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Dodd-Frank Still Harmful After a Decade, But Modest Deregulation Has Helped
Dodd-Frank has caused harmful and sometimes disastrous effects for consumers, investors, entrepreneurs, and Main Street financial institutions such as community banks and credit unions. The…
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Deregulate to Stimulate: #NeverNeeded Regulations Are Harming Health and Economy
The Code of Federal Regulations contains more than 1.1 million regulatory restrictions. State and local governments have additional rules. Some of those rules have a…
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How to Spot a #NeverNeeded Regulation
Regulatory reform is one of the most important weapons there is for fighting COVID-19 and for aiding the economic recovery after the worst passes. Where…
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Trump Administration Celebrates Red Tape Reduction, Promising More
The White House hosted a midsummer celebration on the South Lawn of the Trump administration’s reforms and reductions of unneeded “job killing regulations” and red…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
After another busy week for agencies, the 2020 Federal Register is on pace to be 79,121 pages. None of those pages include the Spring 2020…
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Wealthy Millennials Not So Concerned with “Socially Responsible” Investing
In the last few years advocates of corporate social responsibility theory have been assuring everyone who would listen that a new day is dawning for…
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NEPA Rule: Implications for Climate Policy
The White House Council on Environmental Quality this week published its final rule updating the procedures federal agencies must follow when conducting environmental reviews under…
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America’s Cultural Revolution
In his forthcoming book, The Socialist Temptation, Iain Murray talks about how socialism in China produced the Cultural Revolution. The text of the book was…
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CFPB’s Kraninger Should Drop Navient Litigation in Light of Supreme Court Holding
CEI has praised Kathy Kraninger, director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, for her many deregulatory initiatives that—in contrast to her predecessor, Richard Cordray—protect consumer…
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Chamber of Commerce to Congress: You’re Killing the Economy with Kindness
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce begged Congress on Thursday to scale back the $600 weekly unemployment benefit bonus it has been giving to U.S. workers.
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How to Make #NeverNeeded-Style Reforms Stick
There are lots of good regulatory reform ideas out there. The ideas with the most staying power share a common theme. They don’t just treat…
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A Massbackwards Approach to Helping Rideshare Drivers
Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healy on Tuesday jumped on the bandwagon that California Governor Gavin Newsom started by suing rideshare companies Uber and Lyft in…
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Final Rule on National Environmental Policy Act an Important Step to Get America Back to Work
Along with its regulatory reforms, the Trump administration has also sought to unleash the American economy by streamlining the federal permitting process for major infrastructure…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
New COVID cases continued to rise, and the Supreme Court handed down a number of controversial decisions to end its term. Regulatory agencies issued new…
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Unions Say They Shouldn’t Be Burdened with Complex Process They Created
A favorite tactic used by unions to prevent membership losses, and the accompanying loss of dues money, is making the process of opting out of…
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Congress’ Long Bipartisan History of Defending Cops Accused of Wrongdoing
For more than a decade, one of the areas of broad bipartisan agreement in Congress was on protecting police officers “unfairly targeted” for their “aggressive…
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Democrats Use Phony Asbestos Narrative to Attack CPSC Nominee Nancy Beck
During hearings related to Nancy Beck’s nomination to the Consumer Product Safety Commission earlier this month, Senate Democrats engaged in what basically amounted to character…
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New #NeverNeeded Paper: Regulatory Reform
Regulatory reform is one of the most important policy responses to the COVID-19 crisis. Removing obstacles to health care can save lives. Removing barriers against…
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House Select Committee Climate Report A Pre-COVID-19 Time Capsule
On June 30, the House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis released its report. There is little original in the report. Most of its sweeping…
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New #NeverNeeded Paper: Remove or Reduce Tariffs
Trade barriers are an obvious #NeverNeeded candidate for removal during a pandemic and a recession. They make medical supplies scarcer and more expensive. They raise…
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The E.O. 13891 Guidance Document Portal: An Exercise in Utility
Federal agencies have been required by Executive Order 13891 to create “a single, searchable, indexed database that contains or links to all guidance documents in effect.” Agencies…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
The USMCA trade agreement came into effect on July 1, and three states increased their minimum wages. The unemployment rate went down to 11.1 percent.
