The Open Market Blog

• 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…

• By: Ivan Osorio
• 08/22/2008

This week, The Los Angeles Times featured a three–part series on suspicious dealings at a local of the 2 million-member Service Employees…

• By: Doug Bandow
• 08/22/2008

You’d better keep two or three dates open.  It seems that the National Health Service likes to cancel operations even after they are scheduled.  A…

• By: Hans Bader
• 08/21/2008

American immigration law is perverse, baffling, and dysfunctional.  It keeps out energetic legal immigrants who could make America richer and smarter, while encouraging unskilled illegal…

• By: Hans Bader
• 08/21/2008

Congress gave the phone companies immunity against the billions of dollars in lawsuits brought against them for cooperating with federal antiterror surveillance programs.  The ACLU and some trial…

• By: Hans Bader
• 08/20/2008

Federal “affordable housing” and “diversity” mandates helped spawn the mortgage crisis.  Additional evidence comes from a Washington Post story, which notes that  “even late in the housing bubble, Fannie…

• By: Hans Bader
• 08/20/2008

Maryland’s government, which recently raised taxes by record amounts to pay for more government spending, welfare, and public-employee salaries, is now pleading for a federal bailout,…

• By: Angela Logomasini
• 08/20/2008

According to news reports, New York City’s Mayor Bloomberg wants to build a wind farm to meet 10 percent of New York City’s energy…

• By: Angela Logomasini
• 08/19/2008

We keep hearing in the news these days that bottled water and tap water are basically the…

• By: Hans Bader
• 08/19/2008

Ted Frank has an entertaining and disturbing column in the Washington Examiner about how a compulsive gambler blamed his medication for his irresponsibility.  A jury…

• By: Hans Bader
• 08/18/2008

Not everyone is equally likely to get AIDS, notes former World Health Organization official James Chin in “Political Correctness Undermines AIDS Fight,” an editorial in today’s Washington Examiner.   As he points out, “We…

• By: John Berlau
• 08/17/2008

For more than two years, the Competitive Enterprise Institute has been involved in a constitutional challenge to the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board, the giant…

• By: Doug Bandow
• 08/16/2008

The next time you hear someone complain about Americans who don’t get needed health care, think of Great Britain, where the government has decided that…

• By: Alex Harris
• 08/15/2008

I promised, and I shall deliver. As it's my last day as an intern at CEI, this is my last Philosopher's Corner post,…

• By: Alex Harris
• 08/15/2008

Who doesn't love a good half-litre? Over at the self-proclaimed “irreverant blog for food outlaws” Crispy on the Outside (which our own…

• By: Alex Harris
• 08/15/2008

The Federal Election Commission has held that bloggers are covered by the same rules as journalists, permitting them to write about candidates without their…

• By: Ivan Osorio
• 08/15/2008

In his latest Washington Examiner column, former CEI Brookes Fellow Tim Carney takes on T. Boone Pickens’s call for policies promoting wind and other…

• By: Alex Harris
• 08/15/2008

The British government has not been known for its high level of respect for privacy. But this truly surprised me. Vnunet reports: The…