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Visualizing the Burden of Federal Regulation
The Competitive Enterprise Institute recently released the 25th anniversary edition of Wayne Crews’ widely-cited study “10,000 Commandments: An Annual Snapshot of the Federal Regulatory State.”…
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Free Market Groups Call for Repeal of Clean Power Plan
Public policy analysts from 20 free-market organizations today filed a joint comment letter in support of EPA administrator Scott Pruitt’s proposal to repeal…
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House Committee Examines How to Modernize Labor Laws
Labor-management relation laws in the United States are in need of an update. Reform is long overdue, with the last major update to statutes governing…
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Some Context for the Astronomical Cost of Government Regulation
Since any number with that many zeroes and commas in it is difficult for the human mind to process, let’s put it in a more…
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Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Targets True Rights Violations with Wells Fargo Fine
After being attacked repeatedly for supposedly being soft on Wall Street and the “big banks,” Acting Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Director Mick Mulvaney was part…
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Systematic Failures of Chemical Safety Research at Environmental Protection Agency
“If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again” could be the motto of one of the key research programs at the U.S. Environmental Protection…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
The big news this week was the release of the 2018 edition of Ten Thousand Commandments. Agencies continued to provide fodder for next years edition…
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What Exxon Knew: AEI Panel on Recent Climate Change Litigation
The American Enterprise Institute (AEI) this week held a panel discussion titled “What did they know, and when did they know it?” on the growing swirl of…
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City of Boulder and Two Colorado Counties Join Climate Shakedown Racket
Boulder, Colorado and Boulder and San Miguel Counties filed suit in state court this week against ExxonMobil and Suncor Energy. The suit claims that petroleum products…
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Lessons for Congress from ‘10,000 Commandments’: Regulatory Budgets
One of the lessons learned from this year’s “10,000 Commandments” study is that Congress needs to be more involved in the regulatory process. It needs…
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The Changing Face of Selling Liberty Online
We’ve been publishing and promoting the study for many years, and our strategies and methods have changed as the years have gone by. When we…
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‘10,000 Commandments’ at 25: What Have We Learned, What’s to Come?
Wayne Crews has ably documented the regulatory state for twenty-five years and running. But what will the next twenty-five years of “10,000 Commandments” look like?…
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Peter Navarro’s Economic Ignorance on Trade
Trump economic advisor and Death by China author Peter Navarro’s recent column in The Wall Street Journal, “China’s Faux Comparative Advantage,” is a…
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The Cost of Washington’s ‘10,000 Commandments’
Federal regulation cost Americans $1.9 trillion in 2017, or nearly $15,000 per U.S. household—more than Americans spend on any category in their family budget except…
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House Tech Panel Hears Testimony on Paid Prioritization
Yesterday, members of the House Energy & Commerce Committee’s Subcommittee on Communications and Technology held a hearing on Internet prioritization. Chairman Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) opened…
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AI in the UK: Lords’ Report Makes Startups Less Competitive
The British House of Lords recently published a report on artificial intelligence, which includes policy recommendations that would hamper the development of AI domestically and…
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Massachusetts Court to Exxon: Turn Over All Climate Documents Since 1976
Another day, another investigation in search of a crime. “Massachusetts’s top court on Friday ordered Exxon Mobil, Inc. to turn over company records to the…
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Even without Air Traffic Control Reform, House FAA Bill Improvement to Status Quo
Last week, House Transportation Committee Chairman Bill Shuster (R-PA) introduced his updated Federal Aviation Administration reauthorization bill, eliminating the air traffic control reform title, and making…
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If Trump Is Serious about Jobs, Embrace AI and Loosen Labor Laws
There is a lot of panic about the implications of artificial intelligence technologies for the future of work. Some scholars, such as Nobel laureate Joseph…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
The highlights from this week’s round of 36 proposed regulations and 72 final regulations range from licensing government inventions to the Department of Redundancy Department’s…
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Prof. Rajshree Agarwal on the Rubin Report: The True Value of Free Enterprise
