CEI Weekly: Net Neutrality vs. “BandWealth”
CEI Weekly is a compilation of articles and blog posts from CEI’s fellows and associates sent out via e-mail every Friday. Also included in the Weekly newsletter is a brief description of CEI’s weekly podcast and a feature on a major CEI breakthrough made during the week. To sign up for CEI Weekly, go to http://cei.org/newsletters.
CEI Weekly
January 15, 2010
>>FCC ‘Net Neutrality’ Rules Endanger an Open Internet
CEI’s Wayne Crews filed a public comment against the FCC’s plans to regulate the net. “The FCC seems to be forgetting that not every network has been built yet, and tomorrow’s networks and business models need not resemble those that prevail today,” says Crews. Read the full comment here.
>>Shaping the Debate
As-salt on Science
Dan Compton’s op-ed in the New York Post
Secret Science from the CIA?
William Yeatman’s op-ed in the Washington Times
Does Climate Science Justify Fuel Hikes?
Myron Ebell’s citation in the Detroit News
>>Best of the Blogs
Experts Question Enormous Cost and Constitutionality of Healthcare Legislation
by Hans Bader
The health care legislation backed by the president and congressional leaders will increase Americans’ health care costs by more than $200 billion, concludes an expert at the federal Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services. Earlier, Senator Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), a lawyer, argued that the “individual mandate” in the health care bill legislation, which forces people to buy health insurance, is unconstitutional. Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum likewise is questioning whether it is constitutional to force people to do so.
Obama Bank “Responsibility Fee” Is Destructive, Hypocritical and Likely Unconstitutional
by John Berlau
The so-called Financial Crisis Responsibility Fee is a tax in search of a target. Today, the President declared, “We want our money back.” Yet his proposed tax on financial institutions with assets of $50 billion or more would be levied on the banks that paid back the bailout money – with interest – and on institutions that may not have even taken TARP funds, while most likely exempting Fannie, Freddie and the car companies that still owe billions upon billions to taxpayers.
Public Health Establishment Takes Credit for Mildness of Swine Flu Season
by Michael Fumento
Inevitably when pandemic doom fails to pan out, whether it be heterosexual AIDS, SARS, avian flu, or anything else the public health establishment that panicked everyone will claim that the only reason their predictions didn’t prevail was fast action on their part. So it was inevitable with swine flu, as we’re told in an article with the sub-headline: “If You Warn of An H1N1 Epidemic But Stop It, Do You Get Credit?” Professor Robert Field of the Drexel University School of Public Health tells ABC News online that his poor fellows were, as the piece put it, “damned if they do and damned if they don’t.” According to the story, with the subtitle of “Public health officials faced a tough choice in May and June,” “to some extent, we may be seeing a milder epidemic than we feared because of the vaccine and other measures people are taking” says Field.
>>LibertyWeek Podcast
Episode 76: How Healthy is Health Care?
This week, guest-host host Jeremy Lott from the Capital Research Center grills The American Spectator’s Phil Klein about the politics behind the health care bill, including how next week’s special election in Massachusetts might affect the final product. Special guest Ryan Young weighs in on the return of global cooling. Next up are how well the government’s job creation efforts aren’t going, and Sen. Harry Reid’s embarrassing remarks about President Obama.
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Competitive Enterprise Institute
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