Blog
The Cost Of Enforcing Government Regulation
Regulatory cost estimates of around $1.8 trillion encompass compliance costs paid by the public plus economic drag. But but those estimates do not include the…
Blog
The Anti-Democracy Index
In compiling Ten Thousand Commandments over the years (alas, February 8 is going to mark 20 years of this project) it…
Blog
How Much Does Federal Paperwork And Tax Compliance Cost?
Regulations notwithstanding, the off-budget costs of tax compliance for individuals and businesses are said to account for most of the federal paperwork burden, although there…
Blog
Federal Regulation Update: 224 Economically Significant Rules In The Pipeline
The federal government's Fall Regulatory Plan and the Unified Agenda of Federal Regulatory and Deregulatory Actions finally appeared the Friday before Christmas (the Spring 2012…
Blog
Where Did All The Environmental Protection Agency Rules Go?
The Unified Agenda of Federal Regulations has always been squishy and has never bound agencies to issue solely the rules contained within; but the decline…
Blog
Settlement: FTC Ends Google Antitrust Investigation
Today, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) cleared Google of accusations of "Search Bias," and inappropriately harming rivals. The investigation lasted nearly…
Blog
2012’s Year-End Regulatory Report Card
Both 2011 and 2010 finished with over 81,000 pages in the Federal Register, as tallied in Ten Thousand Commandments. These were the highest page counts…
Blog
Beyond The Fiscal Cliff, Bipartisan Regulatory Reform
If I'm reading this right, the Progressive Policy Institute wants to roll back some over-regulation. It's not clear how much, but it does seem to…
Blog
Where Is Obama’s Unified Agenda Of Federal Regulations?
Two primary federal documents by which we judge the regulatory record of the administration are missing in action this year. We at least can say,…
Blog
Science And Technology Policy And The Democratic Convention
Now it's the Democrats' turn to gather for their convention in Charlotte and one element of the platform in common with basic Republican philosophy is…
Blog
Regulating Obama’s Regulators — And Those of Future Presidents
This month, President Obama released a new Executive Order building upon and making permanent the quest for regulatory savings in his…
Blog
How to Fix U.S. Water Policy? Less Government, More Market Pricing
Late last week I received an invitation to testify in the Water and Power Subcommittee of the House of Representatives Natural…
Blog
Record Red Tape
Over at Big Government today I noted the Federal Register of 2011 has almost reached the level of last year’s record. Given that 2011’s…
Blog
Just in time for the Debt Super Committee–the new Hello Kitty Federal Budget Calculator
The Hello Kitty Federal Budget Calculator is here to ease tension created by hostile political climate in the wake of the debt-ceiling-increase debates. Yesterday,…
Blog
Tea Party vs. Tea Partly
In noticing the upcoming debate tonight featuring Republican contenders, I wondered to myself under which candidate would the federal government actually be smaller after four…
Blog
Obama’s Regulatory Reform: The Costs of Benefits
My colleagues commented above on the Cass Sunstein lecture at the American Enterprise Institute called "Regulatory Look-Back: A First Look," about agency's supposed eagerness to…
Blog
The FCC is Broken
A new report in The Hill notes House Republicans’ concern over “dysfunction” at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and the need for overhaul. Their…
Blog
It’s Nothing Death, Poverty, and Ignorance Can’t Fix
The New York Times “Room for Debate” frets today about overpopulation (h/t Don Boudreaux). Julian Simon and liberty have long since come…
Blog
Defending Nature via Property Rights
Elizabeth Brubaker describes why the institutions of private property are needed to defend nature, and why modern control policies that undermine them contribute to pollution…
Blog
Deirdre McCloskey on “Bourgeois Dignity”
Blog
The State of the Union Address in Five Words
Blog
What Should POTUS Say During SOTU?
Freedom Action‘s Myron Ebell, while he isn’t optimistic, answers on a POLITICO forum: In an ideal world, President Barack Obama would use his…
Blog
The Hidden Cost of Going Green
Here’s a sobering read at SmartMoney on how green products that are supposed to save money can take longer than expected for payback. This holds…
Blog
Video Games are More than Just Good for Kids
They will be a primary way that we learn, teach, produce and advance in the future. Jane McGonigal of Institute for the Future has…
Blog
Should Geoengineering be Banned?
