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George Washington, Larry David, Cryptocurrency, and Freedom
One of the most talked-about Super Bowl ads was that of Larry David traveling through history and naysaying innovations that turned out to be hugely…
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Staying the Course for Liberty
At the Competitive Enterprise Institute, we focus on policy issues ranging from tech and telecommunications to energy and the environment to financial regulation and monetary…
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SEC Misfires in BlockFi Settlement
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In Memoriam: P.J. O’Rourke
From Rolling Stone to nearly 20 rollicking books, P.J. O’Rourke explained the inexplicable, from war and every imaginable human privation to the peccadillos of Congress…
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State Antitrust Lawsuit Trivializes Security Threats in Mobile App Market
Last July, 36 state attorneys general filed an antitrust suit against Google focusing on app distribution for Android devices through the Google Play Store.
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Lisa Cook’s First Amendment Problem
Today, the Senate Banking Committee is set to vote on five nominations for the Federal Reserve Board. My CEI colleague Myron Ebell and I have…
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Either Support Domestic Mining or Oppose the Climate Agenda; You Can’t Do Both
The Biden administration supports more electric vehicles and wind turbines and solar panels in order to address climate change. It should also support more domestic…
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New Federal Reserve Study Is Surprisingly Upbeat on Stablecoins
Amid the Biden administration’s onslaught against cryptocurrencies, new research from the Federal Reserve surprisingly paints stablecoins in a positive light. In a new Fed…
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Treasury Department Report Endorses Deregulation to Boost the Booze Business
It isn’t often that a Democratic administration endorses deregulation, but that is exactly what the Treasury Department does in a new report on promoting…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
Inflation reached an annualized rate of 7.5 percent, with prices going up 0.6 percent just in January. This is highest reading in 40 years.
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Judge Orders Administration to Cease Using the Social Cost of Carbon
Today, in a sweeping ruling from the Western District of Louisiana, Judge James D. Cain, Jr. ruled that the Biden administration must shelve its…
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This Week’s Civil Forfeiture Outrage (Eleventh in a Series: Highway Robbery in California)
The bandit is the scourge of the traveler. In less developed parts of the world, travelers risk encountering bandits even today. Sometimes the bandit claims…
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Reciprocal Switching Is a Bad Idea at a Bad Time
The Surface Transportation Board has resurrected a bad idea it considered in 2012 and 2016—mandated reciprocal switching for freight railroads. For background, you can’t do…
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New Export-Import Bank President Has Opportunities for Reform
Reta Jo Lewis is about to become the next president of the Export-Import Bank. The Senate confirmed her nomination yesterday. Called Ex-Im for short,…
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Steel Tariffs against Japan Lifted, Kind of
President Biden is taking a small step toward tariff relief. Japan’s first 1.25 million metric tons per year of steel exports to the U.S.
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New Hampshire Considers Major Forfeiture Reform
The New Hampshire state legislature’s House Committee on Criminal Justice and Public Safety is considering a significant change to the Granite State’s forfeiture laws:…
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Don’t EARN IT
Bad policy made with good intentions still delivers poor results. That is the case with the Eliminating Abusive and Rampant Neglect of Interactive Technologies…
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New Mexico Should Reject Interest Rate Limit Base on Federal Mismeasurement
There is an old saying that “a lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is still putting on its shoes.” It has…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
The U.S. government’s debt reached $30 trillion last week. Antitrust target Facebook lost users last quarter for the first time in its history,…
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U.S. Geological Survey Study Underscores Extent of Import Dependence for Critical Minerals
The U.S. Geological Survey’s recent report, Mineral Commodity Summaries 2022, documents the significant extent to which America relies on imports of numerous critical minerals,…
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Good News for Facebook Competitors, Bad News for the FTC’s Antitrust Case
Thursday brought some interesting news, none of which were kind to the Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) antitrust case against Facebook. First, Facebook’s number of…
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Protect Consumers, Not Competitors
The Open App Markets Act (S. 2710) is the latest in a parade of antitrust legislation aimed at reining in “big tech” companies that…
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The America COMPETES Act’s Outbound Investment Review Framework Threatens U.S. Global Economic Competitiveness
Earlier this week, the House of Representatives introduced a bill, the America COMPETES” Act (H.R. 4521; the backronym is for ‘‘America Creating Opportunities for…
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The COMPETES Act Is a Bad Idea. Here’s What Congress Should Do Instead
The 2,912-page America COMPETES Act (H.R. 4521; the backronym is for ‘‘America Creating Opportunities for Manufacturing, Pre-Eminence in Technology, and Economic Strength’’) is the…
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Even Most Democrats Favor Right to Work Laws
For being so controversial, right to work laws are pretty popular. A majority of states, 27, have them and even Democrats will give…
![Indiana Beverage Bill Helps [Some] Businesses by Harming Consumers](https://cei.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/Spirits-GettyImages-1306196045-578x324-c-default.jpg)
