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Taking the heat and defending free enterprise
It’s about time that business groups started defending free enterprise, and the U. S. Chamber of Commerce is off to a good start – a…
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Madison on National Health Care Reform
Here is the letter I wrote that appeared in the Los Angeles Times in response to Erwin Chemerinsky’s article on the constitutionality of…
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Congressional Conference Committee Attempts to Turn Hate Crimes Law Into a Speech Code
Hate crimes are irrational, and what sets them off is often unpredictable. The hate-criminal whose sentence was upheld in Wisconsin v. Mitchell by a…
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More on Public Sector Unions
Slate blogger Mickey Kaus explains how public sector unions are driving state and local governments to the brink of bankruptcy (via Nick Gillespie at…
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Regulation of the Day 60: Hybrid Car Noise
One advantage of hybrid cars is that they are quiet. Too quiet, some would say. Blind pedestrians may not hear a hybrid coming around the…
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Silencing Criticism through Libel Law
The physicist turned science journalist Simon Singh has been sued in a UK court and, this past summer, found liable for libel for an April…
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Fighting Eminent Domain Abuse
Popular outrage over eminent domain abuse may have waned a bit since the Supreme Court’s poorly-reasoned Kelo ruling in 2005, but economic development takings remain…
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LibertyWeek 64: Regulators Gone Wild!
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Senate Finance Passes Health Reform Bill
Earlier today, Senator Olympia Snowe (R-Me.) announced that she would vote in favor of the health care reform bill authored by Senate Finance Committee Chairman…
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Senators Lindsey Graham and John Kerry: Yes We Can (Raise Your Energy Prices and Send Jobs Abroad)
Senators John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC) published a curious op-ed in Sunday’s New York Times titled, “Yes We Can (Pass Climate Legislation).” …
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The Wages of Government Unions
The Economist‘s current Lexington column highlights the growing public resentment at the widening disparity between compensation and job security in the private and public…
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Three Cheers for the Nobel Economic Prizes!
After the weird “future” award to President Obama of the Nobel Peace Prize, another Nobel committee has made a brilliant choice – awarding the Economics…
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2002 Economics Nobel Prize Winner Vernon Smith on 2009 Winner Elinor Ostrom
In honor of the awarding of the Nobel Prize in Economics to Elinor Ostrom and Oliver Williamson, it’s worth recalling a mention of Ostrom’s…
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Regulation of the Day 59: Pharmacy Interns in Colorado
It is illegal to intern for a pharmacist in Colorado without a license.
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Markets vs. Special Interests
"It is precisely the fact that the market does not respect vested interests that makes the people concerned ask for government interference."…
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This Year’s Economics Nobel Winners
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Windmills for spite
Clean Energy Splits France: It's Carbon vs. Countryside in Environmental Battle Over Plan for Windmills Near Coastal Shrine." So reads the Washington Post headline. But…
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No “Weekly Flu Watch” this week
See instead my article “Swine Flu: the Real Threat Is Panic,” from the New York Post .
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How did the President’s Council swine flu scenario measure up?
Sorta depends on who you ask. The read about the flu in the mainstream media, you would think men are going through the streets with…
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Mass v. EPA’s legacy of “absurd results”
Last week I posted several excerpts from EPA’s “Tailoring Rule,” which confirm that the Supreme Court, in Massachusetts v. EPA (April 2007), set the stage for…
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Nobel Prize “Gift” Double Standard
Drug companies are apparently forbidden from offering freebies to doctors in certain liberal states like Massachusetts and Vermont, under the theory that doctors’ loyalty…
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Best article on Obama’s Nobel — Wash Post’s Cohen
Here’s Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen’s take this morning on the Nobel Prize announcement. It’s too good to excerpt: In a stunning announcement,…
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Secretary Chu Crosses the Line; Should Resign
Yesterday, energy secretary Steven Chu told reporters at a solar energy conference in Washington, D.C. "it's wonderful" that Apple Inc., Exelon, Nike, PG&E, and…
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DOJ Investigates IBM’s Mainframe Business
The lawyers at the US Department of Justice must be getting bored around the office. This week, antitrust regulators launched an investigation of IBM‘s…
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President Obama Wins Nobel Peace Prize
President Obama is in a prime position to work wonders for the cause of peace. He can institute free trade in America. Trade is the…
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CEI Weekly: EPA Should Reopen Proceedings After Data Deletion Story
CEI weekly is a compilation of articles and blogs from CEI's staff. This week features CEI's petition to the EPA to reopen proceedings because of…
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Regulation of the Day 58: Banning Children from Playgrounds
A new regulation in Kensington, Maryland bans children over five years old from using a local playground between 9:00 am and 4:00 pm.