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Seila Law Leaves More Questions than Answers over the Constitutionality of Past CFPB Actions
On June 29, the Supreme Court ruled the structure of Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to be unconstitutional. Chief Justice John Roberts delivered the majority opinion,…
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Unemployment Drops to 11 Percent, Showing the Economy Can Recover If We Let It
The Labor Department’s announcement Thursday that the unemployment rate fell to 11.1 percent after the economy added 4.8 million jobs in July proves the previous…
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Air Conditioning Can Help Fight COVID-19—If Federal Policy Allows It To
COVID-19 persists into the time of year when most Americans rely on air conditioning, so many are asking whether cranking up the cold air helps…
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For Small Businesses, Hiking Minimum Wages Now Is Like Throwing an Anchor to a Drowning Man
Three states and three major cities hiked up their minimum wages Wednesday, resisting calls by the business community to hold off until the COVID-19 crisis…
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Managed Trade: USMCA Comes into Effect Today
The United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) comes into effect today. USMCA’s policy changes are modest, and its economic impact will be small. But it sets a…
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A Bright Spot for Tech on USMCA Day
Today the new U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement goes into effect. Despite its many flaws, it contains a beneficial provision related to the tech sector. The language of…
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Infrastructure Bill’s Non-Serious Nature Is a Serious Problem
America’s current surface transportation authorization, the FAST Act, expires at the end of September. Rather than reauthorizing it, however, House Democrats have introduced the INVEST…
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Trump’s Regulatory Reform Agenda by the Numbers, Summer 2020 Update
The administration released the Spring 2020 Unified Agenda of Federal Regulatory and Deregulatory Actions. Its purpose is to lay out regulatory priorities of the federal…
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George Washington’s Fight (and Ours) against Regulation without Representation
Those who have followed CEI over the years know that one of our main grievances is “Regulation Without Representation.” The phrase—an apt description of laws…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
Consumer spending rose 8.2 percent in May, a new record that gives hope for a quicker economic recovery. On the other hand, new coronavirus cases…
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Axios Spins IEA CO2 Report
Axios Generate on June 26 concludes its first article with a “bonus chart” from the International Energy Agency’s recent report, Global CO2 emissions in 2019.
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Tax Breaks for Wind and Solar—Bad Energy Policy, Bad Post-Coronavirus Recovery Policy
The House of Representatives’ $1.5 trillion dollar infrastructure package is being sold to the public as a post-coronavirus job creation bill. It now includes the…
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Podcast: Reforming #NeverNeeded Regulations
The John Locke Foundation has released a Rebound Plan for North Carolina, where it is based—the basketball reference is a nice touch. It contains reform…
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Why George Washington Shouldn’t Be Canceled
The father of our country is making news, but for disappointing reasons. Washington was trending on Twitter after his statue was toppled in Portland. A private…
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Will Senator Udall Accept the Blame for Methylene Chloride Deaths?
Hearings for Nancy Beck’s nomination to chair the Consumer Product Safety Commission took place last week at which several Senate Democrats launched outrageous and unfair attacks.
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A Cellular Network or a Jobs Program? Sprint/T-Mobile Critics Launch Misguided Attacks
The recently-approved Sprint/T-Mobile merger is already coming under fire after layoffs were announced. But even the harshest critics begrudgingly acknowledge that the jobs being eliminated…
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Secretary Scalia to Pension Funds: Manage for Returns, Not Virtue Signaling
In a Wall Street Journal op-ed, Labor Secretary Scalia explains the reasoning behind a proposed rule reaffirming that pension funds should focus on providing benefits…
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The Flawed EARN IT Act: Rights and Common Sense Should Not Have to Be Earned
The EARN IT Act is set for a markup in the Senate Judiciary Committee as early as this Thursday. Essentially the bill conditions intermediary liability…
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Supreme Court Declines to Hear Steel Tariff Case: Time for Congress to Act
President Trump’s steel tariffs were intended to boost U.S. manufacturing. They backfired to the point where a group of steel-using industries sued to stop the…
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Is Apple a Bad Antitrust Apple?
The European Union announced last week that it is pursuing two antitrust probes against the tech giant. EU authorities are investigating whether Apple violated European…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
Trade protectionists have taken to calling free traders soft on China. According to John Bolton’s forthcoming book, it turns out to be the other way…
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Webinar Panel: Thoughts on the HEROES Act and Regulation of the Debt Collection Industry
Debt collection firms play a vital role in a market economy, as part of the "plumbing"—the underlying architecture—that makes modern credit markets possible. Legislation to…
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Has Trump Been a Net Deregulator?
Pierre Lemieux, in Regulation magazine, draws from the new 2020 edition of Ten Thousand Commandments to estimate the Trump administration's net impact on regulation. Trump’s…
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Emergencies and the Project Manager’s Dilemma
Government agencies’ initial responses to the COVID-19 crisis were notable for one particular characteristic: incompetence. From basic errors in data collection, through failed lab safety…
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You’ve Been Volunteered—San Francisco’s Lawsuit against DoorDash
San Francisco has sued DoorDash for allegedly misclassifying its employees as contractors, but concedes in its own lawsuit that the “gig economy” company’s drivers work…
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A Look At Trump’s Deregulatory Record and How More of the Same Can Anchor the Next Coronavirus Recovery Package
I remembered wondering in 2017 whether the federal government would be larger or smaller after four years of Trump. The debt has now topped $25 trillion and the deficit alone…
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Perverse Psychology: How Anti-Vaping Campaigns Backfired
We have spent years and countless billions trying to deal with the supposed epidemic of youth vaping. It has only gotten worse. A new CEI…
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House Judiciary Setting up Political Theater Disguised as Tech Antitrust Hearing
Sometime next month, the House Judiciary Committee is expected to hold a hearing on competition and antitrust featuring the CEOs of Alphabet (Google), Amazon, Apple,…