What Would Ben Franklin Tweet?

Benjamin Franklin would have been an excellent blogger. And he would have enjoyed using Twitter. He was the sharpest communicator of his time, so profound that many of his sayings are still in use today. There’s no doubt he would have thrived using modern communication methods and perhaps even invented new ones.

Get Ready For More Cost In Everything you buy, everything you eat, everything you wear

Things That Will Cost More Under Obama's Climate Change Plan

06/26/2013

President Obama doesn’t “have time for a meeting of the flat-Earth society.” And he probably considers you a member if you disagree with him on his crushing regulatory approach to climate change.

The heck of it is, the policies he advocates actually would not help the Earth.

U.S. HOUSE REJECTS FOOD STAMP AND FARM BILL

The House’s bipartisan rejection of the near trillion dollar “farm” bill demonstrates that Congress is beginning to listen to Americans. Voters and taxpayers have said they’ve seen enough wasteful, reckless spending come out of Washington. Today’s win should be considered a victory for taxpayers and a reaffirmation of fiscal responsibility. … More

Congress Is Trying to Fool You on Immigration

Congress is trying to fool you.

Here’s how they do business. A piece of legislation is going to cost trillions of dollars, but Members of Congress don’t want the public to see that. Instead, they have the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) look at the bill for just the first 10 years—and they move any costly items off into the future on purpose.

They did it with Obamacare—saved the budget bombshells for later. Now they’re trying to do it with immigration.

3 Things You Should Know About the Supreme Court and Voter ID

Yesterday, the Supreme Court handed down one of its first major decisions of this term, striking down Arizona’s measure requiring proof of citizenship for voter registration. Media reports are already off base in interpreting this decision, says Heritage legal expert Hans von Spakovsky. Here are three things to know about the decision.

Welfare Reform Is Back

Last summer, the Obama Administration gutted the successful 1996 welfare reform law by offering to waive its work requirements. Now the debate is back, as several Members of Congress are trying to restore the reforms that helped so many out of poverty.

Getting a Meddling Government Out of Our Lives

The next time a cashier asks “paper or plastic?” think of Abbie Schoenwetter. He spent more than six years in federal confinement for shipping lobster in plastic instead of cardboard.

Don’t Raise Debt Ceiling Without Balancing the Budget

All across America, families are balancing their budgets and even paying off debt. Since the financial panic of 2008, personal debt has fallen as Americans tighten their belts and pay back loans. Some, unfortunately, had to declare bankruptcy because their debts got too big. Washington cannot declare bankruptcy; it must instead follow the example of millions of Americans and cut spending to live within its means.

The President’s Top 5 Immediate Problems

By Amy Payne

Now that President Obama will never face re-election again, it is time for the campaigning to end. Perpetual political rhetoric and promises do not matter any more. Action—and leadership—are sorely needed on pressing issues that threaten the United States. America’s people are under threats to their livelihoods, their protection, and their freedom. For some of these, deadlines for action have already come and gone, making them more dire than ever.
Here are the top five problems that require the President’s immediate attention.

Defending America Is Not an Obama Priority

Speaking to veterans at the American Legion conference this week, President Obama said, “Today, every American can be proud that the United States is safer, stronger and more respected in the world.”
That’s quite a statement from a President who has granted legitimacy to extremist organizations like the Muslim Brotherhood and promised the Russians he would be “flexible” toward their demands on missile defense, while slighting American allies like Poland and the Czech Republic.
Heritage defense experts call Obama’s defense strategy “a strategy of hope“: “a hope that big wars are a thing of the past; a hope that America’s allies will do more; and a hope that fewer resources do not jeopardize the lives of American soldiers.”
These are flimsy hopes in the face of hostile nations and terrorist groups that want nothing more than the destruction of America.
If we do not reverse course—strengthening our military instead of gutting it, providing true security for our allies, and getting real about the groups that want us dead—the cost will be American lives.
The Administration has made a lot of noise about “pivoting” America’s security focus toward Asia. It is a vital region, but Obama’s policies of cutting the size of the military are the opposite of what we need to secure the country’s interests around the world. Heritage’s Bruce Klingner and Dean Cheng explain:    

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We Can Change America's Course

