Recent Policy Studies

• Economic Growth
  

  The Right to Earn a Living: Economic Freedom and the Law

  By Timothy Sandefur, Cato Institute
  
  Book, 09/17/2010
  

  For many people, owning a business is the very definition of the American dream. But in today’s America, attaining such a dream is made increasingly difficult by laws and regulations that interfere with entrepreneurs and their right to earn a living. Author Timothy Sandefur has had a part in defending many hardworking American citizens against the unfair and often ludicrous restrictions imposed on them by government. These rules and regulations allow politicians and lobbyists to play favorites, rewrite contracts, file frivolous lawsuits, seize private property, and manipulate private choices.

  
  
  
• Foreign Policy/International Affairs
  

  Turkey’s Referendum: A Looming Challenge to U.S. Interests?

  By Ariel Cohen, The Heritage Foundation
  
  WebMemo, 09/17/2010
  

  The United States has a strong national interest in close strategic cooperation with Turkey and needs to face the reality of Turkey’s political evolution. But instead of expressing concern about Turkey’s drift away from secularism and its concentration of political power, the Obama Administration and leaders of European powers and the European Union offered only plaudits to Prime Minister Erdogan and his incumbent AKP, which triumphed in the referendum.

  
  
  
• Health Care
  

  Massachusetts Health Care Reform Has Left Small Business Behind: A Warning to the States

  By Joshua Archambault, The Heritage Foundation
  
  Backgrounder, 09/17/2010
  

  Implementation of the Massachusetts health care reform has largely failed to address the needs of small businesses and their employees. Given that small businesses generate most new jobs, this breakdown also constitutes poor economic policy. As other states take up health care reform under the implementation deadlines of President Barack Obama’s health care law, they would be wise to implement health reforms that best address the needs of their states, including their small business communities.

  
  
  
• Immigration
  

  Adding DREAM Act to Defense Bill Is Another Form of Amnesty

  By Jena Baker McNeill, The Heritage Foundation
  
  WebMemo, 09/17/2010
  

  On September 14, U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D–NV) announced plans to introduce the DREAM Act as an amendment to the upcoming Department of Defense authorization bill. The act would create a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants who entered the U.S. before the age of 16 and have lived in the country for at least five years. Despite its seemingly humanitarian aims, the DREAM Act, much like the President’s proposal for comprehensive immigration reform, equates to an amnesty for individuals entering the U.S. illegally.

  
  
  
• National Security
  

  Twelve Flaws of New START That Will Be Difficult to Fix

  By Baker Spring, The Heritage Foundation
  
  Backgrounder, 09/17/2010
  

  New START is a deeply flawed arms control treaty with Russia. It is the product of a contradictory and wrong-headed approach to strategic nuclear arms control by the Obama Administration. The Administration’s approach to strategic nuclear arms control combines the worst aspects of Cold War arms control, which resulted in a nuclear arms race between the United States and the Soviet Union, with the worst aspects of President Barack Obama’s stated policy of seeking a world without nuclear weapons, which carries the serious risk of generating a nuclear conflict.

  
  
  
• Economic Growth
  

  The Business of Government Shouldn’t Be Business

  By Veronique de Rugy, Mercatus Center
  
  Working Paper, 09/17/2010
  

  With the unemployment rate in the United States lingering just below 10 percent and elections approaching rapidly, job creation has become Washington’s top priority. Arguing that small businesses create the most jobs, lawmakers are instituting several programs that focus on helping small businesses. The effectiveness of these policies, though, is dubious. If government wants to help the economy, which in turn would create jobs, it needs to get out of the business of helping business.

  
  
  
• Family, Culture & Community
  

  Marriage: America’s Greatest Weapon Against Child Poverty

  By Robert Rector, The Heritage Foundation
  
  Backgrounder, 09/16/2010
  

  Marriage remains America’s strongest anti-poverty weapon, yet it continues to decline. As husbands disappear from the home, poverty and welfare dependence will increase, and children and parents will suffer as a result. Since marital decline drives up child poverty and welfare dependence, and since the poor aspire to healthy marriage but lack the norms, understanding, and skills to achieve it, it is reasonable for government to take active steps to strengthen marriage. Just as government discourages youth from dropping out of school, it should clearly and forcefully articulate the value of marriage.

