Yard Sales, Air Travel Taxes, and the CEI Podcast

Yard Sales

Salem, Oregon is cracking down on illegal yard sales.

Adjunct Analyst Matthew Melchiorre comments.

“Jay Cline, a Salem resident diagnosed with a debilitating form of bone cancer, held several weekend yard sales to help pay for her treatment. However, the city has a strict rule that a resident may hold no more than three yard sales per year. A city bureaucrat came by to shut down her last independent means of fighting cancer and informed her that violating the regulation again would be considered a misdemeanor and also result in a $300 fine. The city told her, “I’m sorry. Rules are rules.” But this is to be expected from Big Government, in which adherence to procedure is more important than outcome.”

Air Travel Taxes

CEI joined other free market groups in a coalition letter to House Speaker John Boehner, asking him to resist attempts to levy new air travel taxes.

Policy Analyst Marc Scribner comments.

“CEI is in favor of major reforms to civil aviation. A few reforms that should be taken immediately are: (1) privatize, or at the very least spin-off, the FAA’s Air Traffic Organization; (2) allow for more airport privatizations; (3) replace existing excise taxes and other fees (such as the “September 11 Security Fee”) with a simple, transparent user-based fee system; and, (4) prohibit general-revenue funding of FAA. As we note, there are indeed problems with the current air transport system in the United States, but virtually all of them are the result of federal government mismanagement. It is time to finally get serious about solutions: let’s get the incentives right! But we must first prevent the FAA from enlarging its already bloated, ineffectual bureaucracy.”

CEI Podcast

In the most recent CEI Podcast, Ryan Young interviews Energy Policy Analyst William Yeatman explains how the EPA is making electricity less affordable. Listen here.