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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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. …
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RealClear Radio Hour: Endangered Fishermen & Hudson Valley Extinction
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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).
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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…
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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…
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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…
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RealClear Radio Hour: Post-Serpico Policing & Prohibition
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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RealClear Radio Hour: Reforming to Save & Mom vs. Department of Labor
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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In Friedrichs v. CTA, Supreme Court Can Strike a Blow for Free Speech
Oral arguments in one of the most important Supreme Court labor cases in years are set for January 11, with potential major implications in the…
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RealClear Radio Hour: Humanity First and Family Medicine Man
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Promoting Economic Freedom in 2016
It was Marxists who wanted permanent revolution, but it is capitalists who have delivered it. The last 50 years have seen a sustained revolution in…
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The 2016 Unconstitutionality Index: 39 Federal Rules for Every Law Congress Passes
The New Year brought news of yet more executive action by President Obama, most prominently this time on tweaking the Second Amendment and access to…
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CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation
2015 was a record-setting year, with the Federal Register reaching 82,035 pages. This breaks the previous record by more than 600 pages, or roughly the length of Moby…
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The Good the Bad and the Big: Top 3 Consumer Policy Stories of 2015
2015 was a big year for health and consumer news. Unfortunately, many of the biggest stories were viral in the true sense of the word:…
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CEI’s Year in Review: Defending Freedom and Promoting Free Markets
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CEI Looks Ahead to 2016
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Bureaucracy Unbound: 2015 Is Another Record Year For The Federal Register
With one day to go in 2015, the Federal Register tops off at 81,611 pages. That’s higher than last year at 77,687 pages and higher than it’s…
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2015 – The Year of Equity Crowdfunding
As 2015 comes to a close, it’s time for year-end retrospectives, in which the past year is proclaimed the “year of” something. So in that…
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RealClear Radio Hour: Legacies of Empire & A New Magna Carta
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CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation
78 new regulations, from drones to ground beef.
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Washington Says Merry Christmas With 80,000 Pages Of Regulation
There may be a federal war on coal in the ground, but Washington has plenty of coal for your Christmas stocking. The Federal Register—where federal…
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Holiday Liquor Laws: Where to Buy Your Christmas Cup of Cheer
Nobody wants to drive an hour over the border just to get booze, especially on Christmas Day. However, 27 states in the union still have…
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Scrooge Was the Ultimate Job Creator
In a 2013 essay for Forbes that is quickly becoming a Christmas classic, my colleague Fred Smith took a fresh look at the character of…
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RealClear Radio Hour: Mom, Boogey Man, and Popehat
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CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation
There are just eight more editions of the Federal Register remaining to be published this year. With new regulations in the last week covering everything from truck…
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“UN climate change goal? We’re there now” – John Christy
Every month John Christy and Roy Spencer of the University of Alabama, Huntsville, report global temperature data from their satellite monitoring program, known as the…
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COP-21 Adopts Big, New Paris Climate Treaty (But We’re Not Supposed To Call It a Treaty)
COP-21 (the 21st Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change) concluded in Paris only one day late on Saturday, 12th…
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Republican House and Senate Give Huge Victory to President Obama’s Climate Agenda
The House and Senate on 18th September passed omnibus appropriations legislation that provides $1.15 trillion to fund the federal government for the remainder of FY…
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Automated Vehicles Update: California DMV Releases Draft Rules and Some Notes about that Crash Study
CALIFORNIA DMV AV OPPS RULES PROPOSED: On December 16, the California Department of Motor Vehicles released its draft licensing and operations rules for consumer automated vehicles,…
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Obama Claims the Paris Climate Agreement Is Not a Treaty. Huh?
President Obama insists that the international climate agreement adopted at the COP 21 conference in Paris is not a treaty. His reason for doing so…
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Congress Rewards Education Department for Overreaching and Flouting Checks and Balances
At Powerline, lawyer Paul Mirengoff writes about one of the many disturbing provisions buried in the budget-busting omnibus spending bill currently being passed by Congress as…
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Obama Cements Status as King of Regulatory Bloat
Today marks a milestone for the one brandishing the Mighty Pen and Phone. The Federal Register hit 78,648 pages today. The Register is where the federal…
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Omnibus: No Financial Reg Relief, Dangerous GSE Provision, But a Little CFPB Sunshine
My Competitive Enterprise Institute colleagues and I have made the case for members of Congress to use the omnibus spending bill as an exercise…
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Why the Omnibus Shouldn’t Include Cybersecurity Legislation
Later this week, the House is slated to vote on a $1.1 trillion “omnibus” spending bill to fund the federal government through next fall. Naturally,…
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FAA Releases Mandatory Drone Registration Interim Final Rule
On December 16, the FAA will publish its interim final rule (IFR) on Registration and Marking Requirements for Small Unmanned Aircraft in the Federal…
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Omnibus with Significant Reg Relief May Be Worth Supporting
As the year-end omnibus spending bill is about to be unveiled, there will be a scramble to examine its provisions. In many policy areas, my…
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RealClear Radio Hour: The Miracle of New Zealand
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CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation
It was a comparatively slow week for regulations, though agencies still published new rules ranging from bright lamps to train doors. On to the data:…
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COP-21 Nears Agreement on New Paris Climate Treaty
A third straight night of all-night negotiations will almost certainly end Saturday morning with a new climate deal at COP-21. The Paris Climate Treaty is…
