The Open Market Blog

• By: Ryan Young
• 08/15/2011

California’s state legislature is poised to pass SB 432. It would, of all things, make it a crime for hotels to use non-fitted sheets.

Regulatory Reform

• By: Aaron Buchhop
• 08/12/2011

The US Environmental Protection Agency officially backed a study last week underscores what scientists around the world have been saying for years: BPA is not…

Consumer Freedom

• By: Michelle Minton
• 08/12/2011

Federal: A proposed bill, Brewer's Employment and Excise Relief Act, would reduce the federal excise taxes for craft brewers in order to help them…

Consumer Freedom

• By: Fran Smith
• 08/11/2011

Canada’s Prime Minister Stephen Harper, with his strong defense of Canada’s trade agreement with Colombia, provides a stark contrast with President Obama’s weak-kneed approach…

Labor and Employment

• By: Ryan Young
• 08/11/2011

Besides today's CEI Podcast, Iain Murray and I have a column over at Townhall.com about Lemonade Freedom Day:…

Regulatory Reform

• By: Ryan Young
• 08/11/2011

Vice President for Strategy Iain Murray talks about the rash of children's lemonade stands being shut down by police, and his plans to celebrate Lemonade…

Consumer Freedom

• By: Gregory Conko
• 08/11/2011

The Environmental Working Group seems to exist for no other reason than to scare consumers away from the products of modern technology -- and to…

Consumer Freedom

• By: Michelle Minton
• 08/11/2011

Public Outcry Forces Rule Reversal for Massachusetts Craft Brewers Despite the recession, one segment of the US market, at least, has been steadily growing. This…

Regulatory Reform

• By: Hans Bader
• 08/10/2011

In a small but growing number of schools, you have to invite all the kids in your child's class to her birthday party, even if…

Consumer Freedom

• By: Clyde Wayne Crews
• 08/10/2011

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,…

Regulatory Reform

• By: Ryan Young
• 08/10/2011

Missouri has a new law that bans teachers from becoming Facebook friends with any current or former student. The goal is to prevent inappropriate…

Consumer Freedom

• By: Hans Bader
• 08/10/2011

"Disease does not discriminate, but apparently Medicaid coverage does. A 26-year-old South Carolina tile-layer has found himself with breast cancer and out of luck for…

Consumer Well-Being

• By: Hans Bader
• 08/09/2011

“Federal payments required by President Barack Obama’s health care law are being understated by as much as $50 billion per year because official budget forecasts…

Consumer Well-Being

• By: Ryan Young
• 08/09/2011

This is a different broken window fallacy than the kind one usually sees.

Regulatory Reform

• By: F. Vincent Vernuccio
• 08/09/2011

No matter what the outcome of today’s recall election, nothing substantive will change in Wisconsin. Even if organized labor were to sweep all six recall…

Labor and Employment

• By: Hans Bader
• 08/09/2011

People are going hungry, pulling their children out of school due to poverty, and joining criminal gangs to make ends meet in the poorest region…

Labor and Employment

• By: Ryan Young
• 08/09/2011

Congress and the White House have typically been reluctant to repeal any laws or regulations, regardless of which party is in power. The solution? Change…

Regulatory Reform

• By: Hans Bader
• 08/09/2011

The Dow Jones Industrial Average finished down a massive 634 points after Obama gave an uninspiring address in response to the downgrading…

Trade and International

• By: Ryan Young
• 08/08/2011

Britain has a Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents. It isn’t quite living up to its name, though. The group is pressing to ban…

Consumer Freedom

• By: Matt Patterson
• 08/08/2011

The Baltimore Sun On July 10, three Chicago-area Alderwoods funeral homes were viciously vandalized. All were Dignity Memorial network facilities that had also been targeted…

Labor and Employment

• By: Hans Bader
• 08/05/2011

The false left-wing meme of the day is that the modest spending cuts in Sunday's debt limit deal are bad, because spending cuts caused the…

Labor and Employment

• By: Ryan Young
• 08/05/2011

They allowed her to take through her needles and syringes. But they confiscated her insulin, claiming it was an explosives risk.