Entering the final stretch of the presidential contest, Americans are facing a monumental choice. The American people will decide the direction of government and its role in their lives for the coming years.
The debate in Tampa this week raised a number of issues, including preserving the American dream of working hard to achieve success. The Heritage Foundation has extensive research and policy prescriptions on each of these issues:
Energy: America needs to end energy subsidies and restore a free market in the energy sector. We can and should develop our domestic energy sources in an environmentally responsible way. Go to Energy & Environment
School choice: America’s education focus should be our students. The best way to serve the needs of a diverse population is to give families the freedom to choose a school—public, private, charter, or home school—that best fits their children’s needs. See where your state stands
Free trade: America needs jobs, and promoting free trade is an excellent way to create high-quality jobs in America. We should have a free flow of goods, services, and investments between democratic nations. Catch up on the U.S. free trade record
The federal budget: Tackling the federal budget is a complex task, but it must be done. Heritage’s Saving the American Dream plan details ideas for reforming major entitlement programs, permanently balancing the budget, and reducing the national debt. See the Heritage plan                                           
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Higher Gas Prices Add to Economic Slump

Unemployment is at 8.3 percent. The economy is sputtering at 1.5 percent growth. Food prices are rising due to drought conditions across the country. And gas prices are up again, pinching Americans’ summer budgets. It is past time for the President and Congress to pursue smart policies that would put us on a path to relief.
According to AAA’s Fuel Gauge Report, the current national average for regular is $3.66 per gallon. That’s up 28 cents per gallon from a month ago, and July had its biggest price jump since AAA started tracking prices in 2000.
There are many factors affecting prices that we cannot control—worldwide tensions, especially in the Middle East, can drive up oil prices. Global demand, especially from China and India’s rapidly growing economies, continues upward.
But after three years of adding regulatory hurdles and blocking exploratory access and development, President Obama’s policies are helping keep prices higher than necessary.
If the President truly wanted to lower gas prices, he would work to increase supply. But when given the opportunity, he has done the opposite. He turned down the Keystone XL pipeline, which would bring up to 830,000 barrels of oil per day from Canada. His Administration has made it even harder for companies to explore and extract domestic energy resources by canceling, delaying, or withdrawing a number of lease sales for exploration and development. Meanwhile, huge swaths of federal lands have been put off limits for energy exploration.
Domestic refinery outages have had a recent impact on gas prices. Two of the factors holding back domestic energy production are regulatory red tape and litigation—and these, we can do something about. As Heritage’s Nicolas Loris notes:
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Let's Be Honest About Outsourcing

Both candidates in the presidential race have been accusing the other of “outsourcing.” It’s one of those words that is loaded with negative meaning, implying that the perpetrator is un-American. But does America have an outsourcing problem?
What is popularly referred to as “outsourcing” is the practice of offshoring business functions, including building facilities and employing workers in other countries. Liberals often argue that “sending jobs overseas” is harming America’s economy.
They are missing two important truths: The reality of jobs in America, and the ways to bring even more jobs to the home front.
Jobs in America

• The U.S. actually leads the world in manufacturing. Yes, you read that correctly. We produce 21 percent of global manufactured products, while China comes after at 15 percent. According ot the National Association of Manufacturers, “manufacturing supports an estimated 17 million jobs in the U.S.—about one in six private sector jobs.”
• Big manufacturers are building new plants here. BMW is adding 300 new jobs to its South Carolina plant this year, and Airbus recently announced it will employ 1,000 at a new plant in Alabama. (Both South Carolina and Alabama are right-to-work states, meaning that workers aren’t forced to join unions.)
• Multinational corporations still employ more Americans. U.S.-based multinational corporations employ 22.9 million Americans—more than twice as many people as they employ in China, Mexico, and all other countries combined.
• There is no “giant sucking sound” of jobs and money fleeing the United States. According to the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, the total value of foreign investment in the United States exceeds the value of U.S. investments in other countries by more than $4 trillion. Foreign-owned multinational corporations employ 5.5 million people in the United States.
• “Insourced” businesses are a tremendous boon for the U.S. economy. “Insourced” jobs—jobs brought to America by foreign-based companies—account for nearly 5 percent of private-sector employment. These businesses buy more than $1.8 trillion in goods and services from local suppliers and small businesses in the areas where they locate.

How to Boost American Jobs Even More
With an 8.2 percent unemployment rate, America still needs more jobs. There are many steps policymakers could take that would make locating—or relocating—in the U.S. more attractive to businesses.
A quick look at the Index of Economic Freedom, produced by The Heritage Foundation and The Wall Street Journal, reveals America’s competitive disadvantages.
Hong Kong, ranked No. 1 in the Index, has an economy that has been growing at 7 percent. That’s astounding. In contrast, U.S. GDP growth in the first quarter of 2012 was a paltry 1.9 percent.
There are several reasons why Hong Kong is No. 1 and America is No. 10. Hong Kong’s top corporate tax rate is only 16.5 percent, compared to the U.S. rate of 35 percent. Hong Kong’s trade regime is one of the world’s most competitive and efficient, with a zero tariff rate. And its regulatory environment is “highly supportive of business efficiency.”
Meanwhile, in the U.S., runaway regulations growing by the day make doing business vastly more expensive and difficult. The government is holding back the economy through regulation and its nonstop deficit spending, as Heritage’s Bryan Riley explains:

Excessive federal spending and the resulting budget deficit continue to be a problem. Foreign investors spent more than $400 billion on U.S. Treasury securities in 2011. This is another way to say that the government borrowed more than $400 billion from foreign investors. Those dollars could have been invested otherwise in the private sector of the U.S. economy or spent on U.S. exports.

