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.
Trump Improves Transparency by Ending EPA Sue-and-Settle Agreements
H. Sterling Burnett, Townhall
Regulations should be built on unimpeachable science, and transparency is critical when developing and imposing regulations. However, during President Barack Obama’s administration, rather than following this legally required transparency process, bureaucrats worked behind the scenes to collude with lobbyists from radical environmental groups to impose costly “sue-and-settle.” Thankfully, under Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Scott Pruitt, sue-and-settle agreements at EPA are over. READ MORE
School Choice Matters to Everyone, Not Just Families
Teresa Mull, RealClearEducation
Education, they say, is the great equalizer, but in the United States, not all schools, and certainly not all educational opportunities, are created equal. There exists in our country an array of schools, ranging from high-quality traditional public and charter schools to many that are epically failing. What remains constant in most states, though, are barriers to families who wish to access something other than their one-size-fits-all, ZIP code-mandated government school, and these barriers are bad for all of us. READ MORE
The Most Important Tax Reform Bill in Modern History
Justin Haskins, Washington Examiner
On Thursday, Republicans released their highly-anticipated tax reform bill, which was formulated in coordination with the Trump administration. It is the most important tax legislation in modern American history. Unlike the tax proposals of the past, the Republican bill wouldn’t merely tinker with the broken U.S. tax code; it would radically transform the current tax system and catalyze economic growth in a way we haven’t enjoyed in decades. READ MORE
Featured Podcast: Bobbi Herzberg, Mercatus Center: The Attack of the Zombie Obamacare Death Panel
Mercatus Center Distinguished Senior Fellow Bobbi Herzberg joins the Heartland Daily Podcast to talk about “Failure to Launch: The Institutional Defects of the Independent Payment Advisory Board,” a newly published research paper examining the track record of the so-called “death panel” created by the Affordable Care Act. Both political parties have allowed the Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB) to linger around, like a zombie agency delegated authority without any way to exercise that power. Herzberg says Congress should put IPAB out of its misery and eliminate it entirely, instead of just ignoring it and hoping it’ll go away on its own. LISTEN TO MORE
America First Energy Conference
LAST CHANCE TO REGISTER! President Trump has already turned back years of Obama’s anti-energy policies, allowing the United States to once again emerge as a global energy leader. This is an amazing turn of events, one that would have been impossible had Hillary Clinton won the 2016 election. To discuss this remarkable moment in history, The Heartland Institute is gathering the country’s best energy policy experts, as well as key players in the industry, for the America First Energy Conference at the J.W. Marriott Galleria Hotel in Houston, Texas on Thursday, November 9, 2017. Join Heartland for an event that will explain what has happened, and more importantly, what comes next. REGISTER NOW
Would Revived Civics End Up Being Progressive Ed Redux?
Robert Holland, American Thinker
The good news is that civics education is quickly gaining fans after being dormant for decades. There is a growing recognition that democracy cannot endure if three-fourths of American students don’t know what makes their country tick. The big unknown is whether revived civics coursework will become a means of teaching kids that they live in an exceptional republic whose founders molded a constitutional system within which citizens can find their niche and enjoy the blessings of liberty. READ MORE
South Carolina on Brink of Expanding School Choice Program
Teresa Mull, School Choice Weekly
South Carolina has a new leader at the helm of its private school choice program, and people are speculating he could make the program much more expansive. Chad Connelly is the new executive director of Exceptional SC, a nonprofit created by the state GOP-controlled Legislature to run the state’s private-school choice program that raises money to give tuition grants to children with disabilities so they can attend private schools. No doubt it will be an uphill battle for Connelly, but luckily for him, there are more parents than members of teachers unions. READ MORE
Costs of Decarbonization Greater Than Costs of Climate Change
H. Sterling Burnett, Climate Change Weekly
According to the report, between 2007 and 2017 to date, the national government has incurred direct costs of more than $350 billion because of extreme weather and fire events. The GAO did not conduct original research but rather relied on a few reports, and climate models referenced in those reports. The new GAO report is filled with so many uncertainties, and its cost projections built upon so many flawed assumptions, it is virtually useless for guiding climate change responses. READ MORE
Cupcakes, YouTube, and Home Production
Daniel Sutter
Home or small-scale production of goods and services is surging in the U.S. Examples include YouTube videos, blogging and self-published books, craft beer, cupcakes, and home schooling. This craft production boom, I think, foreshadows our economy’s future. People watch over three billion hours of YouTube per month, with 300 hours of video uploaded every minute. More than 700,000 books were self-published in 2015. We now have some 5,200 craft breweries, 2,800 commercial bakeries, and 6,000 retail bakeries. More than 1.7 million children (3.4 percent of students) are home schooled. READ MORE
Bonus Podcast: Bud Weinstein: The Future of US Energy
Dr. Bud Weinstein, associate director of the Maguire Energy Institute and an adjunct professor of business economics in the Cox School of Business at Southern Methodist University, discusses the future of energy in the United States. Dr. Weinstein will be a panelist at Heartland’s America First Energy Conference, and he shared his thoughts on the future of energy in the United States as it pertains to the coal, oil, and natural gas industry, as well as the importance these sources of energy play in America’s desire to be energy dominant. LISTEN TO MORE
Fossil Fuels Drive Hurricane Monitoring And Relief
H. Sterling Burnett, RedState
Hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria highlight the crucial role of fossil fuels to humankind’s reaction to the whims of nature. Fossil fuels are powering helicopters, boats of the “Cajun Navy” and U.S. Coast Guard, military, police, and the utility vehicles sent to restore electricity. They also powered the vehicles that evacuated people from the flood zone; the semi-trailer trucks that delivered water, food, blankets, and other relief supplies; and the ambulances that rescued those hurt during the storm. READ MORE
Heartland Institute Experts React to the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act
Republicans unveiled the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act on Thursday. If passed and signed into law, the bill would simplify the tax code to four brackets – 12 percent, 25 percent, 35 percent, and 39.6 percent – and amount to a $1.51 trillion tax cut over the next decade. Said President Tim Huelskamp: “Unlike their efforts on Obamacare, let’s hope congressional Republicans listen to the president and the American people, not the thousands of lobbyists and other Beltway insiders who support the 75,000-page status quo tax code.” 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.
