Blog
UnChartered Cronyism: The FCC’s Attempts to Block Cable Merger
When you hear about “crony capitalism,” what comes to mind? The Export-Import Bank? The ethanol mandate? Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac? Tax credits and loan…
Blog
CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation
As the 2016 Federal Register passed the 10,000-page mark, new regulations cover everything from salmon to wine. On to the data: Last week, 67 new final regulations…
Blog
Opening Briefs Filed in Case Challenging EPA Greenhouse Gas Rules for Existing Power Plants
The opening briefs (here and here) for the petitioners in West Virginia et al v. EPA—the lawsuit challenging the EPA’s greenhouse gas rule for existing power…
Blog
Ethanol Mandate Is Immortal Unless Congress Repeals It
In last week’s Texas presidential primary debate, one of the candidates opined that he did not need to call for repeal of the Renewable Fuel…
Blog
Minimum Wage: The End of Teenage Work Experience?
A new report from JP Morgan Chase & Co. finds that the summer employment rate for teenagers is nearing a record low at 34 percent. The…
Blog
The One Year Anniversary of Net Neutrality
In the pen and phone era, one of the many examples of the descent into arbitrary lawmaking influencing an entire sector of the economy is…
Blog
NLRB Undercuts its Own Employees’ Rights
If the NLRB cannot respect the rights of its own employees, is it really capable of governing all private-sector labor relation disputes?…
Blog
The Supreme Court Should Hear the Appeal of EPA’s Chesapeake Bay TMDL Rule
The Supreme Court will soon decide whether it will hear an appeal to overturn the latest outrageous power grab by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
Blog
New Poll Numbers Paint a Fascinating “Portrait of America”
During a presidential campaign, pollsters ride high. Despite perennial criticism, “horse race”–style campaign reporting nevertheless keeps political junkies glued to Twitter, awaiting the latest…
Blog
The Speech Sen. McConnell Should Give about Supreme Court Vacancies
In a Washington Post op-ed, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) staked out an early position against…
Blog
Up in the AIRR, Part 2: Unmanned Aircraft Systems
To date, CEI’s analysis of the Aviation Innovation, Reform, and Reauthorization (AIRR) Act (H.R. 4441) has largely focused on proposed air traffic control reforms, which CEI…
Blog
Why and How Congress Should Fight the President’s Climate Treaty Power Grab
President Obama claims the recently adopted Paris Agreement on climate change is not a treaty but rather an executive agreement—a pact he can approve…
Blog
Sharing Economy in the AFL-CIO’s Crosshairs
The AFL-CIO is meeting in San Diego to shape its policy initiatives for the upcoming year. One increasingly popular type of work arrangement is…
Blog
Utah’s Disastrous War on Electronic Cigarettes
Despite the fact that tobacco products kill nearly half a million Americans each year, it is vaping products—which help people quit smoking—that have become a…
Blog
Up in the AIRR, Part 1: Passenger Facility Charge Modernization
To date, CEI’s analysis of the Aviation Innovation, Reform, and Reauthorization (AIRR) Act (H.R. 4441) has focused on proposed air traffic control reforms, which CEI strongly…
Blog
RealClear Radio Hour: Ed Latimore & Ted Frank
Blog
OCR’s Evasive Letter to Sen. Lankford about Colleges and Title IX
An agency can disregard logic and jump to conclusions when it imposes legal mandates outside the notice-and-comment rulemaking process, since it never has to address…
Blog
CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation
It was a short work week in Washington due to George Washington’s Birthday, also known as President’s Day. Even so, federal agencies still published new…
Blog
Is EPA Trying to Centrally Plan the Auto Sector (in Addition to the Electric Sector)?
With the Clean Power Plan, President Obama’s marquee climate policy, the Environmental Protection Agency is trying to run the electricity sector. Of course, the agency…
Blog
Justice Scalia’s Death Scrambles EPA Power Plant Litigation
Blog
Todd Stern Reassures Europeans That Republicans Won’t Undo Paris Commitments
Blog
CEI Remembers Justice Antonin Scalia
Blog
House Oversight Committee Demands Agencies Reveal Union Subsidy Data
On February 12, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee sent out letters to federal agency heads to provide more information on union “official…
Blog
IBL’s Trovato Presents Latest Index of Liberalization
The Cato Institute in Washington, D.C., recently hosted Massimiliano Trovato for a policy forum discussing whether the European Union is a friend or foe of economic…
Blog
Save the Date – 2016 Annual Dinner and Reception
Blog
Regulatory Threats to Flexible Employment & Worker Freedom: What Can Congress Do?
