CEI Weekly: Taxpayer March on Washington
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
September 11, 2009
>>CEI and Ayn Rand Institute Hosts Workshop for 9/12 Tea Party in D.C.
Tea Parties and town hall meetings held around the country this year have empowered a growing number of Americans outraged by the bail-outs, government take-overs, and taxpayer boondoggles gone rampant in Washington, D.C. Yet, too often the protestors have been dismissed as being merely anti-government, when in fact they are pro-liberty. Why are they pro-liberty? In this workshop, we will explore those reasons and explode the myth that the protests are just angry manifestations of reaction
WHEN: September 11, 2009 12:00pm – 4:00pm
WHERE: The National Press Club – Ballroom
>>Shaping the Debate
[Featured in Reason’s Hit & Run] Political Malpractice
Greg Conko’s issue analysis on health care at CEI.org
What do ‘Cybersecurity Emergency’ Powers Mean for the Internet
Wayne Crews and Ryan Radia’s article in the Washington Examiner Opinion Zone
Does Intel Have Human Rights?
Hans Bader and Ryan Young’s op-ed in Real Clear Markets
John Berlau’s citation in the Wall Street Journal
Big Labor’s Benefits
Ivan Osorio’s op-ed in the American Spectator
>>Best of the Blogs
New Paper Shows Staggering Cost to Americans of Waxman-Markey
by Iain Murray
A new cost benefit study from New York University Law School’s Institute for Public Integrity that shows, “From almost any perspective and under almost any assumption, H.R. 2454 [Waxman-Markey] is a good investment for the United States to make in our own economic future and in the future of the planet.” A good investment for the US? Really? The authors recognize that the benefits they find are global, while the costs are located in the US.
The Washington Post Discovers that Poor People Need More Energy
by Myron Ebell
Emily Wax details the energy poverty of Africa, India, and Pakistan. She draws the obvious conclusion that has evaded most of the establishment media for years; that’s why India and other developing countries aren’t going to sign on to any UN treaty that mandates reductions in their greenhouse gas emissions. They don’t need an energy diet; they need thousands of coal-fired power plants. Wax writes: “Just one in four Africans has access to grid electricity, according to the World Bank. More than 500 million Indians, roughly half the population, have no official access to electricity.”
NIMBY for me, not for you — Robert Kennedy, Jr.’s selective embrace of renewable energy
by Marlo Lewis
Robert Kennedy — like his cousin-by-marriage Gov. Schwarzenegger — wants to allow ”alternative energy” companies to build solar power stations in the Mojave. As the Governator was widely quoted as saying, “If we cannot put solar power plants in the Mojave Desert, I don’t know where the hell we can put it.” But according to Sen. Diane Feinstein (D-CA), David Myers of the Wildlands Conservancy, and others, the solar stations would wreck the habitat of the desert tortoise, a threatened species under the California and federal Endangered Species Acts.
Regulation of the Day 49: Political Speech
by Ryan Young
The First Amendment famously reads, “Congress shall pass no law… abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.” Congress, ever sneaky, has looked very closely at the First Amendment’s wording. If they can’t pass laws abridging the freedom of speech or of the press, maybe they can pass laws abridging the freedom of speech and of the press. No lawyer in their right mind would use that argument in court. The real justifications for most speech and press-abridging laws — collectively known as campaign finance regulations — are actually much flimsier.
>>Liberty Week Podcast
Episode 59: The New March on Washington
In episode 59, we take a detour from the usual format and focus on the upcoming 9/12 March on Washington, where thousands of Americans from across the country will converge on Capitol Hill to protest record levels of government spending and borrowing. The demonstration is about defending our liberty and about restoring our Constitution by reducing the size and scope of the federal government.
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Charles Huang
Web and Media Associate
Competitive Enterprise Institute
[email protected]
http://www.cei.org
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