The Open Market Blog

• By: Richard Morrison
• 01/29/2007

Cuban exiles have long been looking forward to the day when their homeland is no longer goverend by aging revolutionary Fidel Castro, but now the…

• By: Ivan Osorio
• 01/26/2007

The management of risk has long been an area of interest at CEI, so we will be watching with interest the development of a…

• By: Fran Smith
• 01/26/2007

“If the country is going to meet the ethanol industry’s corn needs, we’re going to have to cut back on feed, cut back on food.”…

• By: Marlo Lewis, Jr.
• 01/26/2007

From a free-market perspective, the only redeeming social value in the Bush Administration’s biofuels initiative is the proposal to lift the 54-cents-a-gallon tariff and 2.5…

• By: Marlo Lewis, Jr.
• 01/26/2007

I recently debated a Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) activist on global warming and the future of the U.S. electricity supply. The activist made the…

• By: Iain Murray
• 01/26/2007

We often hear that global warming is a global problem that requires a global solution. The developing world, on the other hand, wants none…

• By: Iain Murray
• 01/26/2007

Senator Inhofe makes some very pertinent and often ignored points in his Human Events article today: The fact of the matter is that the…

• By: Iain Murray
• 01/26/2007

Some revealing quotations in an excellent BBC Radio investigation into the Stern Report: The IPCC is not going to talk about tipping points; it’s…

• By: Fran Smith
• 01/25/2007

According to news reports, President George Bush will ask Congress to renew fast-track trade authority — perhaps as soon as next week. The Trade…

• By: Fran Smith
• 01/25/2007

There’s even more talk now about alternative energy sources — spurred by President Bush’s State of the Union address where he said: We must…

• By: Fran Smith
• 01/25/2007

“Tricks and traps.” Those were the terms used to describe credit card industry practices to snare vulnerable and lower-income people into a vicious cycle of…

• By: Richard Morrison
• 01/25/2007

While we at Open Market know that there's nothing inherently bad about fast food, we're still willing to believe that an outragous stunt like…

• By: Cord Blomquist
• 01/25/2007

At the DC premiere of Mine Your Own Business yesterday evening, I spoke with protesters who insisted that the 96% of the citizens of…

• By: Richard Morrison
• 01/25/2007

The PETA animal cruelty trial is getting started in North Carolina this week, and the Center for Consumer Freedom is on the case:…

• By: Richard Morrison
• 01/24/2007

We at Open Market HQ just received an email from John Coequyt at Greenpeace, responding to the President’s State of the Union remarks about global…

• By: Marlo Lewis, Jr.
• 01/24/2007

In this post, I comment on President Bush's remarks, in the State of the Union address, about energy. Although a few nods to the old…

• By: Iain Murray
• 01/24/2007

Climate Change seen fanning conflict and terrorism runs the Reuters headline. The premise is that people will fight over resources made scarcer by global…

• By: Iain Murray
• 01/24/2007

June Arunga and Billy Kahora of the International Policy Network have a new paper out about the cellphone revolution in Kenya. The tale is…

• By: Iain Murray
• 01/24/2007

In a nice display of bipartisanship, Iain Dale has a post quoting Britain’s former Labour party Home Secretary David Blunkett approvingly. Blunkett says: “…The…

• By: Iain Murray
• 01/24/2007

The President’s proposals for energy in the State of the Union address are wrong-headed. He proposes to put the boon in boondoggle by increasing the…

• By: Ivan Osorio
• 01/23/2007

That the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) is a far-left political activist group is hardly news. Yet the point needs to be made repeatedly, given…

• By: Cord Blomquist
• 01/23/2007

The Progressive Majority today reports that Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth has been banned by the The Federal Way School District in Washington…

• By: John Berlau
• 01/23/2007

Consumer Reports’ retraction last week of its flawed testing of infant car seats puts in question the magazine’s credibility as an unbiased product evaluator.

