The Open Market Blog

• By: Jody Clarke
• 02/13/2007

CEI President Fred Smith is testifying before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee this morning on the Climate Action Partnership and the effects…

• By: Ivan Osorio
• 02/12/2007

This week’s new episode of  the Fox animated series”King of the Hill” centers around a great — and hilarious — illustration of the public…

• By: Richard Morrison
• 02/12/2007

Ivan has an excellent take on the unintended consequences of raising the minimum wage (below), so I’ll limit myself to highlighting a recent…

• By: Richard Morrison
• 02/12/2007

Open Market readers may have seen this already, but I wanted to point out one interesting development from last night’s Grammy awards. The award for…

• By: Ivan Osorio
• 02/12/2007

It shouldn’t be surprising. In Arizona, the state’s minimum wage hike, which went into effect last month, has led to teenagers being laid off,…

• By: Christopher C. Horner
• 02/12/2007

So, as I ponder the massive pressure group assault against passenger aviation and comparative per capita emissions (the city of Aspen having wonderfully shown us…

• By: Marlo Lewis, Jr.
• 02/12/2007

At a Capitol Hill policy briefing on February 9 for congressional staff and media, sponsored by the Competitive Enterprise Institute, Dennis Avery of the Hudson…

• By: Richard Morrison
• 02/11/2007

In the least surprising headline of the weekend, Drudge alerts us: “Socialist candidate in France unveils far-left platform…” Je suis l’état…

• By: Ivan Osorio
• 02/11/2007

In the weekend Wall Street Journal, Stephen Moore, quotes former CEI Warren Brookes Fellow Tim Carney from his book The Big Ripoff: How…

• By: Ivan Osorio
• 02/09/2007

My good friend and fellow radical for capitalism — and former Warren Brookes Fellow — Brian Doherty (now with Reason magazine) will discuss his new…

• By: Hans Bader
• 02/08/2007

On February 6, a panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco reinstated a multi-billion dollar class action lawsuit against Wal-Mart in…

• By: Sam Kazman
• 02/08/2007

The growth in air travel is one of the culprits behind the alleged global warming crisis. (See, for example, Cheap Air Travel Adding to…

• By: Richard Morrison
• 02/07/2007

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a woman so passionate about the cause of global warming that she created a new select committee dedicated exclusively to…

• By: Ivan Osorio
• 02/07/2007

Deroy Murdock writes about ethanol in National Review Online today, specifically on the effect on food prices, as the Mexican tortilla crisis illustrates: Existing…

• By: Jody Clarke
• 02/07/2007

Pollster Michael McKenna just released his latest survey on what Americans think about enviro issues, particularly global warming. Some interesting findings: 1.  Environmental issues as…

• By: Jody Clarke
• 02/07/2007

Robert Samuelson has a great column on the global warming issue in today’s Washington Post. He hits the nail on the head when it…

• By: Clyde Wayne Crews
• 02/07/2007

While the big telecom firms and some free speech and civil liberties groups may clash over issues like net neutrality, they agree over the fact…

• By: Ivan Osorio
• 02/07/2007

After much anticipation, Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.), chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee, has introduced the Orwellian-monikered Employee Free Choice Act (H.R.800).

• By: Gregory Conko
• 02/06/2007

Sure, everyone’s heard that a US Department of Agriculture regulation governs the size of the holes in Swiss Cheese. But, did…

• By: Iain Murray
• 02/06/2007

An avian flu outbreak in the UK has had that country’s media in a predictable panic.  The Times’ Mick Hume has a rational response:…

• By: Iain Murray
• 02/06/2007

If you live in Texas, you’ll have heard about how the coal-based energy utilities want to build a lot of new power plants to meet…

• By: John Berlau
• 02/06/2007

Former New York mayor Rudolph Giuliani has all but declared himself a Republican presidential candidate by filing an official “statement of candidacy” and saying he is “in…

• By: Iain Murray
• 02/06/2007

Here is a graphical representation of EU energy policy: Translation: Lisbon – the EU require energy to keep its industries running; it has to…

• By: Iain Murray
• 02/06/2007

At the cost of 10,000 jobs, but that’s a small price to pay for a slight reduction in the rate of global warming.  I’m…

