Heartland Weekly: Heartland Energy Expert in Wall Street Journal

Published July 24, 2017

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.

A Proposed Balanced Budget Amendment
Rob Natelson, Heartland Policy Brief
As the debt of the United States government continues to mount, efforts to add a balanced budget amendment (BBA) to the U.S. Constitution are gaining steam. But drafting such an amendment is not as easy as it sounds. In this new Policy Brief from The Heartland Institute, constitutional scholar Robert G. Natelson takes on the task. He opens with a brief discussion of the national government’s debt crisis. Noting “the same dysfunctions that impede Congress from balancing the federal budget also prevent it from proposing a BBA,” Natelson suggests an Article V convention of the states is the most
promising vehicle for proposing a BBA. READ MORE

Repeal Obamacare Now, Replace It Later
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) on Monday announced the Senate leadership is giving up on its latest attempt to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act (ACA) simultaneously and is planning a vote on repeal only. “Repealing Obamacare and starting from scratch will likely result in a far more free-market replacement bill than the one recently considered by the Senate—especially if the future replacement bill includes Medicaid block grants, giving more power and control over the program to the states,” said Senior Fellow Peter Ferrara. READ MORE

Heartland Energy Expert in Wall Street Journal
Isaac Orr, Wall Street Journal (paywall)
German Chancellor Angela Merkel used her closing speech at the recent Group of 20 summit to chide President Donald Trump for withdrawing the United States from the Paris climate accord. Yet the German people will benefit far more from the American president’s focus on facilitating U.S. energy production and boosting exports than from Mrs. Merkel’s climate policies. Those policies have increased residential electricity prices for German households and failed to achieve any meaningful reductions in fossil-fuel consumption or carbon-dioxide emissions. READ MORE

Featured Podcast: Adam Millsap, on Ranking States’ Fiscal Stability
Adam Millsap of the Mercatus Center at George Mason University talks about the center’s new report ranking the 50 states on their fiscal stability. The 2017 edition of the Ranking the States by Fiscal Condition report uses comprehensive annual financial reports from all 50 states to measure the stability of state governments’ financial books. The study ranks each state’s financial health based on short- and long-term debt and other key fiscal obligations, such as unfunded pensions and health care benefits. How does your state rank? LISTEN TO MORE

Dr. Jane Orient Talks Republican Health Care on Newsmax TV
Policy Advisor Dr. Jane Orient appeared this week on Newsmax TV to support full repeal of Obamacare. With a clear majority in both houses of Congress, as well as a president urging legislators to repeal immediately, there should be no reason for failure. Yet, despite all these advantages, the current repeal bill is struggling to find votes. Dr. Orient explains the need for government to get out of health care and work towards a free-market system. WATCH HERE

Free Market Road Show: The World after Brexit and Trump
On July 18, The Heartland Institute hosted a stop on the 10th Annual Free Market Road Show, which brings together leading business people, outstanding scholars, and policy experts to discuss the aftermath of two historic events in the United Kingdom and United States. Speakers were Stephen Hicks, professor of philosophy at Rockford University; Matt Kibbe, president and chief community organizer at Free the People; and Barbara Kolm, Friedrich A.V. Hayek Center president and Austrian Economics Center founding director. WATCH HERE

Does ‘A’ Now Stand for ‘Average’?
Teresa Mull, School Choice Weekly
This week’s issue of School Choice Weekly asks whether getting an ‘A’ on your report card means what it used to. According to USA Today, “Nearly half of America’s Class of 2016 are A students. Meanwhile, their average SAT score fell from 1,026 to 1,002 on a 1,600-point scale—suggesting that those A’s on report cards might be fool’s gold.” Reminder: The majority of students in the United States attend government schools. Government schools are producing students with inflated egos and empty minds. READ MORE

Burnett Refutes NY Magazine Primal Scream
H. Sterling Burnett, Climate Change Weekly
In this week’s Climate Change Weekly, H. Sterling Burnett analyzes a claim made by David Wallace-Wells in his notorious New York Magazine doomsday story, that man-made ozone and particulate matter are causing millions of premature deaths annually. This claim would be laughable if it weren’t so regularly repeated in the media and so commonly believed. The claim is based on flawed scientific studies and government claims that knowingly excluded copious amounts of research demonstrating ozone and particulate matter levels aren’t causing any known fatalities. READ MORE

Bonus Podcast: Scott Ehrlich: How Health Insurance Is Supposed to Work
Republican efforts to replace Obamacare are hamstrung by a fundamental misunderstanding of how health insurance should work, according to DebatingHealth.com Founder Scott Ehrlich. Relatively few people use auto insurance to pay for car maintenance or use homeowner’s insurance to make home repairs. But people use health insurance for even routine visits for which they should pay cash, indicating our health insurance system is dysfunctional. LISTEN TO MORE

Insanity and Hypocrisy Down Under
Paul Driessen, CFACT
A massive energy shortage in Australia that “no one saw coming” was actually predicted by many experts. But intent on pursuing their “dangerous manmade climate change” and “renewable energy will save the planet” agendas, the political classes ignored them. Reliance on green energy caused 90,000 homes to be without power during a windless heat wave. Comically, Al Gore is jetting around the land Down Under promoting his new climate chaos film, oblivious to the fact that following his advice is what caused the crisis. READ MORE

China Will Never Be a Climate Leader—Unless There Is a Payoff
H. Sterling Burnett, Breitbart
Many stories on radio, television, and in print following President Donald Trump’s decision to pull the United States out of the costly Paris climate agreement claimed America’s absence from the accord means China has ascended as one of the world’s leaders in the battle against human-caused climate change. Good luck with that! In contrast to the United States, China’s CO2 emissions are growing more rapidly than expected. China is now, by a substantial margin, the largest emitter of greenhouse gases in the world. READ MORE

HEARTLAND’S PODCASTS NOW ON SOUND CLOUD
Heartland’s podcasts have grown steadily since going “daily” in 2010—on pace for nearly two million downloads in 2017 on iTunes! Now, the Heartland Daily Podcast is also available on SoundCloud, so you have yet another convenient and dynamic way to listen to the country’s best podcasts on school reform, budgets, taxes, health care, environment, energy, and constitutional reform. Follow us on SoundCloud, get the app for your phone, and grab the easy-to-use player to embed on your own blogs or social media accounts. CLICK HERE

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