The Competitive Enterprise Institute hosted a panel of experts last week to discuss the regulatory threats to flexible employment and worker freedom. The panel also…
Blog
Congress Gets Some Common Sense on Nutritional Disclosure
Last week, members of the House approved a bill that giving customers the nutrition information they want while minimizing harm and cost. Now it's up…
Blog
Spinning the Stay
A few days before the start of the COP-21 meeting in Paris, U.S. climate negotiator Todd Stern filed a declaration urging the D.C. Circuit Court of…
Blog
Overregulation Turns Sydney into International “Laughing Stock”
American city officials, take note: Sometimes the remedy to a purported problem is worse than the disease. This is a lesson fans of Sydney’s once…
Blog
Presidential Candidates Neglect Regulatory Bureaucracy
Allowing a $19 trillion federal debt when it was obvious that interest rates couldn’t remain zero forever is Exhibit A that legislatures rarely control spending.
Blog
News Cycle Contradicts Green Energy Revolution
Last Thursday, The Wall Street Journal’s Jeff Bennet and Christina Rogers reported that auto dealers “are telling auto makers to limit production of passenger cars in…
Blog
NYT Editorial Board Repeats Falsehoods on Air Traffic Control Reform
The New York Times editorial board has staked out a position on proposed air traffic control reform legislation, and it doesn’t like it. To anyone…
Blog
RealClear Radio Hour: Government Monopoly & Public Parks
Blog
CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation
The big regulatory news this week is the Supreme Court’s decision to delay the EPA’s big power plant emission regulation. Other than that, agencies issued…
Blog
A Majority of States Now Right to Work
Today's historic vote in West Virginia means that now in a majority of states, workers can’t be fired from their job if they choose not…
Blog
Democrats’ Debate Further Demonstrates Illegitimacy of Obama’s Climate Pivot
In the wake of Tuesday’s unexpected decision by the Supreme Court to stay the Environmental Protection Agency’s Clean Power Plan, politicians and commentators are…
Blog
How George Washington Propelled First Great Disruptive Technology
Blog
The Improvisational Fed, and Unpredictable Regulations
Improvisation can be a wonderful thing when performed by talented hands—Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, and the like. The Federal Reserve, especially for the past several…
Blog
House Committee Narrowly Approves Eleanor Holmes Norton’s Deadly E-Cigarette Science Denialism
Following three government reports in the 1980s highlighting the low cabin air quality caused by cigarette smoking and the health risks of passive smoke,…
Blog
Permanent Moratorium on Internet Taxation in Customs Bill
Today the Senate voted 75-20 in favor of the conference report accompanying H.R. 644, the Trade Facilitation and Trade Enforcement Act of 2015, the so-called customs…
Blog
A Banner Day for Rule of Law, Constitution, and Common Sense
In an unexpected and unprecedented decision, the Supreme Court last evening granted an application by more than two dozen states to stay implementation of the…
Blog
FOIA Production on Clinton Email Scandal and Security Training
The following documents were produced in response to CEI's FOIA requests seeking records of IT training by then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and her aids…
Blog
In Defending Clean Power Plan before the Supreme Court, EPA/DOJ Misrepresent Clean Air Act with Lame Editing Tricks
Lawyers for the EPA and the Department of Justice (DOJ) are trying to pull a fast one on the Supreme Court. Through creative formatting, they…
Blog
RealClear Radio Hour: Budding CEOs and PC University
Blog
PITFA a Poor Hostage for Internet Sales Taxes
Despite the premise of many a political cartoon, U.S. senators aren’t stupid. But a few of them are hoping to bamboozle at least 60 of their…
Blog
House Votes This Week on Common Sense Nutritional Disclosure Bill
Many, if not most proposals that make their way through Congress seem to have comically unsuitable names. However, at the end of this week the…
Blog
CDC Alcohol and Pregnancy Scare Tactics Backfire
Are you a woman of childbearing age? Do you binge drink constantly and have unprotected sex on the reg? Well, the CDC wants you to…
Blog
CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation
Back to business as usual this week, with new regulations covering everything from Taiwanese orchids to student pilots. On to the data: Last week, 58…
Blog
Senate Energy Bill Stalled by Wrangling
Blog
Dr. Christy Rebuts Alarmist Spin on Satellite Data
The divergence between satellite data and climate model warming predictions has long been too large for “consensus” scientists to ignore, and it keeps growing despite…
Blog
President Obama Will Propose $10 a Barrel Tax on Oil To Pay For $32 Billion Green Transit Slush Fund
The White House has begun to release details of President Barack Obama’s budget request for Fiscal Year 2017. Most interesting so far is the announcement that…
Blog
Don’t Put Eco-Finance Measures in Energy Bill
Cronyism and boondoggles in an energy bill is nothing new in the U.S. Congress. But this week, senators of both parties are taking the process…
Blog
Trans-Pacific Partnership Signed, Provisions a Mixed Bag
