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Budget & Tax
Research & Commentary: Alabama Pension Reform
Unfunded state pension liabilities are an increasingly troubling problem for states across the country. This has been especially true for Alabama. In this Heartland Institute Research & Commentary, Senior Policy Analyst Matthew Glans concludes, “In 2010, Alabama received a grade of D in The Heartland Institute’s 50-State Pension Report Card. According to the Huntsville Times, Alabama’s three pension funds, including separate funds for education workers, judges, and state and local government workers, currently have only $28.1 billion in total assets but $42.5 billion in total liabilities. These three programs serve 114,050 retires and 221,735 current workers.”Read More
Energy & Environment
Obama’s CO2 Restrictions Will Hit Hardest in Key Senate States
In this Environment & Climate News article, Heartland Senior Fellow James M. Taylor discusses the impact of the Obama administration’s proposed CO2 restrictions on key Senate states. He explains, “In Senate battleground states, the Obama administration’s emissions reduction requirements are particularly stringent. Arkansas, Colorado, Georgia, Louisiana, Michigan, Minnesota, New Hampshire, North Carolina, and Virginia will all have to reduce their emissions by more than the 30 percent overall national reduction.” Under these restrictions, many states will be forced to shut down perfectly good coal-fired power plants to meet their emissions requirements. Read More
Healthcare
The Premium Spikes Begin
This fall, hundreds of thousands of consumers nationwide who bought insurance plans under the Affordable Care Act will face a choice: accept higher premiums to stay on their current plan, or save money by switching. According to Heartland Institute Senior Fellow Benjamin Domenech, writing in the Heartlanderdigital magazine, that is the picture emerging from proposed 2015 insurance rates in the 10 states that have completed their filings. In all but one of them, the largest health insurer in the state is proposing to increase premiums between 8.5 percent and 22.8 percent for the next year. Read More
Education
Research & Commentary: Common Core in Pennsylvania
Pennsylvania is one of 45 states that adopted national Common Core State Standards. In this Research & Commentary, The Heartland Institute’s government relations intern, Hailey Vrdolyak, concludes, “Despite the name change, the standards in Pennsylvania are the Common Core standards, which have questionable academic quality, were created and adopted in a nontransparent way, raise significant student privacy concerns, and would further erode state and local control of schools.” Several states, including Oklahoma and South Carolina, have repealed Common Core, and many others, including Louisiana, Missouri, and North Carolina, are in the process of taking similar steps. Read More
Telecom
The FCC Plan to Steamroll State Laws Against Government Broadband
In an article in the Heartlander digital magazine, Heartland Policy Advisor Seton Motley discusses why government broadband is a disaster and why states should be worried about executive action on the part of the Federal Communications Commission moving forward. Read More
From Our Free-Market Friends
2014 Tennessee Pork Report
The Beacon Center of Tennessee has published its ninth annualTennessee Pork Report, exposing $609 million in state and local government waste. The $609 million is the most government waste uncovered in a single year since the Beacon Center started publishing the report. Beacon CEO Justin Owen concludes, “It’s time for Tennesseans to start holding their elected officials accountable for the rampant misuse of their hard-earned money.” Read More
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