The Heritage Foundation - Leadership for America

ST. PAUL — After two conventions, three cities, 11 days and more than 16 panel discussions, a pretty clear picture emerges on the different directions conservatives and liberals want to take the country.

Conservatives recognize we live in a global economy from which we cannot afford to retreat. It’s a world where an information-based economy enables consumers to expect not only better choices in the products and services they buy, but more accountability from their government as well. They believe the same free market forces that have lifted billions out of poverty around the world now need to be applied to a model of government still stuck in the 20th century.

The left, on the other hand, believes the country has gone wildly off track since Ronald Reagan became president. Liberals want to return to 1930s-style solutions of the New Deal and Great Society. On issue after issue, the left has rejected President Bill Clinton’s 1996 claim that “the era of big government is over.” For them, big government is about to make a huge comeback.

Energy: Listening to the left on energy policy, one would think the only way America ever moved away from the horse and carriage was through a well-thought-out, centrally planned government program to tax buggy whips and subsidize Model Ts. There simply is no acknowledgment that private technological innovation and entrepreneurship were the driving factors that transformed our nation’s transportation sector a century ago. Driven by fears that our planet will end soon unless drastic reductions in carbon emissions happen immediately, the left desperately wants the government to direct and control our nation’s energy infrastructure. Never mind that many on the left don’t even know where we currently get our energy from or how much their plans will hurt American consumers. The nostalgia on the left for big government runs so deep that any analogy to past government programs is marshaled to help make their case. Conservatives, meanwhile, plainly acknowledge that our economic and national security interests are not well served by our dependence on foreign oil. They just believe that millions of individual consumer choices, instead of a few selected government bureaucrats, should shape our energy future.

Health Care: The left desperately wants to inflict a government run, Medicare-like, health care bureaucracy on the American people. But the left’s leaders deftly recognize that the American people would never sign up for government health care knowingly. So instead, they use the language of choice to sell incremental reforms that are designed to strangle private health care and pave the way for a single-payer system. Conservatives are much more honest in their approach, explicitly telling the American people that our 1930s-era employer-delivered health care system is hopelessly out of date, and that consumers need to be given the dollars and the information to make their own decisions. Only when real market forces are introduced, for the first time, into our health care system will skyrocketing costs and uninsured rates come down.

Labor: Still dependent on unions for votes and money, the left has turned its back on free trade, calling for a timeout on new trade deals and renegotiation of current deals with our closest allies. Worse, the left wants to solidify its political power by reversing labor’s continued shrinking share of the private workforce. To do this, they want to end secret ballot elections for union organizing, thus enabling union “lieutenants” to pressure employees at work, in the parking lot, and even at their homes.

Education: Despite decades of poor results, the left still has only one solution for education reform: higher government spending for public schools. Never mind that there is no link between higher spending and results, teacher unions will never allow the left to embrace any reforms that endanger seniority and job security. Conservatives, however, know that 85% of education spending goes to teachers’ salary and benefits, that these salary and benefits are determined by seniority and that seniority has no impact on how well students learn. The only way to bring real reform to our nation’s schools is to empower families to make the decisions on where their education dollars go.

Budget and Spending: The leaders of the left talk a good game on reducing the deficit and lowering taxes, but the fact is that they still want to raise America’s overall tax burden. What little new revenues they raise don’t come close to matching their promised massive new spending increases. But for many on the left, this is not a problem: they want high deficits. Conservatives, meanwhile, know that our looming entitlement crisis threatens our entire economy and that steps must be taken today to ensure our children will have the opportunities for growth that we do.

Quick Hits:

• Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) told bloggers in St. Paul the GOP would embrace Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) if he decided to cross party lines.
• According to CBS 2 Chicago, an estimated 123 people were shot and killed over the summer, nearly double the number of soldiers killed in Iraq over the same time period.
• According to Nielsen ratings, more than 37.2 million people watched Sarah Palin’s speech Wednesday night.
• A SurveyUSA poll of voters in Washington found that 52% believe the media are rooting for Barack Obama.
• According to Rasmussen Reports, more than half of U.S. voters think reporters are trying to hurt Sarah Palin with their news coverage.

MINNEAPOLIS — Sen. Bob Bennett (R-UT) came to the Hubert Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs to “shill” for the Healthy Americans Act he’s co-sponsoring with Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR).

Bennett insisted his bill was meant to expand the debate on health care policy with the hope that it could become the framework for real legislative action next year. The driving force behind the Wyden-Bennett bill is the belief that the health care system cannot be fixed without changing the tax code. Specifically, their plan targets the subsidies businesses receive to provide health care for their employers. Bennett explained that pensions and health care funded and managed by employers may have made sense in the 1930s, but that the success of 401(k)s in transforming the field of pensions shows consumer-centered health care reform can work.

Also on the panel was Galen Institute President Grace-Marie Turner, who had some material objections to the bill that largely mirror those made by Heritage senior policy analyst Nina Owchernko.

