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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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LibertyWeek 53: The Real Crooks of New Jersey
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Movement on the U.S.-Korea FTA?
It looks like things may be moving – slowly — on the trade front. The U. S. Trade Representative has published a notice in…
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Obama Backs Imperial Presidency
Obama is backing an imperial presidency in Honduras. When Honduras removed its ex-president and would-be dictator, Obama demanded his reinstatement, even though he…
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Justice Dept. Should Leave the Microsoft-Yahoo Search Deal Alone
Statements of Ryan Young and Wayne Crews Washington, D.C., July 29, 2009 – Today, Microsoft and Yahoo announced a ten-year partnership of their…
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Policy Translated: Stimulus to Nowhere
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Food Police Attack Denny’s Over Salt
It seems that the food police at the unconscionably named Center for Science in the Public Interest are at it again. Last week, CSPI filed…
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Ameritrade Stock Spam Settlement briefing
Unlike the Bluetooth case, we were among several plaintiffs who filed substantive objections to this settlement. The hearing will be before Judge Vaughn Walker…
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Best Way to Curb Irrational Exurberance?
Zachary Goldfarb, a Washington Post staff writer, discusses (p. A10, “SEC Moves to Limit Short Sales of Stocks”) this SEC proposal – sympathetically. The article…
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Policy Peril Segment 2: Air Pollution
Last Friday, I launched a blog series on CEI’s film, Policy Peril: Why Global Warming Policies Are More Dangerous Than Global Warming Itself. The film is our…
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Regulation of the Day 22: Rhinestones
The Consumer Product Safety Commission, after much deliberation, has banned crystal rhinestones from children's products, despite no evidence of harm.
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The Folly of 100%
The same groups that have been insisting for years that there is something fundamentally wrong with the United States’ international broadband ranking…
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Just Another Tuesday in Washington
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Policy Translated: Introduction
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Obama Health-Care Plan Will Harm People With Insurance, and Raise Taxes, Obama Adviser Says
Obama’s health-care plan is drawing criticism from one of his own advisers, Harvard University’s Martin Feldstein. In today’s Washington Post, Feldstein warns that…
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Policy Peril Segment 1: Heat Waves
As announced last Friday, each day this week and next I’ll post an excerpt of CEI’s film Policy Peril: Why Global Warming Policies Are More…
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The Wall Street Journal on the Union Pension Debacle
Two weekend Wall Street Journal editorials sum up well the ticking time-bomb of underfunded union pension funds. First, the dire state of many union…
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Put it in quotes: health care “reform”
Robert J. Samuelson has a hard-hitting column in today’s Washington Post on the non-reform elements of the health care reform package. He points out…
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Dems’ Health Care Bill Looking Weaker by the Day
For the Democrats still supporting the health care overhaul, the blows just keep coming. As if the financial problems I described in a previous…
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NEW VIDEO: Policy Translated
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UAW Gives Taxpayers the (Gettel)finger
Considering the enormous amounts of cash that the federal government has hurled at the auto industry since the start of the financial crisis, recipients…
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Health Insurance Reform: look at what does and doesn’t work already
“One of the methods used by statists to destroy capitalism consists in establishing controls that tie a given industry hand and…
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The People’s Phone
Venezuela’s increasingly ridiculous strongman, Hugo Chavez, would be funny if not for the misery and repression he continues to impose upon his own citizens. From…
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An Important, yet Little Noticed Civil Liberties Case
A friend currently in law school complained to me recently about the lack of public attention and media coverage that has been accorded to the…