The Competitive Enterprise Institute Daily Update
Issues in the News
1. ENERGY
Thousands gather in Mexico City to protest steeply rising prices for corn tortillas.
CEI Expert Available to Comment: Senior Fellow Iain Murray on how the mandated demand corn-based ethanol is gouging food prices:
“Unintended consequences of our energy policies abound – tortilla prices in Mexico are going up, for instance, as a direct result of the already existing ethanol mandate. As the ethanol mandate expands, we’re going to see higher prices for meat and (gasp!) beer, not to mention higher gas prices coupled with decreased performance from our cars. There are significant externalities to our new energy policies that people have not taken into account.”
2. POLITICS
Supporters of socialist president Hugo Chavez of Venezuela prepare to vote him near-absolute executive powers.
CEI Experts Available to Comment: Editorial Director Ivan Osorio on Chavez’s anti-democratic precedent:
“Chavez’s contempt for the rule of law is astounding. In the ongoing general strike, he has sent out troops to seize private gasoline-delivery trucks and ordered military commanders to ignore court orders to return the trucks to their owners. He has also seized control of the Caracas police department and defied a court order to return the department to the city’s mayor’s control. ‘A country where the judicial system is not autonomous and must submit to the executive is not democratic,’ said strike leader Carlos Ortega, president of the country’s largest labor federation. ‘Listen well, Venezuela and the world: There is no democracy here.’”
3. NANNY STATE
France enacts a ban on smoking in most public places.
CEI Experts Available to Comment: Policy Analyst Brooke Oberwetter on Washington, DC’s own smoking ban:
“The interest groups that pushed for the ban are hailing the ban as a victory for non-smokers’ rights. Making this an issue of rights—a right to clean air versus a right to smoke—is a ploy designed to illicit sympathy for non-smokers, but it’s a gross mischaracterization of what smoking bans are all about. To a certain extent, it’s a matter of personal liberty; certainly in places where smoking is banned outdoors–everywhere from sidewalks to beaches to public parks, personal liberty is at stake. But in the case of DC, the bigger threat behind the ban is the threat to the economic liberty of business owners.”