Blog
A National Anthem for April 15
As Tea Parties brew across the land today, I’m reminded of the infamous “Tax Poem” chain email, or, spam, if you like. Set to music…
Op-Eds
Deregulate to Stimulate
Few Americans are aware of the massive scope of the federal regulatory enterprise. It is hardly common knowledge that 4,004 rules from nearly 70…
Blog
“Newspapers are dying; Are universities next?”
Wikinomics warns that non-elite colleges risk the same plight now facing newspapers. Rarely do the dominant industries lead innovation, and in the case of…
Op-Eds
Take the pressure off
Even before counting President Obama’s ambitious “stimulus” agenda, spending by the U.S. government – the largest on planet Earth – is now…
Cafe Hayek
Regulatory Burdens
Blog
As Washington frets over “behavioral advertising”…
Blog
Imagine There’s No Agency
Washington spends and regulates, and it’s hard to make it stop doing either. Government agencies and programs attract constituencies that want to keep them around,…
Cafe Hayek
It’s Time to Consider the Cost of Regulation
As President Obama took the podium Tuesday night, all minds were fixed on the economy. As expected, the President addressed the economy first, front…
Blog
Zero-Based Governing and Improving the State of the Union
Removing burdensome regulations on small business hasn’t figured much into the economic recovery program thus far. Too bad. Alternatives to “spendulus” and the “Bailout to…
Blog
Coming Soon: A Predatory, Anti-Business Federal Trade Commission?
Even an economy in shambles shall not sway the elevation to Federal Trade Commission chairmanship of Jon Leibowitz, an interventionist-minded commissioner who, like all…
Blog
Top Ten Federal Rules to Jettison — According to Small Businesses
The Small Business Administration’s Regulatory Review and Reform initiative (r3) has a new compilation of rules that need reform, according to small businesses across…
Blog
Null Government
Well, the Spendulus/Stimulus will be signed into law within minutes. We’ll soon learn that even this Leviathan-In-A-Box is only the beginning of the Age…
Wall Street Journal
Do You Want a New Internet?
Wall Street Journal cites Wayne Crews's on Internet regulation. On the Technology Liberation Front, Adam Thierer suggests another option: “splinternets.” Clyde Wayne Crews…
Blog
What would it mean to have no “environmental footprint”?
Maybe to have no life. As this article over at the Ayn Rand Institute points out, the more “eco-friendly” you try to live, the…
Blog
“Spendulus” conference report has passed the House
But thought you might be interested in one congressman’s last-minute appeal to sanity. You, dear reader, are a person things are done to.
Blog
What unlimited government means to you.
Ran across this excerpt from a Wall Street Journal piece that I thought I’d pass along. And this was before the Anti-Stimulus added…
Blog
“Porkulus” has no relation to economic recovery; But other reforms do.
Today CEI and other free-enterprise analysts and advocates are making one last pitch to stop the anti-stimulus package that President Obama is likely to…
Blog
Why “doing nothing” is something really big: Stopping the Anti-Stimulus
Robert Higgs, he of the famous “ratchet effect” theory of government growth (up but never down in answer to a crisis), has…
Blog
Should the Anti-Stimulus Package be tan or beige?
President Obama more than once last week called it “inexcusable” for Congress to get “bogged down in distraction, delay or politics as usual” over the…
Blog
Obama’s defense of weatherizing homes as “stimulus” with Anderson Cooper on CNN is priceless
The President actually said: –it puts people to work –it saves families on their energy bill –it reduces dependence on foreign oil.
Blog
English Arch-Druid wants to limit you to two children
Two children should be limit, says this British green “guru.” What makes him a guru? Saying outrageous things that others should do, but not…
Blog
Ranking geo-engineering strategies, or “climate hacks” to cool Earth down
Numerous approaches have been described to cool what some insist is a warming world (though not over the past few years). In any event, not…
Blog
Birth of the Digital New Deal: An Inventory of High-Tech Pork-Barrel Spending
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TV Transition follies: Plaguing consumers then and now.
