Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Download Podcast | iTunes | Podcast Feed

On today’s edition of Coffee and Markets, Brad Jackson and Ben Domenech are joined by Joy Pullmann to discuss Obama’s recent student loan initiatives, lessons to be learned from the battle with teacher’s unions in Wisconsin , and the need for dramatic reform in America’s schools.

We’re brought to you as always by BigGovernment and Stephen Clouse and Associates. If you’d like to email us, you can do so at coffee[at]newledger.com. We hope you enjoy the show.

Related Links:

The impact of Michelle Rhee’s ‘culture of urgency’
Joy Pullmann’s September 2011 Edition of School Reform News
Obama Bypasses Congress on No Child Left Behind Reform
Joy Pullmann at the Heartland Institute
Joy Pullmann at The Weekly Standard

Follow Brad on Twitter
Follow Ben on Twitter

The hosts and guests of Coffee and Markets speak only for ourselves, not any clients or employers.

Al Gore is using his considerable media muscle to express his frustration that people and governments the world over – but especially here in the United States – have increasingly rejected the notion humans are destroying the planet. He’s broadcasting on his cable channel, Current TV, and online something he calls “24 Hours of Reality,” beginning at 7 p.m. CDT, Wednesday, September 14.

Gore will show a new multimedia presentation attempting to “connect the dots between recent weather events” and man-caused global warming. He has promised that 95 percent of the slides are new and different from those he showed in his Oscar-winning film, An Inconvenient Truth – which is a good thing, considering that film has since been exposed as fraudulent in many respects.

But the truth is, Gore can’t handle the reality that thousands of reputable scientists across the globe have rejected his dogmatic view of climate catastrophe. Those scientists have done the kind of hard scientific work that The Heartland Institute has presented in six conferences, dozens of papers and books, podcasts, videos, and in Environment & Climate News.

Al Gore’s timing is perfect. We here at The Heartland Institute are just now finishing off the last preparations for our Sixth International Conference on Climate Change in Washington, DC, June 30 and July 1. (It’s still not too late to register, and you can also check out the live-stream).

And, wouldn’t you know it! Al Gore emerges from his palatial, energy-sucking estate for a media blitz (here, here, and here) in which he peddles his usual hokum: ”If you don’t do what I say … we’re all doomed. DOOMED, I say!!! Why won’t you LISTEN TO ME!!! YOU FOOOOOOLS!!!!” (Blah, blah, blah … and paraphrasing)

We couldn’t ask for a more timely example of why we put on these conferences. Thanks, Al. By the way, the invitation for you to speak and/or debate at our climate conference still stands — if you’re up for it. And the offer is real.

(more…)

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Download Podcast | iTunes | Podcast Feed

On today’s edition of Coffee and Markets, we’ll discuss what’s driving gas prices and other environmental issues with James Taylor of the Heartland Institute.

We’re brought to you as always by BigGovernment and Stephen Clouse and Associates. If you’d like to email us, you can do so at coffee[at]newledger.com. We hope you enjoy the show.

Related Links:

James Taylor at Forbes
Bloomberg: Consumer Comfort Declines as Gas Prices Rise
WSJ: In Washington, Oil CEOs on the Hot Seat
Environment and Climate News
(more…)

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Download Podcast | iTunes | Podcast Feed

On today’s edition of Coffee and Markets, Brad Jackson and Ben Domenech are joined by James Taylor to discuss the regulation of phosphates and why your dishwasher doesn’t work anymore, then Pejman Yousefzadeh talks about the White House and Egypt.

We’re brought to you as always by BigGovernment and Stephen Clouse and Associates. If you’d like to email us, you can do so at coffee[at]newledger.com. We hope you enjoy the show.

Related Links:

Another Triumph for the Greens
Phosphorous Fertilizer Bans Are Ignoring Science
EPA Likely Underestimating Costs of Florida Water Nutrient Restrictions
Environmental and Climate News
The Obama Administration: Missing in Action on Egypt

(more…)

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Download Podcast | iTunes | Podcast Feed

On today’s edition of Coffee and Markets, Brad Jackson and Ben Domenech are joined by Francis Cianfrocca to discuss astonishing disposable income numbers in America. Then, Ben talks to Maureen Martin, legal expert with the Heartland Institute, about today’s expected ruling in Virginia on the legal standing of Obamacare.

We’re brought to you as always by BigGovernment and Stephen Clouse and Associates. If you’d like to email us, you can do so at coffee[at]newledger.com. We hope you enjoy the show.

