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Stimulus Follies
President-elect Obama wants a massive stimulus package of $700 billion or more. But previous attempts to artificially stimulate the economy have generally been failures. …
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Health Care Bureaucrats Take Care of Themselves
For years observers have noted the phenomenon of public school teachers sending their kids to private schools–especially in cities with the worst and deadliest public…
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You’ve Just Got to Love Britain’s Health Care Bureaucrats
First the National (Un)Health Service said if you wanted a drug that it wasn’t willing to provide–too expensive for the purpose of saving your miserable…
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DeLorean disproves domsayers in debate over auto bankruptcies
In the debate about bailing out the Big 3 automakers, it is said that we just can’t allow a bankruptcy. Despite the fact that Chapter…
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Imagine that: More Research Suggests that More Research is Needed
It seems that methane hasn’t been behaving as the climate models suggest. Hmmm … another problem for the alarmists who believe that the world is…
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Wasteful “Stimulus” Packages by Government Don’t Work
Only in Washington could politicians and bureaucrats dump more than $2 trillion into bail-out money holes and then claim that the federal government needs to…
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Filling the Federal Money Hole
The Onion explains Washington, D.C. to those Americans who still have a naive civics class view of government. Why is it important to continue filling…
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Holiday foods and natural carcinogens
I always enjoy the Thanksgiving Holiday Dinner Menu from the American Council on Science and Health. It lists the natural carcinogens…
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Credit Spiral
So, say you've had a good relationship with a credit card company and been paying off substantially more than minimum payment over recent months. You've…
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Will Obama go after farm bill pork?
Cutting some of the pork in the 2008 farm bill may be on President-elect Obama's plate. In his press conference November 25 to…
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Load Up the B-52s with Dollars!
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Barack Obama Wants to Cut the Budget
Like, oh, maybe 40 of the presidents before him, Barack Obama says that he wants to cut out wasteful programs. At least George W. Bush,…
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World Toilet Day Passed Me By
I was traveling last week and missed World Toilet Day. You didn't notice it either? Too bad. The toilet is a humble creation, one that…
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LibertyWeek 18: The LOST Episode
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Legal High-Seas Hostage Taking?
Ratification of the Law of the Sea Treaty (LOST) would mean a loss of sovereignty and burdensome extraterritorial regulation of U.S. extractive industries. In…
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Holder for Attorney General: Bad, But It Could Be Much Worse
President-elect Obama is poised to appoint Eric Holder as the next attorney general. I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, Holder…
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Slowdown may affect green investment, says NYT
An article today in the New York Times notes that the worldwide economic slowdown may hold up investments in clean energy projects to…
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IHT profiles Václav Klaus
The International Herald Tribune takes a look at the in-coming president of the European Union, Václav Klaus, the president of the Czech…
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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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Bailout Turning All Banks into Freddie/Fannie
Freddie Mac & Fannie Mae were the catalyst for our current financial crisis. By buying up risky sub-prime mortgages, Freddie & Fannie encouraged banks…
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EFCA’s Unambiguous Language
A recent Washington Times editorial rightly calls the bluff on organized labor’s dubious claim that millions of American workers would eagerly join unions if…
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Socialize Medicine, Kill Cancer Patients
Any American who travels to Europe as I just did is likely to get hit with the argument that the United States is inhumane because…
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Fitzgerald v. Barnstable School Committee: School Board Virtually Concedes Vast New Liability
There's an interesting case pending in the Supreme Court, Fitzgerald v. Barnstable School Committee, that could make Title IX irrelevant in many cases, by creating…
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FT says “nay” to Hillary choice for State
As pundits bet that Sen. Hillary Clinton is a done deal for Secretary of State, today’s editorial in the Financial Times calls it a…
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Geithner choice is ‘more of the same’ — was Paulson’s bailout cohort
If news accounts are true, and Presidet-Elect Barack Obama has indeed decided on Timothy F. Geithner to be his Treasury Secretary nominee, it represents a…
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Student Eye Opener
Cheers to Dewey Crowley for his eye-opening article in the Bowdoin College paper The Bowdoin Orient. His piece on bottled water should be…
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Free Speech Free Zone
Ithaca: Where the 1960s Never Ended. Ithaca, New York, home to my noble alma mater, has long been considered a place where…
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America’s Other Auto Industry, the Successful One
CNN has a great story about the successful auto companies in America, namely those that aren’t named “GM,” “Chrysler,” or “Ford.” Turns out, folks…
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Happy Anniversary, Big Tobacco
In the 1990s, state attorneys general launched massive, unprecedented lawsuits against major tobacco companies, claiming the companies owed the states for the past costs of…
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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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More on Waxman and Tech
As Cord mentioned earlier, Henry Waxman has been named incoming Chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, of which the Subcommittee on Telecommunications…
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Too Bad Daschle Isn’t at SEC — Backed Sarbanes-Oxley Relief
President-Elect Barack Obama just nominated former Senate Democratic Leader Tom to be his Secretary of Health and Human Services. Much is being written about Daschle…
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Chairman Waxman on USF & Net Neutrality
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Daschle: Good, Wrong, and Terrible
President-elect Obama has named Tom Daschle to head the Department of Health and Human Services. By some measures the largest department in the government,…
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Celebrate Coal (or, How I Just Tripled My Carbon Footprint)
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Is Beer Next?
