The Competitive Enterprise Institute Daily Update
Issues in the News
1. TECHNOLOGY
State attorneys general pressure MySpace, Facebook and other social networking websites to implement stricter privacy controls for minors.
CEI Expert Available to Comment: Communications Director Christine Hall on the questionable wisdom of the AGs’ campaign:
“Of course, no one wants sex predators targeting teens on the Internet—on MySpace, Facebook, or anywhere else. But what [Connecticut attorney general Richard] Blumenthal and his fellow AGs won’t acknowledge is that they really can’t regulate these sites. If they are able to impose new barriers to joining social networking sites, many users will simply abandon those sites in favor of other sites. That could very well happen, anyway—MySpace has some 115,000 million members and Facebook some 35 million, according to the WSJ article, but people could tire of those sites in favor of others. Surely government regulation wouldn’t be an exciting new feature for users.”
2. BUISNESS
Bank of America rescues mortgage lender Countrywide Financial Corp. from the prospect of bankruptcy with a $2 billion stock buy.
CEI Expert Available to Comment: Senior Fellow John Berlau on the paternalistic response to the fluctuation in mortgage default rates:
“[I]n one of the first bills he has introduced since the Democrats took control of Congress, [Sen. Chuck] Schumer ignores his own advice and looks down his nose at …real middle-class families. Schumer’s bill condescends to the middle-class voters worried about housing market woes. Using concerns about subprime loans for lower income homebuyers as a pretext, the bill treats all families like basket cases and assumes that they are incapable of choosing the home loan that fits their needs. While the message Schumer repeats in his book is ‘it’s the middle class, stupid,’ the message underlying his paternalistic Borrower’s Protection Act of 2007 is ‘the middle class are stupid.’
3. HEALTH
Politicians suggest requiring individuals to purchase health insurance, just as many states require drivers to buy auto insurance..
CEI Expert Available to Comment: Senior Fellow Eli Lehrer on the false analogy between auto and health coverage:
“No matter what steps the government takes to contain costs, control premiums, and subsidize needy groups, health insurance will remain much more expensive than auto insurance. On one hand, only a small percentage of drivers—about 4 percent—will ever get into a crash that results in serious injury. On the other, everybody who has health insurance will eventually die and likely incur large medical bills in the process. While subsidies and taxes can hide the cost, there’s simply no way to make any decent health insurance plan as affordable as the typical auto policy. While a person of very modest means can often afford to pay for a bare-bones auto insurance policy, health insurance will very likely much harder to afford.”
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].