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Electric Vehicle Tax Credits Not Popular with Americans: Poll
A recent survey conducted for the American Energy Alliance clearly shows that the public does not support congressional efforts to extend or expand federal tax credits for purchasers of…
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VIDEO: How to Become a Federal Criminal
Have you ever made an unreasonable gesture to a passing horse in a national park? If so, you are already a federal criminal. For the…
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Democrats’ Criticism of Department of Labor Overtime Rule Misguided
Overtime regulation has been a hot topic since the Obama administration proposed and finalized a rule that radically overhauled such requirements. Before this rule, which…
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This Summer, Celebrate Lemonade Freedom
There is good news for young entrepreneurs coming out of the Lone Star State, as Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) recently signed a bill allowing…
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State Officials, Department of Justice Should Green-Light Sprint-T-Mobile Merger
Yesterday’s filing by ten state attorneys general to block the proposed merger of wireless carriers T-Mobile and Sprint is the latest threat to the innovations…
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Department of Health and Human Services Needs to Correct Record on Marijuana
Regulators at the federal Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) had an opportunity in 2016 to move marijuana into a less restrictive category of controlled substances. This…
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Does Capitalism Destroy Culture?
Capitalism’s critics claim that the pursuit of profit can become like a black hole, consuming all of our attention and energy at the expense of culture.
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Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Should Acknowledge Its Unconstitutional Structure
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s structure is unconstitutional. The agency’s leadership should recognize it as such.
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‘Citizen’s Guide to Climate Change’ Exposes Activist Falsehoods
Climate change is not a hoax, but as a political matter, it is a perpetual pretext for expanding government control over the economy, redistributing wealth,…
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Congress Should Authorize Longer Trailers When Reforming National Highway Policy
In 1982, when Congress designated the National Network—the approximately 200,000 miles of truck corridors that crisscross the U.S.—it also set a 28.5-foot minimum limit on tandem…
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Remove Government Barriers to Promote Efficient Highway Investment
Today the Competitive Enterprise Institute released my new report, “Transforming Surface Transportation Reauthorization: A 21st Century Approach to Address America’s Greatest Infrastructure Challenge.” In it, I…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
While the administration is so far keeping to its one-in, two-out policy for proposed rules, new trade and antitrust policies are likely to increase net…
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Automakers to Trump: Keep Us Captive to California Bureaucrats
Seventeen automakers, including Ford, General Motors, and Toyota Motor North America sent a letter on 6th June to President Donald J. Trump urging him not to challenge California’s…
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Union Gets Nasty over Natural Gas Pipeline Rejection
Friction between the trade unions that build energy infrastructure and the politicians who routinely block these projects has been growing for the last decade—especially as…
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VIDEO: Free Trade for Economic Development in Developing World
The Cato Institute here in Washington, D.C. recently sponsored a discussion of trade and economic development, emphasizing the role that robust trade has in raising…
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EPA Streamlines Infrastructure Approval Process under Clean Water Act
Making good on its promise in Executive Order 13868 to combat the abuse of section 401 of the Clean Water Act by states seeking to block…
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Bjorn Lomborg and John Christy Shred Climate Alarmism
The latest talking point of progressive politicians, pundits, and activists is that America cannot afford not to spend trillions of dollars to “solve the climate…
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National Donut Day: Eat One for Yourself and One for Freedom
The Competitive Enterprise Institute first started its two-donut campaign back in 2010. There were some formidable issues back then, from childhood obesity to international tensions to the…
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Venezuela and Rwanda: A Tale of Two Countries, Different Paths
The 21st century Venezuela is a failure. It failed because it adopted socialism. Paul Larkin, Senior Legal Research Fellow at the Heritage Foundation, remarked in…
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Corporate ‘Power’ Is Limited and Temporary—Government Power Is the Real Threat
An Axios article today examines for-profit companies taking public positions on controversial political issues, carrying the headline “When companies act like governments.” Reporter Erica Pandey…
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Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Should Define ‘Abusive’
The Dodd–Frank Act was a mammoth overhaul of financial services regulation. Along with creating an entire new consumer protection agency, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau,…
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SEC’s ‘Regulation Best Interest’ Respects Investor Choice
Today, the Securities and Exchange Commission approved final rules that comprise “Regulation Best Interest,” which will govern conduct of broker-dealers in their transactions with retail investors. Any…
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VIDEO: Just Say No to a Carbon Tax
The Competitive Enterprise Institute has a new video out today featuring Senior Fellow Marlo Lewis which explains why adopting a carbon tax in the United…
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Prevent Another Mortgage Crisis: Let Qualified Mortgage ‘Patch’ Expire
Last month, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau released its rulemaking agenda for Spring 2019. While there weren’t too many surprises in the agenda, which mainly…
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Regulations Trump Administration Has Eliminated So Far in 2019
The Trump administration promised to roll back red tape. So how goes 2019? The 2019 Spring Unified Agenda of Deregulatory and Regulatory Actions released by the…
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This Month, Take Pride in Abundance and Opportunities of Capitalism
June is Pride Month, when gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and other not-straight people celebrate with a variety of events, including activism, parades, and concerts. As…
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Will Antitrust End Trump’s Deregulatory Push?