In my prior post on bottled water bans on campus I asked: If greens can get water banned, what next? Students over 21…
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John Berlau on the Auto Bailout
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Academic Nanny State
Both universities and elementary schools are going after bottled water, as if that were the greatest threat facing students today! At the grade and…
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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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The Big Tobacco Deal’s 10th Anniversary
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LibertyWeek 17: One New Cabinet – Some Assembly Required
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LibertyWeek 17: One New Cabinet, Some Assembly Required
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University of Socialism to be Founded by Iran, Venezuela
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Obey GE
This is “Green Week,” NBC's annual effort to show you how to “green your routine.” It sounds innocuous enough, but “Green Week” is actually part…
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From Each According to his Profitability…
That seems to be the motto of Illinois, at least of those legislators who decided to tax casinos in order to prop up…
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Hillary at State — not good for trade
Controversy continues over the strong possibility of President-elect Barack Obama naming Sen. Hillary Clinton as the new Secretary of State. Politico today notes…
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The Auto Industry Has a Rich History of Failure
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GM Fiction & Scare Tactics
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Pure Hype about Bottled Water
The company producing Pur Filters is touting the fact that its filters can remove trace pharmaceuticals and even some (but they don’t guarantee it…
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The Government Money Hole
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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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Are We Socialists Yet?
The term socialist got tossed around a lot in the recent presidential campaign. But Robert Higgs of the Independent Institute says we’re already there. And…
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Brits Say Care More Expensive, Lower Quality than in Estonia
Ah, socialized medicine. Everyone is guaranteed care, right? And the government saves so much money that is wasted in America. Well, so much for the…
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President Bush — In defense of free markets and capitalism
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Were Lada factories this bad?
As the Senate prepares to debate the proposed $25 billion bailout bill for the Big Three Detroit automakers, it’s worth pointing out — as…
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Championing civil liberties — mostly
I’ve been a closet admirer of Senator Russell Feingold (D-WI) since he singlehandedly opposed the Patriot Act in the Senate. According to…
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Will the G20 Only Make Matters Worse?
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How Not to Solve a Crisis
…is the title of a useful contribution to the discussion from the International Policy Network in London and the Lion Rock Institute in Hong…
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Bureaucrash’s Pete Eyre in the DC Examiner
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Interesting headline
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VIDEO: Understanding the Financial Crisis
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Tories Retreat From Green Taxes
A major part in the rebranding of the British Conservative Party following a traumatic election defeat (sound familiar?) in 2005 was a turn to environmentalism.
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Battling Bail-Outs: A Little Backbone at Last?
After having voted for or passively accepted some $2 trillion in federal bail-outs, a few congressmen seem be growing uneasy with the lengthening soup-line. The…
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Ugly Vegetables and Fruit Again to be Sold in Europe!
Amazing. The European Union actually responded to criticism. About one-fifth of European produce has to be dumped because it doesn’t mean minimum EU standards, which…
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BusinessWeek Cites CEI on the Auto Industry Bailout
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More on Deflation
Good stuff from Joseph Lawler at the American Spectator, defending Robert Samuelson from, err, Robert Samuelson. He concludes: No reasonable observer of government…
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Lame Duck Flies in the Face of Americans’ Rights
The Bush administration is arguable one of the most wildly unprincipled in the history of the white house. They have acquiesced to or…
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License to Print Money. Literally.