  
  
  
• Foreign Policy/International Affairs
  

  Russia’s Proposed New European Security Treaty: A Non-Starter for the U.S. and Europe

  By Sally McNamara, The Heritage Foundation
  
  Backgrounder, 09/16/2010
  

  In several ways, Russia’s proposed new European Security Treaty would undermine European security—the opposite of its stated purpose—not least of all by sharply limiting North Atlantic Treaty Organization's ability to act and to accept new members. Instead of adding to the existing European architecture and treaties, the U.S. and its European allies should work to advance relations with Russia bilaterally and through existing institutions. They should explicitly reject Russia’s sphere-of-influence policy and reaffirm the inviolability of national borders.

  
  
  
• Education
  

  Report Card on American Education: Ranking State K-12 Performance, Progress, and Reform

  By Matthew Ladner, Andrew T. LeFevre, Dan Lips , American Legislative Exchange Council
  
  Book, 09/16/2010
  

  American Legislative Exchange Council's 16th edition of the Report Card on American Education contains a comprehensive overview of educational achievement levels (performance and gains for low-income students) for the 50 states and the District of Columbia (see full report for complete methodology). The Report Card details what education policies states currently have in place and provides a roadmap for legislators to follow to bring about educational excellence in their state.

  
  
  
• The Constitution/Civil Liberties
  

  Amending the Constitution by Convention: A Complete View of the Founders’ Plan

  By Robert G. Natelson, Goldwater Institute
  
  Policy Report, 09/16/2010
  

  Americans are increasingly questioning–and resisting–the endless growth of the federal government. Part of this resistance finds voice in efforts to enforce state sovereignty through litigation and legislation such as the Health Care Freedom Act and the Firearms Freedom Act. Measures such as these protect existing, fundamental rights from erosion at the federal level. But the growing discontent has also reignited interest in an even more direct route for the people and the states to regain control over the federal government–the Article V constitutional amendment process.

  
  
  
• Health Care
  

  How to Cover Pre-existing Conditions

  By James C. Capretta, Tom Miller, National Affairs
  
  National Affairs, 09/16/2010
  

  The many advantages of high-risk pools create an opening for opponents of Obama’s approach. Critics should seize the chance to present a coherent case to the public for replacing the deeply flawed new law—advancing in its place a series of targeted, incremental solutions to the specific problems plaguing our health-care system. The challenge of covering Americans with pre-existing conditions offers the earliest, and perhaps best, proving ground for their case. It is a challenge that those who oppose Obamacare’s overreach should embrace—not a vulnerability that should scare them away from the cause of repeal.

  
  
  
• Health Care
  

  Toward Real Health Care Reform

  By Paul Howard, Stephen T. Parente, National Affairs
  
  National Affairs, 09/16/2010
  

  One way or another, the system created by the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act will have to be replaced; the fiscal and policy booby traps hidden among its various provisions mean that the law is simply unsustainable as currently written. The real question, then, is what comes next. Facing rapid cost increases and interminable struggles between regulators and insurers, some on the left will likely argue that government should create a public option to compete with private insurers, or just open Medicare to all Americans.

  
  
  
• Economic and Political Thought
  

  Hayek’s The Constitution of Liberty: An Account of Its Argument

  By Eugene F. Miller, Institute of Economic Affairs
  
  Book, 09/16/2010
  

  F. A. Hayek’s The Constitution of Liberty has had a profound effect on the thinking of a generation of scholars, students and even politicians. There is a sense in which it is regarded as a manifesto of traditional liberalism. But the book has a complex underlying argument, and the philosophy is often difficult to understand for the non-specialist reader. This monograph, in the great tradition of IEA publications, both summarises and interprets the argument of The Constitution of Liberty for a non-specialist audience. It does so by setting Hayek’s seminal book in the context of his earlier and later works.

  
  
  
• Transportation/Infrastructure
  

  Public Transit in North Carolina

  By Randal O’Toole, John Locke Foundation
  
  Spotlight, 09/16/2010
  

  Public transit is often portrayed as a low-cost, energy-efficient alternative to auto driving. In fact, transit is much more costly than driving and requires huge subsidies to attract any riders at all. Moreover, transit systems in the vast majority of American cities use more energy and emit more greenhouse gases than the average car. For every dollar collected in fares from transit riders, the average transit system in America requires more than $2 from taxpayers for operating subsidies plus more than $1 for capital improvements and maintenance.