I’ve been interested over the last several years to see Dave Rubin’s metamorphosis from stand-up comedian to podcast co-host to serious public affairs…
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Facebook Privacy Critics Ignore Benefits of Social Media
Facebook is not a tool designed to violate privacy nor fan the flames of hate, but it and other social media platforms have been some…
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Senator Grills Zuckerberg While Gathering His Own Facebook User Data
One of the most glaring moments of hypocrisy during yesterday's Facebook hearing came from Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) telling Zuckerberg that he felt “betrayed”…
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Zuckerberg Testimony Hints at Devil’s Bargain with Big Government
Much of the political class in Washington, D.C. is currently holding its breath for the big event of the week: Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s long-awaited…
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Congress Impatient for Zuckerberg Privacy Testimony
With Facebook in Congress’s crosshairs, America’s leading Internet companies—sometimes known as “big tech”—arguably face a greater risk of regulation than at any time in their…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
It may not feel like Spring yet, but regulatory agencies have turned their fancies to rulemaking, with 45 proposed and 70 final regulations ranging from…
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National Labor Relations Board General Counsel Rebukes Board
It seems there is never a slow day over at the National Labor Relations Board. Today, the NLRB General Counsel Peter Robb issued a legal…
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Option for States Dealing with Illegal Teacher Union Strikes
An uptick in teacher union strikes has occurred over past few months. Teachers have abandoned students in West Virginia, Kentucky, and Oklahoma with rumblings of…
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Misfiring on All Cylinders: New York Times’ Attack on Pruitt’s Fuel Economy Reset
Greenhouse gas/fuel economy standards encourage automakers to reduce average vehicle size and weight. That is hardly surprising. It takes less fuel to move smaller, lighter…
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Law Geeks Rejoice: Property Rights on the Big Screen in ‘Little Pink House’
John Stossel discusses the history of eminent domain—the legal power that allows local governments to seize property from owners for supposedly public purposes—and how…
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Acting Director Asks Congress for Reform of Consumer Financial Protection Bureau
On Monday, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau released its first semi-annual report to Congress under its new Acting Director, Mick Mulvaney. A routine procedure…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
With a full quarter of 2018 in the books, agencies have issued just one economically significant rule—an increase in State Department fees amounting to $115…
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What’s Driving the New Economy: Reviewing ‘Tomorrow 3.0’
We truly do live in amazing times. And according to Michael Munger, who directs Duke University’s multidisciplinary PPE program (it stands for Philosophy, Politics, and…
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Track How Humans Are Making Progress around the World
For several years now, HumanProgress has been an excellent source of data and scholarship on major demographic trends around the word. As longtime fans know,…
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Investigate Labor Relations Board Confidentiality Breach
Earlier this week, the Competitive Enterprise Institute sent a request to the National Labor Relations Board Office of Inspector General to investigate NLRB member…
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Chef Geoff Tracy Fights Virginia’s Happy Hour Ad Ban
Local D.C.-area chef Geoff Tracy is a bacon lover, popular food Instagrammer, and a budding legal activist. This week, aided by his attorneys at the…
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Wayfair Supreme Court Case Could Upend How We Buy and Sell Things Online
In April, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear a case, South Dakota v. Wayfair, Corp, that could have a huge impact on people who sell…
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Hope for Reforming Obama-Era Fuel Economy Mandates at EPA
The Environmental Protection Agency is approaching the April 1st deadline to complete its Midterm Evaluation of the Obama administration’s fuel economy and motor vehicle greenhouse…
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European-Style Tech Regulation Not the Answer to Facebook Privacy Concerns
The fallout at Facebook continues to grow after it was revealed that millions of Facebook users’ data was used by the consulting firm Cambridge…
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Tax Complexity a Major Headache for Small Businesses Online
For a lot of small businesses in America, taxes are not just an expensive hassle but a scary, anxiety-inducing ordeal. Taxes are the…
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Obama Holdovers Work to Save EPA Junk Science
Obama administration holdovers at the Environmental Protection Agency are doing their best undermine efforts to drain EPA’s bureaucratic swamp. And thus far, unfortunately, they’re succeeding.