The threat of deflation is so big in the UK, where they have found their version of the financial crisis worsened by the weakness of…
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No to Union Auto Bailouts and Voter Fraud
USA Today has an editorial opposing a massive proposed bailout for the automakers. The automakers would be leaner, more efficient, and more able to…
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Bail-Outs for Bonuses
You have to love the timing. The federal government gives Wall Street billions of dollars just in time for Wall Street to pay out billions…
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The More Government Loot Available, the More Looters Who Come to Washington
There are endless attempts to "clean up" politics--limiting campaign contributions, restricting lobbyists, and the like--as if the problem is a few self-interested individuals who want…
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Detroit Broke City
In his CBSNews.com column today, CNet's Declan McCullagh makes a good case against bailing out the Detroit Big Three. As he rightly points out,…
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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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Meet the real boss…
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EU Lifts “Ugly” Fruit and Vegetable Ban
The European Union has rescinded its ban on some “ugly” fruits and vegetables. AP reports: The European Union bid adieu Wednesday to rules that…
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Are liberal groups’ lobbyists banned from transition team?
On Tuesday, John Podesta, the head of President-elect Obama's transition team, said that lobbyists will be banned from working on the transition team…
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Even the liberal media support the Colombia trade deal
Today's Washington Post and Los Angeles Times both endorse passage of the U.S- Colombia free trade agreement, which many Democratic politicians, pressured by…
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OpenMarket.org Cited in CFO Magazine
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Last-minute push for Colombia trade pact
Major newspapers around the country including the Washington Post, the LA Times, and the Wall Street Journal are urging President-elect Barack…
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LibertyWeek 16: Electoral Hangover
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Wacky Obama Adviser Slated for Attorney General?
Earlier, I wrote about Obama's possible appointment of Charles Ogletree, who believes that America is a racist country that is to blame for 9/11,…
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In mortgage modifications, property rights of investors must be respected
Today, in addition to Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson's expected announcement of a major mortgage modification plan through the $700 billion TARP, Barney Frank's House Financial…
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The Economic Change We Need
I have an article on that very subject over at NRO today. Check it out!…
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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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Gypsy Hot Dog Vendors on the Horizon?
In Toronto, city officials have been waging a slow campaign against street hot dog vendors, many of whom, notes National Post columnist Kelly McParland,…
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Explaining the Election to Brits
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“Cap-and-cash-back” — A new Ponzi scheme?
Came across this in-depth analysis on Reuters for President-elect Obama to consider. It’s a new twist on the cap and trade scheme for…
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Defending the free market — “Yes, we can!”
Matt Welch’s Reason piece “Back to the Barricades —Free Markets are Under Attack Again” is a good read, if not…
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Reality hits Gore’s World
Juxtapose this from the Washington Post-- Gore envisions a nationwide "Smart Grid"--a massive underground network of electrical power lines that would be powered by…
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Comments from the real world
Here's some insightful comments from Thomas Haynes, a friend of CEI's: There's a very interesting debate that could be conducted on who's…
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Catchy Climate Newspeak
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Gore Rebuffs Press, Admits Failure, Still Adored
Paul Krugman once accused me of Gore Derangement Syndrome. In response, I suggested that he and others suffered from Gore Blindness Syndrome. Here’s another…
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A Harvard Economist’s Advice for the President-Elect
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Obama the Political Entrepreneur
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Berlau & Smith on Dealing with the Threat of Global Recession
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Bush ignores his own mandate.
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The Dingell-Waxman fight and climate change
At the same time President-Elect Barack Obama is supporting a bailout of the auto industry, House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman John…
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The Regulatory President
Why bother getting elected officials' votes when you can accomplish your purposes by presidential fiat? An article in yesterday's Washington Post reveals just what…
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Bailout on Wheels Rolls Down Slippery Slope
Ah, that slippery slope. All of a sudden, Nancy Pelosi has come to the conclusion that ensuring union retirees receive large amounts of taxpayers’ money…
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Bailouts Mushroom, Impoverishing Taxpayers
The federal government is expanding its bailout of AIG to $150 billion, well above its originally-predicted cost, and planning to bail out…