Paul Krugman Accuses Heritage of “Deluding the Right-Wing Faithful”

Sigmund Freud described “projecting” as the act of attributing your own shortcomings to others, supposedly as a coping mechanism. These columns don’t quote Freud often, but we couldn’t pass up this description of Paul Krugman’s latest screed, only because it is so deliciously apt.

In it, the New York Times columnist goes after The Heritage Foundation for, among other things, “creating false impressions” and attempting to “delude the right-wing faithful.” He also castigates conservatives for being cut off from reality in general because they supposedly read only stuff they agree with. The title was “The Wonk Gap,” meaning that the left is just so much more wonky, apparently.

What caused Mr. Krugman to fulminate with such righteous ire? A couple of weeks ago, Heritage put up on our Facebook page an image in which we said that 57 percent of Americans wanted to stop Obamacare. Talking Points Memo, a liberal site, tweeted that we were misquoting a Kaiser Family Foundation survey, which showed that 57 percent did not support defunding Obamacare.

I called the TPM writer and told him that, no, he had assumed wrong. We were quoting a Basswood poll commissioned by Heritage Action for America. Even TPM, which makes no pretentions about impartiality or objectivity, subsequently ran a story which observed “in fairness to Heritage, they did trumpet the Basswood poll when it was released.”

Via: The Foundry

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The Last Stand: The Fight of State Attorneys General to Preserve Federalism

On Thursday, September 12, the Edwin Meese III Center for Legal and Judicial Studies at The Heritage Foundation is hosting four state attorneys general—Scott Pruitt (Oklahoma), Derek Schmidt (Kansas), Luther Strange (Alabama), and Alan Wilson (South Carolina)—in the first of a seven-event Preserve the Constitution series.

The moderator will be Fred Barnes, executive editor of the Weekly Standard, who in a recent article profiled many of the principled state AGs who are fighting to reinvigorate the federalism that forms the basis of our constitutional republic and protects our liberty and freedom.

As Barnes outlined:

They’re committed to limiting Washington to powers prescribed in the Constitution. They oppose overreaching by Congress, regulatory agencies, federal bureaucrats, and the executive branch…and are eager to rejuvenate the Tenth Amendment as a check on the scope of federal power.

The Framers of the Constitution designed a federal republic in which a central government with strictly limited powers was balanced by state governments with plenary powers. The past 100 years have seen an exponential growth in the size and power of the central government—often at the expense of state sovereignty. This growth has accelerated under the current Administration, imposing massive, uncompensated costs on states. Some question whether the national government can be brought back within constitutional bounds.

Via: The Foundry

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Wasserman Schultz Takes Parting Shot at Jim DeMint, Tea Party

DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz appeared on Current TV and took a parting shot at Sen. Jim DeMint, saying he gave up in the Senate because he was alone with his Tea Party "extremism."

I think Senator DeMint clearly sees that the Tea Party is not a growth industry. I mean, he had an election that just passed that did not see the ranks of Tea Party members expand the Senate candidates that he expected to be very likery to join him in the Senate were rejected in red states by the voters who simply know that extremism is just not the way that we need to go forward in getting our economy turned around, in reducing our deficit, in creating jobs. 

So I think, when Jim DeMint looked around, he looked and saw a future where he would be standing by himself very often, and likely facing dwindling, even greater dwindling number of Tea Party advocates and allies. I think he headed for the doors, because he thinks that probably, as he said, the only way he's significant impact is through a think tank. 

Sen. DeMint announced he will be leaving the Senate to become President of the Heritage Foundation.

List: The 36 Obama-Funded Green Energy Failures…

The complete list of faltering or bankrupt green-energy companies:

1. Evergreen Solar ($25 million)*
2. SpectraWatt ($500,000)*
3. Solyndra ($535 million)*
4. Beacon Power ($43 million)*
5. Nevada Geothermal ($98.5 million)
6. SunPower ($1.2 billion)
7. First Solar ($1.46 billion)
8. Babcock and Brown ($178 million)
9. EnerDel’s subsidiary Ener1 ($118.5 million)*
10. Amonix ($5.9 million)
11. Fisker Automotive ($529 million)
12. Abound Solar ($400 million)*
13. A123 Systems ($279 million)*
14. Willard and Kelsey Solar Group ($700,981)*
15. Johnson Controls ($299 million)
16. Schneider Electric ($86 million)
17. Brightsource ($1.6 billion)
18. ECOtality ($126.2 million)
19. Raser Technologies ($33 million)*
20. Energy Conversion Devices ($13.3 million)*
21. Mountain Plaza, Inc. ($2 million)*
22. Olsen’s Crop Service and Olsen’s Mills Acquisition Company ($10 million)*
23. Range Fuels ($80 million)*
24. Thompson River Power ($6.5 million)*
25. Stirling Energy Systems ($7 million)*
26. Azure Dynamics ($5.4 million)*
27. GreenVolts ($500,000)
28. Vestas ($50 million)
29. LG Chem’s subsidiary Compact Power ($151 million)
30. Nordic Windpower ($16 million)*
31. Navistar ($39 million)
32. Satcon ($3 million)*
33. Konarka Technologies Inc. ($20 million)*
34. Mascoma Corp. ($100 million)

*Denotes companies that have filed for bankruptcy.