While concern about outsourcing is misplaced, there are many ways the U.S. could attract even more jobs than it already does. Increasing our own economic freedom would spur growth in the economy, bringing greater prosperity and new enterprises to our shores.

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The imperial Presidency has overturned Congress and the law again. Not content to stop at rewriting immigration policy, education policy and energy policy, yesterday, President Obama’s Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) released an official policy directive rewriting the welfare reform law of 1996. The new policy guts the federal work requirements that were the foundation of the Clinton-era reform.
While this real news occurred yesterday, most of the media remained fixated on political ads and speeches, letting a major and unilateral shift in America’s welfare system go nearly unreported.
Welfare reform replaced the old Aid to Families with Dependent Children with a new program, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF). The Heritage Foundation played a pivotal role in building bipartisan consensus for the reform and providing many of the recommendations that became part of the law. The whole point was that able-bodied adults should be required to work or prepare for work as a condition of receiving welfare aid.
This reform was very successful. TANF became the only welfare program (out of more than 70) that promoted greater self-reliance. It moved 2.8 million families off the welfare rolls and into jobs so that they were providing for themselves. Child poverty fell, and single-parent employment rose. Recipients were required to perform at least 20–30 hours per week of work or job preparation activities in exchange for the cash benefit.
Now, Obama’s HHS is claiming that it can waive those work requirements that are at the heart of the law, and without Congress’s consent.
When it established TANF, Congress deliberately exempted or shielded nearly all of the TANF program from waiver authority. They explicitly did not want the law to be rewritten at the whim of HHS bureaucrats. In a December 2001, the non-partisan Congressional Research Service clarified that there was no authority to override work and other major requirements: “Effectively, there are no TANF waivers,” it reported.
But that did not stop the Obama Administration, which has been increasing welfare spending at an alarming rate already. President Obama has added millions to the welfare rolls, and his Administration has come under fire lately for its efforts to expand and add more Americans to the food stamp program.
This is a chronic problem: Over the past two decades, welfare spending has grown more rapidly than Social Security and Medicare, education, and defense. The TANF reform was one small step in the direction of reducing Americans’ dependence on government programs and getting them back on their feet. Cutting its work component is likely to unnecessarily swell the ranks of welfare recipients and with no way to pay for it.
Heritage experts Robert Rector and Kiki Bradley explained further in their comprehensive analysis of yesterday’s announcement:

In the past, state bureaucrats have attempted to define activities such as hula dancing, attending Weight Watchers, and bed rest as “work.” These dodges were blocked by the federal work standards. Now that the Obama Administration has abolished those standards, we can expect “work” in the TANF program to mean anything but work. The new welfare dictate issued by the Obama Administration clearly guts the law.

Obama certainly didn’t tell people he was going to gut welfare reform when he was running for President in 2008—and why would he? “Welfare horror stories helped elect Ronald Reagan,” wrote Mickey Kaus of The Daily Caller. “A promise to ‘end welfare as we know it’ elected President Clinton…And in 2008, Barack Obama didn’t dare suggest that he wanted to do what he has done today.”
While the 1996 welfare reform successfully moved people from welfare into work, it did not “end welfare as we know it.” Now, however, the Obama Administration has ended welfare reform as we know it. The President cannot hide his disastrous unemployment record by depriving Americans of the hope of a job. He should immediately reverse this course, and offer constructive ideas for economic growth rather than government dependence.
Fact Sheet on Welfare Reform

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The American Spirit

Many Americans proudly hang the Stars and Stripes on June 14 to celebrate Flag Day. On that day in 1777, the Second Continental Congress formally adopted the emblem under which generations of Americans have lived, fought and died. More than any other flag in the world, it symbolizes freedom and celebrates the optimism of our Founding Fathers. Cont.Reading

Reconciliation, Entitlements, and Defending Defense Spending

                                          Reconciliation, Entitlements, and Defending Defense Spending

A Better Life for Julia

                                                                  A Better Life for Julia