The Competitive Enterprise Institute Daily Update
Issues in the News
1. ENVIRONMENT
A coalition of churches mounts a campaign to promote Al Gore’s global warming documentary, An Inconvenient Truth.
CEI Expert Available to Comment: Senior Fellow Marlo Lewis takes an exhaustive look and the science and economics behind Gore’s film and book:
“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, Gore distorts the evidence he presents. Nearly every significant statement Gore makes regarding climate science and climate policy is either one sided, misleading, exaggerated, speculative, or just plain wrong.”
2. LEGAL
New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin issues minority set-aside requirements for businesses involved in post-Hurricane Katrina reconstruction.
CEI Expert Available to Comment: Special Projects Counsel Hans Bader on the legal implications of the contract requirements:
“Yesterday, New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin issued an executive order commanding businesses seeking federally-funded disaster relief administered by the City of New Orleans to award at least 50 percent of their business to local businesses and at least 35 percent to minority and women-owned businesses. Assistance will now be denied those businesses that contract based on merit, rather than discriminating based on race or geographic origin.”
3. TOBACCO
The government of France considers a nationwide ban on smoking in public places.
CEI Expert Available to Comment: Policy Analyst Brooke Oberwetter on the extremes of anti-smoking zealotry here in the U.S.:
“This story is simply outrageous: spurred by the release of the Surgeon General’s report on secondhand smoke a couple of weeks ago, the chief of police in North Platte, Nebraska has decided that he wants to instruct his officers to arrest parents who smoke in cars when children are present under Nebraska’s child abuse statute. According to Chief Martin Gutschenritter, he and the county attorney’s office are “researching to determine whether law enforcement has probable cause to arrest anyone exposing children to second-hand smoke inside a vehicle.”
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