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Commonwealth Nations Beating America on FinTech Regulation
While the United States continues to have healthy development of financial technologies—thanks predominately to unparalleled access to capital and technology—it is at risk of falling…
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Cracking Down on Automated Vehicles Would Mean More Death and Destruction
Real-life road testing is the best way to continue improving the performance of automated driving systems, thanks in part to the gathering of real-time road…
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Consumers Lose in European Union’s Struggle against Google
Anti-technology hysteria continues to build in the European Union. Margrethe Vestager, the European Commissioner for Competition, confirmed today that she is still considering breaking…
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Arizona Becomes First State to Establish FinTech Sandbox
As the only state where all four North American deserts reside, it’s fitting that Arizona became the first state to establish a “sandbox” for financial…
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California Climate Change Litigation: Will Big Oil Learn How to Fight?
This week, Chevron lawyer Ted Boutrous told federal Judge William Alsup that “There’s no debate about climate science.” His company “accepts the consensus of the scientific…
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Will Government Allow Gene Editing for Cancer Treatment?
The idea of genome editing is no longer a theoretical concept studied only within the confines of labs and scientific research institutions. In August 2017, scientists…
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Outlook for Economy’s ‘Master Resource’ Bright
Yesterday my colleague Marlo Lewis and I sat down for a Facebook Live interview (archived here) on this week’s big event, Human…
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Liberate Dishwashers from Federal Efficiency Mandates
Thirty-five years ago dishwashers cleaned dishes in about an hour. Sadly, today there are no dishwashers that do so due to federal government regulations. This…
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3 Proposals to Temper the Federal Payday Loan Rule
When the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau finalized a rule regulating payday loans in October last year, I wrote that this could be the end…
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Natural Isn’t Necessarily Better: Celebrating Human Achievement
Human Achievement Hour is the Competitive Enterprise’s Institute’s annual celebration of innovation and progress. During this hour, people around the world pay tribute to the advancements that inventors…
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Next Steps in Facebook Privacy Fallout
Privacy policies at Facebook—and, by extension, other major online platforms—have sparked furious debate in recent days because of the revelations regarding…
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History Lesson in Technological Optimism: Simon, Jevons, and Lardner
Through his publications and scholarly work in the 1980s and 90s, the economist Julian Simon challenged the conventional wisdom and the intellectual position of the…
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Human Achievement: The Shipping Container
One of the most underappreciated drivers of the modern global economy is the humble shipping container. Widely adopted internationally in the second half of the…
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Hernando de Soto Wins Julian Simon Memorial Award
It is enormously gratifying that this year’s winner of the Julian Simon Award is Hernando de Soto, whose work around the world to define,…
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Include ‘Joint Employer’ Fix in Omnibus Budget Bill
The Competitive Enterprise Institute is leading a free-market coalition urging Congress to attach the Save Local Business Act (H.R. 4331) as a policy rider to the…
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CEI Submits Comments to Federal Vehicle Regulator on Automated Driving Systems
The process for modernizing federal motor vehicle safety standards needs to be improved, thereby allowing for more rapid deployment of vehicles equipped with new self-driving technology…
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Gains from Automation Create Path to Greater Prosperity
Automation has become somewhat of a dirty word recently. Fear of mass unemployment and widening inequality has led to calls for greater regulations of technology…
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Climate Policy: What It Means for Pompeo and Kudlow to Be Replacing Tillerson and Cohn
If people are policy, the Trump administration’s commitment to the President’s pro-growth energy agenda has become clearer and firmer. Last week, Mr. Trump …
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Department of Education Limits Federal Employee Union Subsidy
Department of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos deserves a round of applause. Most federal agencies, even in Republican administrations, agree to collective bargaining agreements that heavily…
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Human Achievement Benefits Nature’s Creatures—Including Pets
Environmental activists want you to “take action for our planet and nature” by sitting in the dark for an hour on March 24th. But…
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Impressive Work on Display by Students for Liberty
Congratulations are in order to our friends at Students for Liberty and their CEO Wolf von Laer on a successfully annual conference recently held here…
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Online Sales Tax Bill a Small-Business Killing Tax Hike
The Wall Street Journal editorial board was entirely correct yesterday when they said, “Republicans have spent the last year cutting taxes and regulations, which…
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5G Will Work—If Government Gets out of the Way
To usher in a new era of 5G virtual reality, 4K video, and self-driving cars, a major network upgrade is needed. The greater data demands…
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What Will You Achieve with Your 8,760 Hours?