Turner worried about the second- and third-tier results of the individual mandate in the plan. Turner explained that in order to successfully implement any mandate, the federal government would have to heavily regulate which insurance plans met the individual mandate requirements and which did not. Special interests in Washington would inevitably add many requirements to health insurance plans that most consumers do not want or need. These new federal mandates would make health insurance unfordable for many more Americans.

ST. PAUL — The Heritage Foundation has long believed that a more informed populace will lead to greater government accountability and less wasteful spending. That is why we were so eager to partner with the Sunlight Foundation on their Exposing Earmarks project. In that same spirit, we are very proud to feature a guest post today from Missouri Gov. Matt Blunt:

I established the Missouri Accountability Portal to equip taxpayers with new power to hold the government accountable for what it spends. In the year since the spotlight came on, our site has received more than 10 million hits as more people are using this powerful new tool for open government.

The taxpayer has no greater friend than Grover Norquist, who has shined the light on elected officials and candidates who want to raise taxes as well as progressive efforts like ours to provide taxpayers with greater information on how government spends their tax dollars. We know why politicians want to raise taxes: so they can spend more money. If people cannot see what the government is doing, we have government in secret. The bottom line is that public scrutiny is a vital firewall against wasteful and uncontrolled spending.

Missouri is a low tax state, but Missourians still pay more than $3,500 per capita in state and local taxes annually, according to the Tax Foundation. There were some who wanted me to raise taxes when I became governor to address an inherited $1.1 billion deficit. We did not raise taxes. We cut taxes — three times. Each time, public awareness of the link between taxes and spending has been very important in securing legislative majorities.

Every citizen has a right to know where and how their money is being spent. Citizens are supposed to hold us accountable. This principle is a bedrock of democratic self-government. At 25,000 site hits per day and total hits now nearly twice our state population, it is clear that people are eager for more and better knowledge about the state’s checkbook.

The Missouri Accountability Portal is a free, online tool that provides ready access data about how elected officials and agencies spend hard-earned tax dollars. The Internet site is located at http://mapyourtaxes.mo.gov

My administration built the MAP with existing resources, without new spending. We update information at the close of each business day. Users can search the MAP by budget category, vendor or contract. They can also view the salaries of all state employees as well as see who is benefiting from the state’s tax credits.

Missouri is among the few states in good financial shape. We have a surplus, lower taxes and spending growth that has been brought under control for the first time since the 1990s. We have increased aid to education at all levels, which was being raided by liberals to fund out-of-control costs in social welfare programs.

There have been no job-killing tax increases, nor any other kind of tax increase — if there are other kinds.

We can control spending. All this means is that the government has more than enough money already, and needs to do a better job with what it takes right now. We can cut taxes, save money and modernize government. We have proven it, in fidelity to our motto, as the Show-Me State.

Opening the books to inspection by any citizen with an Internet connection is a vital step toward the goal that Grover Norquist and I share with millions of Americans — government that is open, efficient and pro-taxpayer.

MINNEAPOLIS - Economic advisers from both Barack Obama and John McCain’s campaigns squared off in a panel on tax policy this afternoon, and the consensus among the non-partisan members of the panel was that no matter who wins, Americans should not expect any major changes in tax policy. After both John Taylor and Austan Goolsbee made the case for their candidates’ tax plan to the crowd at the Hubert Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs, University of Michigan economics professor Joel Slemrod presented a power point presentation that concluded neither candidate was offering fundamental tax reform.

According to Slemrod, both candidates retain much of the Bush tax cuts, make research and development tax credits permanent, and limit but do not repeal the Alternative Minimum Tax. The differences, Slemrod said, include: 1) McCain would collect about $100 billion less in taxes per year; 2) Obama would raise more revenues from families making more than $200k; 3) Obama would collect less revenue from the middle class.

Also on the panel, Urban/Brookings Tax Policy Center director Leonard Burman identified three “things that will force action” by Washington on taxes: 1) the Bush taxes are set to expire and both candidates largely want to keep them in place; 2) the most recent AMT fix is also set to expire; 3) unless something fundamentally changes in Medicare we will be spending our entire federal budget on entitlements by 2030. Burman stressed that somehting most be down about the entitlement crisis but that neither candidate had put forward any serious proposals.

Both Leonard and Slemrod also heavily criticized Washington’s new habit of creating new spending programs through the tax code. Burman said, “Our tax system has become a Christmas Tree” and Slemrod claimed that McCain’s record indicated he had a much better chance of ending this deceptive practice. Leonard and Burman. When asked if raising taxes kills jobs both Leonard and Slemrod said they could on the margins, but that a bigger threat to employment were soaring federal deficits (Heritage’s JD Foster recaps the literature on this subject here).

While the panel did issue firm warnings on the dire predicament entitlement spending has put our nation’s economy, this panel largely failed to address the other half of the budget process: spending. When pressed to identify where their candidates would reduce federal spending, both surrogates gave alarmingly similar answers: 1) less money spent on Iraq (Taylor said we could do this now because of the surge); 2) reducing earmarks; 3) ending farm subsidies. But no one on the panel addressed the new spending candidates have proposed. Given that Obama has promised to spend an additional $1.4 trillion over five years, it would have been nice to hear Goolsbee explain how Obama would not send deficits even higher considering the Tax Policy Center estimates Obama will only raise American’s taxes by $181 billion over that same time.

