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CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation
Despite a respite for Thanksgiving, the 2015 Federal Register is now on pace to set an all-time record page count. It began publication in 1936. New regulations…
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Douglass North, 1920-2015
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Much to Be Thankful For
Thanksgiving is tomorrow, and all of us have much to be thankful for. Over at Inside Sources, I have a Julian Simon-inspired take on the…
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Thanksgiving: Massachusetts Discovers Property Rights
Thanksgiving is a day layered in tradition and myth. The standard story makes much of the creative efforts of our ancestors, the assistance provided by…
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Washington’s Thanksgiving Turkeys: Here’s Your Chance to Fill Up on the White House’s 218 Economically Significant Rules
The president will pardon a couple turkeys again this year for Thanksgiving. The birds will take a carbon-intensive cross country flight from San Francisco International…
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Fracking: The Gift Keeps Giving
“U.S. proved crude oil reserves hit levels not seen since 1972, surpassing 39 billion barrels in 2014, according to newly released federal data,” Michael Bastasch…
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3 Political Food Developments to Be Thankful For
For most of us in the U.S., we don’t have to worry about getting enough food. Quite the opposite actually; holidays like Thanksgiving can be…
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A Fundamental Misunderstanding of Free Enterprise
Today, in The Guardian, columnist Zoe Williams repeats an idea often advanced by progressives, that entrepreneurial activity is dependent on the action of others, especially “government,”…
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Problems with Mandatory Drone Registration
On Saturday, the Unmanned Aircraft System (UAS) Registration Task Force issued its recommendations on a mandatory UAS registration proposal. The report is available here. On…
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Government Submits TSA Body Scanner Final Rule Schedule to Court
On October 23, 2015, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ordered the Department of Homeland Security to produce a schedule for final rule…
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CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation
The number of new regulations on the year passed the 3,000 mark last week, and the Federal Register is nearly on pace to set an all-time record…
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RealClear Radio Hour: Dodging The Devil’s Bargain, Appreciating Crowdsourced Evolution
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House Commerce Committee Approves “Pizza” Bill to Ease Onerous Calorie Labeling Rule
While most consumers are blissfully unaware, a provision tucked into the Affordable Care Act could cause food vendors a lot of headaches. Starting on December…
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Anti-Capitalism on Campus
Prof. Brad Thompson of Clemson University writes this week in Minding the Campus on the impact of corporate donations to institutions of higher education. In particular, he describes…
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The FAQ on COP-21
What is COP-21? The 21st session of the Conference of Parties (COP-21) in Paris is a United Nations meeting to adopt a plan requiring greenhouse…
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NLRB Attack on McDonald’s
No one accuses the government of being responsive to the public. Whether you are a veteran seeking care or need to renew your license at…
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Calling All Public Choice Scholars
Earlier this month the Cato Institute generously hosted a small roundtable discussion of CEI’s recent study “Virtuous Capitalism: Why there Is Less Corruption in…
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Unconstitutional Sexual-Orientation Set-Asides in Massachusetts
Government contracts should go to the lowest bidder, not be set aside for a particular group. So it is unfortunate that Massachusetts’s governor is now…
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Less than 1 Percent of Federal Regulations Get Cost-Benefit Analysis
The Obama administration likes to assert that all the rules and regulations pouring out of Washington have positive net-benefits. Billions of dollars in postulated net…
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Virtuous Capitalism in Theory and Practice
Government is responsible for billions and billions of dollars of corruption and corporate welfare. Considering the potential returns on investment compared to honest entrepreneurship, it…
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Should a Billionaire Decide Where Pennsylvanians Can Gamble?
