Opinion and commentary on news, politics, culture, and policy impact.
Natural resource industry leaders nationwide shuddered in February 2011 when the Environmental Protection Agency announced its intent to veto the proposed copper, gold and molybdenum-rich Pebble Mine in southwestern Alaska – before the developer even had finished its preliminary design. Without warning, the EPA had nullified a half-dozen basic laws and seized power to itself…
Doctors in their day-to-day practice already face a mound of federal regulations. Now, starting Oct. 1, doctors will face a new unfunded mandate as they will be required to transition to a costly and complicated coding system for payment. While the International Classification of Diseases (ICD) system was originally designed specifically for disease classification, since…
Wal-Mart is giving employees a raise. Wal-Mart announced today that it would spend $1 billion to raise the wages for 500,000 workers. Current employees will now be paid at least $9 per hour by April of this year and $10 per hour by February 2016. Wal-Mart’s decision to lift its base hourly wage is an…
Common Core continues to be a top concern in the states, with Mississippi and Wisconsin being the latest states taking steps to distance themselves from the controversial standards. Mississippi is considering full repeal of the Common Core standards. State senators Michael Watson and Angela Burks introduced legislation to repeal the standards last month, with Watson…
The current proposals in both the House and Senate to reauthorize No Child Left Behind are working through Congress. Although the proposals eliminate and consolidate some programs, the proposals maintain elevated levels of spending overall. While they would, importantly, eliminate some mandates imposed by No Child Left Behind, they retain most others, and would extend…
On Friday before leaving his position as a senior counselor to President Barack Obama on climate policy, John Podesta warned: Those in Congress who question the need and efficacy of the President’s actions on climate change will find themselves on the wrong side of science, on the wrong side of history—and on the wrong side…
In his surprise best seller Capital in the Twenty-First Century, Thomas Piketty argues that the wealth of rich owners of capital grows faster than the wages of workers in capitalist economies. Hence, inequality always increases unless destructive world wars or heavy-handed government regulation of the economy intervene. To remedy modern inequality, he proposes punitive taxes…
Hypocrisy is a given in Washington. So much so that Senate Democrats must believe no one notices just how much of it they are guilty of in their attempts to prevent Congress from funding the Department of Homeland Security. First, Democrats say they want to fund Homeland Security–yet they have filibustered any and all attempts…
It’s not a good time for freedom of the press. The non-profit organization Reporters Without Borders, devoted to supporting journalists worldwide, published its annual index this month. In six continents, the conditions for free media in 2014 became not just worse, but “dramatically worse,” according to the group’s “2015 World Press Freedom Index.” International journalism…
Egypt retaliated for the decapitation of 21 Egyptian Christian workers held hostage in Libya by supporters of the Islamic State (also known as ISIS or ISIL) by bombing bases and training camps controlled by that revolutionary terrorist movement. Some of the targets were located near the cities of Derna and Sirte. Eastern Libya long has…
Allow funding for the Department of Homeland Security to lapse or engage in the legislative process. Those are the only two options Senate Democrats have at this point. Everything else transcribed in the press or recited by television pundits is nothing more than a distraction. Senate Democrats, of course, deny that binary choice, but their…
The 26 states that sued President Obama over his unilateral amnesty plan for illegal aliens won a major battle on Monday when a federal judge issued a temporary injunction against the plan’s implementation. In a fitting bit of irony, the order was issued on President’s Day, a day when we remember the great men who…
At the recent inauguration of the Desert Sunlight solar farm, Secretary of Interior Sally Jewell stated, “This is the beginnings of a renewable energy future.” Let’s hope she is wrong, because the Desert Sunlight project is cronyism at its worst. This project involves $1.5 billion of subsidized loans. It also mandated purchases of overpriced power,…
Who makes history? When people think of history makers, they may first think of those whose accomplishments rest upon specific moments in their life. However, there are individuals whose actions over a lifetime create ripple effects for many years to come. A man of this exact nature, the late Sen. Edward Brooke, R-Mass., served as…
FutureGen is dead. Again. The Department of Energy pulled the plug on this $1.1 billion project in Illinois: a “clean coal” power plant that would capture carbon dioxide and store it underground. President George W. Bush proposed the carbon-free power plant in 2003 but shelved the project five years later because of cost overruns. President…
GABORONE, Botswana—Western governments, well-intentioned NGOs and good-old-fashioned profit-seeking capitalists have been trying for decades to help bring development and prosperity to Africa, often unsuccessfully. Botswana embraced democracy, free markets and the rule of law. In other words, economic freedom. But buried in the heart of Southern Africa lies a success story that could be a model…
Predictably, President Barack Obama’s 2016 budget request calls for higher taxes to partially finance a $4-trillion spending tsunami. One of the more senseless tax hikes would fall on multinational businesses and is sought to pay for a transportation budget more lavish than necessary. It’s baffling why Obama would propose this tax on businesses’ foreign income,…
Between complacency and confrontation there is a responsible way forward that keeps the Asia-Pacific a big enough place to accommodate the vital interests of both Beijing and Washington. The heavy lifting will have to be done by the United States. That’s okay. The work will make America a stronger nation and a better Asian ally….
What’s so great about George Washington? I don’t mean this as a rhetorical question, implying that Washington really was not great—as such a question might be intended by many modern scholarly debunkers of great men. I intend it, rather, as a real question from which we can gain some valuable insight: what exactly made George…
Among so many of President Obama’s flaws, near the top of the list is that he has never understood the art of the deal. Every successful president has cut deals with the other party to strategically advance his own agenda. Give a little, get a little. Washington, Lincoln, FDR, Reagan and Clinton were masters at…