• Education Tax Credits: Most Popular Choice Policy - Cato-at-Liberty 

The Friedman Foundation has just published the latest state poll – Maryland – in their very helpful education survey series. There are a lot of interesting things here, but I’ll highlight just a couple… 

• What’s the Harm in Broadening Who Is Considered “Disabled”? | OpenMarket.org 

The Justice Department is proposing 1,000 pages of new ”guidance” expanding the reach of the Americans with Disabilities Act, at an estimated cost of $23 billion (not counting legal expenses)… 

• Jurisdictional Competition Needed to Control Excessive Health Mandates - The Market Center Blog 

Grace-Marie Turner of the Galen Institute explains in the Wall Street Journal that consumers should have the freedom to purchase health insurance from providers in other states… 

• Forging Constraint Rapidly Disappearing - Atomic Insights Blog 

One of the more frequently mentioned constraints on new nuclear power plant construction is the production of large steel components like reactor pressure vessels… 

Today the Wall Street Journal published a letter from Barack Obama economic adviser Jeffrey Liebman responding to an op-ed by McCain advisers Martin Feldstein and John Taylor. Feldstein and Taylor are savvy enough to respond to Liebman’s arguments on their own, but Liebman did materially misrepresent the position of The Heritage Foundation in his letter. Heritage senior analyst Rea Hederman has written to the WSJ:

How ironic that Jeffrey Liebman (“Tax Plan No Help to Middle Class,” Letters, Sept. 4) should charge Martin Feldstein and John Taylor with misrepresenting the candidates’s tax plans just one paragraph after he blatantly represents my work.

According to Liebman, I “praised Sen. Obama’s tax plan as ‘a great step in the right direction’….” In fact, what I characterized as “a great step” was Obama’s climb down from his earlier vow to sharply hike taxes on capital gains and dividends. He now calls for more moderate, albeit still unwise, tax hikes on capital.

Making a bad plan less bad is a step in the right direction. But the Obama tax plan still falls miles short of good economic policy.

UPDATE: Hederman also responds at Greg Mankiw’s Blog:

I saw this morning that you posted a letter by Dr. Liebman on your blog (to which I subscribe). The letter does not accurately reflect my comments on the Obama tax plan. Dr. Liebman has sliced my quotes well out of context. If you read the full article in the NY Sun (August 15) you will see that my quote–’great step in the right direction’–refers to reductions in the tax rates for capital gains and dividends to 20%, which is far lower than the 25% or 28% that seemed to be contained in Senator Obama’s tax plan at beginning of the summer. Heritage and the Tax Policy Center both started our initial assessments of Senator Obama’s tax plan with the capital gains and dividends tax rate being raised to 25%. I do think it’s a step in the right direction that the Obama campaign has decided not to raise the cost of capital by as much as they planned in the beginning of the summer. But, as I noted later, it would be even better not raise taxes on capital at all.

Dr. Liebman also did not include my comments that Senator Obama is reducing middle class taxes in the wrong way. He complicates the tax code with messy tax credits that will do a host of harm to growth and fairness in the tax code.

ST. PAUL — The most common headline or lead for stories about Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin’s speech last night was that she “electrified” the arena. Watching from our perch in the rafters we have to agree: Palin sent the energy in the Excel Center through the roof. For all the attacks from liberal media commentators this week, Palin proved to the nation that when it comes to the most important issue in this election, energy, she has experience and results in spades.

The left says it wants to reduce American dependence on foreign energy, but many of them continue to demonstrate outright ignorance on the issue. Speaker Nancy Pelosi, for example, appears to be completely unaware that natural gas is a fossil fuel that requires drilling. Barack Obama is slightly better. He says he wants to drill for more gas and he says he wants to build a natural gas pipeline from Alasaka, but he never has actually done anything to make these dreams a reality. Palin’s record is different.

For years former-Alaska Gov. Frank Murkowski tried to strike a deal with the major oil companies to construct a new natural gas pipeline. After Palin defeated Murkowski, she bypassed the oil companies entirely and struck a much better deal for the taxpayers with North America’s largest pipeline operator, TransCanada, a Calgary-based company. The pipeline is set to be completed by 2018 and will give Americans access to 35 trillion cubic feet of gas that need to be drilled from Alaska’s North Slope. The pipeline will ship 4.5 billion cubic feet of gas a day, through Canada, to U.S. markets. That represents about 7% of current U.S. demand. This pipeline will lower American consumer energy bills. As Palin said last night: “Families cannot throw away more and more of their paychecks on gas and heating oil.”