  
  
  
• Elections, Transparency, & Accountability
  

  Supreme Court Considers Whether Sales Tax Exemptions Can Be Discriminatory Taxes

  By Joseph Henchman, Tax Foundation
  
  Fiscal Facts, 09/16/2010
  

  If a state exempts particular businesses from paying sales tax but not their competitors, does that mean the tax system is discriminatory? On November 10, 2010, the U.S. Supreme Court will consider this question in the context of railroad taxation when it hears arguments in CSX Transportation, Inc. v. Alabama Department of Revenue, No. 09-520. The Tax Foundation’s Center for Legal Reform has filed a friend-of-the-court brief in the case, which this report summarizes.

  
  
  
• Budget & Taxation
  

  What Every American Needs to Know about Government-Entitlement Reform

  By Andrew G. Biggs, American Enterprise Institute
  
  Retirement Policy Outlook, 09/16/2010
  

  In the end, we must choose between larger programs financed by higher taxes or better, more targeted plans that focus resources where they are needed most. Reforming entitlements should be seen as a virtuous act if only because virtue, as it is said, is its own reward. The political party that reforms entitlements will not likely be rewarded at the ballot box for doing so. However, that party will secure an America consistent with its vision for decades to come.

  
  
  
• Economic and Political Thought
  

  Austrian Economics: A Primer

  By Eamonn Butler, Adam Smith Institute
  
  Book, 09/16/2010
  

  Austrian School economists gave us the ideas of marginal utility, opportunity cost, and the importance of time and ignorance in shaping human choices and the markets, prices and production systems that stem from them. ‘Austrian’ economics has revolutionised our understanding of what money is, why economic booms invariably turn to damaging busts, why government intervention in the economy is a mistake, the importance of time and information in economic decision-making, the crucial role of entrepreneurship, and how much economic policy is just plain wrong.

  
  
  
• Health Care
  

  Why Obama’s Government Takeover of Health Care Will Be a Disaster

  By Davis Gratzer, Encounter Books
  
  Book, 09/15/2010
  

  If Barack Obama has his way, the American health care system is headed for a train wreck. In this vital expose, Dr. David Gratzer reveals how a government takeover by Washington will put a massive new bureaucracy between doctors and patients, create rationing, and kill the spirit of innovation that has made American high tech medicine a world leader in the treatment of cancer and other diseases. Dr. Gratzer, a first-hand witness of the failures of Canada’s healthcare system, shows why socialized medicine will make America sick.

  
  
  
• Foreign Policy/International Affairs
  

  Obama’s Betrayal of Israel

  By Michael Ledeen, Encounter Books
  
  Book, 09/15/2010
  

  Today, Barack Obama is giving the Arabs the same opportunity as Nixon gave the Vietnamese. Obama told a Muslim audience in Cairo in the first months of his administration that America’s support for Israel was “unbreakable,” even as he moved to compel Jerusalem to cede even more territory to its enemies. In, this new broadside, Michael Ledeen asks why the Obama administration has chosen this course, and examines what this betrayal means for Israel and the world at large.

  
  
  
• Elections, Transparency, & Accountability
  

  How the Obama Administration Threatens to Undermine Our Elections

  By John Fund, Encounter Books
  
  Book, 09/15/2010
  

  In this explosive Broadside, John Fund exposes the new package of reforms being pushed by Obama and liberals in Congress. First, the White House has declared it will exercise oversight of the Census next year, compromising the apportionment of Congressional seats and federal dollars. On top of that, liberals in Congress are pushing for “universal voter registration,” a version of which is already used in a half dozen states but has only resulted in serious fraud. Making it easier to vote is a worthy goal. But pushing dubious measures puts the very foundation of our democracy at risk.

