Blog
Feds Say Hybrid Electric Vehicles Too Quiet, Noisemakers Should Be Mandated
Green paternalists often gush about the great potential for hybrid electric automobiles to reduce negative externalities, or social costs, such as local air pollution and…
Blog
Basel III Cliff May Be Averted, But Dangers Still Loom For Main Street Banks
After numerous criticisms from U.S. community banks and lawmakers of both parties, the international committee in charge of the Basel III bank capital agreement…
Newsletter
CEI Today: EPA Lisa Jackson email scandal, BPA chemical study, and the Supreme Court on global warming
Blog
CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week In Regulation
28 new regulations, from the United Soybean Board to synthetic drugs.
Forbes
Federal Regulation: The Costs of Benefits
The premise that national top-down regulation of the economy brings substantial net benefits dominates public policy. But forget the philosophical debate over laissez-faire vs. the…
New York Times
Easing of Rules for Banks Acknowledges Reality
“If Basel had been implemented this year as written, it almost certainly would have thrown the U.S. and other economies into a recession more than…
Blog
Pearce v. Acosta
A class member contacted me to complain about the settlement in Pearce v. Acosta. At first glance, it seems troubling: as described to me, the…
Forbes
Fiscal Justice Trumps Fiscal Sanity, Progressivism Marches On
In his first New Year’s Eve address since taking office, French President François Hollande—progressive poster boy and role model for class warriors the world over—defended his…
Blog
Update On D.C.’s Driverless Car Legalization Legislation
In November, I noted in The Washington Post and here on Open Market that a bill introduced in the D.C. Council contained two dangerously flawed provisions and…
Blog
Not So Rosey Facts About Green Schools
It is amazing how public officials will blindly pass mandates even when evidence is abundant to show their policies will prove costly and counterproductive. My…
Blog
Mice Study Questions BPA-Obesity Link
Science is a long-term process that only brings meaning when numerous, scientifically robust studies produce consistent results. But when it comes to politically loaded issues…
Blog
The Constitution And Broad First Amendment Freedoms Are Obsolete, Say Left-Leaning Judges And Constitutional Law Professors
The progressive Georgetown University constitutional law professor Louis Michael Seidman argued Monday in The New York Times that we should just ignore the Constitution and…
Bloomberg Business
Duane Morris, Troutman Sanders, Munger: Business of Law
Bloomberg reports on the case In re Citigroup Inc. Securities Litigation, in which Center for Class Action Fairness objected to the settlement which would grant…
Forbes
Class-Action Firms Capitalize On Wretched Market For Law-School Grads
Forbes mentions Ted Frank's objections to the marked up fee requests from lawyers who worked on the Citigroup class action lawsuit. Class-action activist…
Forbes
Lisa Jackson’s Resignation
Blog
Settlement: FTC Ends Google Antitrust Investigation
Today, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) cleared Google of accusations of "Search Bias," and inappropriately harming rivals. The investigation lasted nearly…
Blog
CEI Podcast For January 3, 2013: The Fiscal Cliff Meets The Costberg
Congress made an unsatisfying compromise deal this week to avoid falling off the fiscal cliff. But Vice President for policy Wayne Crews thinks this is…
Newsletter
CEI Today: Fiscal cliff meets Costberg, avoiding Italy’s fate, and the EPA email scandal & investigation
Blog
Other December doings
In addition to the objection to the Citigroup Securities settlement, we were busy in December: Another bad coupon settlement: …
News Release
Web Users Dodge Bullet as FTC Closes Google Probe
WASHINGTON, D.C., January 3, 2013 — Today, the Federal Trade Commission announced a settlement with Google, marking the end of a two-year antitrust probe…
Forbes
Alleged Conflict of Interest on FDA Tobacco Panel
U.S. District Court Judge Richard Leon has allowed a lawsuit seeking an injunction by R.J. Reynolds and Lorillard Tobacco to proceed against the Tobacco Products…
Minding the Campus
How Law Schools Evade Market Competition
The plain truth, as many lawyers will tell you (Harvard Law graduate Hans Bader, for instance), is that law school is mostly a drawn-out prelude…
ABA Journal
Does Legal Fees Motion in $590M Citigroup Case Include $1K Per Hour for Low-Paid Contract Lawyers?
ABA Journal reports on Ted Frank's objections to the lawyers' marked up fee claims in a class action lawsuit where most of the work was done by…
Blog
New Year, New Laws
More than 400 new laws came into effect today.
Blog
Chicago Voters Reelect Legally Insane Judge
In November, Chicago voters re-elected a legally insane judge charged with a crime of violence. "The Cook County Democratic Party…
Blog
2012’s Year-End Regulatory Report Card
Both 2011 and 2010 finished with over 81,000 pages in the Federal Register, as tallied in Ten Thousand Commandments. These were the highest page counts…
Blog
Southern District of New York assistance?