The casino industry has been good for my home state of Pennsylvania. For whatever ills one might claim goes along with gambling, the gaming industry…
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Net Neutrality Questions FCC Commissioners Need to Answer
In a House Energy & Commerce Committee oversight hearing on Tuesday, November 17, all five Federal Communications Commissioners will testify. Net neutrality, the FCC’s broad push…
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A Look Ahead to CEI’s Future
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The Mild, Mild West: Regulation in America
Over at the newly launched U.S. edition of the U.K.-based CapX wesbite, Wayne Crews and I have a short primer on U.S. regulation: America…
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CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation
Wednesday’s Veterans’ Day holiday made it a short work week, but the Federal Register still passed the 70,000-page mark, with new regulations covering everything from Flugzeugbaus to…
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RealClear Radio Hour: American Colossus and Private Alternatives
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Judge Allows Deposition of EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy
Clean Air Act §321(a) requires the EPA to monitor job losses due to the agency’s environmental regulations. In March 2014, Murray Energy, an Ohio-based coal…
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Senate Likely To Vote on Resolutions To Block EPA’s Greenhouse Gas Rules for Power Plants Next Week
The Senate is tentatively scheduled to take up the two resolutions of disapproval of the EPA’s greenhouse gas rules for new and existing power plants…
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Farewell and Toast to CEI’s Future
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CFPB’s Database Should Be Bipartisan Privacy Concern
The behemoth Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) played a big role in Tuesday night’s GOP presidential debate on Fox Business, both during the commercials and…
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Five Infuriating Facts about Federal Regulation
Each year, we produce Ten Thousand Commandments (10KC), an extensive report on the size, scope, and true cost of federal regulations. 10KC exposes the burdens put…
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Daily Fantasy Sports Betting: Gambling or Game of Skill?
That is the big question in New York today after that state’s attorney general issued a cease and desist order to DraftKings and FanDuel—the two…
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CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation
New rules last week covered everything from relaxed grape handling to unclaimed funerary objects.
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Churchill: A “Foolish Moth”, and FDR’s Raw Deal
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China Burns 17% More Coal Than Reported
China has been burning up to 17% more coal per year than previously reported, according to new data released by the Chinese government. New York’s…
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O Says No to Keystone XL
President Barack Obama on 6th November determined that the proposed Keystone XL Pipeline is not in the national interest and therefore denied the cross-border permit necessary…
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CEI FOIA Reveals Clinton Email Security NDA
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Bureau of Labor Statistics Releases October Jobs Report
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Text of Trans-Pacific Partnership Trade Pact Released
The office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) has released the complete text of the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP) – a huge trade pact…
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Passcode for Liberty: Why the Government Shouldn’t Restrict Encryption (Video)
Most Americans own a smartphone and use cloud computing services such as Gmail, Dropbox, and Facebook. Increasingly, we store sensitive data on our devices and…
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Who’s Playing Politics on the Keystone XL Pipeline?
“The White House on Tuesday said President Obama had no intention of bowing to a request from the company behind the Keystone XL oil pipeline…
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What Does the World Think of Capitalism?
The Legatum Institute in the U.K. has an important new international poll out about public attitudes towards capitalism and the business world. They hired YouGov to…
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Republicans Should Support Rep. King’s Amendment to Prohibit Davis-Bacon Requirements
The House of Representatives is voting on the Highway Trust Fund this week. Numerous amendments have been added to the bill. One that should garner…
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Don’t Spare the ROD: An Inventory of Resolutions of Disapproval under the Congressional Review Act
Before Thanksgiving Day, both chambers of Congress are likely to consider so-called “Resolutions of Disapproval” to attempt to reject major, cripplingly expensive Environmental Protection Agency regulations…
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Freddie Mac’s Loss Shows Need to Protect Taxpayers from GSE Raids
I wish baseball great Yogi Berra were still here—upon the release of Freddie Mac’s new quarterly report showing a sudden Q3 loss—so he could offer…
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Federal Menu Laws Need Some Common Sense
This week, the House Energy and Commerce committee will hold a mark-up hearing on the Common Sense Nutrition Disclosure Act (H.R. 2017), a bipartisan bill intended…
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Sell a Kidney, Save a Life
Last week I blogged about the idea that some things should not be part of a market economy, and highlighted one rather silly example of…
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RealClear Radio Hour: Modern Environmentalists
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CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation
The pace of new rules has picked up recently, with 80 or more final regulations and more than 2,000 Federal Register pages for the second straight week.
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Congressional Resolutions To Block EPA’s Climate Rules and DC Circuit Decision on Stay of Power Plant Rule
Congressional Resolutions To Block EPA’s Climate Rules Are Introduced and Set To Move Quickly Representative Ed Whitfield (R-Ky.), chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee’s…