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Carney on Cash for Clunkers
Former CEI Warren Brookes Fellow Tim Carney, highlights the high cost of the Cash for Clunkers program, which I wrote about here…
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Today’s Unintentionally Funny Headline
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The return of Grand Theft Auto: Class Action
With a million dollars of attorneys’ fees at stake, the trial lawyers in the infamous Grand Theft Auto case appealed the lower…
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Regulation of the Day 26: Fortune Telling in Maryland
You need a license to tell fortunes in Annapolis, Maryland.
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Health-Care “Reform” Always Costs More Than Promised
The depressing truth, as told by former Congressman Tim Penny (D-MN) and former Senator Rudy Boschwitz (R-MN).
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Union Bosses Say the Darndest Things
As described in an OpenMarket post by CEI’s Ivan Osorio a couple weeks ago, the Teamsters union and UPS are currently lobbying Congress to…
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Cash for Clunkers’ Real Cost
As Frederic Bastiat succinctly noted long ago, when determining the effects of a specific action, it is necessary to consider not only “what is…
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Chuck Schumer: “We’ve Got to Stand Still”
High-frequency stock trading — the markets where sophisticated algorithms running on bleeding edge hardware trade assets using information only fractions of a second old —…
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Freedom Anniversary: The Acquittal of John Peter Zenger
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Regulation of the Day 25: Cattle with Scabies
If you own cattle and they are at risk of catching scabies, you may want to read up on the pertinent federal regulations. There are…
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The Environment’s “Odd Couple”: Sustainable Use and Private Management
Chaffee County, Colorado currently has the opportunity to engage in an advantageous business partnership, but environmental groups are attempting to derail this proposition that…
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Frivolous Lawsuit Against Denny’s Over Salty Food
Denny's has never claimed that it serves only health-food, and nutrition facts about its food are available on its web site. But that hasn't…
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British Government Pays Lobbyists to Lobby It on Climate Change
More proof that government does things better! In traditional “astroturfing,” a company would pay a PR firm to set up a fake grassroots organization aimed…
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The Right to a Green Job?
Demand for wind turbine blades in Europe has slipped, apparently, so a British company that makes them, Vestas, has plans to let go 625 workers…
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End the Letter Delivery Monopoly: Sell The USPS
“Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion…
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LibertyWeek 54: Read My Lips
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Policy Translated: Technology Regulation
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Turn out the lights, the party’s over… and tomorrow start the same old thing again.
Cuba has become more and more destitute since the revolution and has fallen on hard times since the collapse of the Soviet Union, a period…
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Policy Peril Segment 4 – Sea Level Rise
In An Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore warns that global warming could raise sea levels by 20 feet, and he implies that this could…
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FDA to Smokers: Drop Dead
The FDA is now moving towards banning a smoking alternative that could save many lives. Every year, millions of smokers like my wife try…
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Who’s a climate scientist? Depends on which side you’re on.
I was interested to read an item in today’s Climate Wire about a new report by “a prominent Australian scientist.” Andrew Macintosh of the…
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The Antitrust Anachronism
Wall Street Journal columnist Gordon Crovitz has a great column in today's paper on the anachronism that is antitrust law. He writes: "Markets were so…
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Newsflash to FCC: The iPhone is a Closed Platform, and Consumers Love It
Just when you thought the FCC’s investigation of the wireless industry couldn’t get any stranger, TechCrunch reports that the Commission has sent letters…
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Policy Translated: The Homeowners’ Defense Act
[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bmzVgg0tpmo 285 234]…
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Billions More for Wasteful Auto Bailouts
The auto bailouts keep expanding. Billions more are going to be spent on wealthy auto-dealers, cash-for-clunkers, politically-correct cars few people will buy, and excessive benefits…
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The Antitrust Religion still Has Many Adherents
Why bother with the ongoing challenge of competing in the marketplace if one can merely go to Brussels or Washington?…
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Ebell ranked in top 10 of most-respected global warming skeptics
Myron Ebell may be enemy #1 to the current climate change community. Ebell works for the free-market thinktank Competitive Enterprise Institute and, according to his…
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Regulation of the Day 24: The Width of Ladders
It is illegal for a portable metal ladder to have steps narrower than 12 inches.
