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Hey Fed! Don’t worsen devastating Durbin debit card price controls
Consumers using their debit and credit cards just can’t catch a break these days from politicians, bureaucrats, and big retailers pushing Big Government ripoffs. In…
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This week in ridiculous regulations: Robocalls and toddler carriers
Culture warriors falsely accused immigrants of eating people’s pets. Donald Trump discussed the issue in his presidential debate with Kamala Harris. The final…
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Removing taxes on overtime would have only marginal impact
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s proposal to remove the taxes on overtime would likely have little effect on the workers and the economy. It…
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Free the Economy podcast: Why we can’t have nice things with Eric Boehm
In this week’s episode we cover weaponized financial regulation, poverty policy beyond handouts, and Italy’s call to slow down the electric…
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Proposed USDA rule disregards recent Supreme Court rulings
The first two of the four priorities the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) lists on the homepage of its website are tackling social justice,…
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Just 5 percent of private sector workers voted for their unions
Imagine if you lived in a country where a vote held decades previous determined which party held control of the government and people had little…
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A cry for Yelp or crocodile tears?
Online review platform Yelp filed a private antitrust suit against Google last month, accusing the tech company of monopolizing the “local search services market”…
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Regulatory relief, not subsidies, can make housing more affordable
Housing affordability has become a major issue – and for good reason given skyrocketing home prices and high mortgage rates coming at a time when…
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Scaling deregulation: Can Trump achieve a 10-for-1 rule elimination?
In a speech at the Economic Club of New York, Donald Trump pledged if re-elected to eliminate—not two rules for every one added as he…
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This week in ridiculous regulations: Nuclear casks and radiofrequency toothbrushes
It was a four-day week due to Labor Day. The unemployment rate declined from 4.3 percent to 4.2 percent. The Biden administration signaled it…
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Government efficiency commission: the good, the bad, and the ugly
Donald Trump is proposing a new government efficiency commission and he wants Elon Musk to lead it. Like most campaign proposals, it does not…
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Will Big Nuclear make a comeback?
Following Georgia Power Plant Vogtle Unit 4’s completion and coming online earlier this year, there aren’t any outstanding large nuclear reactors under construction in the United…
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Steeling politics
Politics ruins everything. Right now, it is ruining America’s steel industry. The Biden administration, with plenty of bipartisan support, has announced it will block…
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Junk science behind federal appliance regs about to get junkier
The Biden-Harris administration has embarked on a wave of anti-consumer home appliance regulations over the last several years. Each was justified in part by overblown…
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The problem with power subsidies
A new paper from the Energy Alliance highlights one of the biggest causes of rising unreliability on the electricity grid: subsidies. The report’s author, Bill Peacock,…
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Price controls: right problem, wrong solution
In an op-ed being syndicated by Inside Sources, I take a look at Kamala Harris’s price control proposals for groceries and housing:…
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Free the Economy podcast: The future of streaming with Geoff Manne
In this week’s episode we cover social media censorship, automation at US ports, and the property market crash in China. Our…
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Congress needs to fight the bureaucracy – and itself
After testifying before the House Committee on Administration in July on Congress in a Post-Chevron World, I received a series of Questions for…
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This week in ridiculous regulations: marijuana scheduling and do-not-call fees
Rather than allow more housing to be built to combat rising rents, the Justice Department sued RealPage, a rent-listing service. CEI’s James Broughel released…
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Proof of price gouging is harder to find than Bigfoot
The concept of “price gouging” is a lot like Bigfoot. Lots of people think it exists and have been chasing it for decades. Yet actual…
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Free the Economy podcast: Searching for digital privacy with Jen Huddleston
In this week’s episode we cover the new book What Went Wrong with Capitalism, the problem with price controls (via Brian…
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The power of proceduralism: Lessons from New York’s Uniform Procedures Act
Within the labyrinth of environmental regulation, good intentions often pave the way to bureaucratic nightmares. But amidst the tangle of red tape, there occasionally emerges…
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ESG policy trembles in our post-Chevron world
The US Supreme Court recently rendered one of the most historic decisions in administrative law in the consolidated cases of Loper Bright v. Raimondo…
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Congressional Review Act votes could claw back some of Biden’s regulations
As the Biden-Harris baton-passing administration approaches the final stretch of its first term, a critical deadline has passed that could render subsequent major federal rules…
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This week in ridiculous regulations: energy labeling and FCC rules for homework
There are now more than 2,000 new final regulations on the year. The Democratic National Convention was held in Chicago. A labor market statistic caused…
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Labor issues
Labor Day was established in the late 1800s to celebrate workers and their achievements. Back then, manual labor was the dominant type of work for…
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Free the Economy podcast: AI and the future of work with Patrick Carroll
In this week’s episode we report from the State Policy Network’s annual meeting in Phoenix, Arizona and some of the great reform proposals…
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Price signals and virtue signals
It’s a divisive election year, but all of us still have some things in common. Since the pandemic began, inflation has devalued the dollar by…
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The social significance of the Consolidated Audit Trail
Personal privacy is important. The ability of citizens to communicate and do business with one another – and to do so with some degree of…
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This week in ridiculous regulations: Horse race integrity and threatening air cargo
Now that it’s August, agencies began publishing their Spring 2024 Unified Agenda entries for their planned regulations. Economists had a frustrating week, with Kamala…
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Ten Thousand Commandments in the news
The 2024 edition of Wayne Crews’s Ten Thousand Commandments is out now. For those not familiar, the report puts together a big-picture view of…
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Free the Economy podcast: Crypto politics with Eric Peterson
In this week’s episode we cover corporations playing politics, Florida’s ban on lab-grown meat, and a tale of two high-speed rail…
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Scrapping tipping taxes is now a bipartisan issue. Good.