• By: Christopher C. Horner
• 01/22/2007

It is quite typical for pressure lobbies to claim that their issue has been provided a mandate by any given election outcome even where, as…

• By: Iain Murray
• 01/22/2007

With oil prices currently at a 19-month low and heading back to $50 a barrel, this is an excellent discussion of the causes…

• By: Gregory Conko
• 01/22/2007

Today’s Wall Street Journal has a feature (link here for subscribers) article discussing DuPont’s renewed efforts on crop biotechnology. DuPont “announced…

• By: Iain Murray
• 01/19/2007

Al Gore’s movie increases Informational and Reputational Cascades based on Availability bias… Hey, don’t complain to me, but to Oxford University’s Future of Humanity…

• By: Iain Murray
• 01/19/2007

The scandal of the US ethanol program – a mandate, a subsidy and a trade barrier all rolled into one – is now having dire…

• By: Ivan Osorio
• 01/19/2007

It had to happen. Jokes about Starbucks’ ubiquity have become, well, ubiquitous, much like the coffee chain itself — so it was only a…

• By: Gregory Conko
• 01/19/2007

Last year, global biotech crop acreage increased more than 13 percent from 2005. By year-end 2006, 10.3 million farmers in 22 countries were growing biotech…

• By: Clyde Wayne Crews
• 01/19/2007

Jack Shafer ponders the case for abolishing FCC in Slate’s blog.  He wonders what things would be like if the philosophy of FCC’s control…

• By: Fran Smith
• 01/18/2007

The title says it all: The Improving State of the World: Why We’re Living Longer, Healthier, More Comfortable Lives on a Cleaner Planet. Read…

• By: Fred L. Smith, Jr.
• 01/18/2007

The decision by the Board of British Petroleum to accelerate the switch from the current chairman, John Brown (Lord Brown), is indicative of a growing…

• By: Marlo Lewis, Jr.
• 01/18/2007

Several automakers and dealers are suing (warning: big PDF file) California to overturn the “landmark” (pro-Kyoto) legislation requiring new vehicles sold in the state…

• By: Fran Smith
• 01/17/2007

At a press roundtable today, Deputy U.S. Trade Representative John Veroneau said that the U.S. would be renegotiating three completed Latin American free trade…

• By: Richard Morrison
• 01/17/2007

Living in a nation with a vibrant market economy and a predictable rule of law is generally considered a good thing. Lest we allow ourselves…

• By: Iain Murray
• 01/17/2007

Our sophisticated friends, the Europeans, are desperate to do anything to meet their Kyoto targets, which they are currently speeding away from in the wrong…

• By: Hans Bader
• 01/17/2007

On November 21, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals voted to vacate and rehear its Abigail Alliance v. Von Eschenbach decision, which would have…

• By: Iain Murray
• 01/17/2007

That is, of course, one of the classic lines of untruth. A spectacular example comes from the UK: [The] invention looked like being a…

• By: Hans Bader
• 01/16/2007

Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes observed in Towne v. Eisner (1918) that “a word is not a crystal, transparent and unchanged, it is the skin of a…

• By: Fran Smith
• 01/16/2007

For those following trade issues, a World Trade Organization report published today gives one-page summaries of 103 cases brought before the WTO’s Dispute Settlement…

• By: Fran Smith
• 01/16/2007

With Congress focusing a lot of attention on identity theft, sometimes it’s important to note that individuals have some responsibility for protecting their personal…

• By: Angela Logomasini
• 01/12/2007

This week, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) denied the marketing of yet another wood preservative, meaning consumers will continue to have few choices when it…

• By: Fran Smith
• 01/12/2007

One of the top free market legislators — Rep. Jeff Flake (R-AZ) — got kicked off the House Judiciary Committee, even though he had…

• By: Fran Smith
• 01/12/2007

A 2007 farm bill with generous support could run into problems, according to a New York Times article today. But despite possible budget problems,…

• By: Fran Smith
• 01/12/2007

In an opinion piece today in Le Figaro, Drieu Godefridi, director of L’institut Hayek in Brussels, points out that what is halting negotiations…