Energy is not just an economic issue. It is also a key foreign policy issue, and Palin demonstrated she has a firm grasp on the relation between the two:

The stakes for our nation could not be higher. When a hurricane strikes in the Gulf of Mexico, this country should not be so dependent on imported oil that we are forced to draw from our Strategic Petroleum Reserve. With Russia wanting to control a vital pipeline in the Caucasus, and to divide and intimidate our European allies by using energy as a weapon, we cannot leave ourselves at the mercy of foreign suppliers.

To confront the threat that Iran might seek to cut off nearly a fifth of world energy supplies … or that terrorists might strike again at the Abqaiq facility in Saudi Arabia … or that Venezuela might shut off its oil deliveries … we Americans need to produce more of our own oil and gas. And take it from a gal who knows the North Slope of Alaska: we’ve got lots of both.

The U.S. has even more natural gas off of our nation’s coasts. Pelosi and Obama are fighting to keep 77 trillion cubic feet of natural gas in the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) off limits from production. Obama’s support for the Alaska pipeline exposes the left’s hypocrisy on this issue. The left says we can’t drill in the OCS because it will take the oil and gas five to 10 years to reach the market. But Obama’s favored pipeline won’t be finished until 2018. Applying his own logic evenly, he should be fighting against, not for, the Alaska gas pipeline.

Developing our domestic energy resources is not the only solution to meeting U.S. energy needs. We also need to remove regulatory burdens on nuclear power and facilitate basic research on renewable energy. Palin showed she understands this, too: “Our opponents say, again and again, that drilling will not solve all of America’s energy problems — as if we all didn’t know that already. But the fact that drilling won’t solve every problem is no excuse to do nothing at all.”

Quick Hits:

• Due to high gas prices, sick Americans who travel far or frequently to get medical treatment are skipping or delaying appointments.
• The White House proposed $1 billion in humanitarian and economic assistance yesterday to help rebuild Georgia.
• Sen. Joe Biden said yesterday that he and running mate Barack Obama could pursue criminal charges against the Bush administration if they are elected in November.
• A new study published yesterday again shows no link between vaccines and autism.
• Mayor Ray Nagin is now allowing New Orleans residents to return home.

ST. PAUL - Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) stopped by bloggers row here inside the Excel Energy Center and we pressed him to talk about … energy. Specifically what he thought about the Gang of 10 energy plan beginning to take form in the Senate. DeMint stressed that whatever the bill looked like when it was introduced, it was guaranteed to be drastically worse by the time it passed: “You have to remember, the five Republicans working on the compromise are working with the five most reasonable Democrats. If it gets to the floor, it will get worse. The left does not like nuclear, so that will probably be lost. And in exchange all we get is higher taxes.”

DeMint went on to stress that now is not the time to compromise on the issue: “We can not compromise on on national security. We can stop the ban now. There is no reason to compromise.” When pressed on whether he could accept the House ‘All of the Above’ plan, DeMint said that “tax credits don’t bother me” and that he thought it was perfectly reasonable to pay for them with the revenues from new natural gas and oil leases. But he did say that he did not want the government to be picking winners and losers in the energy market: “The corn based ethanol mandates and subsidies were a mistake. We should not make the same mistake again.”

ST. PAUL - Rep. Adam Putnam (R-FL) kicked off a House Republican Conference presser today explaining, “Energy is an issue we don’t have to wait till November to address.” For the next five minutes one might have thought they were at a Speaker Nancy Pelosi press conference as Putnam reeled of all of the commitments the GOP is proposing in their ‘All of the Above‘ energy plan including: tax incentives for businesses and families that purchase fuel efficient vehicles, permanently extending the tax credit for wind and solar power, and establishing a renewable energy trust fund.

But when it came to to explain how they planned to fund their new renewable energy trust fund, that’s when it began to sound like a Republican press conference again. The ‘All of the Above’ energy plan pays for new investments in renewable energy with proceeds from the sale of leases to oil and gas producers in now banned areas in the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) and Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR). Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) insisted on an up and down vote on the bill and was skeptical that Pelosi would offer any compromise that truly made an effort to develop our natural resources. The ‘Gang of 10′ energy plan currently floating on the hill allows only 14% of the currently banned oil resources to be developed.

Ranking Energy Committee Joe Barton (R-TX) noted that some experts estimate that U.S. energy use is expected to grow 30-40% by 2030. “We simply are not prepared for this,” Barton said, “and we will not meet these needs without developing our own energy resources.

MINNEAPOLIS - “If Hubert Humphrey was still a leader of the Democratic Party, I would not be at this convention today,” Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) told a packed audience at the Hubert H. Humphrey Institute of Public Policy this afternoon. Sitting on a panel that included National Security Adviser to Ronald Reagan, and Ambassadors Robert Portman and Richard Williamson, Lieberman concluded his opening remarks saying, “Humphrey believed in the kind of progressive politics at home and idealism abroad that I grew up with.”

