Blog
How About Some Intellectual Diversity At The Labor Department?
As the cabinet turns: Hilda Solis announced this week that she will soon be stepping down from her post as secretary of labor. Solis, a…
Blog
Teaching Self-Esteem Undermines Students’ Academic Achievement
Self-control, not self-esteem, leads to success, researchers have found. Indeed, teaching self-esteem actually harms students' achievement and work ethic. "In one study, university students…
Washington Examiner
20 Windsorgate questions for Obama administration
Officials with the U.S. Department of Justice are expected to make public Monday the first batch of 3,000 of 12,000 "Richard Windsor" emails sought by…
Washington Examiner
Top EPA official used private email account to correspond with environmental groups
A second Environmental Protection Agency official stands accused of using a personal email address to shield communications with environmental activists from public disclosure. Court documents…
Washington Examiner
E-Verify: Immigration Reform’s Threat To Legal Workers
Ken Nagel thought it would be no problem to hire his daughter at his Phoenix restaurant. He had not considered that Arizona’s new employment verification…
News Release
CEI Calls on EPA to Turn Over Bristol Bay Documents to Congress
Washington, D.C., January 10, 2013 – The Competitive Enterprise Institute today called on the Environmental Protection Agency to stop stonewalling repeated requests over many months…
Blog
Getting Buchanan Wrong
Blog
James Buchanan, 1919-2013
Economics has lost one of its greats. James Buchanan has passed away at age 93. Born on a Tennessee farm in 1919, he continued working…
News Release
Gov. McDonnell’s Transportation Tax Plan a Bad Deal for Virginians
WASHINGTON, D.C., Jan. 9, 2013 — Yesterday, Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell released his transportation funding plan. His proposal would eliminate the gasoline tax, making…
Forbes
A Barrage Of Legal Threats Shuts Down Whistleblower Site, Science Fraud
Cato
The Ripple Effects of Flawed Agbiotech Regulation
The modern techniques of genetic engineering—also known as biotechnology, recombinant DNA technology, or genetic modification (GM)—offer plant breeders the tools to make old crop plants…
Cato
McDonnell’s tax plan draws heat from across the spectrum
The focus on general sales tax revenues, rather than a tax on those who use the roads, also raised eyebrows. The Competitive Enterprise Institute said…
Study
A Timeline of the EPA’s “Richard Windsor” Email Scandal
Blog
U.S.-EU Trade Negotiations Will Have Some Sticking Points
A Financial Times article today focuses on possible negotiations for a bilateral trade agreement between the U.S. and the European Union and some of…
Newsletter
CEI Today: Regulation without review + impact on poor, and Basel Cliff
Blog
Guatemalan Children Starve Due To Ethanol Mandates
The New York Times reports that ethanol and biofuel mandates in the U.S. and Europe are fueling rising hunger in Guatemala, which now has the fourth-highest…
Blog
Alcohol Regulation Roundup: New Year Edition 2013
With a new year comes a new opportunity to take stock in our past endeavors and renew our goals for the future. While many a…
Cato
EPA Rejects Arizona Haze Plan
Arizona consumers can expect higher electricity costs as a result of new EPA restrictions on three Eastern Arizona power plants. Arizona state environmental officials say…
Washington Examiner
Bush officials, Environmental Defense Fund join in appeal to conservatives
Myron Ebell, who directs the Competitive Enterprise Institute's Center for Energy and Environment, dismissed the council as "one of several attempts by the environmental movement…
Washington Examiner
Ethanol mandates and starving kids in Guatemala
Our federal law requires refiners buy ethanol. This results in ethanol imports from places like Guatemala. This spurs the ethanol industry in Guatemala. This exacerbates…
News Release
Eurocrats Delay “Basel III” Albatross on U.S. Banks
WASHINGTON, D.C., January 8, 2013 – Over the weekend, a committee of international regulators and central bankers decided to slightly revise and delay the…
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…