I’ve filed an objection in the Southern District of New York to an attorney-fee request that is excessive by tens of millions of dollars, and…
Washington Examiner
Watchdog: Transparency advocates see tough year, growing ‘Windsorgate’ scandal at EPA ahead
According to Christopher Horner, a senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), there is substantial evidence that Jackson was not the only EPA official…
Washington Examiner
Italy’s Zombie Politicians Have Crossed The Atlantic
Zombies have overrun Rome—and they’re spreading to Washington. Politics on both sides of the Atlantic is stuck in limbo between life and death as politicians…
Forbes
Plaintiff Lawyers in Citigroup Case Seek Big Markup For Outside Attorneys
Forbe reports on Ted Frank's objection to the platiffs' lawyers' fee requests in the Citigroup class action case because it is clear that they marked…
Forbes
David Vitter and Lisa Jackson are universes apart: James Gill
Vitter is not alone in his suspicions. The EPA’s inspector general, at the behest of Republicans on the House Science Committee, had begun an investigation…
The Environmental Forum
Missing in Action: Constitutional Environmentalism
The most important thing the Obama administration could do in its second term to promote public health is terminate its regulatory war on affordable energy.
Blog
CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week In Regulation
54 new regulations, from handling spearmint oil to drug testing railroad workers.
Forbes
Happy New Year? Fiscal Cliff, Meet The Costberg
How the largest government on earth plans to expand our liberties in the new year of 2013 by forcing “the rich” to pay somebody’s idea…
Forbes
EPA’s Jackson to resign
Jackson leaves the agency while under scrutiny from a federal lawsuit filed by the Washington-based Competitive Enterprise Institute, which claims that the administrator used an…
Forbes
In Ireland, carbon tax cuts deficit and pollution
The Competitive Enterprise Institute, a conservative advocacy group, has even filed a Freedom of Information suit seeking the release of Treasury Department emails containing the…
Overlawyered
Free Speech Roundup
Common Cause vs. First-Amendment-protected political speech, part umpteen [Hans Bader, CEI]…
Blog
Europe 2013: A Primer
As the New Year approaches, many challenges loom for Europe. Here’s a quick list of the toughest hurdles for 2013: 1. Implementing the Single…
Blog
EPA Regulations Cost How Much?!
Over at the Daily Caller, I summarize my recent CEI Regulatory Report Card on the EPA. Recommended if you don't feel like reading the entire…
One News Now
CEI’s Report Card on the EPA
Ryan Young reports that the information is included in a report card [pdf] of sorts by his organization, the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI). "There is…
One News Now
Obama’s Regulatory Cliff Draws Near
The scope is staggering. According to the Competitive Enterprise Institute, the overall regulatory burden has reached $1.8 trillion annually, and $215.4 billion in compliance costs…
Daily Caller
EPA costs US economy $353 billion per year
Transparency is the lifeblood of democracy. Washington needs more of it, especially in the all-too-opaque world of regulation. The…
Fox News
Attorney claims EPA chief resigned over alias email accounts
Jackson, in a brief written statement, said Thursday she is leaving the EPA after four years on the job, for "new challenges, time with my…
The Hill
BPA resin replacements may be more harmful
As the year winds down, it’s a good time to look back at what was one of the biggest alarm stories of the year: the…
Washington Examiner
‘Richard Windsor’ departure from EPA is a victory for transparency
Then, in the course of litigation initiated a few months ago by Competitive Enterprise Institute Senior Fellow Christopher Horner, an internal memo from the…
Daily Mail
Did EPA Chief Lisa Jackson resign because emails she sent from a secret alias account will go public next month?
A Washington attorney suing the Environmental Protection Agency for refusing to disclose information about the creation and use of the ‘secondary’ email accounts, says the…
Daily Caller
EPA chief Jackson resigns amid transparency investigations into secret emails
“Life’s full of coincidences, but this is too many,” Competitive Enterprise Institute Senior Fellow Chris Horner told FoxNews.com. “She had no choice.” The Justice Department…
News Release
CEI: EPA Administrator’s Resignation A Good First Step
Washington, D.C. – December 27, 2012 – The Competitive Enterprise Institute released the following statement on the news today that EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson will…
Blog
Community Reinvestment Act Induced Banks To Take Bad Risks, Economic Study Finds
The Community Reinvestment Act, which "prods banks to make loans in low-income communities,” encouraged banks to make riskier loans, concludes a recent study…
Blog
CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week In Regulation
68 new regulations, from summer flounder fishing to switching contractors.