Fortune magazine’s Nina Easton hosted the ‘Building a Better, Safer World: What Would A McCain Presidency Do‘ panel which was sponsored by the Center for U.S. Global Engagement (which is funded in part by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation). Lieberman said a McCain administration would bring “a veterans distaste” for using military force unless absolutely necessary, and a strong commitment to free trade. Lieberman stressed that his former party has radically changed their position on free trade in just eight short years. A favorite President Bill Clinton schtick, Lieberman said, was to point out that the U.S. had only 4% of the world’s population and we could not expect top grow our economy without trading with the 96% of people that make up the rest of the world.

Trade quickly became the focus of the panel and Amb. Portman stressed trade’s role in promoting peace throughout the world, but especially in troubled regions: “Doha’s collapse was a huge loss not just because of the trade lost between the United States and other countries, but because of all the trade lost between other countries.” Amb. Williamson quickly chimed in about what the failure of Doha signaled about China and India’s intentions to participate in international norms. “Trade is the canary in the mineshaft for the rest of the international system,” Williamson said.

• Gee, It’s a Bummer When You Cope with High Gas Prices So Well - Government Bytes

Peder Jensen, a “transportation expert” for the EU’s European Environment Agency in Copenhagen had this to say about stubborn motorists who insist on driving even with high fuel prices…

• Company Can’t Test for Mad Cow, Bureaucrats & Courts Say - OpenMarket.org

Earlier, I and Alex Harris criticized the Agriculture Department for banning a company from testing for mad cow disease. The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals has now upheld that ban. Law Professor Jonathan Adler…

• Opposing Viewpoints on Network Neutrality - The Technology Liberation Front

I contributed the Cato institute’s side in this debate at Opposing Viewpoints. I took the “no” position to the question “Should the Government Regulate Net Neutrality?”…

• California Tobacco Control Program Wants More Money - Pacific Research Institute

But Can Higher Taxes Really Eliminate Smoking Within 5 Years? I have spent (undoubtedly too much) time today struggling with a new article from the tobacconistas at the University of California, San Francisco’s…

Heritage’s Sally McNamara discusses the concerns for the West now that Russia invaded Georgia. In the video she highlights three main reasons why we need to be concerned:

1. The Invasion was illegal and immoral

2. Europe’s response has been wholly inadequate

3. The West should stress to Russia that actions have consequences.

Read more about this conflict:

Russia’s Recognition of Independence for South Ossetia and Abkhazia Is Illegitimate: They Are Not Kosovo

The EU Must Express Solidarity with Georgia at Its Emergency Summit

It’s time for the NRC to listen to the collective voice of Nevada.”

Ah, Harry Reid, you couldn’t be more right. The Senate Majority Leader again voiced his anti-Yucca Mountain sentiments a few days ago, claiming the dump is wrong and saying, “We will not accept it.”

Reid made these statements after 4,000 Nevadans filed a petition to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), and Nevada officials “contend nuclear waste cannot be safely stored at Yucca Mountain for the thousands of years envisioned by the government.”

First of all, only 4,000 petitioners? According to the Census Bureau Nevada’s population in 2006 was about 2.5 million. That means .16%, less than two tenths of the population signed this petition. Granted, the bright lights of Las Vegas are alluring, but if Nevadans truly cared about shutting down Yucca Mountain as much as Harry Reid says they do, they could build a case stronger than 4,000 petition signers.

Seriously, people in Seattle, Washington were more riled up for a 20-cent grocery bag fee. Only one month after Seattle’s Mayor signed the ordinance to take place in January, The Coalition to Stop the Seattle Bag Tax formed and gathered more than 20,000 signatures to have the fee repealed.

Without question the voices of Nevadans deserve the right to be heard, but what I’m hearing is that Yucca Mountain is not an issue for the majority of Nevada. With a nuclear energy push on the horizon, resolving the issue of managing spent nuclear fuel will be critical to the sustainability of nuclear power in the United States. While the entire system needs an overhaul, a geologic repository remains vitally important to used fuel disposal. The Department of Energy (DOE) did their part in submitting a license application to the NRC, but Members of Congress can take action; specifically they should:

• Replace the artificial 70,000-ton cap on Yucca Mountain with a more scientifically calculated cap.
• Acknowledge that the current regime for managing spent nuclear fuel is broken and engage in a process to develop a new ratio­nal, market-based approach to managing spent nuclear fuel that can support a broad expansion of nuclear power in the United States.

Secondly, I’m not sure if Nevada officials are the most qualified to determine that nuclear waste cannot safely be stored at Yucca Mountain. I’d leave that to the experts that say there is no scientific, safety, or technological reason that prevents waste from coming into Yucca Mountain. For more on this, you can read the DOE’s environmental impact study or the U.S. Geologic Survey, Yucca Mountain as a Geologic Repository.

Senator Reid is right. We should be listening to the collective voice of Nevada; we should be listening to those concerned about gas and energy prices, taxes, education and jobs rather than the minority that wants to stop the development of clean, safe and affordable energy.

