people, by limiting the size of government, thereby increasing personal freedom and improving the state’s economic future. Walker’s most recent achievement is the Regulations from the Executive in Need of Scrutiny Act, which he has said he will sign soon. It prevents executive branch regulatory agencies—those under the governor’s control—from imposing significant rules without the consent of the state legislature. READ MORE
Before Closing the Waukegan Coal Plant, Lawmakers Should Consider California’s Failures
Fred Palmer and Isaac Orr, Lake County Gazette
Lake County Republican Board Chairman Aaron Lawlor has recently partnered with the Sierra Club in its Beyond Coal campaign, which advocates for the closure of the Waukegan Generating Station, a large coal-fueled power plant located on the shores of Lake Michigan that provides jobs for 100 people. The stated goal of their effort is to combat climate change by eliminating carbon-dioxide emissions from coal—no matter the consequences to Lake County families. READ MORE
Featured Podcast: Megan Hansen, Ethan Dursteler: The Relative Benefits and Drawbacks of the Modes of Transporting Oil and Gas
There are three main ways of moving oil and gas, which are vital to the U.S. economy, across the country. Each mode of transportation has its virtues and drawbacks relative to the others, but all have critical roles. Megan Hansen and Ethan Dursteler’s study, titled “Pipelines, Rail & Trucks,” examines the economic, environmental, and safety impacts of transporting oil and gas in the United States. The study finds while each mode of transportation has its merits and serves a unique purpose, in general, pipelines move the most oil, at the lowest costs, and with the best safety record. LISTEN TO MORE
How to Fulfill the Promise of Online Education
Jane Shaw, American Spectator
Many colleges and universities have hired private companies to build and operate their online education programs. They are known as online program managers. Online education, if operated properly, will bring cheaper, customized, and innovative education to a much broader range of college students—something most universities say they want to do but has yet to occur. Why aren’t prices going down? Most universities are too traditional to act boldly. Online courses need special digital platforms and techniques and new kinds of recruitment. Many faculty members don’t want to teach online courses, and administrators don’t know how to reach non-traditional students. READ MORE
Betsy DeVos: Let’s ‘Rethink School’
Teresa Mull, School Choice Weekly
U.S. Education Sec. Betsy DeVos has done the unthinkable: She’s proposed the educational elite consider an alternative to our tired, old, broken-down, one-size-fits-none education system. Her bold speech is unlikely to be well-received by the educational elitists—mainly teachers unions and their cronies. Luckily for DeVos, it’s not the teachers unions who matter, and it’s fairly certain those who do matter, the parents with kids in the failing government school system, will approve wholeheartedly. READ MORE
Trump Keeping Climate Promises
H. Sterling Burnett, Climate Change Weekly
Gridlock in the congressional swamp is not slowing President Donald Trump’s efforts to roll back ineffective but extremely costly climate programs and regulations. During the 2016 presidential campaign, Trump said the United States faced many more important problems than climate change, and he pledged to roll back climate policies hampering economic growth and domestic energy development. Since becoming president, Trump has kept that promise, removing scores of climate-related executive orders and regulations. READ MORE
Stopping Medicaid’s ‘Pac-Man Doomsday‘
Jesse Hathaway, American Thinker
In December 2009, as Congress debated whether to approve President Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act, U.S. Sen. George Voinovich (R-Ohio) compared the Medicaid entitlement program to “the Pac-Man that gobbled up our state budget dollars,” consuming every other government program. Expanding the taxpayer-funded health care program to include individuals and families earning up to 133 percent of the federal poverty line, Voinovich said, would crowd out allocated resources for other programs, eating up state governments’ budgets as if they were so many white dots. READ MORE
Bonus Podcast: Robert Chatfield: School Inc. and The Free to Choose Network
Robert Chatfield, president and CEO of the Free to Choose Network, shares with listeners the mission and work of Free to Choose, which helped produce the late Andrew Coulson’s documentary: School Inc. Chatfield discusses how School Inc. presents Coulson’s vision of education—a system in which schools survive and thrive or fail and die in the same manner as regular businesses. Chatfield also talks about his company’s other work and how to access materials that promote the philosophy of Milton Friedman. LISTEN TO MORE
Why ‘Sin’ Taxes Fail
Matthew Glans, Dispatch Argus
Voters in South Dakota may soon be considering a new proposal to dramatically increase the state’s tobacco tax. The current cigarette tax is levied at a rate of 76.5 mills per cigarette, making the average tax on a 20-cigarette pack $1.53. The tax on other tobacco products is set at 35 percent of the wholesale price of the product. Although reducing smoking rates may be a noble goal, raising tobacco taxes rarely works as intended and frequently causes many negative effects, especially on small businesses READ MORE
Public Schools Are Breeding Grounds for Corruption and Violence
Teresa Mull, Breitbart
Some public school teachers are turning to violence to silence people with whom they disagree.”Public school teachers are behind a leading far-left militant group that is part of the Antifa network that federal officials say is committing ‘domestic terrorist violence,'” The Daily Caller‘s Peter Hasson reported recently. “By Any Means Necessary, which has played a key role in riots in Berkeley, Sacramento, and elsewhere, has dozens of public school teachers among its members, including among its most prominent leaders.” READ MORE
Talk With Heartland Experts!
You are cordially invited to participate in an exclusive monthly conference call for supporters who give $250 or more to The Heartland Institute. The first Wednesday of each month we will host a 20- to 30-minute call with a short presentation by one or more of Heartland’s senior staff.
Please RSVP to Gwendalyn Carver at 312/377-4000 or [email protected]. You will receive dial-in information upon confirmation of your participation. DONATE HERE
Help Us Stop Wikipedia’s Lies!
Have you visited Heartland’s Wikipedia page recently? The good news is that it is more complete than it was just a couple months ago, after leftists took it over and trashed it. Most of the new information is accurate and unbiased. But the lies and libel about our positions on smoking and climate change remain. Other conservative and free-market sites suffer, too. Wikipedia refuses to make many of the changes we request and deletes and reverses the changes made by others. We need your help! READ MORE
Jim Lakely is the Vice President and Director of Communications of The Heartland Institute.