Consumer Freedom

• By: Nick DeLong
• 08/04/2011

Finally. It looks like Congress will actually be moving to approve the three pending FTAs after it returns from the summer recess according to a…

Trade and International

• By: Ryan Young
• 08/04/2011

Congress is expected to take up stalled free trade agreements with Colombia, Panama, and South Korea when it returns from its August recess. Adjunct Fellow…

Trade and International

• By: Trey Kovacs
• 08/04/2011

Openmarket.org Before we even come close to paying off our current government-sponsored enterprises (Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac) or recoup taxpayer dollars from Federal bailouts (General…

Labor and Employment

• By: Nicole Ciandella
• 08/03/2011

In a few weeks, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California will hear arguments in a consumer lawsuit against Ferrero, the maker…

Consumer Freedom

• By: Jacqueline Otto
• 08/03/2011

Today, August 3, 2011, marks the one year anniversary of Treasure Secretary Tim Geithner’s op-ed in The New York Times, ostentatiously titled “Welcome…

Regulatory Reform

• By: Marc Scribner
• 08/03/2011

Over at Salon, former Labor Secretary Robert Reich has a predictably empty article on the debt ceiling deal in which he denounces Republicans for…

Labor and Employment

• By: Ryan Young
• 08/03/2011

Robert Fernandes, a father of two, has had enough. That's why he has declared August 20, 2011 to be Lemonade Freedom Day.

Consumer Freedom

• By: Ryan Young
• 08/03/2011

Abigail Krutsinger, 4, never applied for a permit and a health inspection.

Consumer Freedom

• By: Hans Bader
• 08/03/2011

The Seattle Times recently featured a special report about a psychological "expert witness" who destroyed countless lives in the court cases in which…

Consumer Freedom

• By: Ryan Young
• 08/01/2011

Few regulations are more blatantly anti-competitive than occupational licensing.

Labor and Employment

• By: Hans Bader
• 08/01/2011

After Norway adopted gender quotas for corporate boards -- requiring companies to have boards of directors comprised of at least 40 percent women -- large…

Labor and Employment

• By: Ryan Young
• 08/01/2011

New York’s state legislature just passed a bill requiring warning labels to be put on all sippy cups sold in the state.

Consumer Freedom

• By: Ryan Young
• 07/29/2011

Usually, "bipartisan" means "twice as stupid." But for real regulatory reform to happen, both parties need to be involved.

Regulatory Reform

• By: Hans Bader
• 07/29/2011

After school shootings, psychologists fan out and provide “grief counseling” to student bodies, but it’s far from clear that this does any good. Critics say…

Consumer Freedom

• By: Trey Kovacs
• 07/29/2011

Openmarket.org The House will vote on the Jobs Protection from Government Interference Act today. Sponsor Rep. Tim Scott and other representatives of Congress have proposed…

Labor and Employment

• By: Ryan Young
• 07/29/2011

Since time immemorial, Cook County, Illinois has had very strict personal conduct regulations for its forests. Among other things, it has been illegal to:…

Regulatory Reform

• By: Trey Kovacs
• 07/28/2011

The House will vote on the Jobs Protection from Government Interference Act today. Sponsor Rep. Tim Scott and other representatives of Congress have proposed numerous…

Labor and Employment

• By: Hans Bader
• 07/28/2011

There are apples and other fruit sitting around my house, and my four-year-old daughter can eat an apple anytime. By contrast, she seldom gets to…

Consumer Freedom

• By: Ryan Young
• 07/28/2011

President Obama made a speech on immigration reform this week. Policy Analyst Alex Nowrasteh dissects several bills already in Congress that would do just that,…

Labor and Employment

• By: Ryan Young
• 07/28/2011

New Zealand’s Registrar of Births, Deaths and Marriages has a list of names that are verboten for newborn babies.

Consumer Freedom

• By: Hans Bader
• 07/27/2011

Thanks to the "conflict minerals" provisions of  the 2010 Dodd-Frank law, thousands of the world's poorest people will lose their jobs. Why? Simply because they…

Labor and Employment

• By: Ryan Young
• 07/27/2011

San Diego's city government is going through tough financial times. But legislators have found a lucrative possible revenue source: the city’s 373,000 cats. The city…

Regulatory Reform

• By: Hans Bader
• 07/26/2011

Ed Pinto, who was an executive at Fannie Mae long before it went into the toilet and nearly took the financial system down with it,…

Regulatory Reform

• By: Nick DeLong
• 07/26/2011

Yesterday’s Wall Street Journal article highlights another reason why farm subsidies need to be put to rest. Land…

Consumer Freedom

• By: Ryan Young
• 07/26/2011

The DC City Council wants to require pedicab passengers to wear seatbelts.

Consumer Freedom

• By: Gregory Conko
• 07/26/2011

When the federal government's Preventive Services Task Force recommended in November 2009 that most women under age 50 should stop having regular…

Consumer Well-Being

• By: Fran Smith
• 07/25/2011

In yesterday’s New York Times, trade economist Jagdish Bhagwati takes the Obama administration and Congress to task for letting the World Trade Organization’s Doha…

Trade and International

• By: Ivan Osorio
• 07/25/2011

A judge has ruled that the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) improperly benefited from an employer threatening workers with loss of raises in a 2010 election in California…

Labor and Employment