ST. PAUL — Fred Thompson was by far the most well-received speaker last night, and the former senator’s detailed recounting of John McCain’s service and captivity in Vietnam produced more than a few tears inside the Excel Center. But the energizing moment, Thompson’s big applause line about McCain, came later:

He has been to Iraq eight times since 2003. He went seeking truth, not publicity. When he travels abroad, he prefers quietly speaking to the troops amidst the heat and hardship of their daily lives. And the same character that marked John McCain’s military career has also marked his political career. This man, John McCain is not intimidated by what the polls say or by what is politically safe or popular. At a point when the war in Iraq was going badly and the public lost confidence, John stood up and called for more troops. And now we are winning.

Not only did that last phrase (”now we are winning”) bring down the house, the whole paragraph encapsulates some of the biggest differences between last week’s Democratic convention in Denver and this week’s Republican convention in St. Paul. Last week, the surge in Iraq simply did not exist. Both Barack Obama and Joe Biden opposed the surge, so it was simply ignored. This week, there is an honest assessment of why peace rapidly is taking hold in Iraq, and an acknowledgment the surge was essential to that peace. Last week, all of America’s troops were victims who needed more government programs. This week, our troops are heroes who deserve our respect and gratitude.

One way Americans can honor the troops is by doing everything possible to ensure they can vote in the election. There is movement in both the House and Senate to do just that. On the Senate side, Sens. Wayne Allard (R-CO) and John Cornyn (R-TX) are sponsors of the Military Voting Protection Act of 2008. In the House, Reps. Roy Blunt (R-MO) and Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) have sponsored a similarly named bill. Both are efforts to address problems reported by the the Election Assistance Commission (EAC) in a September 2007 study on military and overseas absentee voting.

In 2006, elections officials counted only 48 percent of the ballots cast by overseas members of the military who requested absentee ballots, according to the EAC. The top reason officials rejected the ballots: They “were received by the election offices after the deadline stipulated by state law.”

Both bills charge the secretary of defense with collecting absentee ballots of overseas military voters and delivering them to state elections officials via air transport, using tracking capabilities. The bills also would eliminate the notary requirement on voted ballots and allow for electronic submissions of requests for absentee ballots. Military personnel have little control over their geographic assignments, and measures like these ought to make it easier for them to exercise the same voting rights enjoyed by civilians.

Nobody knows better than the troops in the field that not only are we now winning in Iraq, but it is because of the surge that our fortunes changed. These troops deserve to have their voices heard in November.

Quick Hits:

• Of the 2,000 protesters who showed up yesterday at the Republican National Convention, 135 people will be charged with felonies in connection with property destruction and other violence.
• Gen. David Petraeus, U.S. commander in Iraq,  said declining violence in Baghdad raises the possibility that American combat troops could leave the capital by next summer.
• The former Soviet republic of Georgia is moving to rebuild its military in expectation of  more Russian violations of Georgian sovereignty.
• US Weekly, the tabloid magazine published by Barack Obama supporter and  Rolling Stone magazine founder Jann Wenner, next week will feature a cover with this screaming headline: “Babies, Lies and Scandal: John McCain’s Vice President.”
• Local governments in Britain are recruiting “citizen snoopers” to rat out neighbors who don’t comply with mandatory recycling laws.

MINNEAPOLIS — As one might expect, the contrast between an education panel hosted by the conservative American Solutions and one hosted by the National Education Association (NEA) is stark. At the downtown Minneapolis Club this afternoon, the Republican Main Street Partnership co-hosted “An Education Forum on 21st Century Skills” with the NEA. Rep. Mike Castle (R-DE), co-founder of RMSP, headlined the event, but NEA executive director John Wilson did most of the talking.

Like this morning’s American Solutions session, Wilson opened by talking about how the future of the United States depends on preparing our children to compete in a global marketplace against India and China. Also like the American Solutions panel, there was strong agreement that the U.S. had a 20th century education system that badly needed to be updated for a 21st century world. That is where the similarities ended. Where the conservatives in the morning wanted more accountability through increased educational choices, the NEA wanted … a rainbow:

Or to be more precise, a “Rainbow of 21st Century Skills.” Instead of an increased focus on math and science, the NEA wants time spent on “Learning and Innovation,” “Information, Media and Technology,” and “Life and Career” skills. Never mind that one in three fourth-graders scores “below basic” in reading on the National Assessment of Educational Progress. Or that 29 % of eighth graders scored “below basic” in mathematics on the same test. Instead of letting schools focus on the basics, the NEA believes “schools must move beyond a focus on basic competency in core subjects to promoting understanding of academic content at much higher levels by weaving 21st century interdisciplinary themes into core subjects.” Got that? In what those themes the NEA wants to eat up class time: Global Awareness; Financial, Economic, Business and Entrepreneurial Literacy; Civic Literacy; and Health Literacy.

The most revealing part of Wilson’s presentation was when he talked about the surefire success The Partnership for 21st Century Skills will experience. Wilson explained: “Our coalition includes education, business, and government. When these three groups get together to change public schools there is nothing we can’t do.” We know who ‘business’ and ‘government’ are. But who exactly is ‘education’ made up of? Not students. And definitely not the parents who are in such desperate need of control of their children’s education.