Since one day the sun will expand into a red-giant star, humans in the distant multi-millennial future will either have to leave the Earth, geoengineer…
Blog
The cut-and-paste Splinternet
The way Ben Kunz in a new Business Week artcle puts it, “Each device contains its own widening universe of services and applications, many…
Blog
If we want elephants to die off, we only need to do what we’re doing
They can be saved, however. Dan Hannan in London talks about “privatising” the elephant (and watch the video): To us, elephants are…
Blog
Obama Defends Misguided Spending Stimulus on One-Year Anniversary
Today on the anniversary of Porkulus, President Barack Obama and his staff are defending the massive spending stimulus and sweeping financial, health care, energy…
Blog
Bailout for the First Amendment vs. Preservation of Competing Biases
Clearly many groups contend there’s a “crisis” in journalism, even to the extent of advocating government support of news organizations, despite the dangers inherent…
Blog
Space, the final private frontier
Here’s a case for private space exploration in the Wall Street Journal. Indeed, if we can ever get rid of NASA and the FAA,…
Blog
Preserve Liberty with an Opt-Out Principle
Blog
Act Now! Support a Bold National Elevator Plan
Last week I received Public Knowledge’s press release and letter urging support of a “Bold National Broadband Plan.” I admire PK a great deal on…
Blog
Government should spend nanodollars on nanotechnology.
At least that’s how my former colleague Tom Miller, now at the American Enterprise Institute, used to put it. Still another government/business funded report,…
Blog
Today is “Safer Internet Day”
Blog
“Monopoly” in a media saturated world
Blog
No More Education. Please.
Blog
An alternative to laws against texting while driving?
You can put on makeup while driving, fiddle with your GPS and iPod or reach back to pinch your annoying kid in the back seat,…
Blog
Grab Your #SoTU Pom-Poms
Blog
Bastiat’s Broken Window Fallacy isn’t even an analogy when it comes to Obama
One can only stand back in awe. President Obama said this at Home Depot today: “The simple act of retro-fitting” — installing…
Blog
Cato Institute’s Ed Crane on limited government vs. the parties
Blog
NY Attorney General Files Antitrust Suit Against Intel
Intel does not enjoy government protection of its market share, nor does it operate in a vacuum, immune from discipline if if its rebates are…
Blog
Net Neutrality at 28 kilobits per second.
Why didn’t the Federal Communications Commission impose net neutrality a decade ago? We don’t need all this multimedia and advanced services. They finally caught…
Blog
President Obama’s Back-to-School speech to students
Blog
A Bailout for the First Amendment?
Dan Rather actually made the following two contradictory statements in the same speech: I personally encourage the president to establish a White House…
Blog
Just Another Tuesday in Washington
Blog
Our Colleague Julie Called it “Subprime Healthcare”
I think that about sums it up.
Blog
Aggravated FCC Bureaucrat Knows Better than Us; Calls Petitioners “Sloppy”
Federal Communcations Commission broadband coordinator Blair Levin, charged with coming up with a “U.S. National Broadband Plan,” by February, says the 8,500 pages…
Blog
Doctors On Strike: What if They Just Said “No” to the Healthcare Hairball?
Blog
Water Displacement Forty
Blog
Want Recovery? Remember Antitrust is Anti-Economy
More restraint is in order when it comes to the Obama administrations intent to escalate “antitrust” enforcement against business and enterprise in America.
Blog
Summer 2009 and the Triumph of Unlimited Government
Blog
“Libertarian paternalism”?
