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Are the RICO 20 Guilty of Racketeering?
Controversy continues to swirl around the September 1 letter from 20 climate scientists to President Barack Obama, Attorney General Loretta Lynch, and White House science adviser John…
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ABI MillerCoors Merger Won’t Harm the Craft Beer Movement
The folks at Food & Water Watch are pissed. And I don’t mean “pissed” as in drunk; they are mad as hell about the proposed…
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Latest Ex-Im Revival Tactic: The Discharge Petition
One of the classic lines from the 1990 novel and 1993 movie Jurassic Park is that “life finds a way.” As with dinosaurs, so with government programs.
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CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation
The 2015 Federal Register broke the 60,000-page barrier in a big way, with new rules ranging from tuna boats to Nicaraguan archaeology. On to the…
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United Nations Releases “First Draft” of Paris Climate Treaty
The co-chairmen of UN negotiations on the forthcoming Paris climate treaty on 6th October released what they called a “first draft,” which they said will…
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North Carolina and Kentucky Show Their Hands on Clean Power Plan
EnergyWire ($) reports that North Carolina won’t seek an extension on the September 2016 deadline for submissions to comply with the Clean Power Plan, but…
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IPCC Selects New Leader
The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change elected Dr. Hoesung Lee as its new chairman at its meeting in Dubrovnik, Croatia, this week. Dr.
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House Moves To Lift Oil Export Ban
The House of Representatives passed a bill on October 9, 2015, to lift the forty-year-old ban on crude oil exports by a vote of 261…
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What Will a Chaffetz Speakership Mean for Internet Freedom? Part 2
Utah Republican Congressman Jason Chaffetz recently threw his hat in the ring in a bid to replace Speaker John Boehner, after House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy’s…
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What Will a Chaffetz Speakership Mean for Internet Freedom?
With House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy’s (R-Calif.) gaffe regarding the Benghazi investigation, the race to replace outgoing Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) appears much more open. Days later,…
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Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement Covers a Lot of Ground
Trade ministers of 12 Asia-Pacific countries announced October 5, 2015, that they had completed negotiations on the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP). The TPP links…
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The Death of RAWA: A Performance for an Audience of One
RAWA (H.R. 707) is dying the slow death of bills that aren’t sexy enough to draw attention away from much sexier issues. With the House…
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Agency Overload: Meet the Federal Bureaucracy One-Page Word Cloud
There exist various counts of agencies in the federal bureaucracy, but no particular tally is regarded authoritative. The “Agency List” page maintained at FederalRegister.gov probably…
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Drone Policy Update: FAA Proposes $1.9m Fine, 3 More Bills Vetoed in California, and More
FAA PROPOSES RECORD FINE FOR UNAUTHORIZED UAS OPERATIONS: On October 6, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) announced it was proposing a $1.9 million civil penalty against…
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Reasons for Global Warming Skepticism
Democrats have developed a cottage industry in ridiculing and condemning Republicans as Luddites. How can any “reasonable” person deny that increased greenhouse gas concentrations in the…
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No, Politicians Shouldn’t Outlaw Driving to Usher in Self-Driving Cars
Over at Fusion, Kevin Roose has what is perhaps the worst article on automated vehicles (AVs) I’ve ever seen. In it, he calls for a near-term…
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Warren Bullies Not Just Litan But Consumers
Elizabeth Warren “drew blood,” writes Washington Post reporter Tom Hamburger. “Elizabeth Warren Claims Another Scalp,” reads the headline of an excellent piece by John Fund at National Review…
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CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation
In another busy week, federal agencies issued new regulations for everything from tomato plants to airplane seats. On to the data: Last week, 76 new…
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On Added Sugars, Canada Gets Right What the U.S. Got Wrong
Last month, I wrote about how the new nutritional labels might end up making Americans fatter and sicker. Particularly dangerous, in my opinion, is the addition…
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Are Tropical Storms Becoming More Destructive? Will They?
Lin & Chan, 2015, a study published in Nature Communications, finds that the destructive potential of tropical cyclones (“typhoons”) in the most active and…
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VW Diesel Scandal Exposes Conflicting Regulatory Mandates
The Environmental Protection Agency on 18th September charged that Volkswagen had sold approximately 480,000 diesel cars in the U. S. that contained “defeat devices” that allowed…
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Professor Who Advocates Criminalizing Global Warming Skepticism Has Taken $63 Million in Federal Grants
In early September, twenty professors sent a letter President Barack Obama, Attorney General Loretta Lynch, and White House science adviser John Holdren that congratulates the President…
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EPA Issues Job Killing Ozone Rule
The Environmental Protection Agency released its final rule to reduce ozone levels on 1st October. The current National Ambient Air Quality Standard of 75 parts…
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Why Isn’t There a Joint Union Standard?
