The benefits of family time
August 9, 2007 | By Nathaniel Ward
“The saying that ‘families that play together or pray together stay together’ resonates with many, and is borne out in the social science data as well, Heritage expert Christine Kim says in a new Heritage video.
Read the latest FamilyFacts.org Top Ten on the benefits of families spending time together.
Take our poll: Are traditional family values important?
Leading the way on entitlement reform
Last week, Washington Post columnist Robert Samuelson attacked The Heritage Foundation and other organizations for being “timid” on federal spending issues. “For think-tank scholars, brutal candor might offend friends and political mentors,” he said. “For the ambitious, it might jeopardize future appointments to top government jobs.”
Nonsense, replies Heritage Vice President Stuart Butler in the same newspaper.
How Estonia overcame communism
Decades under the Soviet boot meant that captive nations like Estonia were unable to develop economically. But today, Estonia has one of the most dynamic economies in Europe and ranks 12th in The Heritage Foundation’s Index of Economic Freedom, ahead of countries like Japan and Germany.
What happened? Find out how free enterprise helped save the Baltic republic.
A new plan to cut high taxes
What do Britain, France, Germany, Bangladesh and China all have in common? They all have a lower corporate tax rate than the United States. In fact, the global average corporate tax rate is 27 percent, while America’s remains at 40 percent. This leaves America at a tremendous competitive disadvantage.
But there’s good news. President Bush has proposed cutting the nation’s corporate tax rates to increase America’s competitiveness in the world. Cutting corporate tax rates is a sound concept that Heritage experts have themselves recommended. “A corporate tax-rate cut may soon be essential to sustain our international competitiveness,” Heritage economist J.D. Foster wrote in June.
Heritage Vice President Mike Franc made a similar case earlier in the year. Congress and the President, he wrote in Human Events, should “make it a policy goal to align the top tax rate on corporate profits with the norm that prevails throughout the industrial world. This means dropping the top rate (state plus federal) to somewhere between 25% and 30%.”
There is no Heritage on the Left
The successes of The Heritage Foundation and the conservative movement remain the envy of the Left. Markos Mousilitas, who runs the popular left-wing blog DailyKos.com, admitted to C-SPAN that liberals lack institutions like Heritage.
Watch the video online (Windows Media format)
“The conservative movement, starting with Barry Goldwater, spent thirty years building this incredible infrastructure,” he explained. Conservatives have established “everything from The Heritage Foundation and [the] Cato [Institute] and the think tanks, to training institutes to train their up-and-coming politicians and staffers and pundits, to media outlets.”
“They have this incredible machine that that creates language, that creates policy, trains people in how to use that language and how to promote those policies, and then this media machine to get it out and to the public.”
“We don’t have anything like that” on the Left, Mousilitas concluded.
Defending talk radio against liberal attacks
As liberals step up their efforts to regulate the media in order to silence conservative voices, The Heritage Foundation has launched a campaign to defend talk radio.
Find out more at DefendTalkRadio.com.
In other news
- The Washington, D.C. Examiner reports that “the surge is working” in Iraq, as additional troops and a new deployment strategy have dealt blows to al Qaeda and improved the political situation. For the latest on the conflict in Iraq, visit Heritage’s Progress in Iraq website.
- One liberal Congressman is looking to spend $8 million in taxpayer money on a new gym—for the exclusive use of members of Congress. Equally wasteful, perhaps, is the “gleaming new gym” reserved for their staffers. The Hill reports that “in the staff members’ gym, each elliptical machine and treadmill has its own flat-screen TV hooked up to cable. The locker rooms are well lit (not many overhead fluorescents), with vanity tables in the women’s for reapplying mascara or blow-drying hair. Staffers can attend classes or roll around on Pilates balls in an aerobics room lined with full-length mirrors.”
- President Bush has told Congress he disapproves of proposals to increase the federal gasoline tax to pay for highway infrastructure. Instead, he said Congress should reform the way it spends transportation money and determine new priorities. Right now, for instance, many highway dollars are earmarked for wasteful projects or spent on tremendously costly public transit programs—and not on actual highways.
Coming up at Heritage
To attend these or any other Heritage Foundation events, RSVP at Heritage’s events website. Or you can watch these events live online at Heritage.org. All times are Eastern.
- On Tuesday, August 14 at 11:00 a.m., author Rowan Scarborough talks about his new book, Sabotage: America’s Enemies Within the CIA.
- On Wednesday, August 22 at noon, economist Bruce Caldwell discusses a new edition of Hayek’s Road to Serfdom and the need for free enterprise in a free society.
Nathaniel Ward is the Editor of MyHeritage.org—a website for members and supporters of The Heritage Foundation. DeEtte Chatterton contributed to this report.