In Sunstein's latest book Nudge. . . he makes the case that people often make bad decisions, and a slight "nudge" can set things right…
Blog
Virginia’s shutting down 19 Rest Areas along the interstates
Blog
Mammas, Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to be Doctors
Blog
A Handshake, Not a “Contract with America”
Newt Gingrich’s new “Strategy Memo: Time for a Real Stimulus Bill” is helpful on highlighting tax cuts that could stimulate business’ capacity for job…
Blog
Growing Young Statists
Gene Healy’s column in Examiner today chronicles the alarming statism and collectivism of today’s youth and tomorrow’s voters. The generation born from the…
Blog
A funny take on people’s resistance to new technology
"Meet Bronze!" "Bronze is Your Friend!" "Bronze is Brilliant; User-Friendly; and Multi-Purpose!" "Stone is Dead, Prepare for the Age of Bronze!"…
Blog
Obama’s pending cybersecurity overhaul should heed the “Cybersecurity Commandment”…
Not many details have appeared, but the Atlantic reports on a speech given by the administration’s Melissa Hathaway in McLean, VA: In her speech,…
Blog
Well @#$%&, Supreme Court Upholds Ban on “Expleetive Deleetives.”
In FCC v. Fox today, the Supreme Court upheld regulation of “fleeting expletives” on broadcast television. What should be “fleeting” is the nearly century old…
Blog
Well, the Feds at least banned an “amusement tax”
Blog
A National Anthem for April 15
As Tea Parties brew across the land today, I’m reminded of the infamous “Tax Poem” chain email, or, spam, if you like. Set to music…
Blog
“Newspapers are dying; Are universities next?”
Wikinomics warns that non-elite colleges risk the same plight now facing newspapers. Rarely do the dominant industries lead innovation, and in the case of…
Blog
As Washington frets over “behavioral advertising”…
Blog
Imagine There’s No Agency
Washington spends and regulates, and it’s hard to make it stop doing either. Government agencies and programs attract constituencies that want to keep them around,…
Blog
Zero-Based Governing and Improving the State of the Union
Removing burdensome regulations on small business hasn’t figured much into the economic recovery program thus far. Too bad. Alternatives to “spendulus” and the “Bailout to…
Blog
Coming Soon: A Predatory, Anti-Business Federal Trade Commission?
Even an economy in shambles shall not sway the elevation to Federal Trade Commission chairmanship of Jon Leibowitz, an interventionist-minded commissioner who, like all…
Blog
Top Ten Federal Rules to Jettison — According to Small Businesses
The Small Business Administration’s Regulatory Review and Reform initiative (r3) has a new compilation of rules that need reform, according to small businesses across…
Blog
Null Government
Well, the Spendulus/Stimulus will be signed into law within minutes. We’ll soon learn that even this Leviathan-In-A-Box is only the beginning of the Age…
Blog
What would it mean to have no “environmental footprint”?
Maybe to have no life. As this article over at the Ayn Rand Institute points out, the more “eco-friendly” you try to live, the…
Blog
“Spendulus” conference report has passed the House
But thought you might be interested in one congressman’s last-minute appeal to sanity. You, dear reader, are a person things are done to.
Blog
What unlimited government means to you.
Ran across this excerpt from a Wall Street Journal piece that I thought I’d pass along. And this was before the Anti-Stimulus added…
Blog
“Porkulus” has no relation to economic recovery; But other reforms do.
Today CEI and other free-enterprise analysts and advocates are making one last pitch to stop the anti-stimulus package that President Obama is likely to…
Blog
Why “doing nothing” is something really big: Stopping the Anti-Stimulus
Robert Higgs, he of the famous “ratchet effect” theory of government growth (up but never down in answer to a crisis), has…
Blog
Should the Anti-Stimulus Package be tan or beige?
President Obama more than once last week called it “inexcusable” for Congress to get “bogged down in distraction, delay or politics as usual” over the…
Blog
Obama’s defense of weatherizing homes as “stimulus” with Anderson Cooper on CNN is priceless
The President actually said: –it puts people to work –it saves families on their energy bill –it reduces dependence on foreign oil.
Blog
English Arch-Druid wants to limit you to two children
Two children should be limit, says this British green “guru.” What makes him a guru? Saying outrageous things that others should do, but not…
Blog
Ranking geo-engineering strategies, or “climate hacks” to cool Earth down
Numerous approaches have been described to cool what some insist is a warming world (though not over the past few years). In any event, not…
Blog
Birth of the Digital New Deal: An Inventory of High-Tech Pork-Barrel Spending
Blog
TV Transition follies: Plaguing consumers then and now.
