The Open Market Blog

• By: John Berlau
• 09/15/2008

The weeks leading up to a Presidential election have always been called the "silly season." But the attacks from bloggers and the media on vice-presidential…

• By: Cord Blomquist
• 09/12/2008

Rad Berky of NewsChannel 36 in Charlotte, North Carolina reports that fears of Hurricane Ike disrupting the supply of gasoline has…

• By: Hans Bader
• 09/12/2008

On the front page of the Washington Post, writer Steven Pearlstein contradicts himself by writing that mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are being…

• By: Hans Bader
• 09/11/2008

The Religious Left seeks to impose its authoritarian social agenda through lawsuits and other means.  They love speech codes, despite the fact that they are often…

• By: Ivan Osorio
• 09/11/2008

…looks very different than it does in the United States. And by Miller, I mean Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.). In 2001, Rep. Miller and several…

• By: Iain Murray
• 09/11/2008

This summer has made it quite clear that the US is suffering an energy crisis. Not a great one yet, but definitely a harbinger of…

• By: Gary Howard
• 09/11/2008

As we learn from a Portfolio.com story by Zubin Jelveh, more erroneous proclamations about how horrible WalMart is for society have…

• By: Hans Bader
• 09/11/2008

Public employee unions make the false claim that public employees are underpaid and undercompensated.  But the reality is just the opposite.  Not only are public employees…

• By: Julie Walsh
• 09/10/2008

The presidential election is in a dead heat, so every vote counts. Yet ACORN wants some votes to count more than once. The Association of…

• By: Ivan Osorio
• 09/09/2008

Shopfloor.org draws a stark contrast between The New York Times‘s stated position on unions for other employers, and its own laying off…

• By: Hans Bader
• 09/09/2008

Right now, the federal government, at a huge cost to taxpayers of perhaps $100 billion, is bailing out the two government-backed mortgage giants, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac…

• By: Hans Bader
• 09/08/2008

In California, where a referendum legalized medical marijuana, the state legislature has now gone much further and passed a bill, AB 2279, that would force…

• By: John Berlau
• 09/08/2008

There are many words -- and most them not nice -- to describe the new government conservatorship and planned bailout of Fannie Mae and…

• By: Hans Bader
• 09/06/2008

When Congress authorized a taxpayer bailout of government-backed mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, supporters claimed that the mere authorization of a bailout would…

• By: Hans Bader
• 09/06/2008

Congressional leaders want yet more budget-busting, deficit-expanding “stimulus” packages, using the slow economy as an excuse for proposals to bail out state governments…

• By: John Berlau
• 09/05/2008

As Open Market readers know, the Competitive Enterprise Institute recently helped achieve a very significant victory wrapped within a defeat at the DC Circuit Court…

• By: Hans Bader
• 09/04/2008

Inflation is now a bigger economic problem than unemployment, argues the Wall Street Journal, and is a bigger concern to voters, too.  The Fed…

• By: Richard Morrison
• 09/04/2008

It’s official – Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick has admitted to lying under oath and will be resigning within the next 14 days. Mr. Kilpatrick,…

• By: Hans Bader
• 09/03/2008

The Justice Department is proposing 1,000 pages of new “guidance” expanding the reach of the Americans with Disabilities Act, at an estimated cost of $23 billion…

• By: Hans Bader
• 09/03/2008

Earlier, I and Alex Harris criticized the Agriculture Department for banning a company from testing for mad cow disease.  The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals…

• By: Ivan Osorio
• 09/03/2008

Cuba punk rock musician Gorki Aguila Carrasco was spared jail this week, after the Cuban government arrested him on the ridiculous charge of “…

• By: Eli Lehrer
• 09/02/2008

P. Diddy, one of my heroes, has announced that he wants to bring down gas prices so he can fly coast to coast on…

• By: Doug Bandow
• 09/01/2008

Sorry about that!  That’s the British government’s reaction to the two-year delay in approving a drug that combats blindness.  Too expensive, dear chap … anyway,…

• By: Doug Bandow
• 08/30/2008

The consume’rs right to know. It’s hard to disagree with the nanny-state proposal now before the California legislature (I know, I know … what nanny-state…

• By: Ivan Osorio
• 08/29/2008

Today, in time for Labor Day weekend, I’ve got two new articles out on current goings-on in organized labor. In The American Spectator, my…

• By: Gary Howard
• 08/28/2008

Today in the WaPo we see that plans by the University of Chicago to establish a research institute named after the late Nobel prize-winning…

• By: Iain Murray
• 08/28/2008

The Brookings Institution is the most establishment of establishment think-tanks. Old-fashioned, genteel, liberal, they do a lot of good work while at the same time…

• By: Ivan Osorio
• 08/28/2008

In a move reminiscent of Minority Report, the Cuban government has arrested punk rock singer Gorki Aquila Carrasco, for charge of “pre-crime social…

• By: Gary Howard
• 08/27/2008

Some thoughts on why our side is losing in its efforts to promote and defend free trade:…

• By: Ivan Osorio
• 08/26/2008

The scandal that broke at the largest union local in California earlier this month, an affiliate of the Service Employees International Union, has…

• By: Gregory Conko
• 08/25/2008

It’s no surprise to many readers of this page, but governments in North America and Europe often funnel millions of dollars to activist groups that…

• By: Sam Kazman
• 08/25/2008

Will gas prices keep dropping? A recent drive I took ended with a very strange coincidence.  If…

• By: Hans Bader
• 08/23/2008

On Friday, a divided appeals court rejected a constitutional challenge to a powerful board set up by the Sarbanes-Oxley Act to regulate the accounting industry. …

• By: Ivan Osorio
• 08/23/2008

…to promise much and deliver little, if anything — all the while making themselves feel just great. The Israeli news site Ynetnews.com reports: A…

• By: Ivan Osorio
• 08/23/2008

An editorial in today’s Wall Street Journal gives “Service Employees International Union President Andy Stern credit for tenacity” in pressuring private equity firms. SEIU,…

• By: Ivan Osorio
• 08/23/2008

In response to my two posts on the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), I got forwarded this story. Pro-union student activists, in a…

• By: Doug Bandow
• 08/23/2008

It can’t be true.  Canada, that paragon of health equality, the place where all health shortages are shared and shared alike, might have more private…

• By: Ivan Osorio
• 08/22/2008

Union organizers try to recruit workers by saying that they’ll go to bat for them when things get tough for them. So it’s fair to…

• By: Ivan Osorio
• 08/22/2008

Following up on my earlier post about The Los Angeles Times‘ investigation into allegations of financial malfeasance by the head of a California affiliate…

• By: Hans Bader
• 08/22/2008

Today, a divided D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals voted 2-to-1 to uphold a provision of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, over a strong dissent by Judge…