Looks like the “digital television transition” to abandon analog and make high-definition broadcasts the standard is not going to happen as planned, but is…
Blog
Avoiding Political Erectile Dysfunction
According to the Congressional Budget Office, “Bailout to Nowhere” money for the proposed new infrastructure stimulus won’t be spent within the next two years–far too…
News Release
Statement on the Nomination of Julius Genachowski to Be Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission
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CNS News
Economists Say Bush ‘Chucked’ Free Market Principles Long Before Financial Crisis
CNS News discusses President George W. Bush's move away from free market principles. However, Wayne Crews of the Competitive Enterprise Institute told CNSNews.com that…
Daily Iowegian
The Hidden Costs of Government Regulation
Blog
How Do Regulations Stack Up as a Small Firm Grows?
Tomorrow, electric utilities and green groups team up at the National Press Club to ask for billions of new spending on what they term energy…
Blog
The Cloverfield Monster of the Internet
Earlier posts today dealt with the hoo-ha over Net Neutrality. By coincidence, an anonymous colleague put the following old 1996 quote by Sen. James Exon…
Blog
“Net Neutrality,” RIP? Well, One Can Hope
Net neutrality has long been a threat to Internet users. Despite the rhetoric and appeals to “openness,” it was always an anti-consumer enterprise, irretrievably and…
Op-Eds
Power to the People
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Blog
Jay Leno Riffs on the Bailout
A new viral email, claiming to be jokes written by Mr. Leno, adds a bit of humor to the financial crisis. As business and government…
Blog
Abarackadabra! A 21st Century “New Steal”
JOBS, ROADS, BRIDGES, SCHOOLS, BROADBAND, ELECTRONIC MEDICAL RECORDS, ENERGY…blares the Drudge Report. It’s President-elect Obama’s weekend plan—not to produce, but to transfer yet…
Blog
Wealth-Creating Alternatives to Pelosi’s Destructive Infrastructure “Stimulus”
Well, who can possibly be surprised by the revelation that “The federal government's economic stimulus package will include investment in broadband Internet infrastructure and…
Blog
This week’s Least Objectionable Bureaucrat
My occasional “Least Objectionable Legislator Award” (no prize) takes a detour today and goes to a bureaucrat instead. So the LOL Award (pun intended, I…
Blog
Stimulus as if Capitalism Mattered
Those dispensing the "Bailout to Nowhere" proceeds seemingly answer to no one (here's one article behaving as if this were unexpected and surprising). Today…
Blog
America the Ungovernable
With respect to the ongoing series of bailouts, my colleague Iain Murray pointed out that some sensible British commentators note that one of the ways…
Blog
Hollywood Rep. to Wield Power Over Copyright Law
My colleague Cord asked me about proposing a tech agenda for Congress given the ascendancy today of Henry Waxman to Energy and Commerce Chairmanship;…
Blog
The Least Objectionable Legislator Award
My occasional "Least Objectionable Legislator Award" today goes to Michele Bachmann (R-MN) for a solid statement at today's hearings on the Bailout on Wheels,…
Blog
To Blame Laissez-Faire, Anti-Market Media Must Do Better
Like many of us at CEI, it looks like my former boss Phil Gramm isn't interested in helping anybody pretend that today's financial crisis was…
Blog
To President-Elect Obamaâ€â€Freeze Gov’t Regulations this Winter
Yesterday I called for a major “Deregulatory Stimulus.” Alongside---with financial, health care, energy efficiency, “green job” and other mandates likely in an Obama Administration---the…
Blog
Reject political stimulus, embrace “Deregulatory Stimulus.” And do it FAST.
Facing an economic downturn and an election, politicians of both parties sought to stimulate consumer demand—and some business investment—through political action. They promised that if…
News Release
An Agenda for the Obama and Bush Meeting
Since the President and President-elect start spending quality Oval Office time together today, and since the incoming administration’s advisors can’t settle on either pushing a…
Blog
An Agenda for the Monday a.m. Obama and Bush Meeting
Since the President and President-elect start spending quality Oval Office time together today, and since the incoming admistration's advisors can't settle on either pushing…
Blog
Redistributing Wealth, Simplified
It’s not fully clear what president-elect Obama plans to do on tax policy other than “redistribute” and make those families making over $250,000 pay their…
Blog
Beware of Coercive Utopians and Quack Capitalists
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Civics According to “Mad Men”
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If only you could take it all with you
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No “Technology Czar,” Please
Like everybody else in town, we're pondering the implications of the transition to the Obama Administration for various policy areas here at CEI. On the…