Looks like the “digital television transition” to abandon analog and make high-definition broadcasts the standard is not going to happen as planned, but is…
Blog
Avoiding Political Erectile Dysfunction
According to the Congressional Budget Office, “Bailout to Nowhere” money for the proposed new infrastructure stimulus won’t be spent within the next two years–far too…
Blog
How Do Regulations Stack Up as a Small Firm Grows?
Tomorrow, electric utilities and green groups team up at the National Press Club to ask for billions of new spending on what they term energy…
Blog
The Cloverfield Monster of the Internet
Earlier posts today dealt with the hoo-ha over Net Neutrality. By coincidence, an anonymous colleague put the following old 1996 quote by Sen. James Exon…
Blog
“Net Neutrality,” RIP? Well, One Can Hope
Net neutrality has long been a threat to Internet users. Despite the rhetoric and appeals to “openness,” it was always an anti-consumer enterprise, irretrievably and…
Blog
Jay Leno Riffs on the Bailout
A new viral email, claiming to be jokes written by Mr. Leno, adds a bit of humor to the financial crisis. As business and government…
Blog
Abarackadabra! A 21st Century “New Steal”
JOBS, ROADS, BRIDGES, SCHOOLS, BROADBAND, ELECTRONIC MEDICAL RECORDS, ENERGY…blares the Drudge Report. It’s President-elect Obama’s weekend plan—not to produce, but to transfer yet…
Blog
Wealth-Creating Alternatives to Pelosi’s Destructive Infrastructure “Stimulus”
Well, who can possibly be surprised by the revelation that “The federal government's economic stimulus package will include investment in broadband Internet infrastructure and…
Blog
This week’s Least Objectionable Bureaucrat
My occasional “Least Objectionable Legislator Award” (no prize) takes a detour today and goes to a bureaucrat instead. So the LOL Award (pun intended, I…
Blog
Stimulus as if Capitalism Mattered
Those dispensing the "Bailout to Nowhere" proceeds seemingly answer to no one (here's one article behaving as if this were unexpected and surprising). Today…
Blog
America the Ungovernable
With respect to the ongoing series of bailouts, my colleague Iain Murray pointed out that some sensible British commentators note that one of the ways…
Blog
Hollywood Rep. to Wield Power Over Copyright Law
My colleague Cord asked me about proposing a tech agenda for Congress given the ascendancy today of Henry Waxman to Energy and Commerce Chairmanship;…
Blog
The Least Objectionable Legislator Award
My occasional "Least Objectionable Legislator Award" today goes to Michele Bachmann (R-MN) for a solid statement at today's hearings on the Bailout on Wheels,…
Blog
To Blame Laissez-Faire, Anti-Market Media Must Do Better
Like many of us at CEI, it looks like my former boss Phil Gramm isn't interested in helping anybody pretend that today's financial crisis was…
Blog
To President-Elect Obamaâ€â€Freeze Gov’t Regulations this Winter
Yesterday I called for a major “Deregulatory Stimulus.” Alongside---with financial, health care, energy efficiency, “green job” and other mandates likely in an Obama Administration---the…
Blog
Reject political stimulus, embrace “Deregulatory Stimulus.” And do it FAST.
Facing an economic downturn and an election, politicians of both parties sought to stimulate consumer demand—and some business investment—through political action. They promised that if…
Blog
An Agenda for the Monday a.m. Obama and Bush Meeting
Since the President and President-elect start spending quality Oval Office time together today, and since the incoming admistration's advisors can't settle on either pushing…
Blog
Redistributing Wealth, Simplified
It’s not fully clear what president-elect Obama plans to do on tax policy other than “redistribute” and make those families making over $250,000 pay their…
Blog
Beware of Coercive Utopians and Quack Capitalists
Blog
Civics According to “Mad Men”
Blog
If only you could take it all with you
Blog
No “Technology Czar,” Please
Like everybody else in town, we're pondering the implications of the transition to the Obama Administration for various policy areas here at CEI. On the…