Related Links:

In Entitlement America, The Head Of A Household Of Four Making Minimum Wage Has More Disposable Income Than A Family Making $60,000 A Year
Full Chart of Income Comparrisons
Why Work?
Ben: Ruling Today on the Individual Mandate in Virginia
Virginia Passes Health Freedom Bill, Setting Up Legal Challenge to Individual Mandate
Virginia Ruling on Standing to Challenge Individual Mandate
Health Care Lawsuits

(more…)

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Download Podcast | iTunes | Podcast Feed

Throughout the month of December, Coffee and Markets will be looking back at the most significant stories of 2010 with recap interviews from leading thinkers. In today’s edition, Ben Domenech interviews Avik Roy, a health care analyst on Wall Street and author of The Apothecary blog, about how Obamacare effects pharmaceutical innovation.

We’re brought to you as always by BigGovernment and Stephen Clouse and Associates. You can find our iTunes feed at CoffeeandMarkets.com. If you’d like to email us, you can do so at coffee[at]newledger.com. We hope you enjoy the show.

Related Links:

Pitts: Keeping the U.S. Lead in Medical Innovation
Podcast: The Market Case for Health Care
Roy: Why is the Pharma Pipeline Clogged?
Roy: The Fiscal Commission on Health Care Reform

(more…)

Next week, thanks in no small part to your hard work and efforts, a great number of newly elected individuals will head to Washington and to statehouses across the country. At that point, the question they will ask themselves and their staffers is: what do we do now?

At the Heartland Institute, we’re committed to presenting ideas founded on a proper understanding of the role of constitutional government and the importance of liberty as the key to restoring American prosperity. So we’ve prepared a new book called The Patriot’s Toolbox.

It’s a 270-page book which gathers our Legislative Principles providing guidance on good public policy, including 80 principles for restoring our freedom and prosperity. Each chapter boils down to ten principles the most important facts and ideas, giving you the ability to become a more effective spokesperson for pro-consumer, pro-liberty reforms. We’ve already distributed free copies to 34,000 elected officials and candidates for public office, but requests for additional copies are pouring in — and we want to meet demand.

With that in mind, we’re happy to offer free copies to BigGovernment readers, activists, candidates, bloggers and allies.

(more…)

“We have a lot of Re-education to do,” Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said this week. And no wonder — once you’ve started with Rationing and Redistribution, it’s the third R of out-of-control government!

Sebelius claims senior citizens need the re-education the most, because they “have been a target of a lot of the misinformation.” Of course, what’s really happened is that Americans have learned more about Obama’s law, and what they’ve learned, they don’t like. The facts are now inescapable, for Sebelius and for the politicians who advocated for this measure — facts that detail the false nature of the case advanced by the president and his allies, and the true ramifications of this wrongheaded reform package foisted upon the American people. They’ve learned that they can’t keep their plan, even if they like it; they can’t count on lower costs; they can’t count on lower deficits; and they can count on more bureaucracy, more rationing, and more IRS involvement in your daily life.

Today, fewer than one-in-three Americans believe their family will be better off under ObamaCare. The same survey Nancy Pelosi touted last month as showing some positive views on the measure illustrates the movement. The Kaiser Family Foundation found that “support for health reform fell over the course of August, dipping from a 50 percent favorability rating in July to 43 percent, while 45 percent of the public reported unfavorable views.”

Americans have these views because of the litany of broken promises within Obamacare, detailed across thousands of websites, hundreds of reports and dozens of research papers released since its passage. They have these views not because they need to be taught a lesson by Kathleen Sebelius, but because they’ve noticed how the politicians and activists with all those big promises are awfully quiet now. They can’t even make the claim that the legislation will reduce costs or lower the deficit any more without getting laughed out of the room.

(more…)

During his presidential campaign, there were few subjects Barack Obama was more unequivocal about than transparency. He committed to bringing the sunlight, and bringing it hard — five days guaranteed for legislation posted online, debates held openly on C-SPAN, online access to all aspects of stimulus projects, and so on.

The news this week, of course, is an indication that these were all just words:

President Obama has abolished the position in his White House dedicated to transparency and shunted those duties into the portfolio of a partisan ex-lobbyist who is openly antagonistic to the notion of disclosure by government and politicians.

Handing Norm Eisen’s duties off to DNC lawyer and political hack Bob Bauer is just one of the more audacious aspects of this decision. So The New Ledger’s Brad Jackson and I sat down for a chat with Jim Lakely of the Heartland Institute about the nature of the transparency joke, the president’s technology policies, and the future of broadband and net neutrality.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Download Podcast | iTunes | Podcast Feed

Listen and learn. You can subscribe to our podcast feed by following the links above, and if you’d like to email us, you can do so at coffee[at]newledger.com. We hope you enjoy the show (there’s a good bit of news at the end about jetpacks).