• By: Fran Smith
• 02/06/2007

  For those who don’t think trade is in trouble and is being used as the big stick to solve all global problems, the World…

• By: Iain Murray
• 02/05/2007

Opinion research guru Bob Lichter has a good dissection of the problem with the Union of Concerned Scientists study on federal interference with science that…

• By: Iain Murray
• 02/05/2007

Greg Mankiw notes that President Bush is considering some form of road pricing to reduce congestion. London has a congestion charge which deeply divides…

• By: Fran Smith
• 02/05/2007

Today’s New York Times has a funny op-ed (both funny ha ha and funny odd for the NYT). It’s a spoof by Rick…

• By: Ivan Osorio
• 02/04/2007

Also worth reading in the weekend Journal is an article by Philip Stott, professor emeritus of biogeography at the University of London, in which…

• By: Ivan Osorio
• 02/03/2007

Today’s Journal also features an op ed by Coca-Cola CEO E. Neville Isdell, on his company “corporate social responsibility” policies. He cites some specific examples…

• By: Ivan Osorio
• 02/03/2007

Today’s weekend Wall Street Journal features a favorable editorial on CEI’s national survey of orthopedic surgeons, which was released earlier this week. As…

• By: Myron Ebell
• 02/02/2007

Representative Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), Chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, this week launched an investigation of the several charges that the…

• By: Marlo Lewis, Jr.
• 02/02/2007

Today, in a press release timed to coincide with publication of the Summary for Policymakers of Climate Change 2007, also known as the…

• By: Iain Murray
• 02/02/2007

Well, it turns out that the report on which I based my previous two posts on IPCC temperature projections was hideously garbled. The reporter had…

• By: Jody Clarke
• 02/02/2007

Last night CEI’s John Berlau was a guest on Libertarian Politics Live to talk about his new book, Eco-Freaks. The entertaining interview starts about 7:30…

• By: Angela Logomasini
• 02/02/2007

This is depressing. Wal-Mart has decided to take the politically correct road—working to eliminate its so-called “carbon footprint.” What on earth does that mean? Are…

• By: Ivan Osorio
• 02/01/2007

Pubs in Ireland, pubs in Great Britain, bard in New York — in recent years, long-established smoking traditions have been snuffed out in the unlikeliest places — and the country whose…

• By: Fran Smith
• 02/01/2007

Last night “Larry King Live” hosted a debate on global warming featuring a large cast of characters that included Senators Barbara Boxer (D-CA) and…

• By: Iain Murray
• 02/01/2007

For those who have been tempted by the attractions of Pigovian taxes, Russell Roberts provides a cogent explanation of why Coasean theory suggests that…

• By: Marlo Lewis, Jr.
• 02/01/2007

Not content to report the weather, the Weather Channel’s Heidi Cullen has become a global warming pundit, recently appearing on Larry King Live, where…

• By: Iain Murray
• 02/01/2007

I wrote earlier about how the IPCC has quietly changed its definition of its projected temperature rises to include all pre-industrial warming, not just…

• By: Fran Smith
• 02/01/2007

Nominations closed today for the Nobel Peace Prize, which is supposed to be awarded to a person who “shall have conferred the greatest benefit…

• By: Richard Morrison
• 02/01/2007

Unfortunately for members of the lower house of Maine’s legislature, some of their colleagues have decided that they all have less self-control than most 14-year…

• By: Richard Morrison
• 02/01/2007

Everyone’s favorite “walrus-moustachioed” anti-globalist has set his eyes on high public office. French sheep-farmer/McDonald’s hater Jose Bove has declared he’ll be running for President…

• By: Iain Murray
• 01/31/2007

A new report from the Union of Concerned Scientists finds “unacceptably large numbers of federal climate scientists [have] personally experienced instances of [political] interference…

• By: John Berlau
• 01/31/2007

By proclamation of several cities and states, Monday was Milton Friedman Day. CEI was one of many free-market groups that joined in this…

• By: Fran Smith
• 01/31/2007

This morning Secretary of Agriculture Mike Johanns presented the Administration proposals for the new Farm Bill. Here’s his press…

• By: Iain Murray
• 01/31/2007

Looks rather large: Perhaps he should be called Bigfoot?       …

• By: Richard Morrison
• 01/31/2007

In today’s Politico, Amy Doolittle has a light-hearted story on the tours that Members of Congress occasionally give for constituents around the Capitol. A…

