CEI Daily Update
Issues in the News
1. SECURITY
Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff warns Americans not to become complacent about the possibility of a new terrorist attack.
CEI Expert Available to Comment: Vice President for Policy Wayne Crews and Senior Fellow Eli Lehrer on how private enterprise can improve infrastructure security:
“America has not done enough to protect the networks of roads, train lines, pipelines, power wires, ports, and fiber-optic networks that constitute the nation’s critical infrastructure. This infrastructure, indeed, faces threats from all directions, from nuisances to existential risks. The September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks and Hurricane Katrina showed the vulnerability of our systems. … Over the last decade, government has taken an ever-growing role in providing this protection. Of course, government has a role to play in defending the country from threats both natural and man-made. But we will hurt our own security by allowing government’s role to grow too large.”
2. BUSINESS
Microsoft indicates that it might attempt a hostile takeover of Yahoo after having its buyout offer rejected.
CEI Expert Available to Comment: Technology Policy Analyst Cord Blomquist on speculation that a Microsoft-Yahoo deal would arouse antitrust concerns:
“In the past antitrust regulators have succeeded in breaking up firms with the ironic affect of allowing other firms to come to more dominant positions as the market continued to develop and change. Hopefully antitrust regulators will realize that their narrowly defined and static conception of markets are arbitrary to begin with and no supposed monopoly can possibly last that long in a free and open market.”
3. ECONOMICS
Federal Reserve economists suggest that the gap between rich and poor in America is much smaller than previously thought.
CEI Expert Available to Comment: Special Projects Counsel Hans Bader on the flexible definition of “poverty”:
“People below the poverty line often aren’t really poor. Many of them receive tax-free income and welfare benefits that aren’t even considered in determining whether someone is below the government’s official poverty line. One sign of that fact is that middle class people (households in the middle fifth of households in terms of income) consume only 29 percent more per person than people in the bottom fifth of all households — the so-called poor. That’s what economists at the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas found, as they noted in Sunday’s New York Times. Moreover, most Americans below the poverty line live better than the average Western European, and possess things — like air conditioners, cable TV, and dryers — that many European households lack. Moreover, many of them own their own homes, typically, a three-bedroom house.”
Blog feature: For more news and analysis, updated throughout the day, visit CEI’s blog, Open Market.
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