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Politics In A Nutshell
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CEI Podcast for July 24, 2012: Unfunded Mandate Reform
Research Associate David Deerson explains why past efforts to rein in unfunded mandates failed, and why new legislation that Congress is set to vote on…
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Time To Reform Unfunded Mandates
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CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week In Regulation
81 new rules and 1,283 Federal pages last week, covering everything from sippy cups to perch fishing in Alaska.
Washington Times
Season for Relief From Big Government
The good news is that this year’s budget deficit will be half a trillion less than last year’s. The bad news is that it still…
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CEI Podcast For July 19, 2012: Congress Takes On High-Skilled Immigration Reform
Congress will soon vote on a package of reforms for holders of the H-1B visa for high-skilled immigrants. Policy Analyst David Bier unpacks the proposed…
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CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week In Regulation
84 new rules and 1,412 Federal Register pages, covering everything from fair use of the FBI's anti-piracy seal airline pilot's working hours.
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Regulation Roundup
Britain bans starting pistols from track meets, plus more.
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Rent-Seeking In The Apple Industry
A small food company in Canada has grown an apple that doesn’t turn brown after being sliced. Not everyone thinks it’s a great idea.
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CEI Podcast for July 12, 2012: Who to Blame for D.C.’s Power Outage
Energy Policy Analyst William Yeatman thinks the jeering public should look in the mirror. A government-granted monopoly and rampant NIMBY-ism are not a recipe for…
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TSA Roundup
Everyone's favorite sexy-searchers are back in the news, but not for the right reasons.
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Regulation Of The Day 224: Competing With Taxis
A cool startup company called Uber operates in about half a dozen cities in the U.S. and Canada, and is growing fast. Think of…
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CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation
71 new rules and 1,388 Federal Register pages covering everything from wedding entertainment to collisions at sea.
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Clarence Birdseye: An Unsung Hero Gets His Due
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CEI Podcast for July 5, 2012: Relic of Prohibition
Prohibition ended 79 years ago, but in Washington, D.C., it is still illegal to buy liquor on Sundays. Fellow in Consumer Policy Studies Michelle Minton…
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Regulation of the Day 223: Fred Flintstone Cars
Sebastian Trager built a replica of Fred Flintstone’s car, but regulators won't let him drive it.
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Regulation of the Day 222: Macaroni
According to federal regulations, you may not, in fact, stick a feather in your hat and call it macaroni.
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The State of American Manufacturing
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CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation
101 new final regulations, covering everything from Costa Rican flowers to tanning.
Reason
Government Mini Golf: The Federal Regulations For Putt-Putt Courses
From Peter Suderman's post on Reason's Hit & Run: Under the umbrella of the Americans with Disabilities Act, the federal government has issued…
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CEI Podcast: June 28, 2012: The Obamacare Decision
General Counsel Sam Kazman shares his thoughts on the Supreme Court's health care decision, the Commerce Clause, Congress' taxation power, and more.
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Quick Thoughts on the Health Care Ruling
The Supreme Court upheld the health care bill, as you've no doubt heard by now. Over at the Daily Caller, I offer a few quick…
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Regulation of the Day 221: Miniature Golf Courses
The federal government regulates the slopes of miniature golf courses.
Daily Caller
Three Quick Thoughts on the Health Care Ruling
The Supreme Court has upheld the health care law’s insurance mandate, to the surprise of many. This surprise sparked a few quick thoughts about the…
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The Good-Citizen Economist
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Globalization Has Been Happening for a Long Time
Our innate tendency to truck and barter, as Adam Smith put it, is very strong indeed.
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CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation
77 new final rules and 1,633 Federal Register pages, covering everything from prison rape to airport concession workers.
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CEI Podcast for June 21, 2012: Free Speech for Me, and for Thee
Labor Policy Counsel Vinnie Vernuccio explains why today's 7-2 Supreme Court decision in the Knox v. SEIU case is an important victory for free speech.
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CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation
84 new regulations, covering everything from gopher frogs to cotton gins.
New York Times
This Week in Small Business: Working Without Pay
From Gene Marks' post in The New York Times' You're the Boss blog: The Internal Revenue Service offers advice for safeguarding tax…
Blog
An IRS Trojan Horse
The IRS' proposed real-time tax system is a Trojan horse for a return-free system, in which the IRS would become your tax preparer as well…
Daily Caller
The IRS’s Trojan Horse
It may be another 10 months before Tax Day rears its ugly head again, but that doesn’t mean that the American people should take their…
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CEI Podcast for June 13, 2012: Smarter Transportation Funding
When the federal government gives out transportation funding to the states, it attaches a lot of strings. The solution, according to Land-use and Transportation Policy…
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Stigler on the Regulatory Mindset
"There are only two alternatives to the market: the state, and prayer. It turns out the two were merged in one."…
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CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation
65 new regulations last week, covering everything from substance abuse to the official taxonomy of the endangered African wild ass.