U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman signed the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP) in Auckland, New Zealand, yesterday, together with ministers from 11 other Pacific-rim…
Blog
Zika Wake-Up Call
The spread of the mosquito-transmitted Zika virus should be yet another wake-up call for public officials around the world. As a relatively new threat, Zika has…
Blog
Overtime Rule Is a Threat to Workers and Small Business
By statute, Congress delegated to the Secretary of Labor “the authority to define and delimit the terms of the [overtime] exemptions.” But that doesn’t mean it…
Blog
White House Threatens Veto to Choke Point Reform Bill
As has been demonstrated time and again, this administration is opposed to any change in the law that will reduce its powers. We see this…
Blog
How to Get Rid of Obsolete Regulations
The House this week is considering H.R. 1675, the Encouraging Employee Ownership Act, sponsored by Rep. Randy Hultgren (R-Ill.). I’ll leave it to my colleague…
Blog
West Virginia Set to Enact Major Labor Reform with Prevailing Wage Repeal
West Virginia, which appears poised to become the nation’s 26th right to work state, may soon enact another major labor law reform. The state Senate is…
Blog
Bill Aims to Stop Operation Choke Point Happening Again
Operation Choke Point is a major abuse of executive authority. As we have detailed over the last couple of years, Choke Point is an…
Blog
CEI Joins Coalition Supporting Bill to Curb Abusive Lawsuits Targeting Free Speech
Today, the Competitive Enterprise Institute joined seven other free market organizations in a coalition letter expressing our strong support for the SPEAK FREE Act, which would…
Blog
Interchange Fee Warnings Coming True in EU
We have often warned about the negative effects of interchange fee regulation and specifically a cap on interchange fees. Last year we warned the European Parliament that…
Blog
West Virginia: Prospect for a Right to Work Majority
West Virginia may soon become the nation’s 26th right to work state—making the number of right to work states a majority for the first time.
Blog
RealClear Radio Hour: Greek Goodbye & Cuban Revolutionary
Blog
CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation
The big Snowzilla storm came and went, but still made its presence known in the Federal Register. For many documents, there is a lag of a…
Blog
Revisiting Gore’s Katrina Innuendo
In An Inconvenient Truth (pp. 94-95), Al Gore blamed global warming for Hurricane Katrina and the devastation of New Orleans. Not in so many words but through…
Blog
Twenty-Six States Appeal to Supreme Court To Stay EPA’s Greenhouse Gas Rule for New Power Plants
West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton on 26th January filed on behalf of twenty-six States an appeal of the…
Blog
Lyft Drivers Remain Independent Contractors
A California class-action lawsuit against ridesharing company Lyft has been settled without trial. In the settlement, Lyft agreed to pay its drivers, their lawyers, and…
Blog
In FERC Ruling, Supreme Court Announces Dangerous New “No Man’s Land” Principle
On January 26, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the federal government in a high profile case, FERC v. Electric Power Supply Association. Media…
Blog
Doomsday Clockamamie
“It is still three minutes to midnight,” proclaims The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists in their latest “Doomsday Clock” report. The Atomic Scientists welcome the Iran…
Blog
War on Logging Claims another Casualty
Sierra Pacific Industries is permanently closing its Arcata, California, sawmill, a third-generation family-owned forest products company and one of largest landowners…
Blog
State Attorney General Climate Change Investigations Are Unconstitutional
Should government officials be able to cut off donations to groups because they employ people disparaged as “climate change deniers,” even if the group in…
Blog
Is Any Component of Obama’s Energy Policy Not Shrouded in Obfuscation?
Last week, Bloomberg News’s Toluse Olorunnipa tweeted from a Detroit auto show that President Obama “slammed” Republicans for having predicted high gas prices during his administration. …
Blog
RealClear Radio Hour: Endangered Fishermen & Hudson Valley Extinction
Blog
NLRB’s Joint Employer Ruling Challenged in Court
CEI applauds Browning-Ferris’ stand against the National Labor Relations Board's upending of employment liability and flexibility, otherwise known as the new joint employment standard. The…
Blog
CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation
It was a short week due to both MLK Day and a large snowstorm in the DC area, but regulators still issued new rules covering everything…
Blog
Labor Policy Developments to Watch in the New Year
Labor policy reform was a fast-moving issue during in the past year. At the federal level, labor policy became more tilted in favor of union…
Blog
Market Dominance Doesn’t Last; Regulation Shouldn’t Either
One of the justifications for heavy regulation of large companies is that they use market power to crush competition and maintain market dominance. Yet the…
Blog
Coalition Tells Congress to Keep the Internet Tax-Free
Today, the Competitive Enterprise Institute joined 44 organizations in signing a coalition letter urging Congress to extend and make permanent the Internet Tax Freedom Act (ITFA).
