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New Mexico Taxpayers Foot the Bill for Union Business
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Despite Naysayers, Consumer Finance Panelists are Uniquely Qualified to Tackle Barriers to Financial Inclusion
Last week, the Consumer Financial Protection announced the membership of the newly created Taskforce on Federal Consumer Financial Law, which will work to “harmonize and…
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Minimum Wages Rise Across the Country
Twenty four states rang in 2020 with minimum wage increases. Most of the increases are modest, so the tradeoffs will be, too. But there was…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
The new year started off with a literal bang, though as of this writing the worst Iran scenario seems to have been avoided. The Senate…
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EIA Projects Renewables Will be “Most Used” Energy Source in 2050—but …
“With the rapid growth of electricity generation, renewables—including solar, wind, and hydroelectric power—are the fastest-growing energy source between 2018 and 2050, surpassing petroleum and other…
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Trump Administration Rewrites the Rules for the National Environmental Policy Act
President Trump on January 9 rolled out new rules to implement the National Environmental Policy Act of 1970 (NEPA). NEPA was enacted in 1970, and…
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Brexit Update: Nigel Ashford and Iain Murray Offer Analysis
With the vote yesterday in the House of Commons to approve Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s plan for separating the United Kingdom from the European Union,…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
Happy New Year, everyone. We’re doing a slightly different format this week, on account of the new year starting mid-week. With just two days’ worth…
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Proposed iHeart Media Acquisition Threatened by Antitrust Regulation
The Wall Street Journal recently reported that Liberty Media Corp, which already owns Sirius XM satellite radio, including its Pandora streaming service, and 33% of…
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Mitt Romney Made Millions off Cigarettes, Now He Wants to Kill its Competition
Though they (probably) aren’t car surfing or eating Tide pods, lawmakers and government bureaucrats are as susceptible to passing fads as bored teenagers. For government…
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Best Books of 2019: Year of Vindication for Mother of George Washington
August 25 of this past year was the 230th anniversary of the death of Mary Ball Washington, the mother of the first president of the…
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How Much Federal Regulation Was There in 2019?
Happy New Year, everyone. Now that 2019 is in the books, we have some data on how much new regulation hit the books. Note that…
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Best Books of 2019: In Defense of Openness
Most policy proposals for fighting poverty are zero-sum. The best way to help the poor, the argument goes, is to take from the rich. Van…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
Federal workers got a three-day week as a Christmas present this year. Agencies still put out 323 notices, 50 proposed regulations, and 1,342 Federal Register…
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Best Books of 2019: Alienated America by Tim Carney
Tim Carney’s new book on social alienation and U.S. politics, Alienated America: Why Some Places Thrive While Others Collapse, raises the bar for Trump-era political…
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California’s New Privacy Law Will Harm Consumers and Innovation
The California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) goes into effect January 1, 2020. The law requires companies of a certain size that collect information on customers…
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Best Books of 2019: Big Business by Tyler Cowen
Cowen argues that most people underestimate the amount of good that big businesses do. They make possible affordable communications, books, culture and art (and the…
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Year in Review 2019: Climate Policy
The Trump administration this year continued to dismantle key components of President Obama’s climate policy “legacy.”…
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Best Books of 2019: Humanomics by Vernon Smith and Bart Wilson
Smith and Wilson combine insights from their experimental economics research with insights about human character from Adam Smith’s "Wealth of Nations" and especially his 1759 book "The Theory…
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Best Books of 2019: Expert Failure by Roger Koppl
Koppl uses the role of experts to explain the difference between approaching social problems from the top down versus from the bottom up. Koppl defines an…
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Best Books of 2019: Legal Systems Very Different from Ours
Many years ago at a Mont Pelerin Society conference in Reykjavik, I saw David Friedman give a talk on Icelandic law during the Free State…
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Weighing Bad Capitalism and Good Socialism
Recently economics professor Walter Block of Loyola University New Orleans wrote a great op-ed for The Wall Street Journal titled “Bad Capitalism and Good Socialism.”…
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Year in Review 2019: Supreme Court
The nature of the term ending in June 2019 was set at the end of 2018 when the cases were selected. When the term opened…
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Best Books of 2019: The Enlightened Capitalists by James O’Toole
James O’Toole, a professor emeritus at the University of Southern California’s Marshall School of Business, has assembled an impressive collective history of dozens of innovative—and…
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Year in Review 2019: Transportation
The Competitive Enterprise Institute had a busy year in the transportation policy trenches. We worked at the federal, state, and local levels on a variety…
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2019: A Great Year for Light Bulb Freedom
Whatever else one may say about 2019, it was a banner year for consumer choice when it comes to light bulbs, culminating in the December…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