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Regulation of the Day 220: Driver’s Side Mirrors
A math professor has invented a driver's side mirror that eliminates the dreaded blind spot, but regulators won't let car makers use them.
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CEI Podcast for June 7, 2012: MACT the Knife
A new EPA regulation is intended to cut mercury pollution from coal-fired power plants. Are the costs worth it? Policy Analyst David Bier, co-author of…
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Ten Thousand Commandments and Growing
Over at ?The Washington Times?, Wayne Crews and I praise President Obama's recent regulatory reforms. They're small, but they're better than nothing:…
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Washington’s Ten Thousand Commandments
The 2012 edition of “Ten Thousand Commandments” is out now. If you don’t feel like reading all 66 pages (though I recommend you do!),…
The American Spectator
Washington’s Ten Thousand Commandments
Deficits, taxes, and spending are the defining issues of the 2012 campaign. Regulation deserves a seat at the table, too. The federal government spent $3.6…
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CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation
58 new rules despite the short work week, covering everything from dishwashers to Maine lobsters.
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CEI Podcast for May 31, 2012: Ten Thousand Commandments
Congress passed 81 bills last year, while agencies passed 3,807 regulations. This, according to Vice President for Policy Wayne Crews, is regulation without representation.
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CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation
95 new final rules published last week, covering everything from crocodiles to the definition of "unblockable drain."…
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CEI Podcast for May 24, 2012: Driverless Cars
A prototype driverless car made by Google recently made the rounds in Washington, DC, and Land-use and Transportation Policy Analyst Marc Scribner got to take…
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An Economics Disaster
The American Spectator
A Tsunami of Bad Economics
The broken Krugman fallacy. Japan was hit by a tsunami last year on March 11. That’s not news, but the reaction of some economists sure…
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CEI Podcast for May 17, 2012: Ethanol’s Overstated Benefits
Senior Fellow Marlo Lewis takes apart a study claiming that ethanol lowers gas prices by more than a dollar per gallon in some regions.
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CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation
62 new final rules and 1,577 new Federal Register pages covering everything from sunscreen to commericial driver's licenses.
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Politics Is About Power, Not Ideology
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GAO Releases Study About a Study on Studies
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CEI Podcast for May 10, 2012: Freeing Our Farms
Current immigration policy keeps many immigrants in dangerous black markets, raises food prices for consumers, makes it difficult for farmers to hire workers and create…
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There Is Nothing Left to Cut
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CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation
70 new final rules, covering everything from Pell grants to underground storage tanks.
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CEI Podcast for May 3, 2012: Paving the Way for Innovation and Job Creation
Unemployment remains stubbornly high, more than three years after the financial crisis hit. John Berlau, CEI’s Senior Fellow for Finance and Access to Capital, suggests…
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CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation
81 new regulations passed last week, covering everything from Medicare to fishing for northeast skate.
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CEI Podcast for April 26, 2012: The Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA)
Associate Director of Technology Studies Ryan Radia goes over CISPA's privacy problems and discusses the bill's political prospects.
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TSA in the News
Pat-down reduces a woman to tears in Madison, WI, a supermodel is searched with surprising thoroughness, and a frustrated flyer strips naked in Portland, Oregon.
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$15 Trillion for… What, Exactly?
In a new study, Cato’s Michael Tanner finds that “Despite nearly $15 trillion in total welfare spending since Lyndon Johnson declared war on poverty…
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Regulation of the Day 219: Cat Cafes
In a city as big as Tokyo, there is plenty of room for niche businesses. One niche is the neko café; neko is the Japanese…
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CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation
84 new rules, 1,675 Federal Register pages, including new regulations for medical exams for commercial drivers, Chilean pomegranates, and springsnail habitats.
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Regulation Roundup
Alpaca tax breaks, IRS seeks power to confiscate tax delinquents' passports, and more.
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CEI Podcast for April 19, 2012: Right to Work Laws and Compelled Speech
Indiana is becoming a right to work state, which means unions will no longer be able to force workers who don't want their representation to…
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Another Dubious TSA Trifecta
Stolen iPads, harassing drag queens, and a former TSA chief calls for reform -- three years after his departure.
Orange County Register
DOJ Hungry for a Bite of Apple Inc.
From an Orange County Register editorial: "You could actually say that Apple is bringing more competition to the market, not less," through its…
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Tax Day Approacheth
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Regulation of the Day 218: Bagpipes
Street musicians were recently banned from playing bagpipes in Vancouver, British Columbia. Just in time for the city’s Scotland Week celebration, Mayor Gregor Robertson happily…
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CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation
77 new regulations were published last week, the Federal Register grew by 1,475 pages, and the federal government is liberalizing its golden nematode policy.
