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President Obama’s Executive Overreach Compounded by Regulatory Dark Matter
In recent years the Federal Register has topped out at well over 70,000 pages, two times at more than 80,000. Each year over 3,500 rules issue from…
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A Big Payoff for Patient Investors
There’s a fascinating story in The New York Times this week about pharmaceutical companies and the process of discovering new drugs. Fifteen years ago, the…
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Corporate Action against Disease Points Way to Resiliency Strategy for Developing World
In a piece at The Freeman today, I examine how corporations in the developing world have reacted to the threat to their workers from diseases such…
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Don’t Get “Grubered” by the Lauren McFerran Nomination to NLRB
Chief Labor Counsel and Deputy Staff Director of the jurisdictional Senate Health, Education, Labor & Pensions Committee Lauren McFerran has her confirmation hearing at 10:00AM…
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New NLRB Nominee Would Strengthen Big Labor’s Agenda
The left has a troubling Big Labor agenda that can only be accomplished by a pen-and-phone strategy to evade the U.S. Senate and House. The…
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Liberals and Conservatives Challenge Overreach of Dodd-Frank’s FSOC on MetLife
As CEI brings suit before the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals tomorrow challenging the constitutionality of unaccountable bureaucracies created by the Dodd-Frank “financial reform” law…
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Congress Needs to Act to Bring about a Drone Revolution
Earlier this morning, a full panel of the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) overturned a previous ruling from an NTSB administrative law judge in the Pirker case. In Pirker, the…
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Crowdfunding Is Entrepreneurship’s History and its Future
In America and around the world, aspiring entrepreneurs are meeting their colleagues and their mentors in official and unofficial sessions of Global Entrepreneurship Week. Created…
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Biased Anti-Bias Regulations
Anti-bias regulations are sometimes biased and at odds with civil liberties. The Cato Institute’s Walter Olson gives a recent example from a left-leaning region in Spain:…
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How the “Stupid” American Public Pays for Gruber’s Deception
The Washington Times points out that Jonathan Gruber, our nation’s most famous sufferer of foot-in-mouth-disease, has profited greatly from the “stupid” American public to whom he…
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CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation
The Federal Register took Tuesday off to observe Veterans’ Day. The short week was still a busy one, with Thursday’s edition alone totaling 783 pages. On to…
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Gruber’s “Speakola” Virus and Pelosi’s Selective Memory
Obamacare supporters say that when deciding King v. Burwell and the related Halbig v. Burwell, challenges to the law that the Competitive Enterprise Institute helped fund and coordinate,…
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CFPBs Prepaid Debit Card Rules Will Harm Low-Income Consumers
Today’s action by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to issue unprecedented burdens on providers of prepaid debit cards shows why the bureau needs to be held…
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USPS Data Breach Highlights Union Hypocrisy
Recently, a United States Postal Service computer system experienced a security breach. The result: around 800,000 current and former USPS employees' private information, including their…
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Obama’s Meaningless China Deal on Climate Change
It will be up to future Presidents and Congresses after he leaves office in January 2017 to decide whether to require the emissions reductions.
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Minneapolis Adopts Unconstitutional Racial Quotas in School Discipline
Given a choice between following the law, and doing what a bureaucrat with power over them wants, many people will do what the bureaucrat wants,…
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Miami-Dade Contracts Keep Paying Government Employees to Perform Union Business
In the summer of 2013, Miami-Dade County Property Appraiser, and current Lieutenant Governor of Florida, Carlos Lopez-Cantera tried to fire an employee who wasn't showing…
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Obamacare: Cert Granted on Friday, and Gruber III on Saturday
It was very good news, delivered in a very surprising way. Shortly after noon last Friday, the Supreme Court announced that it would review our…
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The Long National Nightmare of Dodd-Frank Is Almost Over
One of the prime reasons for the continuing economic uncertainty that bedevils so many ordinary Americans is the presence in law of the Dodd-Frank Act…
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Right to Work Should Be on the Agenda in Ohio and Wisconsin
One takeaway from the midterm elections is politicians who support labor reform, which protects worker choice and reduce union coercive power, should not fear political…
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CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation
Election week was a busy one on the regulatory front, with new rules on everything from fuel taxes to wireless spectrum. With the Senate changing…
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The Good, the Bad, and the Public Sector Unions
Writing in The Wall Street Journal, Steve Malanga has commented on the growing differences between private and public sector unions. Malanga describes the various instances…
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The Fall of the Berlin Wall, 25 Years Later
This weekend marks the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. While much is going to be written about this quarter-century anniversary, my colleague…
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Labor and Employment Look at the 2014 Elections
The election tide of November 4, 2104, begs to be examined from a labor and employment perspective.
