OpenMarket

It is hard to describe how important the Supreme Court decision last week in Gundy v. United States is. In one sense, nothing changed—no case was overturned, no new law was made, and Mr. Gundy is still going to jail. But in another way, the Gundy ruling suggests that the way our government works will be substantially changed towards greater democratic involvement.

Theoretically, policymakers distinguish between economic and social regulation when examining and reporting on costs, effects, and employment.

The White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) recently released the pre-publication draft of their proposed National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) Guidance on Consideration of Greenhouse Gas Emissions. If finalized, this guidance will replace the Obama administration’s August 1, 2016 final guidance, which was withdrawn on April 5, 2017, pursuant to President Trump’s Executive Order 13783.

An article in today’s Wall Street Journal recapped a recent war-of-words between a European Facebook executive, Nick Clegg, and Apple CEO Tim Cook. At issue is the differing revenue models of the companies. Apple sells devices and subscription-based services. Facebook of course does not charge for the services it provides users and instead relies on advertising revenue.

It has been nearly one year since the U.S. Supreme Court restored the First Amendment rights of public employees, but many members are still having difficulties exercising these new rights. In the landmark Janus v. AFSCME decision, public employees who are not members of a union can no longer be forced to pay agency fees, better known as forced union dues, as a condition of employment.

Environmental activists threw an ever-predictable tantrum after Environmental Protection Agency officials indicated last month that they may eliminate EPA grants to a number of university-based children’s environmental health centers. Headlining their rhetoric were assertions that defunding these centers represents a heartless attempt to undermine children’s health. Lost in this melee is the fact that these centers don’t have any measurable impact on children’s health, nor do they add much to the body of research on that topic.

If a firm is charged with having market power, the question naturally arises: in which market? Does Facebook have a monopoly over social networking, especially now that it owns additional networks such as Instagram and WhatsApp? Or does Facebook compete with other uses of leisure time such as movies, television, books, sports, concerts, and countless other ways people can spend their time? Which is the more relevant market? The answer is subjective—a significant problem for a legal case with multi-billion dollar stakes.

Guidance documents are statements of policy issued by your favorite alphabet soup of agencies, which more often than not translate into law, despite rarely going through the notice-and-public comment period required of most regulations. Agencies are also supposed to submit many of these documents to Congress and the Government Accounting Office (GAO), as well as Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs.

At the Competitive Enterprise Institute this week we’re still reflecting on the success of last Thursday’s 35th anniversary dinner and gala, and thanking our friends and sponsors for making the night so wonderful. On Friday, I blogged the annual dinner movie, a 10-minute short inspired by “Game of Thrones” and our own experiences working in the imperial city of Washington, D.C. Today, I'm pleased to bring you another short film, this one on the history of CEI.

The House Energy and Commerce Committee held a hearing on June 20th on the Trump administration’s Safer Affordable Fuel-Efficient (SAFE) motor vehicle rule. The rule proposes to freeze Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards at model year 2020 levels and terminate California’s unlawful power to regulate fuel economy.