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Indiana Beverage Bill Helps [Some] Businesses by Harming Consumers
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
GDP grew 5.7 percent during 2021, giving further evidence of a strong economic rebound from the COVID-19 pandemic. Even so, Congress is now considering…
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Social Cost of Carbon – Pretzel Logic Cannot Save NetZero Agenda
A new paper by economists Nicolas Stern, Joseph Stiglitz, Kristina Karlson, and Charlotte Taylor calls upon the Biden administration to set a “social cost of carbon…
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Rising Pay Undermines Push for Increasing the Minimum Wage
A Department Labor report released Friday shows wages rising 4.5 percent, evidence that the Biden administration’s plan to raise the federal minimum wage…
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This Week’s Outrage (Which, Again, Touches on Civil Asset Forfeiture)
Last week, the Birmingham News published a scorching expose of police practices in the little town of Brookside, Alabama (population 1,253). Brookside has no…
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CEI Leads Coalition Letter to Department of Energy Defending Freedom of Choice for Light Bulbs
As I described in my recent Wall Street Journal op-ed, A Regulatory Burden For Every Room In Your House, the Biden administration has embarked…
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Biden’s Vaccine Mandate Is Still a Bad Idea Even If Properly Enacted
The best that can be said about the Biden administration’s decision to withdraw the executive order for its COVID-19 vaccine mandate and instead try to…
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A Dangerous Antitrust Game for Microsoft and Consumers
Microsoft’s couldn’t have picked a more inauspicious day to announce its planned acquisition of gaming company, Activision Blizzard. The news came concurrently with antitrust regulators…
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Better Ways to Fight Poverty than the Minimum Wage
Every January, states and cities across the country raise their minimum wages. There are also calls to raise the federal minimum wage, which has stayed…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
A major antitrust bill from Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) is poised to hit the Senate floor without a proper hearing. Considering its contents, one…
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Court Enjoins Enforcement of Federal Workforce Vaccine Mandate
The Biden administration has promulgated four COVID-19 vaccination mandates. Two were issued via administration regulations and were recently reviewed by the Supreme Court. For…
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CFPB’s Dodd-Frank Race and Gender Data Collection Mandates Will Harm Financial Inclusion
In mid-2020, on the 10th anniversary of the Dodd-Frank financial overhaul being rammed through Congress and signed by then-President Obama, I catalogued the damage…
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This Week’s Civil Forfeiture Outrage (Tenth in a Series: Baltimore Edition)
This Baltimore Brew news story describes how the Baltimore Police Department (BPD)—like many police departments around the country—seizes millions of dollars, thousands of weapons,…
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As Numbers Stagnate, Unions Continue to Look to Congress For Salvation
The Department of Labor’s latest statistics confirm that the union movement in the U.S. remains stagnant and slowly declining. Only 10.3 percent of U.S.
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The American Innovation and Choice Online Act Would Regulate Away Consumer Benefits
Perhaps Congress’ enthusiasm for ongoing government oversight of business decisions, embodied in tomorrow’s closed door markup of the American Innovation and Choice Online Act…
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Comments on Department of Labor Pension ESG Rule
At the end of last year, the Department of Labor (DOL) published a notice of proposed rulemaking seeking to rewrite rules on pension fund…
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Six Myths about Bitcoin Energy Use
Newsweek: Bitcoin Mining on Track to Consume All of the World’s Energy by 2020 Bloomberg: What if there were a safe digital currency…
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Larry Fink and BlackRock Pulling Back on “Woke” Investing?
Larry Fink and his team at BlackRock seem to have heard the growing roar of opposition to politicized investing that is emerging in the United…
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In Russia, Government Tells Internet What to Say
As a general rule, if you’re on the same regulatory page as Russia, you should probably turn the page—if not set fire to it. But…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
Happy Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, everyone. Inflation hit a 40-year high last week. Meanwhile, agencies issued new rules ranging from French dressing freedom to…
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This Week’s Civil Forfeiture Outrages (Ninth in a Series: Texas Edition)
There is a big difference between being accused of misconduct and a court finding of misconduct. Nonetheless, the recent accusations leveled against Nathan Johnson, the…
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The Fed Is Not a Climate Regulator
On Tuesday, January 11, the Senate Banking Committee held a hearing on the re-nomination of Jerome Powell to be Federal Reserve chairman. If Powell…
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Equity Crowdfunding Success Should Spur Further Deregulation
Equity Crowdfunding (Reg CF), the innovative tool that allows middle class people to invest in early-stage companies, has now topped $1.1 billion in investment.
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CEI’s Advice to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission: Steer Clear of Climate Policy
On Friday, January 6, CEI submitted comments on the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s November 2021 Technical Conference on Greenhouse Gas Mitigation under Sections…
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Sustainable Aviation Fuel Provisions In Build Back Better – A Slippery Slope?