• By: Fran Smith
• 01/31/2007

At a House Ways and Means Committee hearing yesterday, chaired by Representative Charles Rangel, witnesses said that the effects of trade and globalization on…

• By: Fran Smith
• 01/31/2007

Today President Bush in New York City delivered his second speech on the economy. As expected, in the speech he called…

• By: Jody Clarke
• 01/31/2007

Grist magazine just published an interesting Q&A with Frank Luntz, famed GOP pollster and author of the new book, Words That Work: It’s Not What You Say,…

• By: Hans Bader
• 01/31/2007

In a Washington Post column, George Will questions the constitutionality of a recent vote in the House of Representatives to give delegates from Washington, D.C. and territories,…

• By: Angela Logomasini
• 01/31/2007

California usually leads the nation in the formulation of bad public policy—which policymakers in other states often see as a model. But this week, they…

• By: Richard Morrison
• 01/31/2007

The state of California is poised to claim yet another feather for its environmental-pioneer cap with a proposed ban on the sale of incandescent…

• By: Richard Morrison
• 01/31/2007

American Public Radio’s Marketplace Morning Report has yet another report today on how U.S. demand for corn to make into ethanol is causing a…

• By: Iain Murray
• 01/31/2007

So the IPCC report that’s going to be released on Friday isn’t gloomy enough, eh?  It will find less projected temperature rise and less…

• By: Fran Smith
• 01/30/2007

President Bush in Peoria, IL today gave one of two speeches scheduled on the economy (the next will be in NYC tomorrow). He addressed…

• By: Iain Murray
• 01/30/2007

Are you an aspiring journalist for Reuters? If so, you need to know how to “bury the lede,” which is insider journo-talk for ignoring the…

• By: Iain Murray
• 01/30/2007

There is a respectable, if (we feel) incorrect, case to be made for the idea of raising taxes to lower demand for an activity or…

• By: Marlo Lewis, Jr.
• 01/30/2007

I post this article, despite its breathless credulity about the imminence of a world beyond petroleum, because it reveals how Washington works. Bush and the…

• By: Ivan Osorio
• 01/29/2007

Over at Townhall.com, columnist Mary Katharine Ham comments on the premiere of the documentary Mine Your Own Business (the screening was co-sponsored…

• By: Myron Ebell
• 01/29/2007

Some global warming alarmists, including a few scientists, are complaining about the forthcoming Fourth Assessment Report by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate…

• By: Richard Morrison
• 01/29/2007

Cuban exiles have long been looking forward to the day when their homeland is no longer goverend by aging revolutionary Fidel Castro, but now the…

• By: Ivan Osorio
• 01/26/2007

The management of risk has long been an area of interest at CEI, so we will be watching with interest the development of a…

• By: Fran Smith
• 01/26/2007

“If the country is going to meet the ethanol industry’s corn needs, we’re going to have to cut back on feed, cut back on food.”…

• By: Marlo Lewis, Jr.
• 01/26/2007

From a free-market perspective, the only redeeming social value in the Bush Administration’s biofuels initiative is the proposal to lift the 54-cents-a-gallon tariff and 2.5…

• By: Marlo Lewis, Jr.
• 01/26/2007

I recently debated a Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) activist on global warming and the future of the U.S. electricity supply. The activist made the…

• By: Iain Murray
• 01/26/2007

We often hear that global warming is a global problem that requires a global solution. The developing world, on the other hand, wants none…

• By: Iain Murray
• 01/26/2007

Senator Inhofe makes some very pertinent and often ignored points in his Human Events article today: The fact of the matter is that the…

• By: Iain Murray
• 01/26/2007

Some revealing quotations in an excellent BBC Radio investigation into the Stern Report: The IPCC is not going to talk about tipping points; it’s…

• By: Fran Smith
• 01/25/2007

According to news reports, President George Bush will ask Congress to renew fast-track trade authority — perhaps as soon as next week. The Trade…

• By: Fran Smith
• 01/25/2007

There’s even more talk now about alternative energy sources — spurred by President Bush’s State of the Union address where he said: We must…

• By: Fran Smith
• 01/25/2007

“Tricks and traps.” Those were the terms used to describe credit card industry practices to snare vulnerable and lower-income people into a vicious cycle of…