• Report from St. Paul: On Floods, Charity and Conventions - Shopfloor.org

With Hurricane Gustav bearing down on New Orleans, the entire tenor of the 2008 Republican Convention has changed. Already dedicated to “service,” the focus of convention activities is now on how attendees, and all Americans, can assist in easing the fallout of the storm…

• Going Blind Waiting for the National Health Service–So Sorry! - OpenMarket.org

Sorry about that! That’s the British government’s reaction to the two-year delay in approving a drug that combats blindness. Too expensive, dear chap … anyway, keeping your sight is so 20th century!…

•  The WHO’s blueprint for increasing global poverty - Adam Smith Institute

The WHO last week released its long-awaited report on the “Social Determinants of Health” - the social and economic factors behind disease. As the report lands in the in-trays of ministers all over the world, they would do best to file it under ‘B’ for ‘bonkers’…

• Another favorable view of nuclear power from a South Carolina Senator - Atomic Insights Blog

Senator Jim DeMint (R-SC) has published an opinion column titled We have an efficient, clean energy alternative. Here is a sample excerpt of a column that is really worth reading in its entirety…

Twenty-five percent of America’s oil production and a significant amount of onshore refining capacity and pipeline infrastructure is located in the hurricane-prone central and western Gulf of Mexico — and much of it was in the path of Hurricane Gustav.

Fortunately, unlike Katrina and Rita in 2005 and other past hurricanes, Gustav has not done significant damage to the energy infrastructure there. Prices and markets will be relatively unaffected. Nonetheless, the hurricane does underscore the benefits of geographic diversification in domestic oil production.

The Atlantic, Pacific, and eastern Gulf of Mexico are off limits to offshore oil and natural gas exploration and drilling, as are promising onshore sites such as the few thousand acres at the edge of Alaska’s 19.6 million acre Arctic National Wildlife Refuge believed to contain over 10 billion barrels. While the eastern Gulf and Atlantic also get hurricanes and the Pacific coast and Alaska are susceptible to natural disasters of their own, obviously any one event can only disrupt production in one area.

While increased overall supplies are the main benefit of expanded drilling, the extra resiliency against natural disasters from geographically widespread production is another plus in the debate over repealing the moratorium on 85% of our offshore areas and the restrictions on ANWR.

MINNEAPOLIS — Entrepreneur-turned-filmmaker Bob Compton kicked off an American Solutions panel on education by showing a 13-minute clip of “2 Million Minutes,” a documentary that follows six students in India, China and the United States. The 2 million is a reference to the number of minutes a person has in a four-year time frame. Compton’s movie examines how two students from each country choose to spend their 2 million (hint: the U.S. kids spend a lot less time studying). You can watch a preview here. Compton said that education is “the biggest strategic issue we face” today. He said that if we do not do something about our education system we could become the Britain of the 21st century — and if we were unlucky, France.

Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty spoke next, and he was a bit more specific about what needed to be done. First, he pointed out that in everything else Americans do, “choice” is only expanding. Instead of being held prisoner to the tastes of a few radio stations, today Americans can listen to anything they want on their iPods. Pawlenty was clear: “Choice is the future.” Pawlenty stressed that we needed to work with teachers unions, but that unions had to accept some major changes, especially on pay. Eighty-five percent of education dollars go to salaries and benefits of teachers. Thanks to unions, teacher pay is determined by seniority. But there is no correlation between teacher seniority and improved child learning. Pawlenty said this had to change: “We love our teachers. But they are working in a system that is 50 years old.”

Like that brand new $2,000 BMW on Ebay, if something is too good to be true, it usually is. –

But that’s the phrase William Tucker, author of the forthcoming book Terrestrial Energy, uses in his article on the NY Times Freakonomics blog.

It all seems too good to be true. People conjure up all kinds of nightmare scenarios just to compensate. Yet the reality remains: nuclear energy is the most environmentally benign discovery ever made.”

Wait a minute. Just because we have 104 reactors providing 20 percent of America’s electricity without emitting an ounce of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere doesn’t mean that nuclear energy is “too good to be true.” (And yes, I know that the construction of the reactors emits CO2, but so does construction of everything else on this planet – it’s just the way the world works right now. Singling out nuclear makes no sense.)

Getting back to the fundamental question: Is nuclear too good to be true to meet America’s rising energy demands and environmental concerns? Is nuclear a silver bullet? Before we start calling it that, there are some issues to address, namely bad government policy. Undoubtedly, the biggest obstacle is nuclear waste. Heritage nuclear expert outlines the problems, and more importantly, the solutions in his paper, A Free Market Approach to Managing Used Nuclear Fuel. The primary steps include:

• Create the legal framework that allows the pri­vate sector to price geologic storage as a commodity;
• Empower the private sector to manage used fuel;
• Repeal the 70,000-ton limitation on the Yucca Mountain repository and instead let technology, science, and physical capacity determine the appropriate limit;
• Create a private entity that is representative of but independent from nuclear operators to man­age Yucca Mountain;
• Repeal the mil, abolish the Nuclear Waste Fund, and transfer the remaining funds to a private entity to cover the expenses of constructing Yucca Mountain; and
• Limit the federal government’s role to providing oversight, basic research, and development and taking title of spent fuel upon repository decommissioning.