  
  
  
• Monetary Policy/Financial Regulation
  

  How Barack Obama is Bankrupting the U.S. Economy

  By Stephen Moore, Encounter Books
  
  Book, 09/15/2010
  

  During his first nine months in office, Barack Obama pursued the most aggressive government expansionist agenda since Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal was launched in 1933. White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel summarized Obama’s first-year game plan best, “An economic crisis is a terrible thing to waste.” So far, we have seen multi-trillion dollar bailouts in: housing, banking, insurance, auto industries, the stimulus plan, cap and trade, a $1.2 trillion health care bill, and of course, the $4 billion Cash for Clunkers program. None of this has worked. Now, six months after the stimulus program began, we sit at 9.4% unemployment.

  
  
  
• National Security
  

  How the Obama Administration Threatens Our National Security

  By Victor Davis Hanson, Encounter Books
  
  Book, 09/15/2010
  

  In this revealing broadside, Victor Davis Hanson explains how President Obama has imprinted his domestic ideology of victimhood onto a therapeutic, Carter-inspired foreign policy. In Obama’s vision, the United States renounces its role as a defender of the postwar order and instead becomes an agent of global change – one that questions our existing system of defense, values, alliances, interests and commerce. In tactical terms, Obama believes that his hope-and-change rhetoric and nontraditional background give him a moral authority abroad that will trump any inconsistency in U.S. foreign policy.

  
  
  
• Natural Resources, Energy, Environment, & Science
  

  The Bad Science and Bad Policy of Obama’s Global Warming Agenda

  By Roy W. Spencer, Encounter Books
  
  Book, 09/15/2010
  

  As the U.N. moves closer to a new global warming treaty, it is time to examine the calls for reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. The health and welfare of humanity has benefited from access to fossil fuels, and any drastic move to limit that access must have extraordinary evidence to support it. While alternative energy technologies will increasingly be relied upon in the face of dwindling fossil fuel supplies, leading climate researcher Dr. Roy W. Spencer argues that the free market is the best mechanism for solving the problem.

  
  
  
• Crime, Justice & the Law
  

  How the Obama Administration Has Politicized Justice

  By Andrew C. McCarthy, Encounter Books
  
  Book, 09/15/2010
  

  With the Obama Justice Department under Attorney General Eric Holder’s direction, Americans are learning what really happens when law-enforcement power is co-opted by politics. In this eye-popping Broadside, Andrew C. McCarthy shows that the biggest beneficiaries have been jihadists. For the past eight years, a group of lawyers volunteered their services to America’s enemies. Now, the Justice Department is rife with some of those same lawyers as it enhances due process for terrorists and feeds the international Left’s call for war-crimes charges against President Obama’s political adversaries.

  
  
  
• Economic and Political Thought
  

  Obama’s Radical Transformation of America: Year One

  By Joshua Muravchik, Encounter Books
  
  Book, 09/15/2010
  

  In only one year, Obama has saddled Americans with a skyrocketing deficit that will leave future generations deeply in debt; a health-care plan that prescribes a cure worse than the illness; catastrophically expensive environmental schemes; and a foreign policy that appeases enemies and punishes friends. In this frank and insightful Broadside, Joshua Muravchik analyzes these and Obama’s other misguided efforts to “fundamentally transform” America during his first year in office.

  
  
  
• Foreign Policy/International Affairs
  

  How Obama Has Mishandled the War on Terror

  By Michael B. Mukasey, Encounter Books
  
  Book, 09/15/2010
  

  In this illuminating Broadside, former Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey shows how Barrack Obama has taken the war on terror from the adult realities of George W. Bush, where hard choices were faced and made, and the nation kept safe, to an adolescent fantasy world where we can at once be nobler than the law requires and safer than we were before. Obama rejects as an unnecessary sacrifice of our ideals the stern measures adopted by his predecessor, and offers instead to limit our intelligence gathering and provide terrorists with better conditions than common criminals, in the name of lofty idealism.

  
  
  
• Immigration
  

  How Barack Obama is Transforming America Through Immigration

  By Mark Krikorian, Encounter Books
  
  Book, 09/15/2010
  

  President Obama and his allies have made no secret about their immigration goals: easy amnesty, loose enforcement, and ever-higher levels of legal immigration. One prominent labor leader has boasted that continued mass immigration “will solidify and expand the progressive coalition for the future.” In this Broadside, Mark Krikorian lays out the details of Obama’s open-borders approach to immigration – and its political consequences.