Via: Heritage: The Foundry

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Obama Travel Schedule Indicates Campaign Disaster

Obama travel plans show map is wide open

By Richard McGregor

“As I look out over the landscape today, everything screams ‘tie’,” said Bill Galston, of the Brookings Institution, a Washington think-tank. “Nothing – the national polls and the state polls – is outside the margin of error.”

“In 2008, the Obama campaign was expanding the map to places like Indiana, but that is not the case now.”

Mr Obama spent three full days in Iowa in early August, an almost unprecedented commitment of presidential time for a state with few votes to offer.

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“The schedule is very telling – it suggests that the Obama campaign sees the electoral college map as being completely in play,” said Mike Franc of the ­Heritage Foundation in Washington.

Heritage Expert Confounds the “Fact Checkers” on Welfare Reform

“Obama’s Palace Guard,” Mark Hemingway’s Weekly Standard cover story exposing fact-checkers for willful complicity in the gutting of welfare reform, is a must read for anyone who cares about the state of the news media—and for those who plan to watch, cover, or participate in the presidential debates.

Hemingway meticulously details the checkosphere’s studied indifference—with rare exceptions—to the plain facts. In 4,000 words, he lays bare the media fact-checkers’ almost comical avoidance of the one expert who could help them understand how the Obama Administration is dismantling “workfare”: The Heritage Foundation’s Robert Rector, who helped write the work requirements in the 1996 welfare reform law and just published his latest paper on the outrage.

PolitiFact, Hemingway concludes, came off as more interested in consulting liberal critics of welfare reform and dismissing Rector, conservatives in Congress, and Governor Mitt Romney (R-MA) for daring to suggest the left would want to undo the workfare program it opposed from the start:

PolitiFact said [Rector’s] concerns should be dismissed for no other reason than they are at odds with the Obama administration’s spin. PolitiFact didn’t even address the fact that Rector … was the source of the charge the Obama administration is gutting welfare reform or that he helped write the welfare reform law.

The Washington Post’s Glenn Kessler gets some credit from Hemingway for awarding Bill Clinton two out of four “Pinocchios” for stretching the truth in his speech defending Obama’s move to administratively undo welfare reform.

Via: The Foundry

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Congress Still Using Commemorative Coins to Get Around Earmark Ban

House and Senate Republicans have introduced legislation that would prevent Congress from using commemorative coins to fund pet projects as a creative workaround to the earmark ban.

In April, The Heritage Foundation’s sister organization, Heritage Action, first wrote about the commemorative coin process. Currently, Congressmen can introduce commemorative coin bills depicting national icons in their districts, such as the Pro Football Hall of Fame or Future Farmers of America. The bills are easily passed by bipartisan majorities, because it’s pretty difficult to vote against a Mother’s Day or March of Dimes commemorative coin.

It is important to note that many of these organizations are non-profits that already receive federal funding and are perfectly capable of raising their own funds through various activities such as souvenir sales or—gasp—even making their own commemorative coins.

The congressionally approved coin is then minted by the Treasury, which is completely reimbursed for the cost of the coins as coin collectors purchase them. Of course, if a coin doesn’t sell very well, the upfront cost of the minting could, in theory, not be recouped. But the Treasury is the first to be repaid upon the sale of the coins. 

Via: The Foundry

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Report: Government employees work less than private sector employees

New research suggests that there is something to the stereotype that government employees work less than their private sector counterparts.

A study from the conservative Heritage Foundation shows that government employees work three hours less per week and roughly one month less per year than private sector workers.

“The ‘underworked’ government employee should be of concern to taxpayers who expect private-sector levels of work in the public sector in exchange for private-sector levels of compensation,” the report says.

During a typical work week, private sector employees work 41.4 hours while federal government employees only work 38.7 hours. State and local government employees work even less, only 38.1 hours during a typical work-week.

This adds up over time and means that federal employees work 3.8 weeks less than private sector workers and state and local employees work 4.7 weeks less than those in the private sector.

“More generally, work time differences are a reminder to lawmakers that they should ensure that public employees’ work time and compensation are generally in line with those of private-sector employees,” the study concludes.

Via: The Daily Caller

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