The Competitive Enterprise Institute Daily Update
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Issues in the News
1. WHITE HOUSE
President Bush orders federal agencies to increase scrutiny of the impact of new regulations.
CEI Expert Available to Comment: Vice President for Policy Wayne Crews on the hidden costs of federal regulation:
“In the Fiscal Year 2006 federal budget, President Bush proposed $2.77 trillion in discretionary, entitlement, and interest spending. Although those costs fully express the on-budget scope of the federal government, there is considerably more to the government’s reach than the sum of the taxes sent to Washington. Federal environmental, safety and health, and economic regulations cost hundreds of billions of dollars every year—on top of official federal outlays.”
2. TECHNOLOGY
The Recording Industry Association of American sues a user of file-sharing software for downloading five copyrighted songs.
CEI Experts Available to Comment: Adjunct Scholar James Plummer on how markets can help protect intellectual property:
“The rapid progression of technology and, concomitantly, consumer attitudes and behavior, poses problems for the content industries’ dominant paradigms and business models as configured today. Enforcement costs for protection of old models—encouraged and calcified by congressional expansion of the length of copyright terms—are mounting. Some rights holders are now developing promising new business models that recognize these realities. To encourage this trend, lawmakers should consider dismantling regulatory barriers—particularly antitrust—obstructing the development of potentially superior alternatives to legal copyright protection.”
3. LEGAL
FEMA tries to recover over $300 million in aid improperly claimed by supposed victims of hurricanes Katrina and Rita.
CEI Experts Available to Comment: President Fred L. Smith, Jr. on the best path for recovering from Hurricane Katrina:
“Yet, this disaster as the one before it, gives Louisiana a new chance. Louisiana can rebuild its tax, regulatory, legal, and welfare policies as it also rebuilds its physical structures. But to do so it must liberate the creative talents and energies of its people. Louisiana has for too long allowed itself to become a banana republic (absent, of course, the bananas). It is time for the state to use this disaster to displace the failed populism that for so long has crippled its economy.”
Blog feature: For more news and analysis, updated throughout the day, visit CEI’s blog, Open Market.
FOR MORE INFORMATION
To contact a CEI expert for comment or interviews, please call the CEI communications department at 202-331-2273 or email to [email protected].