The Competitive Enterprise Institute Daily Update
Issues in the News
1. CONGRESS
President Bush prepares to deliver his State of the Union address before a joint session of Congress.
CEI Expert Available to Comment: President Fred L. Smith, Jr. on the legislative challenges now facing the President and congressional leaders:
“During the last Congress, Republicans massively expanded the federal government—and the voters reacted negatively. Now the Democrats have been entrusted to set aright the ship of state. In a globalized world, they will retain their majority only by eschewing the anti-market rhetoric of their party’s past. They, along with President Bush, hope to cement a legacy. There is no reason why that could not crystallize around a revitalized economic liberalization program.”
2. SAFETY
The new book Eco-Freaks by John Berlau chronicles how major environmental regulations have become hazards to human health and safety.
CEI Expert Available to Comment: Adjunct Analyst Steven Milloy on how the use of asbestos for fireproofing could have saved lives in the World Trade Center on 9/11:
“When the non-asbestos fireproofing was attached to a steel pushrod to simulate the steel columns at the WTC and exposed to fire, [the National Institute of Standards and Technology] found that as the temperatures increased, all the non-asbestos fireproofing shrank and lost contact with the pushrod before reaching maximum test temperature. Another set of tests indicated that the thermal conductivity of non-asbestos fireproofing was much higher than asbestos ‘spreading heat to the vulnerable steel,’ Berlau reports.”
3. TECHNOLOGY
More and more companies are using virtual reality programs like Second Life to recruit employees and manage operations.
CEI Experts Available to Comment: Vice President for Policy Wayne Crews on the need to keep “real world” government regulations from stifling virtual communities:
“Nascent public policy issues now resemble those of the Internet a decade ago. Early on, the Internet was threatened with regulation regarding content, privacy, copyright, gambling, overall governance and more. It’s early, but “Second Life” and other Massively Multi-Player Online Games are also threatened — prematurely I’d argue — by various forms of regulation.”