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Bonus pay bill: CBO predicts huge costs to private sector, broad swaths of employees affected
After the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) calculated the enormous costs of an all-encompassing health care scheme with a bloated public option, members of Congress…
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Penn and Teller on Organics
The irreverent and hilarious comedians Penn and Teller have produced another episode of their television show Bullshit about organic foods. Friends of CEI, Ron Bailey…
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Policy Peril Segment 3 – Hurricanes (updated 8/19/09)
Is global warming making hurricanes more destructive? Did global warming contribute to the devastation of New Orleans by Hurricane Katrina? Would Kyoto-style energy rationing help avert future weather-related catastrophes?…
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Argumentum Ad Governmentum
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More on the Microhoo Deal
The long-awaited collaboration of Microsoft and Yahoo on search has the tech business community abuzz. CEI analysts Wayne Crews and Ryan Young made their original…
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California’s Biofuels Policy: Yes, No, or Both
The Los Angeles Times‘ Judith Lewis relates an amusing example of how government can undermine its own harebrained schemes. It was a fine June…
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(Un)Free Press Sticks it to the Essentials
The latest missive from the folks at Free Press has crossed the line: When challenged, the wireless carriers actually compare their industry to another: soda.
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The Obama’s Administration’s Strange Double Standards on Hate Crimes, Terrorism, and Health Care: Soft on the Guilty, Cruel to the Innocent, Unfair to Taxpayers
When black panthers were caught on videotape menacing white voters in Philadelphia, using nightsticks and racial epithets to drive them away from the polls,…
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A Bailout for the First Amendment?
Dan Rather actually made the following two contradictory statements in the same speech: I personally encourage the president to establish a White House…
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Prof. Gates’ property rights likely violated in arrest — but Obama was wrong to weigh in
Amid all the endless media psychobabble about “national conversations” and “teachable moments” – and we will no doubt here more of this in the reporting of…
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Food Safety Bills Moving Through Congress
With all out attention diverted to the government's attempted takeover of the half of US health care that isn't already nationalized, the attempted destruction of…
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In Which Greed Is Good
The great economist Joseph Schumpeter wrote that "[F]ree trade is the cement that holds together the idea of peace." His logic is sound. Commerce gives…
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The Challenge of Network Industries
“Network” industries such as electricity, air transport, telecommunication, freight rail, and internet services face a challenge with their competing flow and grid components. Flows are…
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In Defense of Average Cost Pricing
Many industries in the modern economy are ridiculed for the financing strategies they employ. Only marginal cost pricing is defended as a legitimate practice. Yet…
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Where’s the Reality in Legislation?
In “Why Obamacare Is Sinking,” Charles Krauthammer argues that President Obama’s reliance on rhetoric is finally beginning to fail because “you can’t fake it…
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VIDEO: Healthcare Reform Ideas from the Other Washington
John Barnes at the Washington Policy Center (motto: “Improving Lives Through Market Solutions”) passes on a 3-video series about the fight over healthcare “reform” we’re…
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Russia introduces strict new antitrust law
Russian President Dmitriy Medvedev has signed into law amendments that will bring increased penalties for price collusion and unfair competition. The new amendments will allow…
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Three Cheers for Capitalism and Peter Leeson
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UBS v. IRS saga continues
Today, Wall Street Journal reports that a Miami court has set meeting Friday between the IRS and UBS to look at…
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Policy Translated: Special Access Reform
[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQO84UjQ2Fg 285 234]…
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Regulation of the Day 23: Texting While Driving
Texting while driving is both dumb and dangerous. But making it a crime won’t make people stop doing it. It will merely make more people…
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