The Competitive Enterprise Institute Daily Update
Issues in the News
1. ENERGY
The House of Representatives considers a vote on allowing more offshore oil and gas exploration.
CEI Expert Available to Comment: Director of Energy Policy Myron Ebell on the problems with the current version of the offshore energy bill:
“American consumers deserve legislation that will significantly increase domestic oil and gas production. House members should vote against the Senate bill because it only pretends to be doing that. At some point, the Congress is going to have to confront the fact that domestic oil and gas production is declining because the U. S. is the only country in the world with significant offshore resources that isn’t actively developing them.”
2. TECHNOLOGY
Broadcasters urge the FCC to loosen media ownership rules.
CEI Expert Available to Comment: Vice President for Policy Wayne Crews and Research Associate Achim Schmillen on why we can stop worrying about “media consolidation”:
“What a waste of time: ‘Big media’ is no threat in our free society. Media companies are conduits for information of every sort, but as private parties they cannot ‘monopolize’ it. Without government censorship there is no fundamental scarcity of information, nor can there be; more information can always be created, and in a free society, particularly an Internet-enabled one, nobody can silence anybody else. Free speech activists are even breaking through Internet information blackouts in China and other censor-happy regimes.”
3. ENVIRONMENT
Sen. James Inhofe holds hearings on the media coverage of global warming.
CEI Experts Available to Comment: Senior Fellow Marlo Lewis takes on the exaggerations and speculation in Al Gore’s global warming documentary An Inconvenient Truth:
“In Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth, the only facts and studies considered are those convenient to Gore’s scare-them-green agenda. And in many instances, he distorts the evidence he cites. In fact, nearly every significant statement Gore makes regarding climate science and climate policy is either one sided, misleading, exaggerated, speculative, or wrong.”