Blog
Coalition Submits Comments to EPA on Proposed Clean Power Plan Model FIP
Today, January 21, 2016, is the final day for submission of comments on the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) notice of proposed rulemaking concerning a Model Federal…
Blog
CEI to Appeals Court: FOIA Covers Agency Officials’ Work-Related Emails Stored on Private Server
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit could soon deliver a pivotal ruling in the case of Competitive Enterprise Institute v. Office of Science…
Blog
CDC Sodium Reduction Efforts: Helpful or Harmful?
Most people accept as gospel the nutritional limits set by government organizations. So, when the Centers for Disease Control releases a report saying that 89…
Blog
RealClear Radio Hour: Post-Serpico Policing & Prohibition
Blog
CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation
Things sped up last week after 2016’s slow start. The Energy Department issued the year’s first two economically significant regulations, and other new regulations cover…
Blog
CEI Welcomes Obama Administration’s Automated Vehicle Push, With Caveats
The Obama administration’s plan to pump $4 billion over 10 years to “accelerate” the development and deployment of automated vehicles. How they exactly plan to…
Blog
Milk, Saturated Fat, and Why You Shouldn’t Take Nutrition Advice from Jezebel
Growing up lactose intolerant, I was fond of saying that drinking milk post-infanthood was unnatural. Then I found out that humans aren’t the only ones in…
Blog
Three Economists Had the Answer to the President’s Questions
Last night at the State of the Union, the President asked three questions regarding domestic policy (I’ll leave the foreign policy question to others). They…
Blog
How Do We Give Workers a Fair Shot? Remove Regulatory Roadblocks
In President Obama’s State of the Union address, he echoed a theme that has been constant throughout his tenure, saying, “how do we give everyone a…
Blog
SOTU Response: Fisking O’s Climate Spiel
PRESIDENT OBAMA: “Look, if anybody still wants to dispute the science around climate change, have at it. You’ll be pretty lonely, because you’ll be debating…
Blog
David Bowie, Financial Wizard
With the announcement today of the death of David Bowie, tributes from fellow artists and his millions of fans are pouring in. While it may…
Blog
UK Brewery Success Shows Lost Freedom in U.S.
On Tuesday evening, President Obama will give his final State of the Union address. In evaluating the state of the U.S., it’s useful to look…
Blog
RealClear Radio Hour: Reforming to Save & Mom vs. Department of Labor
Blog
CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation
After a record-setting 2015, 2016 got off to a slow start, with new rules covering everything from vending machines to Nebraskan sludge. Even so, it…
Blog
House Checks Sue and Settle with Sunshine Act
Yesterday the House passed the Sunshine for Regulatory Decrees and Settlements Act (H.R. 712) by a slightly bipartisan 244-173 vote. The bill targets “sue and…
Blog
New Dietary Guidelines: Some Improvements but Also Fatal Flaws
As expected, the nutritional guidelines for 2015-2020 thankfully excised the long-standing warning against cholesterol-laden food in the wake of several decades of research demonstrating that the original…
Blog
Regulatory Reform in 2016 Starts Now
The House is voting on two pieces of regulatory reform legislation today, the Sunshine Act and the SCRUB Act. Both will likely pass, then it’s…
Blog
The EU Faces Many Challenges in 2016
The EU is in a quiet crisis. For the first time it faces the prospect of a major economy leaving the EU voluntarily. Its internal…
Blog
2016 Regulatory Schedule for the U.S. Department of Transportation
Last year, the Federal Aviation Administration’s two drone rulemakings got a lot of attention: their strange attempt to implement Congress’s airspace integration mandate and their unlawful…
Blog
Union Subsidy Eliminates So-Called “Free Rider” Problem
On January 11, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association, a case that could provide right to work…
Blog
Craft Brewers “Selling Out” Is Good For Craft Beer Fans
This week we learned that U.K. craft brewery Camden Town was the latest in a long string of purchases by the international mega-brewery AB-InBev…
Blog
Will SCOTUS Friedrichs Case Lead to Member-Only Unions?
Government employee unions have a lot at stake in Supreme Court case, Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association—especially access to millions of dollars in compulsory “agency…