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Will the Second Chapter of the Renewable Fuel Standard Be Worse than the First?
Enacted in 2005 and expanded in 2007, the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) requires that specified amounts of biofuels like ethanol and biodiesel be added to…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
The World Cup is underway in Qatar and the labor market had another good month. Meanwhile, agencies issued new regulations ranging from canola oil jet…
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Some Climate-Related Items that Recently Caught My Eye
Manhattan Contrarian Francis “Buddy” Menton hit two homers this week. In “Don’t Be So Sure the Climate Extremists Have Won,” Menton offers hopeful words…
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More on Moore: A History of Direct Taxes and their Application to Moore v. United States
Many politicians, such as Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), advocate taxes on wealth. These taxes are easy to abuse, which is why the Founders placed…
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Retro Review: George Selgin, Less Than Zero: The Case for a Falling Price Level in a Growing Economy (Institute of Economic Affairs, 1997)
This year, inflation reached levels not seen in 40 years. The Federal Reserve spent most of 2022 trying to undo its runaway money creation in…
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Biden Hits the Brakes on Possible Railroad Strike
President Biden’s call on Monday for Congress to intervene in contract negotiations between railroad workers and the industry to prevent a strike is…
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Why Choke Point Should Bar Gruenberg from Being FDIC Chair
Tomorrow morning, the Senate Banking Committee will hold a hearing on President Biden’s nomination of Marty Gruenberg to once again serve as Chair of the…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
We hope everyone enjoyed Thanksgiving and/or Black Friday. Meanwhile, agencies issued new regulations ranging from nuclear drug tests to food tracing. On to the data:…
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Ninth Circuit Refuses to Reconsider Allowing Wealth Taxes
Moore v. United States—a case in which CEI represents the Moore family—is likely to be the most important tax case of the 21st century. Yesterday’s…
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New Angles on Finance and Faith
I recently had the pleasure of making my way down to Lynchburg, Virginia, to the campus of Liberty University to attend the Networking the…
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Somebody Better Hit the Brakes Soon in Railway Dispute
Three railroad unions have now voted to reject a contract negotiated by the Presidential Emergency Board (PEB) that had been accepted by eight other…
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This Thanksgiving Biden Pardons Poultry, Plucks Public with Spending and Regulation
Another year is flying by, and each time as I await the ever-delayed fall edition of the Unified Agenda of federal regulations I enjoy taking…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
The 2022 Federal Register surpassed 70,000 pages on Friday, and is on pace for 79,617 pages. The first Artemis moon mission rocket launched. The…
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Could China’s Status as a Developing Nation in Climate Treaties Finally Be Coming to an End?
At the 27th Conference of the Parties (COP27) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC) currently underway in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, representatives…
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Climategate 2.0: EPA’s New Social Cost of Greenhouse Gases Report
When the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) last week proposed to adopt more aggressive methane emission standards for the oil and gas sector, it also…
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Gensler Fiddled with ESG and Power Grabs while FTX Burned
When asked on CNBC about the implosion of crypto exchange FTX, Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Chairman Gary Gensler turned the focus away from the…
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Regulation Population Update: Checking in on Code of Federal Regulations Statistics
In a recent post we noted that, while the online Federal Register database depicts 3,257 final rules for 2021, the 73,000-page Federal Register’s count actually…
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The Unfairness of the FTC’s Policy Statement Regarding the Scope of Unfair Methods of Competition
The latest in a stream of regulatory dark matter is the Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) November 10, 2022 “Policy Statement Regarding the Scope…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
The midterm elections happened, and most of us (sorry, Georgia) are finally free of misleading, scaremongering political ads. Inflation slowed down slightly. Meanwhile,…
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Not Your Grandfather’s Bank Branch
What should financial services do? And how should they look like going forward as they try to serve more people? Some presenters are the recent…
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Who’s Not Buying Electric Vehicles? Single Vehicle Households, for One
Proponents of electric vehicles (EVs) have little to say about the one-third of American households that own only a single car or truck. That isn’t…
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October Inflation Slightly Improves: Time for Less Politics and More Policy
Thank goodness the election is over. One of the frustrating parts of midterm season was that many people were more interested in how inflation would…
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Why Cops Should Be Chasing the Bad Guys, Not the Big Bucks
A recent episode of Archer featured a dialogue between two FBI agents, both riding on jet skis, chasing a wrongdoer’s boat. Agent One: Whoohoo!…
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We Need to Pay More Attention to AI
Artificial intelligence (AI) is one of the most important emerging technologies today. It has the potential to revolutionize many industries and sectors, including health care,…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
The Federal Reserve raised the federal funds rate again, though it remains less than the rate of inflation. Employment increased by 261,000 in…
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Federal Reserve Raises Interest Rate; Uncertainty Strengthens Case for a Policy Rule
As expected, the Federal Reserve raised the federal funds rate by 0.75 percentage points coming out of this week’s Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC)…
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A Dose of Reality Over “Zero-Emissions” Electric Vehicles
Far too many journalists sound like cheerleaders when the topic is electric vehicles (EVs). That’s why RealClear Investigations’ Zero Emissions From Electric Vehicles? Here’s…
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Retro Review: Jared Diamond—Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies (Norton, 1997)
In 1972, Jared Diamond was researching bird evolution in New Guinea. While walking along a beach, he had an hour-long conversation with a local politician…
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Rules and Regulations Increase 45 Percent during Biden Administration
You’ve heard plenty from this quarter on broken disclosure and transparency in the Biden administration, which eliminated the “Deregulatory” designation for rules implanted…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
Happy Halloween! CEI released the latest edition of Wayne Crews’s Ten Thousand Commandments report, which gives a big-picture overview of the federal regulatory state.