CEI Daily Update

Issues in the News

1. ENVIRONMENT

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. makes waves by calling global warming skeptics “traitors.”

CEI Expert Available to Comment: Senior Fellow Marlo Lewis responds to Kennedy’s comments:

When you cannot sell climate Armageddon and Kyoto on the merits of the case, go ad hominem. Call the other guy a polluter, a corporate toady, a tobacco scientist. Stigmatize policy differences so that nobody dares disagree with you in public. After endlessly ramping up the polemic, you are left with nothing else but to allege treason. When Doctor Johnson said, ‘Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel,’ this is precisely the sort of tactic he had in mind.

2. CONGRESS          

Legislators consider giving the Food and Drug Administration authority over cigarette sales.

CEI Expert Available to Comment: General Counsel Sam Kazman on what we can expect from greater tobacco regulation:

Smoking may be hazardous to your health, but FDA regulation is no cure. The end result would be to outlaw tobacco, a return to failed Prohibition-style tactics.

3. AGRICULTURE

Politicians clash over the politics of the proposed farm bill.

CEI Expert Available to Comment: Adjunct Scholar Fran Smith on the subsidies to sugar growers:

Sugar price supports are a form of corporate welfare. The rest of us pay the price, not just for the sugar itself, but in lost jobs and harm to ecologically sensitive areas, such as Florida’s Everglades, and the loss of economic opportunities for many small farmers in poor countries.

Blog feature: For more news and analysis, updated throughout the day, visit CEI’s blog, Open Market.