The Competitive Enterprise Institute Daily Update
Issues in the News
1. TECHNOLOGY
The White House appoints a new “Cybersecurity Czar” to oversee federal computer security policy.
CEI Expert Available to Comment: Vice President for Policy Wayne Crews on what the government role should be in addressing cybersecurity concerns:
“Private solutions are the only real hope we have for decreasing cybersecurity threats, given that previous government efforts to regulate the Internet—for example, outlawing spam in 2004—have not lived up to expectations. Political anonymity and commercial anonymity are not the same thing, and the distinction requires better appreciation. Over the coming tumultuous period of dealing with online threats, policymakers should allow the experimentation necessary to cope with today’s lack of online authentication to proceed with minimal interference.”
2. ENVIRONMENT
Former Vice President Al Gore urges “immediate” action to combat global warming in a recent university address.
CEI Expert Available to Comment: Senior Fellow Marlo Lewis, Jr. dissects Gore’s scientific arguments on global warming in a new study:
“An Inconvenient Truth (AIT), Vice President Al Gore’s book on ‘The planetary emergency of global warming and what can be done about it,’ is not the non-partisan, non-ideological exposition of climate science and moral common-sense that it purports to be. Rather, AIT is a colorfully illustrated lawyer’s brief for global warming alarmism and energy rationing.”
3. SAFETY
A two-week old California wildfire continues to threaten lives.
CEI Expert Available to Comment: Senior Fellow Robert H. Nelson in the Wall Street Journal on how the federal government’s disastrous land management policies have led to increasingly destructive wildfires:
“For most of the 20th century, the Forest Service has failed to manage our national forests properly while treating fire as a virtual moral evil. Unless these policies are reversed, fires that consume millions of acres and inflict billions of dollars in damage will become more and more common.”
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