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CEI Podcast for April 12, 2012: Apple, E-Books, and Antitrust
Yesterday the Justice Department sued Apple and five major publishers over their e-book pricing model, alleging price fixing. Associate Director of Technology Studies Ryan Radia…
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Modernity is Amazing
A man separated from his family 25 years ago as a small child used Google Earth and Facebook to find them and reunite.
Investors
Apple Investors Shrug Off E-Book Antitrust Lawsuit
From Patrick Seitz' article in Investor's Business Daily: The Competitive Enterprise Institute said the Justice Department made a mistake in taking legal action…
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Sources of Economic Error
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Regulation of the Day 217: Being Rude
The mayor of La Torba, Spain recently issued a 65-point Courtesy Charter making it illegal to burp in public or slurp your soup, among other…
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CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation
A new Prison Bureau regulation allows inmates to publish under their own name as of May 3, plus more.
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Regulation Roundup
Public school bans a 3-year old with cerebral palsy from using her walker at school, plus more.
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CEI Podcast for April 5, 2012: The Export-Import Bank
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Public Choice: A Primer
The good folks at the London-based Institute for Economic Affairs have just released an excellent book by Eammon Butler, Public Choice: A Primer.
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Understanding Spontaneous Order
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Regulation of the Day 216: Selling Ice Cream to Kids
A group of parents in Brooklyn's Park Slope neighborhood want to ban ice cream vendors from parks. One parent wrote, “I should not have to…
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Funding Government by the Minute
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CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation
2,191 new pages were added to the 2012 Federal Register last week, for a total of 19,487 pages. At this pace, the 2012 Federal Register…
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TSA Trifecta
First, a TSA manager at Dulles airport has been arrested for running a prostitution ring. Second, two Miami TSA employees were arrested for trashing a…
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CEI Podcast for March 29, 2012: The History of American Immigration in Six Minutes
Immigration Policy Analyst Alex Nowrasteh talks about the reasons behind the major historical shifts, and suggests reforms that would make today's immigration system fairer and…
Blog
No to Broccoli Mandate, Yes to Health Insurance Mandate?
Over at the Daily Caller, I go over some possible explanations for the different results and conclude:…
Daily Caller
No to Broccoli Mandate, Yes to Health Insurance Mandate?
The results of a Reason-Rupe poll that was released on Monday are more interesting than the pollsters may have intended. Two of the questions they…
Blog
Regulation of the Day 215: TacoCopter
A group of Silicon Valley entrepreneurs has found a peaceful use for unmanned attack drones that almost everyone can support: delivering food to hungry people.
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The $400 Pizza
The reason it cost $400 was not because of restaurant business practices but because of television labor practices.
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CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation
75 new final rules were published last week, up from 72 the previous week. That’s the equivalent of a new regulation every 2 hours and…
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Twenty Years without Hayek
F.A. Hayek died twenty years ago today. In his long career—his first book was published in 1929, his last in 1988—he made important contributions to…
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CEI Podcast for March 22, 2012: Human Achievement Hour
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Regulation of the Day 214: Flipping the Bird
Steven Pogue, 64, was cited by police for flipping the bird while driving in Ballwin, Missouri. He was exonerated on free speech grounds, and the…
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Regulation of the Day 213: Dying
Falciano del Massico, a small town in Italy, has banned its 4,000 residents from dying because the local cemetery is completely full.
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CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation
The Defense Department is still implementing parts of the Privacy Act of 1974, plus more.
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CEI Podcast for March 15, 2012: T. Boone Pickens Amendment Fails
The Senate this week voted down a highway bill amendment that would massively financially benefit natural gas mogul T. Boone Pickens. Senior Fellow Marlo Lewis…
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Bill Clinton’s Economic Nationalism
Over at RealClearPolicy, I recently reviewed Bill Clinton’s latest book, Back to Work: Why We Need Smart Government for a Strong Economy. You can…
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Juvenal Delinquents
There are more regulatory reform ideas out there than you can shake a stick at. Some, of course, are better than others.
American Spectator
The Regulatory Path to Full Employment
Who will regulate the regulators who regulate the regulators? An important new book about the financial crisis just came out: Guardians of Finance: Making Regulators…
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IRS Sued for Unfair Labor Practices
A new IRS proposal to require licensing all tax preparers would put a lot of people out of work. So the Institute for Justice is…
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CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation
64 new final rules were published last week, down from 89 the previous week.
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It Gets Better All the Time
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CEI Podcast for March 8, 2012: IRS Moves to Fund Foreign Dictators
A new IRS regulation hits the trifecta of enriching foreign dictators, helping them crush dissent, and would raise no revenue for the U.S. government. Vice…