Heartland Weekly: Trump’s Paris Climate Choice Puts America First

Published June 19, 2017

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When Too Little CO2 Nearly Doomed Humanity
Dennis Avery, Townhall
Now that Alarmist-in-Chief Barack Obama is out of office, maybe a rational discussion can take place about the benefits of carbon dioxide (CO2). During the last Ice Age, too little CO2 in the air almost eradicated mankind. The Ice Age’s combined horrors – intense cold, permanent drought, and CO2 starvation – killed most of the plants on Earth. Only a few trees survived, in the mildest climates. Worldwide, only about 100,00 humans were left alive when the current interglacial warming mercifully began. READ MORE

Climate Alarmists: Abort Your ‘Extra’ Children
Tim Benson, American Thinker
Do global warming alarmists all support abortion on demand? In his new Netflix series, “Bill Nye Saves the World,” the show’s eponymous host asked a group of panelists, “Should we have policies that penalize people for having extra kids in the developed world?” Strikingly, none of the panelists found it creepy and disturbing that Nye said “extra kids.” Similarly, feminist Gloria Steinem charged the “patriarchy” with causing climate change by forcing women not to have all those abortions they secretly want, leading to overpopulation and “climate deprivation.” READ MORE

Trump’s Paris Climate Choice Puts America First
H. Sterling Burnett, Detroit News
In a much-anticipated decision, President Donald Trump kept his campaign promise by announcing the United States will withdraw from the Paris climate agreement. The emission cuts required by the Paris agreement would have forced the closure of many of the least-expensive power plants nationwide over the next decade, raising energy prices at a time of tepid economic growth and sky-high deficits. Au revoir, Paris, and good riddance to a bad treaty. READ MORE

Featured Podcast: WI State Sen. David Craig: Reining in Policing for Profit
Heartland Institute Research Fellow Jesse Hathaway talks with Wisconsin state Sen. David Craig about why civil asset forfeiture reform is needed in the Badger State. Wisconsin legislators are considering a bill, sponsored by Craig, curbing the ability of law enforcement officials to seize private property from suspected criminals. Craig’s bill removes the “policing for profit” motive inherent in the current law by requiring all asset forfeiture proceeds go to Wisconsin schools instead of local law enforcement agencies. LISTEN TO MORE

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The Purdue-Kaplan Earthquake
Jane Shaw, RealClearEducation
The news that Purdue University, Indiana’s public land-grant university, will buy Kaplan University, an online for-profit school, managed to produce only a small blip in national media attention in April. For people in higher education, however, it was an earthquake whose tremors may reverberate for years to come. If Purdue NewU becomes a reality, it could establish a model to help higher education modernize, reduce costs, and reach more students. READ MORE

Judicial Watch Sues DOE Over School Grants Program
Teresa Mull, School Choice Weekly
Judicial Watch is suing the U.S. Department of Education to obtain information about a costly and ineffective program implemented during the Obama administration. Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton says revealing these records will show Americans how “the billions of dollars funneled into public education programs did nothing to help children learn.” Let’s hope Judicial Watch gets the word out, and that the American Enterprise Institute’s Andy Smarick is correct in saying this program’s failure could ultimately end up being a huge boon for school choice. READ MORE

Thousands of School-Choice Hungry Families Left Empty-Handed in Nevada
Teresa Mull, School Choice Weekly
Thousands of families who signed up to take part in Nevada’s education savings account program will have to wait at least two more years because Democrats in the legislature worked this session to deny them the right to choose how they’re educated. Nevada’s budget will include more money for the state’s tax-credit scholarship, but that’s not what the people asked for. As usual, politics has gotten in the way of good policy, and children will suffer for it. READ MORE

Blame the Free Market, Comrade
Michael Hamilton and Chad Savage, Consumer Power Report
Medical pricing in the United States is controlled by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), a federal agency with a budget equal to the production of the 16th largest economy in the world. CMS fixes prices using the recommendations of the Relative Value Scale Update Committee, a 31-member committee formed almost 30 years ago. The ripple effect of these price controls causes Americans to spend on health care an amount equal to the gross domestic product (GDP) of Germany, Europe’s largest economy and the fourth-largest economy in the world. READ MORE

Bonus Podcast: Charlie Katebi: Millennials Can Fix America’s Broken Health Care System
Meet a Millennial helping American patients drink from the fountain of youth. The key is repealing government mandates and expanding patient control over who gets their health care dollars. Charlie Katebi, fellow at the Millennial Policy Center, has coauthored a comprehensive health care reform proposal designed to give patients more control over the dollars they spend on health care. Health Care News Managing Editor Michael Hamilton, a fellow Millennial, asked Katebi to explain it for our podcast listeners. LISTEN TO MORE

In Many States, the Pension Time-bomb Is Ticking
Jesse Hathaway, Washington Examiner
Tick, tick, tick …That’s the sound of a bomb getting ready to go off, one with the power to destroy taxpayers’ lives and state budgets. For decades, state lawmakers and pension boards have been cooking the books and making the funds they manage appear to be more financially sound than they really are, creating a fiscal time bomb that will explode if policymakers don’t work immediately to solve the problem they’ve created. READ MORE

Saving Money but Costing Lives
Peter Ferrara, Washington Times
Buried deep within Obamacare is a provision that takes away health care from you and your doctors, by taking away payment for critical health care that may be needed to save your life. It is called the Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB). The board will be independent of you, your doctors, your hospitals, Medicare, Congress, the judiciary, the democratic process, ultimately even the Constitution itself. IPAB is to be composed of 15 unelected bureaucrats appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate. But the board and its powers are so dangerous that even President Obama never made any appointments. READ MORE