On this week’s Health Care News podcast, Avik Roy, one of the most insightful writers about health care policy today, took the time to discuss with me the White House’s decision to bypass the nomination process of the U.S. Senate to recess appoint Donald Berwick as head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). Listen to it here:

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

People have asked me this week why this recess appointment is such a bad thing. Well, this video clip shows why, in an honest expression of the anti-market views Berwick holds from the man himself. Here’s what he says:

“Please don’t put your faith in market forces. It’s a popular idea that Adam Smith’s invisible hand would do a better job of designing care than leaders with plans can. I do not agree. I find little evidence anywhere that market forces, bluntly used, that is, consumer choice among an array of products with competitors’ fighting it out, leads to the health care system you want and need.”

These two paths run in opposite directions: the path toward market based solutions, where people direct their own care with their doctors, making decisions for themselves, and the path toward bureaucracy based solutions, where unelected experts — “leaders with plans” — determine people’s care, making decisions for them. Berwick is clear about which path he believes America must follow.
(more…)

Avik Roy, a savvy health care analyst in New York City who writes an excellent blog on health policy, took the time to talk with me for The Heartland Institute’s Health Care News podcast about what we learned last week when it comes to the White House’s fraudulent case for Obamacare. It’s well worth a listen.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

In case you missed it — because for some reason, the Washington media types didn’t find time to cover this story — Congressional Budget Office Director Doug Elmendorf offered an astounding rejection of the notion that the new health care regime, which President Obama frequently cited as a profound and necessary deficit-lowering measure, does anything to improve America’s deficit picture.

This is less news to you, of course. But it’s newsworthy because of who’s saying it. As Keith Hennessey put it, “Never before have I seen a CBO Director so bluntly refute the policy claims of a President and his Budget Director.”

Despite the best efforts of OMB chief Peter Orszag and others, the spin that Obamacare was a budgetary cure has already been revealed as a complete falsehood, even before the implementation costs of the vast majority of its policies are fully known. As Roy writes:

At this point, there are only two camps of honest people: those who believe Obamacare will blow up the budget, and that this is a problem; and those who believe that Obamacare will blow up the budget, and that this is not a problem (because wealth redistribution is more important, and because the wealthy can be taxed more if needed).

(more…)

President Obama’s nomination of Donald Berwick as the head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) is a gathering far less attention than a certain other nominee — but it will be getting more attention in the weeks to come, given his particularly radical agenda when it comes to health policy — an agenda that includes support for massive government rationing and his support of using health care bureaucracy to redistribute wealth.

Berwick is a leading Ivy League academic and technocrat – he’s graduated from Harvard not once, but three times – and is the founder of a Cambridge-based think-tank, the Institute for Health Care Improvement. Yet the job of running CMS is hardly the same as running a small think tank or talking in broad terms about the nature of health care – CMS is essentially the world’s second largest insurance company after the United Kingdom’s NHS, covering over 98 million people and overseeing roughly $800 billion annually in taxpayer-funded health care expenditures.

Berwick is a great fan of the NHS, and worked as a consultant on the project under Tony Blair. Berwick will have the opportunity to apply the ideas he gained through that experience with the power of the CMS position, which means that his nomination holds massive ramifications for Medicare and Medicaid recipients, hospitals and doctors and, under Obama’s law, all Americans.

Berwick: Health Care Must Redistribute Wealth

Key to understanding Berwick’s views on the NHS is a speech he gave as part of a presentation offered two years ago, in which he shared his thoughts on the NHS and health care generally. You can watch the full speech here. The full video shows several lines from Berwick that are notable. He decries private sector solutions to health care problems, dismissing the “invisible hand of the market” as an “unaccountable system.” He also states:

“I am romantic about the NHS; I love it. All I need to do to rediscover the romance is to look at health care in my own country.”

(more…)

My latest Health Care News podcast, brought to you by FreedomPub, is with Merrill Matthews, executive director of the Council for Affordable Health Insurance and a resident scholar at the Institute for Policy Innovation, about his latest column on the individual mandate. You can listen to it here or stream it below:

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

When I’m asked on the radio or in person about the biggest problem with President Obama’s health care reform, the answer I usually give isn’t that it’s a recipe for trillions in costs for the American people, that it creates massive new taxes on businesses and entrepeneurs, that it effectively divides us into two Americas, that it squelches innovative programs or that it’s possibly unconstitutional.

My answer is much simpler: it’s a model of health care which is proven not to work, because it assumes consumers will act irrationally.
(more…)

One of the dirty little secrets of Capitol Hill is that most politicians – even the ones the horserace-focused media depicts as irredeemably ideologically divided – actually have no coherent driving ideology. The secret is revealed only occasionally. If powerful oversight chairman Henry Waxman (D-CA) hadn’t reconsidered his plans this week to call the CEOs of major companies into committee chambers for his version of Beltway blackmail, the American people might have had an opportunity to witness it being revealed.