Never let it be said that Democrats think that Donald Trump is always wrong. Vice President Kamala Harris recently endorsed an…
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Consumers can see a net benefit from FCC’s net neutrality rule stall
The saga of broadband regulation is finally taking a positive turn. On August 1st, the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals granted a stay of…
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Americans are rejecting EVs despite government meddling
Some policymakers across the country continue to try and get American drivers out of gas-powered cars and into electric vehicles (EVs), using a…
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CEI’s recent victory and principled history
My colleague Devin Watkins wrote about an important court decision last month, and we like to think that an amicus brief CEI provided to that…
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This week in ridiculous regulations: Bank hiring and salmonella frameworks
Baseless recession freakouts dominated the news cycle. The just-released 2024 edition of Ten Thousand Commandments got its share of attention as well. Kamala…
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Americans are open to trade
Politicians win elections by telling voters what they want to hear. Right now, both parties think voters are angry about foreign trade. But when you…
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Uncertain grids, growing market: The rise of backup power solutions in the US
In recent years, the generator market has seen remarkable growth, with more consumers opting for backup power solutions than ever before. The US generator sales…
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Free the Economy podcast: Economic trends and subsidies with Andrew Stuttaford
In this week’s episode we cover weaponization of banking rules, the massive cost of federal regulation, and politicized pension fund management.
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The politics of proxy voting and the importance of shareholder representation
As the 2024 election quickly approaches, many Americans consider how their vote will affect political races. While our focus tends to be on the voting…
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Can AI thrive in health care’s HIPAA-shaped box?
Innovation continues to transform health care, enabling us to live longer and healthier lives. And now artificial intelligence (AI) is poised to supercharge that…
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CEI’s The Surge: Loper Bright, nuclear exports, and more
If you are interested in analysis and perspective on current energy and environmental issues, then we encourage you to subscribe to this new publication…
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Congress needs to restore representative government: A new legislative solution
BackgroundThere is significant momentum right now to help restore our nation’s republican form of government and ensure that Congress and not unelected agency officials make…
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This week in ridiculous regulations: Closed captioning and toothless blindcats
The new 2024 edition of Ten Thousand Commandments is out now. The Paris Olympics began. Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro stole another election. Agencies issued…
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EPA: From environmental champion to bureaucratic goliath?
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was established as a symbol of hope for a cleaner, healthier America. Today, however, it faces critical scrutiny due to…
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Free the Economy podcast: Paying for mass transit with Marc Scribner
In this week’s episode we cover California’s minimum wage for fast-food workers, overturning the FCC’s universal service fee, and pushing back on…
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Jerome Powell risks the Fed’s gains against inflation
The big story from today’s Federal Reserve decision isn’t that interest rates are staying the same. It’s that the dual mandate is back. This…
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The NLRB’s Orwellian ‘Fair Choice – Employee Final Voice Rule’
The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), the federal agency that oversees union elections, has a funny idea about what constitutes giving employees an honest say…
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America should emulate South Korea on nuclear energy
A South Korean company, Korea Hydro and Nuclear Power, just received a $17.3 billion dollar contract to construct two new nuclear power plants for the Czech Republic.