  
  
  
• National Security
  

  Advice and Consent? The Senate Should START with Advice

  By Baker Spring, The Heritage Foundation
  
  WebMemo, 09/15/2010
  

  There are no easy solutions to fixing the problems of the flawed New START treaty. Foremost, the Senate should avoid rubberstamping the treaty. The new strategic environment requires the U.S. to possess robust missile defenses and a range of conventional and non-conventional capabilities to prevent and deter attacks. The very survival of the U.S. may be at stake in these issues. Congress is required by the Constitution to “provide for the common defense,” and the Senate must provide due diligence in its consideration of the treaty.

  
  
  
• National Security
  

  How Obama Is Transforming America’s Military From Superpower to Paper Tiger

  By Jed Babbin, Encounter Books
  
  Book, 09/15/2010
  

  Barack Obama has made it clear that he thinks the world would be a better and more peaceful place if the United States were too weak to affect the course of events. Obama, along with Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, has slashed missile defense, dramatically reduced investment in future military technologies, and broken promises to our allies. In addition, Obama is transforming our military into a politically correct force that no one will want to join.

  
  
  
• Budget & Taxation
  

  Obama and America's Public Sector Plague

  By E.J. McMahon, Encounter Books
  
  Book, 09/15/2010
  

  In this provocative Broadside, E.J. McMahon explains how the policies of the Obama administration have shielded most state and local government employees from the worst effects of the Great Recession. President Obama’s stimulus bill helped most states and local governments continue raising average employee pay even at the depths of the downturn. In the name of promoting “economic recovery,” the president wants to spend tens of billions more to prop up government payrolls and preserve cushy employee benefits.

  
  
  
• Budget & Taxation
  

  Obama Tax Hikes: McConnell–Grassley Tax Hike Prevention Act Would Help Taxpayers and Economy

  By Curtis Dubay, The Heritage Foundation
  
  WebMemo, 09/15/2010
  

  Raising taxes during a struggling economy makes no sense. Doing so now would slow this lagging recovery even further. Raising taxes on investment, work, and savings would diminish all three—hardly a recipe for creating jobs. The McConnell–Grassley plan recognizes that preventing steep tax rates permanently is good policy any time but especially in a struggling recovery.

  
  
  
• Economic Growth
  

  New York’s 21st Century Job Slump: Still a Tale of Two Sectors

  By E.J. McMahon, Michael Cretz, Empire Center for New York State Policy
  
  Research Bulletin, 09/15/2010
  

  This has been a lost decade for employment in New York State, where the total number of payroll jobs is now below the 2000 level. The Empire State’s job drop has been concentrated in the private sector. As of July, New York’s private firms employed 122,000 fewer people than they had in July 2000, and 247,900 fewer than in 2008. New York’s rate of job loss during the latest recession was less than half as severe as the national norm. However, after gaining private jobs more slowly than average during the 2003-07expansion, the state also had less to lose.

  
  
  
• Natural Resources, Energy, Environment, & Science
  

  BP and the Gulf Oil Spill: Greens Use Deepwater Oil Spill to Promote Job-Killing Policy Agenda

  By Neil Maghami, Capital Research Center
  
  Green Paper, 09/14/2010
  

  Despite its generous past contributions to environmental groups, BP is facing a torrent of green criticism since the Deepwater Horizon explosion and oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Green groups and other agenda-driven activists are using the spill to promote a job-killing energy agenda.

  
  
  
• Health Care
  

  Reductions in Medicare Advantage Payments: The Impact on Seniors by Region

  By Robert A. Book, James C. Capretta, The Heritage Foundation
  
  Backgrounder, 09/14/2010
  

  The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act substantially alters Medicare Advantage and, as a consequence, reduces the access of senior citizens and the disabled to quality health care by restricting and worsening the health care plan options available to them. Lower-income beneficiaries, Hispanics, and African–Americans will bear a disproportionate share of the act’s Medicare Advantage payment reductions.