There are many carrots for low-carbon alternatives to fossil fuels in the Build Back Better legislation passed by the House and now being considered…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
Teachers’ unions continued to make an eloquent case for school choice by shutting down schools in major cities like Chicago. The country also observed the…
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Supreme Court Hears Oral Arguments over Vaccine Mandates
Today the Supreme Court heard over three hours of oral arguments on two of the Biden administration’s COVID-19 vaccine mandates. In the first case,…
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This Week’s Civil Forfeiture Outrage (Eighth in a Series)
I wish it were harder to find forfeiture outrages to write about, but they keep popping up. This week, I focus on Massachusetts. Here’s a…
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Retro Book Reviews: A Capitalism for the People: Recapturing the Lost Genius of American Prosperity by Luigi Zingales (Basic Books, 2012)
University of Chicago economist Luigi Zingales’s book A Capitalism for the People: Recapturing the Lost Genius of American Prosperity, which celebrates its 10th anniversary…
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An Option Isn’t an Option When It’s Mandatory, Even Online
Later this year, Instagram users will have the option of a chronological feed of the accounts they follow. This option is already available to…
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Which Classic Books Deserve a Retro Review in 2022?
Every year, there’s a tsunami of new books about economics, politics, and public policy that are full of hot takes and policy recommendations. In any…
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America Can Keep Its Cool If Senate Rejects Kigali Amendment
The Biden administration apparently wants to add air conditioning to the long list of items becoming more expensive. This latest threat to consumers comes from…
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Joe Biden and Merrick Garland Promise New Regulation in Agriculture and other Sectors
After stepping off into the snow upon arrival Monday, January 3, President Joe Biden headed back to the White House, where his first action of…
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Tell Us It Ain’t So, Joe
There is at least one news report that Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) has continued negotiating with the White House on a slimmed down version…
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New York State of Mind Wrong on Social Media Regulation
Recent injunctions, in both Florida and Texas, against state-level social media laws championed by Republicans illustrate the difficulties of regulating content moderation online.
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
Happy new year, everyone. The Biden administration’s first Federal Register volume is officially complete. While there likely will not be much significant legislation in 2022,…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
The Federal Register took Christmas Eve off, and here’s hoping everyone had a happy holiday season. One more week to go in 2021. The Food…
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Edmans, Soukup, and Devine: 2021 Book Review Roundup
We saw some great books on economics and politics published over the past year, and some excellent book reviews. Just this week, my colleague Ryan…
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This Week’s Outrage (which Touches on Civil Asset Forfeiture)
Last month, The New York Times reported on the way that law enforcement officers take money from the rest of us. I’ve been alternately…
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Review of Vivek Ramaswamy’s Woke, Inc.
Vivek Ramaswamy—pharmaceutical entrepreneur, son of immigrants, Yale Law grad, Hindu, and political conservative—is a capitalist with a lot of strong criticism for big business today.
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Best Books of 2021: Keith E. Stanovich, The Bias that Divides Us: The Science and Politics of Myside Thinking (MIT Press, 2021)
Today’s political polarization isn’t just annoying; it’s damaging important cultural and family institutions. And tensions won’t deescalate until people figure out the root of the…
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Best Books of 2021: Ryan Bourne, Economics in One Virus (Cato Institute, 2021) and Caleb Fuller, There Is No Free Lunch (Freiling, 2021)
Economists are an unpopular bunch. One reason for this is that much of their job is putting parameters on people’s utopias. Spending more money…
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Britain’s Competition and Markets Authority Is Becoming a Global Problem
When British supporters of Brexit talked of “global Britain,” they probably didn’t have in mind British bureaucrats dictating to the world how businesses should be…
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CEI in Amicus Brief Asks Supreme Court to Block the Clean Power Plan that Congress Rejected
People often talk about the undemocratic and illegitimate administrative state, of which the Clean Power Plan (CPP) is the perfect example. The Supreme Court will…
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What’s Ahead for Regulation in 2022?
There are two questions about the coming year in regulation. The first is what will happen. The second is what should happen. What will likely…
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The Challenges of ESG Investing in Space
Last month, I had the opportunity to participate in a panel discussion on the future of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) investing in the…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
Two big pieces of good news last week were the Senate’s decision to shelve the $1.7 trillion Build Back Better spending bill and the…
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This Week’s Civil Forfeiture Outrage (Seventh in a Series)
I’m happy to report that I’ve discovered no new civil forfeiture outrages this week. Instead, I’ll write about two civil forfeiture outrages that are a…
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The SEC’s Irrational Fear of Bitcoin
“The Commission has no basis for the position that investing in the derivatives market for an asset is acceptable for investors while investing in the…
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Have a Regulated Holiday Season!
