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Why “doing nothing” is something really big: Stopping the Anti-Stimulus
Robert Higgs, he of the famous “ratchet effect” theory of government growth (up but never down in answer to a crisis), has…
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Should the Anti-Stimulus Package be tan or beige?
President Obama more than once last week called it “inexcusable” for Congress to get “bogged down in distraction, delay or politics as usual” over the…
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Obama’s defense of weatherizing homes as “stimulus” with Anderson Cooper on CNN is priceless
The President actually said: –it puts people to work –it saves families on their energy bill –it reduces dependence on foreign oil.
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English Arch-Druid wants to limit you to two children
Two children should be limit, says this British green “guru.” What makes him a guru? Saying outrageous things that others should do, but not…
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Ranking geo-engineering strategies, or “climate hacks” to cool Earth down
Numerous approaches have been described to cool what some insist is a warming world (though not over the past few years). In any event, not…
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Birth of the Digital New Deal: An Inventory of High-Tech Pork-Barrel Spending
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TV Transition follies: Plaguing consumers then and now.
Looks like the “digital television transition” to abandon analog and make high-definition broadcasts the standard is not going to happen as planned, but is…
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Avoiding Political Erectile Dysfunction
According to the Congressional Budget Office, “Bailout to Nowhere” money for the proposed new infrastructure stimulus won’t be spent within the next two years–far too…
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How Do Regulations Stack Up as a Small Firm Grows?
Tomorrow, electric utilities and green groups team up at the National Press Club to ask for billions of new spending on what they term energy…
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The Cloverfield Monster of the Internet
Earlier posts today dealt with the hoo-ha over Net Neutrality. By coincidence, an anonymous colleague put the following old 1996 quote by Sen. James Exon…
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“Net Neutrality,” RIP? Well, One Can Hope
Net neutrality has long been a threat to Internet users. Despite the rhetoric and appeals to “openness,” it was always an anti-consumer enterprise, irretrievably and…
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Jay Leno Riffs on the Bailout
A new viral email, claiming to be jokes written by Mr. Leno, adds a bit of humor to the financial crisis. As business and government…
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Abarackadabra! A 21st Century “New Steal”
JOBS, ROADS, BRIDGES, SCHOOLS, BROADBAND, ELECTRONIC MEDICAL RECORDS, ENERGY…blares the Drudge Report. It’s President-elect Obama’s weekend plan—not to produce, but to transfer yet…
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Wealth-Creating Alternatives to Pelosi’s Destructive Infrastructure “Stimulus”
Well, who can possibly be surprised by the revelation that “The federal government's economic stimulus package will include investment in broadband Internet infrastructure and…
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This week’s Least Objectionable Bureaucrat
My occasional “Least Objectionable Legislator Award” (no prize) takes a detour today and goes to a bureaucrat instead. So the LOL Award (pun intended, I…
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Stimulus as if Capitalism Mattered
Those dispensing the "Bailout to Nowhere" proceeds seemingly answer to no one (here's one article behaving as if this were unexpected and surprising). Today…
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America the Ungovernable
With respect to the ongoing series of bailouts, my colleague Iain Murray pointed out that some sensible British commentators note that one of the ways…
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Hollywood Rep. to Wield Power Over Copyright Law
My colleague Cord asked me about proposing a tech agenda for Congress given the ascendancy today of Henry Waxman to Energy and Commerce Chairmanship;…
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The Least Objectionable Legislator Award
My occasional "Least Objectionable Legislator Award" today goes to Michele Bachmann (R-MN) for a solid statement at today's hearings on the Bailout on Wheels,…
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To Blame Laissez-Faire, Anti-Market Media Must Do Better
Like many of us at CEI, it looks like my former boss Phil Gramm isn't interested in helping anybody pretend that today's financial crisis was…
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To President-Elect Obamaâ€â€Freeze Gov’t Regulations this Winter
Yesterday I called for a major “Deregulatory Stimulus.” Alongside---with financial, health care, energy efficiency, “green job” and other mandates likely in an Obama Administration---the…
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Reject political stimulus, embrace “Deregulatory Stimulus.” And do it FAST.
Facing an economic downturn and an election, politicians of both parties sought to stimulate consumer demand—and some business investment—through political action. They promised that if…
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An Agenda for the Monday a.m. Obama and Bush Meeting
Since the President and President-elect start spending quality Oval Office time together today, and since the incoming admistration's advisors can't settle on either pushing…
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Redistributing Wealth, Simplified
It’s not fully clear what president-elect Obama plans to do on tax policy other than “redistribute” and make those families making over $250,000 pay their…
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Beware of Coercive Utopians and Quack Capitalists
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Civics According to “Mad Men”
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If only you could take it all with you
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No “Technology Czar,” Please
Like everybody else in town, we're pondering the implications of the transition to the Obama Administration for various policy areas here at CEI. On the…
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The Road to Serfdom–Illustrated!
Thanks to CEI colleague Gary Howard for sending along The Road to Serfdom in Cartoons; I’d forgotten all about this capsule version of Hayek’s…
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Let’s hear it for Death, Poverty and Ignorance
Grist seems gleeful that New Scientist thinks “our economy is killing the Earth.” According to New Scientist: Consumption of resources is rising…
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Unstoppable SuperState Stimulus, Part 2
Today’s Wall Street Journal highlighted a new $300 political stimulus campaign. Keynesian demand-management has re-conquered economics as surely as Fall 2008 has cemented…
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Stopping “Badvertising” at Yahoogle.
As an indicator of how perverse wealth-draining antitrust policy has become, have a look at the “concessions” being squeezed out of Google and Yahoo…
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Maybe she could drive the Flintstones’ car.
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From the “So let’s regulate the private sector instead” department.
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The environment as if people mattered (cont.)
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“Every obese adult started eating as a child.”
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Don’t use electricity…or candles
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Milton Friedman on Greed
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A better balance between life and death
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In support of school choice–with guilt
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Wonder if a battery “hack” like this would work on my Honda Hybrid Civic Hybrid?
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When we say “infrastructure socialism,” we mean it.
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To show “how desperately the world needs prime movers and how viciously it treats them”
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Here’s something I’ll keep off the gift list
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Now THIS is global warming!
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Hughie Thomasson of The Outlaws dies
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I still can’t get these “freegans” off my mind.
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Left Brain, Right Brain 2.0
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Who killed TV “family hour”?
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