Revelations that antitrust enforcers have conspired to divide jurisdiction and initiate antitrust investigations into Google and Apple (the U.S. Department of Justice) and Amazon and…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
President Trump threatened a new tariff on all Mexican goods, potentially scuttling the NAFTA/USMCA agreement. My colleague Wayne Crews went through the new Spring 2019…
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Study Confirms China Cheating on United Nations Environmental Agreement
A study published in the journal Nature provides further confirmation of illegal production of trichlorofluoromethane (CFC-11) from China.
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California Leads Nation in Gas Prices, Climate Policies a Growing Contributor
The large gasoline price disparity between California and the rest of the country has jumped to nearly $1.20 per gallon. High fuel taxes and stringent clean…
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Addressing the Gender Pay Gap: Culture, Not Legislation
Gender discrimination is a complex problem with a complex solution.
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VIDEO: Ending Police Harassment of Small Business in India
Our friends at the Atlas Network have an excellent new video out about legal reform in India that is helping small businesspeople stand up to…
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Markets, Not Mandates, Best Way to Manage Trash Disposal
Governments around the world often mandate recycling when there’s no market for the materials collected. Oftentimes, markets don’t exist simply because recycling certain materials requires…
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Don’t Let Credit Scoring Kerfuffle Compromise GSE Reform
Just when it seemed that reforming the government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs) Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac was becoming a “third rail” that politicians did not want…
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Trump Threatens up to 25 Percent Tariff on Mexican Goods, Jeopardizes NAFTA/USMCA
Things have been moving quickly on President Trump’s top legislative priority, the NAFTA/USMCA trade agreement. The key was rescinding steel and aluminum tariffs against Canada…
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Corporate Virtue in Eye of Beholder
The main impression I’ve gotten from much recent reporting on the ethical behavior and social responsibility of business is that its value depends greatly on…
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Trump EPA Crosses Important Threshold on Science Policy Reform; Greens Get Political
News coverage would make most people think that Trump administration officials are doing everything possible to undermine environmental protection and human health. One article even…
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Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Should Drop Flawed Enforcement Actions
While the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s role in enforcing consumer protection laws is important, there are times when it oversteps the mark and brings frivolous…
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Liberate Local TV Programming from Price Controls
The Senate Commerce Committee plans to hold a hearing on the state of the media marketplace on June 5 and the debate around reauthorizing The…
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Narrowly Address Fair Lending Requirements to Spare Impact on Small Business
Section 1071 of the Dodd-Frank Act amended the Equal Credit Opportunity Act to require financial institutions to collect, report, and make public certain information concerning…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
The number of new final regulations this year topped 1,000 last Tuesday, and President Trump and Congress entered Memorial Day weekend at odds on issues…
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Climate Issues Decide Australian Election
Australian voters stunned the pollsters and the experts in the general election on May 18th by returning the ruling coalition of conservative parties to office. Votes are…
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ConEd Expanding Existing Pipeline Capacity Amid Ban on New Construction
We have previously reported on Consolidated Edison’s recent restrictions on new natural gas hookups in the greater New York metropolitan area as a consequence of…
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VIDEO: What Is the ‘Social Responsibility’ of Business?
Recently I was in the audience for an interesting panel discussion, hosted by the Federalist Society, on corporate social responsibility. Should corporate managers only work…
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Federal Railroad Administration Withdraws Proposed ‘Featherbedding’ Train Crew Rule
Today, the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) released a draft notice indicating that it will be withdrawing a 2016 proposed rule that would have required trains…
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Regulatory Costs of Anti-Property Approaches to Environmental Concerns
Environmental regulations transfer substantial wealth and can be subject to the same political failure and regulatory pork-barreling that characterize economic regulation—perhaps more so, given the…
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Reform Fair Lending Laws to Uphold Rule of Law
The CFPB’s new director, Kathleen Kraninger, assured the Senate Banking Committee in her confirmation hearing that she was committed to upholding the rule of law.
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Chain Stores Are Part of Civil Society Too
I recently reviewed the book “Alienated America” by Washington Examiner editor Timothy Carney, and I’d like to return to one of the observations he made…
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Costs of Loss of Anonymity in Administrative Surveillance State
The ability of citizens to communicate privately and to retain anonymity if desired are foundational rights slipping away in the regulatory panopticon of the administrative…
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Tariffs Slow Investment, Threaten Retail Industry
Large U.S. companies slowed their investment in the first quarter of 2019, largely because of ongoing trade tensions between the U.S. and China. This is…