High energy prices are giving people the world over a reason to reexamine nuclear energy- and rightfully so. Nuclear power has proven to be safe and secure for years. Even the zeitgeist of Three Mile Island is finally starting to fade away. The reality is that it should never have been an issue to begin with. Yes, the reactor malfunctioned at TMI, but all the safety mechanisms worked as they should have and that is why no one was injured, much less killed, as a result.

For more information on TMI, you can read about The Heritage Foundation’s trip there that took place in February. In the forthcoming weeks, The Heritage Foundation will release a paper that goes into more detail about TMI, including the safety and technological improvements since the near-accident about 30 years ago. The paper will also include a section about Chernobyl and why an accident like that is physically impossible here in the United States. Keep your eyes peeled.

ST. PAUL — In the spring of 1857 a handful of men, including Ralph Waldo Emerson and Oliver Wendell Holmes, met at Boston’s Parker House Hotel to discuss the founding of a new magazine that would bill itself as a “journal of literature, politics, science, and the arts.” Later that November, The Atlantic Monthly premiered and has since become a venerable institution of thought and journalism.

The Atlantic Monthly was the first to print stories from Mark Twain and Henry James, and it was the magazine Martin Luther King Jr. chose to send his handwritten notes from Birmingham, Ala., in 1963. Those notes would become known as King’s “Letter From Birmingham Jail.” The Atlantic also has a deep history of reporting from the battlefield, including the publication of dispatches from Nathaniel Hawthorne during the Civil War and Frances Fitzgerald from Vietnam in the 1960s. Some Atlantic journalists have even paid the highest price for their ideals. In 2003, Atlantic editor Michael Kelly was killed while traveling in a Humvee with the 3rd Infantry Division in Iraq.

Supposedly, The Atlantic still aspires to the best of journalistic ideals. The Atlantic’s Publication Overview explains: “The Atlantic is a brand founded upon and dedicated to ideas. At our core, we aspire to challenge and engage the nation’s thought leaders by presenting new ideas and varied perspectives on major issues.” Unfortunately, The Atlantic has recently chosen to turn its back on this commitment.

Yesterday the Republican National Convention was dominated by discussion of Hurricane Gustav and news that Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin’s 17-year-old daughter is pregnant. How did a 17-year-old’s private life end up dominating the national stage? As soon as candidate John McCain announced Palin as his running mate last week, fringe leftist websites like Democratic Underground and Daily Kos began pushing vicious and outlandish attacks on Palin. The most disgusting of these stories accused Palin of faking her fifth pregnancy in order to cover up “the fact” that her eldest and unmarried daughter was the real mother of 4-month-old Trig Palin, who has Down syndrome. There was simply no reason any respectable institution should have dignified these lunatic ravings with a response. But The Atlantic did. And far worse, it tried to further the story.

Stooping into the gutter, The Atlantic published pictures of Palin’s 17-year-old daughter and baby Trig and then proceeded to demand that the McCain campaign release the family’s medical records. The Atlantic made no attempt to call anyone from Alaska in order to verify these disgusting and false rumors. Instead, The Atlantic chose to slander an entire family and then demand that the victim prove the accusations were false. Does this behavior demonstrate “a brand founded upon and dedicated to ideas” that aspires to “challenge and engage the nation’s thought leaders by presenting new ideas and varied perspectives on major issues”? Thankfully, Barack Obama still has the decency to reject The Atlantic’s disgusting tactics. He told an audience yesterday:

This shouldn’t be part of our politics. It has no relevance to Gov. Palin’s performance as a governor or her potential performance as a vice president. I would strongly urge people to back off these kinds of stories. That shouldn’t be a topic in our politics.

The Atlantic has not followed Obama’s dignified example. Even after the networks and major papers carried the story, and even after Palin announced that her 17-year-old daughter is pregnant now (thus refuting the rumors that she could have been Trig’s mother), The Atlantic continues to demand that the Palin family produce medical records. The Atlantic is not the only print publication trying to find its way in the new online media world. The difference is that most have managed to do so without sullying their reputation.

Quick Hits:

• Unlike 2005 during Hurricane Katrina, Louisiana successfully conducted the largest evacuation in state history before Hurricane Gustav made landfall yesterday.
• Initial reports indicate that Gustav left production platforms and refineries essentially unharmed, meaning that oil and gas supplies would not be disrupted.
• Fears over Europe’s dependence on Russia for energy are limiting the European Union’s response to Russia’s invasion of Georgia.
• Capping one of the starkest turnabouts in the country since the war began five and a half years ago, American commanders formally returned responsibility for keeping order in Anbar to the Iraqi Army and police force.
• As classes start around the country, college administrators and student organizers are politicizing college campuses like never before.