  
  
  
• Budget & Taxation
  

  Federal Pay Still Inflated After Accounting for Skills

  By James Sherk, Jason Richwine, The Heritage Foundation
  
  WebMemo, 09/14/2010
  

  Defenders of the federal pay system, including the Office of Personnel Management, argue that federal employees earn higher wages because they perform more skilled work. This is only partially correct. Skill differences explain only a portion of the federal government’s disparate level of pay. After controlling for skills and occupation, the federal government still pays its employees substantially more than they would earn in the private sector.

  
  
  
• Crime, Justice & the Law
  

  Gun Control Facts

  By James D. Agresti, Reid K. Smith, Just Facts Foundation
  
  Facts & Figures, 09/14/2010
  

  Many aspects of the gun control issue are best measured and sometimes can only be measured through surveys, but the accuracy of such surveys depends upon respondents providing truthful answers to questions that are sometimes controversial and potentially incriminating. Thus, Just Facts uses such data critically, citing the best-designed surveys we find, detailing their inner workings in our footnotes, and using the most cautious plausible interpretations of the results.

  
  
  
• Monetary Policy/Financial Regulation
  

  Euro Will Unravel, and Soon: Collapse Could Imperil U.S. Economy

  By Desmond Lachman, American Enterprise Institute
  
  Economic Outlook, 09/14/2010
  

  The outbreak of a sovereign-debt crisis in the euro zone’s peripheral economies has been among the more important developments in the global economy in 2010. Sadly, this crisis will likely intensify in the months ahead as markets increasingly focus on the intractable solvency and competitiveness issues confronting countries like Greece, Portugal, Spain, and Ireland. Such intensification will affect Europe’s already-troubled banking system, seriously threatening both the European and the global economic recovery.

  
  
  
• Information Technology
  

  The Middle Way to Internet Regulation

  By Glen O. Robinson, Free State Foundation
  
  Perspectives from FSF Scholars, 09/14/2010
  

  Immediately after the D. C. Circuit’s Comcast decision this past April, holding that the Federal Communications Commission’s ancillary jurisdiction did not extend to regulating broadband Internet services, agency staffers let it be known that the agency might respond by invoking jurisdiction under Title II of the Communications Act. The victory celebrations by proponents of an unregulated Internet had to be cut short for the victory now appeared to be a Pyrrhic one. Of course, that latter view assumed the FCC would get away with its Title II claim, and this might not be a sure thing.

  
  
  
• Crime, Justice & the Law
  

  Legalizing Marijuana: Why Citizens Should Just Say No

  By Charles Stimson, The Heritage Foundation
  
  Legal Memorandum, 09/14/2010
  

  This November, California voters will consider a ballot initiative, the Regulate, Control and Tax Cannabis Act of 2010. Scientific research is clear that marijuana is addictive and that its use significantly impairs bodily and mental functions. Even where decriminalized, marijuana trafficking remains a source of violence, crime, and social disintegration. Furthermore, studies have shown that legalized marijuana will provide nowhere near the economic windfall proclaimed by some proponents.

  
  
  
• Health Care
  

  ObamaCare Will Dramatically Reduce Choice in Private Insurance

  By John R. Graham, Pacific Research Institute
  
  Health Policy Prescriptions, 09/14/2010
  

  One of the ways in which ObamaCare will reduce individuals’ and businesses’ choices of health insurance is through regulating the Medical Loss Ratio, a relatively simple concept: Take the amount of dollars an insurer spends on medical care and divide it by the total premiums. For example, if an insurer earns $10 million in premiums and spends $8.5 million on medical claims, its MLR would be 85 percent. Under ObamaCare, policies that cover large businesses will have to achieve an MLR of 85 percent, while those for small businesses and individuals will have to achieve an MLR of 80 percent.

  
  
  
• Health Care
  

  The Oregon Health Plan: A “Bold Experiment” That Failed

  By Eric Fruits, Andrew Hillard, Laura Lewis, Cascade Policy Institute
  
  Report, 09/14/2010
  

  Oregon’s “bold” experiment with the Oregon Health Plan has been thoroughly tested. It has gone through more than fifteen years of economic and fiscal boom and bust cycles. In the end, the experiment has failed to achieve its promoters’ goals simultaneously to expand coverage, control costs, foster provider participation, and maintain fiscal sustainability.

