Opinion and commentary on news, politics, culture, and policy impact.
It’s tax day—time to send those income tax payments to your federal and state governments. While tax withholding throughout the year means that many individuals actually receive tax refunds when they file, most people cringe at the total amount of state and local income taxes they pay each year. As burdensome as income taxes are,…
Forgive me for taking any statement from the public relations department of the IRS with a grain of salt. IRS Commissioner John Koskinen says that the agency has eliminated a huge processing backlog of groups seeking tax-exempt status left over from the years it spent targeting conservative and tea party groups. That’s more than 60,000…
Last month, the New Mexico legislature unanimously passed a bipartisan bill essentially abolishing civil forfeiture in the Land of Enchantment (yes, that’s what they call themselves). But weeks went by and it looked like Gov. Susana Martinez was going to pocket veto the bill. If she hadn’t signed the bill by noon Tuesday, it would…
The Heritage Foundation's Matthew Streit wrote more about this in a column last month for The Daily Signal: The last major update to the U.S. tax system was in 1986—over 29 years ago. Think about how much has changed since then. In 1985, Microsoft Windows was released. Since then, Microsoft has released more than 20…
Ever since President Obama started running for president in 2007, there has been a debate about how much tax rich Americans pay and whether they should pay more. In that ongoing debate, Paul Krugman and Matt Yglesias criticized the chart below because, according to them, it does not give a complete picture of the tax…
The deadline for Congress to finish work on the federal budget is April 15, but will lawmakers manage to hammer out a deal in time? Heritage Foundation expert Romina Boccia, the Grover M. Hermann research fellow in federal budgetary affairs, explains what you need to know about the budget.
The National Committee on Pay Equity designated Tuesday, April 14 as Equal Pay Day to raise awareness for the gender wage gap. The committee and other groups, including the Obama administration, assert that the statistical gender wage gap is a result of discrimination and requires a federal government solution. This leaves us with three questions…
As the situation in Yemen continues to deteriorate, consider this striking contrast between the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and the United States. One country dispatched naval forces to evacuate its citizens from the collapsing Middle East state. In the process, they evacuated citizens from 10 other countries, including Great Britain, Japan and Germany. The other…
Today is apparently “equal pay day”—the alleged day of a new year through which a woman must work in order to earn the same pay as a man earned in the previous calendar year. Forget the impossibility of an annual equal pay day. If a woman had to work until April in 2014, she is…
Though environmental impact statement after environmental impact statement from his own Department of State concludes that the Keystone XL Pipeline would not have a significant environmental impact, President Obama said the impact “could be disastrous.” The alleged disaster would come from the carbon dioxide generated from the production and use of the 800,000 barrels of…
Cyber security firm FireEye’s recent report details persistent cyber espionage in Southeast Asian countries over the past decade. Many of the victims include defense and communication firms and local journalists who reported on regional affairs and Chinese government issues. The report claims these attacks were state sponsored, likely by the Chinese government—a known cyber aggressor….
The Senate Committee on Foreign Relations will mark up legislation Tuesday that would allow Congress to review any nuclear deal agreed upon with Iran. The bill, introduced in February by the committee chairman, Sen. Bob Corker, and then-ranking minority member, Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., would prevent President Obama from lifting economic sanctions on Iran for…
In a disturbing development on Friday, Pakistan released Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi on bail. Lakhvi, who had been in Pakistani custody for the past six years, was the ringleader of the 2008 Mumbai terrorist attacks by Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT). The U.S. had repeatedly urged the Pakistanis to move forward with the prosecution of Lakhvi, who allegedly directed…
Recent nationwide polling shows that 81 percent of Americans agree that the government should leave people free to live and work in accordance with their belief that marriage is between a man and a woman. Nevertheless, such people are increasingly being ostracized, fired and facing death threats simply because of such beliefs. All of this…
Regardless of the name, the United Nations’ proposed list of Sustainable Development Goals actually reads more like a wish list cobbled together by a committee that could not say no. The Sustainable Development Goals, which are the heirs to the Millennium Development Goals, consist of a whopping 169 proposed targets under 17 categories. As The Economist…
Many Americans are aware of Congress’s long history of using Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, two government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs), to increase homeownership among low-income and minority Americans at taxpayers’ expense. Hidden Taxes, Hidden Subsidies Yet a recent study published by the University of Chicago provides new evidence of how government control of the home mortgage…
These days The New York Times best-seller list is filled with conservative books by authors such as Bill O’Reilly, Mark Levin, Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh. Nearly every mainstream publisher (Random House, HarperCollins, Hachette) has its own conservative imprint. In the last decade, Regnery Publishing, the venerable conservative publisher, has seen 30 of its titles…
Americans were stunned last week by graphic video of North Charleston, S.C. Police Officer Michael T. Slager shooting an unarmed suspect in the back after a routine traffic stop. The video led to Slager both being charged with murder and fired from the North Charleston Police Department. Slager’s quick dismissal from the department stands in…
Sens. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., and Patty Murray, D-Wash., have released a draft of their No Child Left Behind rewrite, which is slated to be considered in the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee Tuesday. The 601-page proposal has many of the hallmarks of the House No Child Left Behind rewrite—the Student Success Act—which…
Sunday’s New York Times stated plainly what many of us have known for a while: Our nation’s elites are intolerant of ordinary Americans. The reporter for the Times revealed a startling reality: “In dozens of interviews, lawyers and law professors said the imbalance in legal firepower in the same-sex marriage cases resulted from a conviction…