Waxman originally called the hearing in a characteristic fit of pique. After more than nine months of labor, the House of Representatives had finally given birth to the gargantuan ogre of Obamacare. Yet before the Democratic leadership could finish tousling the hair of the prop children at their signing ceremonies, corporate America started following the law, in the most inconvenient manner possible: they reported to their investors and employees the effects the new legislation would have on their benefit plans.

In each case, the analysts employed by major companies like AT&T, Verizon Communications, Caterpillar, Deere & Co. and others did their job: they delivered reports detailing the ramifications – higher premiums, dropped drug coverage, and forcing their employees into taxpayer-funded plans – thanks to the new bill. Waxman, infuriated, demanded the CEOs of these troublesome companies turn over all internal communications about the predicted results, as if he thought they would reveal some devious Republican plot, instead of the simple mathematical calculations of the green eyeshades and the diligent efforts of company lawyers to ensure that the companies complied with federal disclosure laws.
(more…)

As Capitol Confidential noted the other day, net neutrality is an issue that that is dear to the left, but has flown under the radar of most Americans. It’s a rather technical and arcane subject, but can be summed up rather simply: Net neutrality rules enforced by the Federal Communications Commission would allow government bureaucrats to micromanage the Internet — thus sucking out the lifeblood of the digital economy and threatening the dynamism and freedom we’ve come to take for granted online.

Proponents of net neutrality claim that Internet Service Providers (ISPs) abuse their position as “gatekeepers” to the Web, and the public needs government to establish strict “rules of the road” to protect us from their scheming. Trouble is, the evidence of abusive practices by ISPs is anecdotal and thinner than an iPod mini. The digital economy is currently so dynamic and cutthroat that free-market forces work quickly to correct any undesirable hiccups that arise — all without any micro-managing of the tech industry by government.

Net neutrality advocates insist we need government to preserve an “open” and “free” Internet and claim the market has failed. But they cannot point to any market failures that make the Internet less open or free. In short, the Internet isn’t broken. And it doesn’t need a government fix. No matter. The left presses ahead, because the facts are irrelevant. The goal is to put government in charge of digital policy, taking away your freedom as a consumer to shape the Internet with your own choices.

(more…)

The 13th Annual Energy & Environment Conference, held in Phoenix Feb. 1-3, isn’t the sort of place where global warming “deniers” are exactly welcome. In fact, by my observations, the skeptical caucus at the event consisted entirely of: James M. Taylor, a senior fellow for environment policy at The Heartland Institute; Keith Lockitch, a fellow of the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights; and me. All the other attendees spent their time discussing how the U.S. government — or, even better, a “global government” — needs to compel us all to live “greener” lives through schemes like cap-and-trade. Environmentalists are a bossy and power-hungry lot.

Lockitch gave a presentation arguing free-market economies are better positioned than socialist societies to deal with any severe weather events caused by climate change — and was called a “denier” and compared to a shill for “Big Tobacco” for his trouble. Taylor got off a little easier, receiving only scoffs and curious-to-annoyed glances for asking inconvenient questions.

But that’s not to say we were the only people to question the assumptions of the attendees who believe the “science is settled” on global warming. Perhaps the greatest challenge came from one of their own — renowned climate scientist William Sprigg — who urged his colleagues to stop treating the ClimateGate scandal as irrelevant noise promoted by “deniers.” In an amazingly telling moment, green energy consultant Andy Van Horn, who introduced Sprigg, admitted he’d never heard of ClimateGate until Sprigg suggested it a few weeks ago as a topic worthy of discussion. (Who are the real “deniers” again?)

Sprigg, adjunct research professor in the Institute of Atmospheric Physics at the University of Arizona, believes the planet is on a potentially dangerous warming path and atmospheric carbon dioxide is to blame. He also led the technical review of the first global warming report issued by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 1990. Clealry, Sprigg is no “outlier” or “rebel,” but one of the most respected and “mainstream” scientists in the field of climatology. So it came to a bit of shock to the audience when Sprigg expressed concerns about how contrarian scientists are treated with contempt by many of his colleagues.

(more…)

As the Senate considers a health care bill that amounts to the largest entitlement expansion in American history, we sit down today with health care and budget policy expert James Capretta to discuss the prospects in the Senate and the wide-ranging economic ramifications of the current legislation. It’s a special edition of Coffee and Markets, a daily podcast from The New Ledger on politics, policy and the marketplace, brought to you by BigGovernment.com and by The Heartland Institute’s Health Care News.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Download Podcast | iTunes | Podcast Feed

You can subscribe to the podcast by following the links above, and if you’d like to email us, you can do so at coffee[at]newledger.com. We hope you enjoy the show.

Related Links:

James Capretta’s Blog: Diagnosis
First Things: The Health Care Bill in the Senate
AEI: Opportunities Missed on Health Care
Abortion Vote Could Decide Fate of Health Care Bill
For more on this topic, see Health Care News, a publication of The Heartland Institute.