On September 29, an official and members of Boston’s Teamsters Local 25 were indicted on extortion charges, which U.S. Attorney Carmen Ortiz described as…
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Fed Reacts to Job Reports, Why Doesn’t Department of Labor?
We had another jobs report below expectations this morning, coupled with a rare revision downwards of last month’s jobs report. This ends a summer of jobs…
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Ed Snider: A Sports CEO Talks Leadership and Success
This week the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business was host to an excellent event on business leadership, featuring Comcast-Spectacor CEO and…
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A Class Merger: CEI and the Center for Class Action Fairness Get Hitched
Litigation has been an important part of CEI since its earliest years—from our NYC rent control case in the 1980s, to our lawsuits against the…
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Bill Introduced in Senate to Strip NLRB of Adjudicatory Power
On September 28, Senator Mike Lee (R-Utah) introduced The Protecting American Jobs Act, S. 2084, which would relieve the National Labor Relations Board of its…
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Betting on the Future: 25 Years Later
Today is the 25th anniversary of the famous bet between economist Julian Simon and biologist Paul Ehrlich over the price of five metals: chromium, copper,…
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USDOT Wants it Both Ways with Off-Peak Freight Movements
Over at the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Fastlane blog, Greg Nadeau, administrator of the Federal Highway Administration, has a post touting USDOT’s support for off-peak freight…
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NLRB Doubles-Down on Expanded Joint-Employer Standard
As I detailed here last week, in a case involving Browning-Ferris Industries, the National Labor Relations Board decided to greatly expand when an employer is…
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Free Enterprise: Sometimes We Forget
When we find ourselves debating specific issues having to do with economics and business, we often forget how overwhelming the evidence is for the superiority…
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CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation
A slow week closed with a bang, with Friday’s Federal Register containing 15 proposed regulations, 25 final regulations, and 502 pages. Throughout the week, new regulations cover…
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American and Chinese Presidents Agree To Continue To Work Together To Raise U. S. Energy Prices
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Hillary Clinton Opposes Keystone XL Pipeline
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Pope Francis Barely Mentions Climate Change in Speeches at the United Nations, Congress, and the White House
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Celebrating a Great Editor: Max Borders and The Freeman
Yesterday the Foundation for Economic Education’s “Anything Peaceful” blog carried the news that editor Max Borders was leaving his position directing content for FEE.org and FEE’s…
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Education Department Power Grabs Criticized in Congress
Yesterday, The College Fix published an interesting story titled “Department of Education shredded for lawless overreach in Senate hearing.” It was about Congress getting annoyed with…
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World Bank Increases Number of Poor
The World Bank is considering changing its definition of what constitutes extreme poverty, raising the level below which someone is treated as extremely poor from $1.25…
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Jeb Bush Unveils Regulatory Reform Agenda
Traditionally, presidents named Bush have not been friends of limited government. George H.W. Bush raised taxes after his famous “read my lips” speech, and oversaw…
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Corporate Ads Need to Sell Ideas, Too
Tim Montgomerie, a columnist for The Times of London and founder of ConservativeHome, writes in CapX this week about the visit of Pope Francis to the U.S. Reviewing…
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Pope Francis Cools It on Climate Change Rhetoric
Pope Francis in his speeches at the White House on Wednesday morning and to a joint session of Congress on Thursday morning toned down his…
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New CEI Paper: The Case for Closing OPIC
OPIC is the Overseas Private Investment Corporation. It is a federal agency that offers financing for international projects by U.S. companies. Intended mainly as an…
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Transparency in Card Fees: Where Does the Argument Stop?
There are three ways banks that issue credit and debit cards can gain revenue from them: interest rates (in the case of credit cards) charged…
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You Won’t Believe All the Ways Federal Agencies Issue Rules
Recently, I’d pointed out that we don’t really know how many federal agencies there are. That implies we don’t know how many rules and regulations…
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Has Plain Packaging Reduced Tobacco Consumption?
In 2012, the Australian government instituted a plan tobacco packing requirement—that is, a generic package that removes all stylistic aspects of packaging: colors, imagery, corporate…
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Fantasy Sports Betting Isn’t a Federal Crime, as No Sports Betting Should Be
If you watched football during the open weekend of the NFL season, you probably saw an advertisement for DraftKings or FanDuel. Part of the rapidly…
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A Message from CEI Chairman Todd Zywicki
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NLRB Joint Employer Decision Creates Barrier to Job Creation
In a 2010 speech, President Obama said small business “is as American as apple pie. Small businesses are the backbone of our economy.” He went on…
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Proposed Food Label Change Could Make Us Fatter and Sicker
There’s a new push to finalize the Food and Drug Administration’s new guidelines for nutritional panels. The changes, which include listing “added sugars” and updating…