• By: Richard Morrison
• 01/25/2007

While we at Open Market know that there's nothing inherently bad about fast food, we're still willing to believe that an outragous stunt like…

• By: Cord Blomquist
• 01/25/2007

At the DC premiere of Mine Your Own Business yesterday evening, I spoke with protesters who insisted that the 96% of the citizens of…

• By: Richard Morrison
• 01/25/2007

The PETA animal cruelty trial is getting started in North Carolina this week, and the Center for Consumer Freedom is on the case:…

• By: Richard Morrison
• 01/24/2007

We at Open Market HQ just received an email from John Coequyt at Greenpeace, responding to the President’s State of the Union remarks about global…

• By: Marlo Lewis, Jr.
• 01/24/2007

In this post, I comment on President Bush's remarks, in the State of the Union address, about energy. Although a few nods to the old…

• By: Iain Murray
• 01/24/2007

Climate Change seen fanning conflict and terrorism runs the Reuters headline. The premise is that people will fight over resources made scarcer by global…

• By: Iain Murray
• 01/24/2007

June Arunga and Billy Kahora of the International Policy Network have a new paper out about the cellphone revolution in Kenya. The tale is…

• By: Iain Murray
• 01/24/2007

In a nice display of bipartisanship, Iain Dale has a post quoting Britain’s former Labour party Home Secretary David Blunkett approvingly. Blunkett says: “…The…

• By: Iain Murray
• 01/24/2007

The President’s proposals for energy in the State of the Union address are wrong-headed. He proposes to put the boon in boondoggle by increasing the…

• By: Ivan Osorio
• 01/23/2007

That the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) is a far-left political activist group is hardly news. Yet the point needs to be made repeatedly, given…

• By: Cord Blomquist
• 01/23/2007

The Progressive Majority today reports that Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth has been banned by the The Federal Way School District in Washington…

• By: John Berlau
• 01/23/2007

Consumer Reports’ retraction last week of its flawed testing of infant car seats puts in question the magazine’s credibility as an unbiased product evaluator.

• By: Christopher C. Horner
• 01/22/2007

It is quite typical for pressure lobbies to claim that their issue has been provided a mandate by any given election outcome even where, as…

• By: Iain Murray
• 01/22/2007

With oil prices currently at a 19-month low and heading back to $50 a barrel, this is an excellent discussion of the causes…

• By: Gregory Conko
• 01/22/2007

Today’s Wall Street Journal has a feature (link here for subscribers) article discussing DuPont’s renewed efforts on crop biotechnology. DuPont “announced…

• By: Iain Murray
• 01/19/2007

Al Gore’s movie increases Informational and Reputational Cascades based on Availability bias… Hey, don’t complain to me, but to Oxford University’s Future of Humanity…

• By: Iain Murray
• 01/19/2007

The scandal of the US ethanol program – a mandate, a subsidy and a trade barrier all rolled into one – is now having dire…

• By: Ivan Osorio
• 01/19/2007

It had to happen. Jokes about Starbucks’ ubiquity have become, well, ubiquitous, much like the coffee chain itself — so it was only a…

• By: Gregory Conko
• 01/19/2007

Last year, global biotech crop acreage increased more than 13 percent from 2005. By year-end 2006, 10.3 million farmers in 22 countries were growing biotech…

• By: Clyde Wayne Crews
• 01/19/2007

Jack Shafer ponders the case for abolishing FCC in Slate’s blog.  He wonders what things would be like if the philosophy of FCC’s control…

• By: Fran Smith
• 01/18/2007

The title says it all: The Improving State of the World: Why We’re Living Longer, Healthier, More Comfortable Lives on a Cleaner Planet. Read…

• By: Fred L. Smith, Jr.
• 01/18/2007

The decision by the Board of British Petroleum to accelerate the switch from the current chairman, John Brown (Lord Brown), is indicative of a growing…

• By: Marlo Lewis, Jr.
• 01/18/2007

Several automakers and dealers are suing (warning: big PDF file) California to overturn the “landmark” (pro-Kyoto) legislation requiring new vehicles sold in the state…

• By: Fran Smith
• 01/17/2007

At a press roundtable today, Deputy U.S. Trade Representative John Veroneau said that the U.S. would be renegotiating three completed Latin American free trade…