The Competitive Enterprise Institute Daily Update
Issues in the News
1. CONGRESS
Democratic leaders in Congress plan to take on the nation’s drug companies over prices.
CEI Expert Available to Comment: Bastiat Scholar Doug Bandow on why pharmaceutical manufacturing is just like any other industry:
“There’s a strange tendency to treat pharmaceutical manufacturers as somehow different from everyone else. Industry critics complain about supposedly excess profits, excessive executive salaries, outrageous advertising spending, monopolistic prices, expensive lobbying, and more. Yet what industry could not be accused of the same offenses?”
2. TECHNOLOGY
The Federal Communications Commission awaits the outcome of a study on locally-owned TV and radio stations before issuing new rules on media ownership.
CEI Experts Available to Comment: Vice President for Policy Wayne Crews and Research Associate Achim Schmillen on why “big media” is no threat to a free society:
“Without government censorship there is no fundamental scarcity of information, nor can there be; more information can always be created, and particularly in our Internet-enabled age, nobody can silence anybody else. (Activists are even breaking through Internet information blackouts in China and other censor-happy regimes.) The most ‘big media’ can do is refuse to share megaphones and soapboxes, figuratively speaking, which doesn’t violate anyone’s rights or threaten democracy and expression”
3. ENVIRONMENT
British Prime Minister Tony Blair refuses to curtail his own long-haul vacation trips to fight global warming.
“If the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research has its way, the travel revolution that created the new class of “EasyJetters” across Europe will screech to a halt. The Centre has said that such travel must be curtailed if the UK is to have any hope of meeting its Kyoto treaty obligations. On top of this, the European Commission is considering environmental regulations that could add £55 to the cost of an airline ticket. These developments will be hailed by ailing national carriers and condemned by the successful budget airlines. That’s because British Airways can absorb such a price increase, while the increase would destroy EasyJet’s competitive advantage of low costs. Cheap holidays will be a thing of the past.”