Several years ago CEI launched Human Achievement Hour, an annual celebration of innovation and progress. During this hour—this year, Saturday, March 24th from 8:30pm to…
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How States Can Win Big from Legal Sports Betting
Every March, millions of Americans join friends, relatives, and coworkers in “March Madness” betting pools, centered on the National Collegiate Athletics Association (NCAA) Men’s Basketball…
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National Labor Relations Board Recusal Saga Continues
Democrats and union allies have been transparent in their goal to block or delay any decisions by the Trump National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), as…
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‘Fair Shot’ by Chris Hughes: Facebook Co-Founder’s Book Rich in Anecdote and Emotion
Chris Hughes, the co-founder of Facebook, has a new book out with a dramatic suggestion for changing the distribution of wealth in the United States.
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Melugin: Keep Online Sales Taxes out of Omnibus Budget Bill
Today Jessica Melugin, associate director of CEI’s Center for Technology & Innovation, joined U.S. Senator Steve Daines (R-MT) and a number of other free-market…
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3 Reasons the Senate Should Pass Financial Reform
The Senate is expected to vote on its first major piece of financial reform this week since the Dodd-Frank Act of 2010. A bipartisan bill…
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Trump Ousts Tillerson: What’s Next for the Paris Climate Treaty?
President Trump this morning ousted Rex Tillerson from his post as Secretary of State and plans to replace him with CIA director Mike Pompeo.
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Growing Scandal at National Labor Relations Board
This has the look of a coordinated attack to hinder the current National Labor Relations Board’s ability to reform Obama-era policies. The Inspector General stirred…
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Judge in California Suit against Oil Companies Orders Climate Tutorial
A federal judge in California last week ruled that a suit brought by the cities of Oakland and San Francisco seeking climate damages from major…
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Everything You Need to Know about the Clean Power Plan
West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey, nineteen other state attorneys general, and the head of the Mississippi department of environmental quality recently filed a superb …
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European Food Safety Assessment Proves Nothing about Risks to Bees
As European Union risk assessments purportedly “confirm” that pesticides threaten honeybees and lawmakers quickly clamor for pesticide bans, the stark reality is that so far…
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The Supreme Court Case That Would Catch the Law Up to Economic Reality
As more and more services move into platform business models as the lower transaction costs they facilitate increase consumer welfare, platform firms need assurance…
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More Evidence of Growth in February Job Figures
Today’s jobs numbers shattered expectations—313,000 new jobs in February against an expectation of 200,000. The numbers provide yet more support to the…
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Happy Birthday to Adam Smith’s ‘Wealth of Nations’
Being able to make voluntary transactions with others while having redress in the case of fraud sets the stage for larger, more complex, and longer-term market…
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Trump’s Recent Trade Decisions Could Spell Doom for the Economy
With President Trump’s announcement on steel and aluminum tariffs and his continued wrong-headed approach to trade policy, there are reasons to be concerned that a…
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Tracking Public Opinion on Trump, Tariffs, and Trade
A Pew study noted that Republicans’ views on free trade shifted in a more negative way during the 2016 presidential campaign, while Democrats’ views…
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Don’t Bring Net Neutrality Regulations Back from the Dead
Republicans on Capitol Hill are looking to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory with their recently introduced net neutrality legislation, Sen. John Kennedy’s (R-LA) Open Internet…
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The Government Killed Free Checking—Can Amazon Save It?