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New ObamaCare Version Claims Not to Increase Federal Deficit, But It Explodes State Deficits, and Relies on Mythical Savings and Unlikely Medicare Cuts
Democrats are cheering a Congressional Budget Office decision to “score” the Senate Finance Committee’s version of ObamaCare as not increasing the federal budget deficit. But…
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CBO report: new taxes will balance Baucus health care bill
Those pushing the Senate health care bill were ecstatic when the Congressional Budget Office reported that the bill “would result in a net…
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Precisely Backwards
Few things are more taxing than our elected officials’ economic illiteracy. How sad that visiting a wonderful country like ours may soon be one of…
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Obamacare’s Provisions Have Already Been Tried, and Failed, at the State Level
The major provisions of ObamaCare already have been tried. They've led to increased costs and reduced access to care" for people who once had private…
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Eminent Domain Abuse in New York (Upstate Edition)
The court found that the mall was not liable because the Syracuse Industrial Development Agency condemned the property through eminent domain, which stripped all rights…
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Regulation of the Day 57: Minimum Price Agreements
A new Maryland law makes it illegal for manufacturers to set a minimum retail price for their products in sales contracts. The law is meant…
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Supreme Court Confronts Free Speech, Animal Cruelty, Gun Rights, Violent Crime, and National Sovereignty Issues
The Supreme Court is back in session. Today, it is hearing a challenge to a federal law banning depictions of cruelty to animals…
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Now Crist Goes after Utilities
Not content with exposing Florida to financial catastrophe by taking on responsibility for insuring coastal properties, Florida Governor Charlie Crist (R) continues his assault…
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Corporate Human Rights?
Over at the Detroit News, Hans Bader and I explain why corporations have human rights despite not being human. The reason why? Transaction costs.
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Regulation of the Day 56: Kahlua in Ohio
Kahlua contains 20% alcohol in 49 states. But in Ohio, it is 21.5%. Weird, huh? Turns out regulations are the reason.
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World’s largest country reports first swine flu death
Six months into the swine flu outbreak China, with a population of over 1.3 billion or a fifth of the word’s population, has just…
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Net Neutrality and Rent-Seeking
Net neutrality proposals give companies the incentive to seek rents at each other’s expense when they could be benefitting from each other’s innovations instead.
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“Advanced” biofuels lag behind mandate
EISA mandates the sale of 100 million gallons of advanced biofuel in 2009 and 200 million gallons in 2010. But, Matt Carr of the Biotechnology…
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LibertyWeek 63: Suing the Government into Honesty
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Unemployment Rises to 26-Year High of 9.8%; Obama’s Policies Worsen Unemployment and Credit Crunch
Unemployment has risen to 9.8 percent, a 26-year high. That’s much higher than the Obama administration predicted unemployment would rise, if Congress had refused…
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Video Response to Will Ferrell MoveOn.org: People Are Saying Mean Things About Big Government!
Remember that Will Ferrell, celebrity-packed video on Obamacare last month? The one from MoveOn.org? One of those “we’re from Hollywood, and we’re here to…
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Weekly Flu Watch – What swine flu ISN’T doing this week
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CEI Weekly: CEI Battles Climate Change Policies
CEI weekly is a compilation of articles and blogs from CEI's staff. This week features CEI's response to disastrous climate change policies being pushed in…
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Stimulus Packages Don’t Work; Obama’s $800 Billion Stimulus Will Shrink the Economy
“Stimulus” packages that increase government spending don’t work, notes Harvard economist Robert J. Barro in the Wall Street Journal. The administration claimed that Obama’s…
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Supreme Court to Decide Whether Second Amendment Forbids State and Local Gun Bans
The Supreme Court has agreed to review a lower court ruling upholding Chicago’s handgun ban. In 2008, the Supreme Court, in a 5-to-4 vote,…
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EPA “Tailoring Rule” confirms Mass v. EPA set the stage for administrative quagmire and economic disaster
Attorney Peter Glaser, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, CEI and other free market groups warned that regulating GHG emissions from new motor vehicles would have…
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Why does recycled paper make such crappy toilet paper?
“I remember the importance of toilet paper while being shelled a few times, a couple of times while on the throne. I don’t understand why…
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Nike quits the Chamber. When will the sanctimony end?
Today’s Greenwire (subscription required) reports that Nike, the sports shoe king, is resigning its position on the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Board of Directors. Nike…