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America Can Keep Its Cool If Senate Rejects Kigali Amendment
The Biden administration apparently wants to add air conditioning to the long list of items becoming more expensive. This latest threat to consumers comes from…
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Joe Biden and Merrick Garland Promise New Regulation in Agriculture and other Sectors
After stepping off into the snow upon arrival Monday, January 3, President Joe Biden headed back to the White House, where his first action of…
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Tell Us It Ain’t So, Joe
There is at least one news report that Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) has continued negotiating with the White House on a slimmed down version…
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New York State of Mind Wrong on Social Media Regulation
Recent injunctions, in both Florida and Texas, against state-level social media laws championed by Republicans illustrate the difficulties of regulating content moderation online.
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
Happy new year, everyone. The Biden administration’s first Federal Register volume is officially complete. While there likely will not be much significant legislation in 2022,…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
The Federal Register took Christmas Eve off, and here’s hoping everyone had a happy holiday season. One more week to go in 2021. The Food…
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Edmans, Soukup, and Devine: 2021 Book Review Roundup
We saw some great books on economics and politics published over the past year, and some excellent book reviews. Just this week, my colleague Ryan…
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This Week’s Outrage (which Touches on Civil Asset Forfeiture)
Last month, The New York Times reported on the way that law enforcement officers take money from the rest of us. I’ve been alternately…
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Review of Vivek Ramaswamy’s Woke, Inc.
Vivek Ramaswamy—pharmaceutical entrepreneur, son of immigrants, Yale Law grad, Hindu, and political conservative—is a capitalist with a lot of strong criticism for big business today.
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Best Books of 2021: Keith E. Stanovich, The Bias that Divides Us: The Science and Politics of Myside Thinking (MIT Press, 2021)
Today’s political polarization isn’t just annoying; it’s damaging important cultural and family institutions. And tensions won’t deescalate until people figure out the root of the…
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Best Books of 2021: Ryan Bourne, Economics in One Virus (Cato Institute, 2021) and Caleb Fuller, There Is No Free Lunch (Freiling, 2021)
Economists are an unpopular bunch. One reason for this is that much of their job is putting parameters on people’s utopias. Spending more money…
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Britain’s Competition and Markets Authority Is Becoming a Global Problem
When British supporters of Brexit talked of “global Britain,” they probably didn’t have in mind British bureaucrats dictating to the world how businesses should be…
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CEI in Amicus Brief Asks Supreme Court to Block the Clean Power Plan that Congress Rejected
People often talk about the undemocratic and illegitimate administrative state, of which the Clean Power Plan (CPP) is the perfect example. The Supreme Court will…
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What’s Ahead for Regulation in 2022?
There are two questions about the coming year in regulation. The first is what will happen. The second is what should happen. What will likely…
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The Challenges of ESG Investing in Space
Last month, I had the opportunity to participate in a panel discussion on the future of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) investing in the…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
Two big pieces of good news last week were the Senate’s decision to shelve the $1.7 trillion Build Back Better spending bill and the…
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This Week’s Civil Forfeiture Outrage (Seventh in a Series)
I’m happy to report that I’ve discovered no new civil forfeiture outrages this week. Instead, I’ll write about two civil forfeiture outrages that are a…
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The SEC’s Irrational Fear of Bitcoin
“The Commission has no basis for the position that investing in the derivatives market for an asset is acceptable for investors while investing in the…
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Have a Regulated Holiday Season!
The Code of Federal Regulations is 185,984 pages long, according to my colleague Wayne Crews’s Ten Thousand Commandmentsreport. It consists of 50 titles spread…
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The Platform Competition and Opportunity Act Will Harm Innovation and Competition
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Senate Shelves Build Back Better Spending Bill, For Now
The Senate will not vote on the Build Back Better (BBB) spending bill this year, though they might take it up again next year.
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Bah Humbug. The States that Ban Booze on Christmas, New Year’s, and other Winter Holidays
The holidays bring parties, feasts, and visits with friends and family, many of whom haven’t seen each other in person since the start of the…
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Policy Makers Should Allow Stablecoins to Thrive
The Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs will convene a hearing on stablecoins today. Congress should focus on the many benefits this form…
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Can Pensions Be Saved from Political Mismanagement?
The Department of Labor is currently working on a new rule that would give pension fund managers greater leeway in considering non-financial criteria when…
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President Biden Sows the Whirlwind
It’s the president’s job to console the nation when natural disasters strike, like the horrendous tornado outbreak last Friday night. Much of Mayfield, Kentucky,…
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Biden’s Fall 2021 Unified Agenda of Federal Regulation Heralds Abandonment of Regulatory Oversight Role
The Biden administration has just released the Fall 2021 edition of the twice-yearly Unified Agenda of Federal Regulatory and Deregulatory Actions.
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
The number of new regulations this year topped 3,000, ending the week at 3,068, and the 2021 Federal Register topped 70,000 pages. Inflation went up…
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This Week’s Civil Forfeiture Outrage (Sixth in a Series)
This week’s civil forfeiture outrage begins with a photograph of a police dog crouching over more than $100,000 in U.S. currency. Earlier this week, CBSDFW.COM…
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Inflation Increases to 6.8 percent, Misery Index Reaches 11
October’s inflation reading was the highest since the recession of 1991. November’s is the highest since the 1982 recession, at an annualized 6.8 percent.
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For Energy Infrastructure Projects, Even Supreme Court Victories Mean Nothing
In the last two years, two different natural gas pipeline projects were the subject of Supreme Court cases, and both times the project developers achieved…