Amazon's move into banking services spells good news for currently under-served consumers, who often rely on relatively expensive financial services such as payday lending or…
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If the Payday Lending Rule Stays, Ability-to-Repay Does, Too
Many in the financial services industry seem to believe the CFPB's ability to replay rule doesn’t impact them and it’s not worth fighting. That is…
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Millennials Love Entrepreneurship But Skeptical of ‘Capitalism’
If we want Millennials to have a greater appreciation for the virtues of capitalism, we need to convey how their entrepreneurial aspirations can only be made possible…
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Government Not Only Source of Regulation for Finance
One of the most misunderstood and underappreciated aspects of free market economics is the idea of private or “self” regulation. Up until recently, private enterprises…
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Don’t Let an Online Sales Tax Hike Creep into Omnibus Spending Bill
With the siren song of the omnibus spending bill calling, legislators would be wise to resist pressures to include increases in online sales…
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Seeing How People Really Live around the World
A recent TED Talk by Anna Rosling Rönnlund features images collected by photographers dispatched to 264 different homes in 50 countries around the world. They document the stoves, bed,…
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Chuck Schumer’s Unconstitutional Money-Wasting Machine
If you wanted a counterterrorism technology that could match Amtrak in terms of derailments, you couldn’t do much better than to use “stand-off explosive detection…
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Implement AEI-Heritage-R Street GSE Plan AND Honor Shareholder Contracts
It is welcome news that our friends from the American Enterprise Institute, Heritage Foundation, and the R Street Institute put forth a plan this week…
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Some Critical Points Often Overlooked in the Climate Policy Debate
To date, the political process has determined that the potential risks of carbon dioxide regulation outweigh the benefits. That’s why despite more than 20 years…
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Job-Killing Joint Employer Standard Returns
In an abrupt and unexpected move, on February 26th, the National Labor Relations Board vacated its December 2017 decision in Hy-Brand, which restored longstanding Board…
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Clean Power Plan: Just Repeal, Don’t Replace
The Environmental Protection Agency is in the process of repealing President Obama’s Clean Power Plan, the principal regulatory component of his Paris Climate Treaty emission-reduction…
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Could Janus Ruling Open the Door to Pension Reform?
This week, the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral argument in case Janus v. AFSCME, which could significantly impact unions representing government employees. A ruling in…
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Landmark Supreme Court Case Can Restore Worker Freedom
Today at oral argument in Janus v. AFSCME, Council 31, Justice Sonia Sotomayor said “You're basically arguing, do away with unions,” when questioning Bill…
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President Trump in CPAC Speech Says Deregulation Is as Important as Tax Cuts
President Donald J. Trump in his speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference today spent seven minutes discussing his deregulatory agenda, ending the war on…
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CEI’s Ryan Radia Weighs in on Latest in Net Neutrality Debate
CEI has done its share on the topic for more than 10 years. Tune in to FreedomWorks live streams on February 26 to hear CEI’s…
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CEI Appeal May Be the Cy Pres Case Supreme Court is Looking for
CEI’s petition in Gaos v. Google may give the Supreme Court the opportunity to revisit cy pres recovery to unrelated parties.
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Skepticism of Driverless Car Hype Is Warranted But Shouldn’t Sacrifice Innovation and Safety
Applying the precautionary principle to the regulation of self-driving cars could mean more highway fatalities, by delaying the introduction of new, lifesaving technologies. …
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The Dues and Don’ts of Government Union Life
No worker should be forced to financially support a union to speak and bargain on their behalf with the government. Check out CEI's video on the…
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Rep. Dave Brat’s Pro-Competitive Free to Fly Act Is a First Step in the Right Direction
The Free to Fly Act would eliminate a generations-old anti-competitive federal law governing domestic airline ownership.