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Voters Reject Three Rail Transit Boondoggles
Yesterday, voters across the country had the opportunity to vote on a number of transportation ballot measures. Three of these involved spending for new rail…
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Voters Approve Minimum Wage Hikes
As pollsters predicted, voters approved increases in state-level minimum wages in four states (Alaska, Arkansas, Nebraska, and South Dakota), although to levels less than the increase…
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In Memoriam: Gordon Tullock
I write this Tuesday night as TV pundits drone on in the background. The Republicans may win control of the Senate, though races are too…
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Gordon Tullock, R.I.P.
Imagine making Nobel-worthy contributions to a discipline in which you had almost no formal training. It’s an amazing feat. Gordon Tullock is one of the…
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Volunteering Violation Vignettes
Did you know it is against the law to volunteer for a for-profit business? The issue has surfaced in a trio of varied settings recently.
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Joint Employer Action Anxiously Anticipated
On July 29, 2014, the National Labor Relations Board’s Office of the General Counsel set the labor and employment world on fire by authorized complaints…
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CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation
In the final week before the midterm election, agencies published new regulations ranging from dairy profits to Japanese oranges. Fittingly, the total number of new…
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ObamaCare Failing to Make Insurance Affordable for Many Americans
The two most important Courts in the land are about to dive into the language and purpose of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), the “Obamacare”…
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What Will the SpaceShipTwo Crash Mean for Commercial Space Flight Regulation?
The crash of a test flight of billionaire Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic SpaceShipTwo, which cost the life of one, riveted many around the globe on Friday afternoon.
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Scott Walker Calls Union-Backed Lawsuit a Political Stunt
Big Labor just can’t get its way in Wisconsin.
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NLRB Considers Union Request to Make Removing Unwanted Union More Difficult
It is already an arduous process for employees to remove an unwanted union from their workplace. And now the International Association of Machinists is requesting…
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Soda Makes You Old and Other “Data Mined” Myths
“‘If you torture your data long enough, they will tell you whatever you want to hear.’ Dr. James Mills noted in a 1993 New England Journal…
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How Federal Paperwork and Red Tape Has Grown since President Clinton
In recent five-part series called The 2014 Federal Paperwork and Red Tape Roundup, I took a look at hours of paperwork for various departments and…
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New Jersey’s Driverless Car Bill: One Step Forward, Three Steps Back
Yesterday, the New Jersey Senate Transportation Committee in a unanimous vote reported S734, a bill that would recognize the legality of autonomous vehicle testing…
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Minimum Wages Have Tradeoffs
Minimum wages help some workers, which is why they are so popular. But they aren’t a free lunch. There are tradeoffs. They aren’t always easy…
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CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation
It was business as usual, with new rules hitting the books on everything from political speech restrictions to butterflies to football broadcasts. On to the…
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Sen. Coburn’s Wastebook Highlights Mismanagement of Federal Employees
Senator Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) released on October 22, 2014, his annual Wastebook that exposes how the federal government fritters away your tax dollars.
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The 2014 Federal Paperwork and Red Tape Roundup, Part 5: Executive Agency Regulatory Costs
In Parts 1 through 4 of The 2014 Federal Paperwork and Red Tape Roundup we compiled a basic picture of federal paperwork costs with respect to…
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The 2014 Federal Paperwork and Red Tape Roundup, Part 4: Independent Agency Paperwork Costs
A recent post here at OpenMarket noted the Annual Costs of Independent Agency Rulemakings and presented an annual cost placeholder of $6.14 billion annually stemming from compliance with…
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Education Department Harassment Rules Metastasize through Administrative Fiat
The Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR), where I used to work, today declared that schools can be liable for bullying (or anything else)…
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The Great Unknown – Federal Independent Agencies’ Regulatory Costs
Let’s be independent together! —Herbie the Dentist Elf to Rudolph in Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer Independent agencies are not subject to Office of Management and Budget…
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Union Lobbyists Collecting Illinois Public Pensions Is Illegal Gift
Recent reports uncover that Illinois taxpayers are funding union agents' pensions.
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Green Exploitation of the Monarch Butterfly
Butterflies offer powerful imagery for environmental groups looking to advance their agendas. After all, who doesn’t want to save these beautiful creatures? Surely green activists…
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CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation
The federal government took Monday off for Columbus Day, but still managed to pack more than 50 new regulations into a short week. On to…
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Misguided Regulations Threaten Automated Vehicle Innovation
Earlier this week, I appeared on a Cato Institute panel titled, "The End of Transit and the Beginning of the New Mobility: Policy Implications…
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The Tesla File: Government Favors Cut Both Ways
Electric vehicle manufacturer Tesla Motors has become a fascinating case study in economic freedom in recent years, although the narrative is a complicated one. The…