The Competitive Enterprise Institute Daily Update
Issues in the News
1. ENVIRONMENT
British filmmaker Martin Durkin presents a groundbreaking new documentary on climate change titled “The Great Global Warming Swindle.”
CEI Experts Available to Comment: Senior Fellow Iain Murray on what every citizen should know about global warming:
“Alarm over the prospect of the Earth warming is not warranted by the agreed science or economics of the issue. Global warming is happening and man is responsible for at least some of it. Yet this does not mean that global warming will cause enough damage to the Earth and humanity to require drastic cuts in energy use, a policy that would have damaging consequences of its own. Moreover, science cannot answer questions that are at heart economic or political, such as whether the Kyoto Protocol is worthwhile.”
2. HEALTH
President Bush responds to reports of appalling conditions at Walter Reed Army Medical Center.
CEI Experts Available to Comment: Senior Fellow Eli Lehrer on how to improve health care for veterans:
“If it wants to fix the appalling mess that medical care has become at Washington D.C.’s Walter Reed hospital, the Department of the Army might take a quick trip down Georgia Avenue to the Department of Veteran’s Affairs Washington, D.C. medical center. The VA hospital system, which once produced regular horror stories similar to Walter Reed’s, has emerged as one of the best-run federal agencies. The Department of Defense should look to imitate it while simultaneously freeing military health care from the constraints a VA-like system would almost certainly impose on those who have DOD pay for their health care.”
3. TELECOM
The FCC issues a new order allowing greater competition between cable, broadband and other video services.
CEI Expert Available to Comment: Vice President for Policy Wayne Crews on the impact of the new rules:
“The right to compete and offer new options to customers should be beyond argument and unconditional; yet, as FCC notes at the beginning of the order, the local franchising process, which can impede competition with tangential and unrelated demands, has become a barrier to entry rather than a guarantor of competition.”