Congress finished the year with a bang. In a two day span the House impeached the president and passed the USMCA trade agreement. Both chambers…
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Year in Review 2019: Labor and Employment
The Competitive Enterprise Institute had a busy year in the labor and employment space. Much of the work focused on expanding worker freedom, ending wasteful…
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Best Books of 2019: The Anarchy by William Dalrymple
How did a joint stock company founded in Elizabethan England come to replace the glorious Mughal Empire of India, ruling that great land for a…
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UN Climate Conference in Madrid Fails to Set Rules for Carbon Trading Market
The twenty-fifth Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP-25) was supposed to wrap up one issue remaining from last…
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Free-Market Coalition Opposes Transportation and Climate Initiative
Eleven Northeast states plus the District of Columbia on December 17th released a draft memorandum of understanding this week on how to implement their Transportation and…
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Dutch Supreme Court Upholds Climate Lawsuit against Government
The Dutch Supreme Court on December 20th rejected an appeal by the Dutch government to overturn an appellate court’s October 2018 decision to uphold a lower…
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White House Blocks Most Green Energy Tax Credits in Final Spending Bill
The spending packages to fund the federal government through the end of the 2020 fiscal year ending on October 1st, which were passed by the…
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Blame Anti-Tobacco Advocates for Youth Vaping “Epidemic”
Like most teenage crazes, youth interest in e-cigarettes once seemed a passing fad. In the early years youth vaping skyrocketed, but by 2016 began to…
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Best Books of 2019: The Narrow Corridor
Predatory governments with high corruption, that don’t respect political and economic freedoms, are extractive. Countries with these sorts of institutions tend to be both poor…
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Best Books of 2019: A Republic, If You Can Keep It
Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch explains in vivid detail the purpose of the separation of powers in his 2019 book "A Republic, If You Can…
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Sugarplums or Lumps of Coal? White House’s 192 Big Rules in Pipeline Herald More Regulation than Deregulation
No matter the presidential administration, every year there are thousands of federal rules and regulations compared to a relative handful of laws passed by Congress.
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Flex-Fuel Vehicles and Ethanol No Panacea for Energy Independence
Back in September, I posted a rebuttal to pollster Frank Luntz, who advised President Trump on Laura Ingraham’s Fox News program to promote E85—motor fuel…
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Department of Justice Wrong to Block Sabre Acquisition of Farelogix
On January 27th, the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) will attempt to block travel technology company Sabre Corporation from purchasing communications protocol innovator Farelogix, Inc. This will be the…
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USMCA Won’t Protect Tech from Trudeau
A point of contention in the debate over the new U.S., Mexico, Canada (USMCA) trade agreement has been whether or not the final deal will…
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What Regulations Did Trump Administration Add in 2019?
The Trump administration recently issued “Regulatory Reform Results for Fiscal Year 2019.” This is its fiscal year 2019 status update on the one-in, two-out directive initiated in Executive…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
Britain held a major election, and the U.S. House of Representatives is set to impeach President Trump. At the same time, Trump is poised for…
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National Labor Relations Board Attack on McDonald’s Finally Over
A major holdover case from the Obama-era National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), which acted as the litigation arm of organized labor, is finally resolved. On…
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Congress Racing To Extend and Expand Electric Vehicle, Wind, and Solar Tax Credits
It would be comforting to think that the House’s impeachment proceedings have so poisoned relations between Democrats and Republicans that the Congress won’t be able…
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Don’t Just “Modernize” Community Reinvestment Act, Repeal It
On Thursday, financial regulators released a long-awaited reform proposal which would make substantial changes to the implementation and enforcement of the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA).
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Phase One of a China-U.S. Trade Agreement and the Ratchet Effect
As of Friday, December 13th, the U.S. and Chinese governments have agreed in principle to phase one of a trade agreement. The Chinese government will…
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Supreme Court to Hear Important Natural Gas Pipeline Case
Next February, the U.S. Supreme Court will review the 2018 decision by the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals, Cowpasture River Preservation Association, et al. v. …
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Competitive Enterprise Institute Opposes USMCA Trade Agreement
The Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) today announced its opposition to the USMCA trade agreement between the United States, Mexico, and Canada because the updated agreement…
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UN Climate Summit in Madrid: Al Gore Talks, Donald Trump Vindicated
#TimeForAction is the slogan at this year’s Madrid climate conference. #TimeForTalk would be more accurate. The talking is endless. 70,000 hours and counting have been…
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How Kentucky Taxpayers Foot the Bill for Union Business
As taxpayers, we trust our locally elected officials to act as fiduciaries of our hard-earned dollars. However, it is well documented that the government frequently…