The Competitive Enterprise Institute Daily Update
Issues in the News
1. LEGAL
Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal investigates denial-of-coverage complaints against major insurance companies.
CEI Expert Available to Comment: Special Projects Counsel Hans Bader on the 10 worst state attorneys general:
“Unfortunately, many state attorneys general today find those constraints inconvenient. Over the past decade, attorneys general have increasingly usurped the role of state legislatures and Congress by using litigation to impose interstate and national regulations and to extract money from out-of-state defendants who have little voice in a state’s political processes. The worst offenders flaunt such abuse of power, with the most notorious of the lot, Eliot Spitzer, boasting that he ‘has redefined the role of Attorney General.’”
2. ENERGY
President Bush lays out a plan for reducing gasoline consumption as part of his State of the Union address.
CEI Expert Available to Comment: Director of Global Warming Policy Myron Ebell on how Bush’s energy policy fails taxpayers and consumers:
“Bush’s proposals amount to a giant step back from the goal of a rational energy policy. Instead of increasing affordable and reliable energy supplies, tonight’s plan would raise gas prices on consumers while making the U.S. less economically competitive as transportation costs rise. Raising energy prices significantly would make Americans less, not more, secure.”
3. TECHNOLOGY
Record companies sue XM Radio over storage of songs by listeners on MP3 players.
CEI Experts Available to Comment: Adjunct Scholar James Plummer on how markets can help protect intellectual property.
“The rapid progression of technology and, concomitantly, consumer attitudes and behavior, poses problems for the content industries’ dominant paradigms and business models as configured today. Enforcement costs for protection of old models—encouraged and calcified by congressional expansion of the length of copyright terms—are mounting. Some rights holders are now developing promising new business models that recognize these realities. To encourage this trend, lawmakers should consider dismantling regulatory barriers—particularly antitrust—obstructing the development of potentially superior alternatives to legal copyright protection.”