  
  
  
• Monetary Policy/Financial Regulation
  

  Short Sales Bans Shooting the Messenger?

  By Laurence Copeland, Cato Institute
  
  Cato Policy Report, 09/14/2010
  

  Banning short selling is a knee-jerk reaction by regulators, often in response to lobbying by corporate management seeking to preserve its freedom to operate without pressure from the market. At best, short sales bans have only a small short-term effect on prices, as seems to have been the case with the bans introduced in September 2008. At worst, they seriously impede the flow of information, distorting prices and creating a false market.

  
  
  
• Budget & Taxation
  

  Over One-Third of New Tax Revenue Would Come from Business Income If High-Income Personal Tax Cuts Expire

  By Scott A. Hodge, Tax Foundation
  
  Special Report, 09/13/2010
  

  Supporters of the administration’s proposal to raise taxes on high-income individuals try to discount the impact of these policies on private enterprise by citing the relatively small number of business owners who pay the highest tax rates. But the fact that “only” 2 or 3 percent of taxpayers with business income would face higher taxes is quite meaningless to the debate. What is meaningful is not the number of taxpayers impacted but the amount of business income and, therefore, business activity impacted.

  
  
  
• Budget & Taxation
  

  The Negative Consequences of Government Expenditure

  By Jeffrey Miron, Mercatus Center
  
  Working Paper, 09/13/2010
  

  The U.S. national debt currently stands at 62 percent of GDP, its highest level since WWII. Under plausible assumptions, this ratio will rise to at least 80 percent and possibly 185 percent of GDP by 2035 and continue increasing thereafter. As the debt-ratio increases, the U.S.’s creditors will demand higher and higher interest rates to continue financing this debt. This means ever larger deficits and ultimately a U.S. default. The U.S. can try to avoid this fate by raising taxes, but that approach faces both political and economic obstacles.

  
  
  
• Budget & Taxation
  

  The High-Income Rate Reductions: The Neglected Stepchild of the Bush Tax Cuts

  By Alan D. Viard, American Enterprise Institute
  
  Tax Policy Outlook, 09/13/2010
  

  Congress is considering allowing the Bush tax cuts’ rate reductions for high-income households to expire at the end of 2010 while providing a deficit-financed extension of the middle-class portion of the tax cuts. This combination would damage economic growth by hiking marginal tax rates on saving and investment while swelling the budget deficit. The vulnerable state of the high-income rate reductions is largely due to the failure of supporters of the Bush tax cuts to make the economic-growth case for these reductions.

  
  
  
• Budget & Taxation
  

  Obama Tax Hikes: Higher Dividend Taxes Hurt Seniors

  By Curtis Dubay, The Heritage Foundation
  
  Backgrounder, 09/13/2010
  

  There is much talk in Washington and the media about the impending expiration of the 2001 and 2003 tax relief. Those in favor of letting the tax cuts expire argue that to do otherwise would be merely to reward the rich at the expense of the lower-income population. Lost in these misguided accusations is the fact that higher dividend taxes—part of the tax increase currently scheduled for January 1, 2011—will not only hurt American companies, but penalize America’s senior citizens.

  
  
  
• Natural Resources, Energy, Environment, & Science
  

  Gone With the Wind: Renewables like Solar Power and Others Can’t Fuel America’s Future

  By Jamie Dean, Texas Public Policy Foundation
  
  Viewpoint, 09/13/2010
  

  To make the energy sources consistently reliable on a wide scale would require massive amounts of reliable storage—technology that doesn’t exist on a cost-effective basis. Forcing utility companies to generate more of their power using wind and solar would likely raise energy costs for U.S. consumers.

  
  
  
• National Security
  

  Don’t Ask, I’ll Just Tell You What the Law Should Be: Log Cabin Republicans v. United States

  By Hans von Spakovsky, The Heritage Foundation
  
  WebMemo, 09/13/2010
  

  In Log Cabin Republicans v. United States, the Obama Administration sought to win a policy victory by losing a case. By failing to adequately defend the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” statute—a bipartisan act of Congress that provides that members of the military are subject to separation for engaging in a homosexual act, stating that he or she is a homosexual, or marrying a person of the same sex—President Obama is able to undermine or do away with a statute that he opposes.