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Things Get Heated at Senate Hearing on Climate Science
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CCAF Asks Supreme Court to Hear Challenge on Duracell Class Action Settlement
Today, the Center for Class Action Fairness petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to hear a case challenging an abusive class action practice where trial lawyers pay themselves…
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5 Reasons the COP-21 Meeting in Paris will Fail
A white paper from the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee is the first comprehensive report by Congress on international climate negotiations, encompassing the United…
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Congressional Committee Favors State-Based Legalization of Online Gambling
Wednesday’s hearing was not good for those hoping to make a case for a national online gambling prohibition. While the House Oversight Committee hearing was supposed…
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FAST Act Debrief: A Few Policy Notes on the Latest Highway Bill
Last Friday, December 4, President Obama signed into law the FAST Act, which reauthorizes federal surface transportation programs through Fiscal Year 2020 to the tune…
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Ex-Im Is Back from the Dead, Kind of
On Friday, President Obama signed into law a five-year, $305 billion highway bill. Marc Scribner, CEI’s resident transportation expert, has his thoughts on the…
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Protecting American Workers and Job Creators with the Omnibus
This week, Congress is working against the clock to avert a government shutdown and pass new spending legislation before the current continuing resolution expires on…
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Regulatory Dark Matter
How do regulations get made? Agencies have to follow specific procedures, first outlined in the 1946 Administrative Procedure Act. The trouble is that many agencies simply…
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Deck Stacked at House Oversight Committee Hearing on Internet Gambling
Tomorrow the House Oversight and Government Reform (OGR) Committee will hold a hearing titled, “Casino in Every Smartphone – Law Enforcement Implications,” to discuss…
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Deflate Drug Prices by Reforming the FDA
This Wednesday, the Senate Select Committee on Aging will hold a hearing on “sudden price spikes” among certain off-patent drugs. The most widely publicized of these…
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COP21: CEI’s Myron Ebell and Chris Horner Branded as Climate Criminals for Threatening Bogus Consensus
A group calling itself Avaaz (“Voice”) has plastered “wanted” posters of seven “climate criminals” on Paris streets and billboards during the COP21 climate negotiations. Avaaz worries that…
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RealClear Radio Hour: Polarizing Media & Intellectual Safety
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CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation
With most of December still to go, the 2015 Federal Register is already the seventh largest ever, going back to 1936. It remains on pace to set the…
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Repealed 82 Years Ago, the Spirit of Prohibition Lives On
Tomorrow, December 5, many of us will raise a glass in celebration of Repeal Day—the anniversary of the end of that disastrous experiment of alcohol prohibition…
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COOL Ruling Puts U.S. in the Hot Seat
In a move intended to avoid harmful retaliatory tariffs from Canada and Mexico, five Democratic senators wrote to both majority and minority Senate leaders,…
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Four Takeaways from the COP-21 Paris Climate Treaty
As we near the end of the first week of the COP-21 negotiations in Paris, the focal points of the expected climate treaty have…
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Senate EPW White Paper: Essential Background on the Obama Administration’s Climate Treaty Agenda
A new white paper from the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee is the first comprehensive report by Congress on international climate negotiations, encompassing…
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Official Time and Criminal Misconduct by Federal Employees
With under two weeks until Congress must pass an omnibus spending bill to avoid a government shutdown, one policy that should be on the chopping…
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Five Facts on COP-21
As global leaders converge on Paris for the 2015 Climate Conference (COP-21), the goals of the meeting remain unclear to millions of Americans. To help…
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Will DOL’s “Fiduciary Rule” Silence Dave Ramsey?
It is indeed sad that 40 percent of millennials favor the government banning speech that some deem offensive, according to a recent Pew poll. Even…
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RealClear Radio Hour: Rocker Conservationist and Apocalypse Averted
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Pennsylvania Legislature Begins Process of Firing Attorney General Kathleen Kane
Last month, Pennsylvania Attorney General Kathleen Kane stubbornly clung to office, refusing to resign even after she was suspended from practicing law for her alleged…
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CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation
Despite a respite for Thanksgiving, the 2015 Federal Register is now on pace to set an all-time record page count. It began publication in 1936. New regulations…
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Douglass North, 1920-2015
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Much to Be Thankful For
Thanksgiving is tomorrow, and all of us have much to be thankful for. Over at Inside Sources, I have a Julian Simon-inspired take on the…
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Thanksgiving: Massachusetts Discovers Property Rights
Thanksgiving is a day layered in tradition and myth. The standard story makes much of the creative efforts of our ancestors, the assistance provided by…
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Washington’s Thanksgiving Turkeys: Here’s Your Chance to Fill Up on the White House’s 218 Economically Significant Rules
The president will pardon a couple turkeys again this year for Thanksgiving. The birds will take a carbon-intensive cross country flight from San Francisco International…
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Fracking: The Gift Keeps Giving
“U.S. proved crude oil reserves hit levels not seen since 1972, surpassing 39 billion barrels in 2014, according to newly released federal data,” Michael Bastasch…
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3 Political Food Developments to Be Thankful For
For most of us in the U.S., we don’t have to worry about getting enough food. Quite the opposite actually; holidays like Thanksgiving can be…
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A Fundamental Misunderstanding of Free Enterprise
Today, in The Guardian, columnist Zoe Williams repeats an idea often advanced by progressives, that entrepreneurial activity is dependent on the action of others, especially “government,”…
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Problems with Mandatory Drone Registration
On Saturday, the Unmanned Aircraft System (UAS) Registration Task Force issued its recommendations on a mandatory UAS registration proposal. The report is available here. On…
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Government Submits TSA Body Scanner Final Rule Schedule to Court
On October 23, 2015, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ordered the Department of Homeland Security to produce a schedule for final rule…
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CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation
The number of new regulations on the year passed the 3,000 mark last week, and the Federal Register is nearly on pace to set an all-time record…