The Code of Federal Regulations is 185,984 pages long, according to my colleague Wayne Crews’s Ten Thousand Commandmentsreport. It consists of 50 titles spread…
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The Platform Competition and Opportunity Act Will Harm Innovation and Competition
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Senate Shelves Build Back Better Spending Bill, For Now
The Senate will not vote on the Build Back Better (BBB) spending bill this year, though they might take it up again next year.
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Bah Humbug. The States that Ban Booze on Christmas, New Year’s, and other Winter Holidays
The holidays bring parties, feasts, and visits with friends and family, many of whom haven’t seen each other in person since the start of the…
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Policy Makers Should Allow Stablecoins to Thrive
The Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs will convene a hearing on stablecoins today. Congress should focus on the many benefits this form…
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Can Pensions Be Saved from Political Mismanagement?
The Department of Labor is currently working on a new rule that would give pension fund managers greater leeway in considering non-financial criteria when…
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President Biden Sows the Whirlwind
It’s the president’s job to console the nation when natural disasters strike, like the horrendous tornado outbreak last Friday night. Much of Mayfield, Kentucky,…
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Biden’s Fall 2021 Unified Agenda of Federal Regulation Heralds Abandonment of Regulatory Oversight Role
The Biden administration has just released the Fall 2021 edition of the twice-yearly Unified Agenda of Federal Regulatory and Deregulatory Actions.
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
The number of new regulations this year topped 3,000, ending the week at 3,068, and the 2021 Federal Register topped 70,000 pages. Inflation went up…
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This Week’s Civil Forfeiture Outrage (Sixth in a Series)
This week’s civil forfeiture outrage begins with a photograph of a police dog crouching over more than $100,000 in U.S. currency. Earlier this week, CBSDFW.COM…
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Inflation Increases to 6.8 percent, Misery Index Reaches 11
October’s inflation reading was the highest since the recession of 1991. November’s is the highest since the 1982 recession, at an annualized 6.8 percent.
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For Energy Infrastructure Projects, Even Supreme Court Victories Mean Nothing
In the last two years, two different natural gas pipeline projects were the subject of Supreme Court cases, and both times the project developers achieved…
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Can Regional Trade Agreements Replace the WTO?
Trade policy is in a bad place right now, with two consecutive protectionist administrations in the U.S. and the World Trade Organization (WTO) possibly damaged…
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Is It Finally Goodbye for Incandescent Light Bulbs—and Consumer Choice?
President George W. Bush initiated the federal government’s targeting of incandescent light bulbs in energy legislation he signed in 2007. Subsequent Department of Energy…
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Seven Quotes about Communism
Years ago, I pulled together some quotations about Communism that I thought would make good epitaphs for what I believed was a dying ideology. Unfortunately,…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
The number of new final regulations this year will pass 3,000 this week, with more than three weeks still to go. The Omicron variant gave…
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This Week’s Civil Forfeiture Outrages (Fifth in a Series)
I just finished watching one of the most gripping, compelling videos I have ever seen. It’s like a dystopian horror movie—except it’s real. It’s…
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Why Both Democrats and Republicans Should Oppose Gigi Sohn’s Nomination as FCC Commissioner
On Wednesday, the Senate Commerce Committee held a confirmation hearing on the nomination of Gigi Sohn to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). During the…
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CEI’s New Anti-Carbon Tax Study
CEI has a new study out this week titled, “Why Carbon Taxes Are Anti-Growth, Anti-Consumer, and Politically Dangerous for Conservatives.” It develops the following…
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Social Media in Parallel Universes
The chasm between the political discourse at yesterday’s House Committee on Energy and Commerce hearing on social media platforms and the legal decision…
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Request to OIRA to Ensure Peer Review of Agency’s Medical Marijuana Claims
For two years, CEI has been trying to get the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) to conduct…
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The Bizarre Logic of the NLRB’s Decision in the Amazon Union Case
The National Labor Relations Board’s (NLRB) order overturning the workers’ rejection of a union at an Amazon facility in Bessemer, Alabama, and ordering…
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Another Court Rejects Federal Attempt to Impose a Vaccine Mandate
Shortly following the Fifth Circuit blocking the private employer mandate from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), Judge Matthew Schelp of the Eastern…
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Tapping the Strategic Petroleum Reserve Cannot Undo Biden Administration’s Anti-Drilling Agenda
The Biden administration seems to know the playbook for pretending to respond to high gasoline prices. First, blame big oil for price gouging and launch…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
It was a short work week because of Thanksgiving. Meanwhile, agencies issued new rules ranging from blood lancets to crash test dummies. On to the…
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The “Public Nuisance” Theory of Pharmaceutical Liability for the Opioids Crisis Is … a Public Nuisance
The jury in a federal court in Ohio has found three major pharmacy chains—CVS, Walmart, and Walgreens—liable for the opioids crisis in two plaintiff…