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CNN Hosts Seven-Hour ‘Climate Crisis Town Hall’ with Democratic Presidential Candidates
CNN on September 4th broadcast a seven-hour “Climate Crisis Town Hall” featuring ten Democratic presidential candidates. Each of the following candidates was in the spotlight…
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State Attorneys General Launch Antitrust Investigations, Forget ‘Relevant Market’ Fallacy
Facebook and Google are facing separate antitrust investigations from publicity-seeking state attorneys general from both parties. New York’s Democratic attorney general is heading a joint…
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Ethanol ‘Flex Fuel’ No Solution for Climate—or Political Compromise
Pollster Frank Luntz discussed climate policy Thursday night with Laura Ingraham on her Fox News program “The Ingraham Angle.” In the previous segment, Ingraham interviewed…
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Welfare for Billionaires: Stadium Subsidies Are Pure Cronyism
Our old friend (and former Competitive Enterprise Institute journalism fellow) Tim Carney is doing excellent work at the American Enterprise Institute these days, where he…
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Trump Tariff Costs to Outweigh Benefits from Deregulation
Early in the Trump administration, a series of executive orders slowed the growth of new regulations and removed some existing rules. From the start of…
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Department of Energy Expands Consumer Choice in Light Bulbs
The Trump administration took a pro-consumer step today as the Department of Energy finalized a rule that will allow certain types of lower-cost light bulbs to…
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Facebook’s $5 Billion Privacy Fine Almost Certainly Too High
Facebook has faced intense criticism from lawmakers and regulators since last spring, when The Observer and The New York Times reported that data from over…
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Marijuana Industry Bank Reform on Capitol Hill Agenda
While the continued legalization of recreational and medicinal use of marijuana at the state level has undoubtedly been a win for liberty, there remains much…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
The UK parliament will soon be suspended for a five-week period, something the U.S. Congress should consider emulating as often as possible. Over in the…
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Loco Four Loko Hysteria
It’s only a matter of time before Phusion Projects' new hard seltzer hits shelves, which means that it’s only a matter of time before alarmists…
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Free-Market Groups Urge Reform of National Environmental Policy Act
CEI and five other free market groups submitted comments on the White House Council on Environmental Quality’s Draft National Environmental Policy Act Guidance on Consideration of Greenhouse…
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How Accounting Reform Can Help Address Public Pension Underfunding
By deferring compensation, in the form of pensions, and pushing those costs well into the future, politicians can gain favor with government employee unions, which…
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Lung Disease Outbreak Caused by Black Market, not Vaping
News media around the world have picked up on the story of “vaping-linked” hospitalizations. Most have omitted the fact that black market marijuana e-liquid has…
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Union Wish List Bill Would Harm Workers and the Economy
Today, the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) released a report that analyzes the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act of 2019 (H.R. 2474), which the…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
A humorous diplomatic row over Greenland was not the only news of the week, with China tariffs, divisive rhetoric, and recession fears also putting in…
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Senator Bernie Sanders Releases $16 Trillion Green New Deal Plan
On August 22nd, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) released a 14,000-word plan to implement the Green New Deal—a detailed blueprint to “avert climate catastrophe and create…
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Washington Post Uses Dubious Data on ‘Extreme’ Climate Change
The Washington Post ran a long, complicated story by four reporters on August 14th headlined “Extreme climate change is here.”…
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Antitrust Basics: Think Long Term, Not Just Short Term
Moore’s Law states that computing power doubles every year and a half or so. An antitrust case against IBM, by contrast, lasted for 13 years,…
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David Koch (1940-2019), R.I.P.
Friend, philanthropist, inventor, and industrialist David Koch has died at the age of 79. He was a father and husband. Known best for his pro-liberty…
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Heretics in the Church of Tobacco Control
H.P. Lovecraft opined in 1931 that “if religion were true its followers would not try to bludgeon their young into artificial conformity, but would merely…
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When Did Conservatives Stop Loving a Free Economy?
National Review contributor and rage-inducing controversialist Kevin Williamson has a new book out, “The Smallest Minority: Independent Thinking in the Age of Mob Politics,” which…
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Sealand, from Pirate Radio to Seasteading
Setting up a sovereign free territory has long been a dream of libertarian mavericks, from the ill-fated Republic of Minerva to the nascent Free Republic…
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Will T-Mobile/Sprint Merger Increase Prices?
Lots of things influence prices and, of course, not all are influenced by the same factors. However, the lawsuit filed by several state attorneys general…
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Antitrust Basics: Corruption and Rent-Seeking
Rent-seeking is economics jargon for chasing after unfair special favors from government. Businesses and individuals have a large menu of rent-seeking options to choose from,…
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Where Facebook Interim Report on Bias Falls Short
Today former U.S. Senator Jon Kyl (R-AZ), in fulfillment of an arrangement with Facebook, released an independent Interim Report (and accompanying op-ed) cataloging the primary concerns of…
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Debt Collectors Keep Credit Market Flowing
Debt collecting is a profession that gets little love, but given the social good done by debt collectors who operate ethically and follow the rules,…
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Cataloging Regulatory Costs of Cronyism and Rent-Seeking in a Self-Interested Administrative State
Rent-seeking as a policy concern has been done to death: It’s been described over and over how regulation is often not about elevating the public…
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PRO Act Undermines Employee Choice
Democrats in Congress introduced the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act with the state goal of strengthening union power and increasing union membership, which…
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Business Roundtable Restates Obvious: Stakeholders Matter (and Always Have)
There’s a flurry of news coverage this morning about the Business Roundtable releasing a new public statement on “the purpose of a corporation.” Whereas previous…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
Last week was the Federal Register’s busiest of the year, with its 3,075 pages almost tripling a normal week’s count. A new economically significant regulation…