The Open Market Blog

• By: Richard Morrison
• 02/01/2007

Unfortunately for members of the lower house of Maine’s legislature, some of their colleagues have decided that they all have less self-control than most 14-year…

• By: Richard Morrison
• 02/01/2007

Everyone’s favorite “walrus-moustachioed” anti-globalist has set his eyes on high public office. French sheep-farmer/McDonald’s hater Jose Bove has declared he’ll be running for President…

• By: Iain Murray
• 01/31/2007

A new report from the Union of Concerned Scientists finds “unacceptably large numbers of federal climate scientists [have] personally experienced instances of [political] interference…

• By: John Berlau
• 01/31/2007

By proclamation of several cities and states, Monday was Milton Friedman Day. CEI was one of many free-market groups that joined in this…

• By: Fran Smith
• 01/31/2007

This morning Secretary of Agriculture Mike Johanns presented the Administration proposals for the new Farm Bill. Here’s his press…

• By: Iain Murray
• 01/31/2007

Looks rather large: Perhaps he should be called Bigfoot?       …

• By: Richard Morrison
• 01/31/2007

In today’s Politico, Amy Doolittle has a light-hearted story on the tours that Members of Congress occasionally give for constituents around the Capitol. A…

• By: Fran Smith
• 01/31/2007

At a House Ways and Means Committee hearing yesterday, chaired by Representative Charles Rangel, witnesses said that the effects of trade and globalization on…

• By: Fran Smith
• 01/31/2007

Today President Bush in New York City delivered his second speech on the economy. As expected, in the speech he called…

• By: Jody Clarke
• 01/31/2007

Grist magazine just published an interesting Q&A with Frank Luntz, famed GOP pollster and author of the new book, Words That Work: It’s Not What You Say,…

• By: Hans Bader
• 01/31/2007

In a Washington Post column, George Will questions the constitutionality of a recent vote in the House of Representatives to give delegates from Washington, D.C. and territories,…

• By: Angela Logomasini
• 01/31/2007

California usually leads the nation in the formulation of bad public policy—which policymakers in other states often see as a model. But this week, they…

• By: Richard Morrison
• 01/31/2007

The state of California is poised to claim yet another feather for its environmental-pioneer cap with a proposed ban on the sale of incandescent…

• By: Richard Morrison
• 01/31/2007

American Public Radio’s Marketplace Morning Report has yet another report today on how U.S. demand for corn to make into ethanol is causing a…

• By: Iain Murray
• 01/31/2007

So the IPCC report that’s going to be released on Friday isn’t gloomy enough, eh?  It will find less projected temperature rise and less…

• By: Fran Smith
• 01/30/2007

President Bush in Peoria, IL today gave one of two speeches scheduled on the economy (the next will be in NYC tomorrow). He addressed…

• By: Iain Murray
• 01/30/2007

Are you an aspiring journalist for Reuters? If so, you need to know how to “bury the lede,” which is insider journo-talk for ignoring the…

• By: Iain Murray
• 01/30/2007

There is a respectable, if (we feel) incorrect, case to be made for the idea of raising taxes to lower demand for an activity or…

• By: Marlo Lewis, Jr.
• 01/30/2007

I post this article, despite its breathless credulity about the imminence of a world beyond petroleum, because it reveals how Washington works. Bush and the…

• By: Ivan Osorio
• 01/29/2007

Over at Townhall.com, columnist Mary Katharine Ham comments on the premiere of the documentary Mine Your Own Business (the screening was co-sponsored…

• By: Myron Ebell
• 01/29/2007

Some global warming alarmists, including a few scientists, are complaining about the forthcoming Fourth Assessment Report by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate…

• 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…