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CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation
The big news from last week was the Supreme Court’s King v. Burwell decision, which upheld the IRS’ right to issue regulations directly contradicting legislation passed by…
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Reasons to Oppose the Ex-Im Bank, Part 8: Back Door Bank Subsidies
The Export-Import Bank’s charter expires on June 30. This series of posts makes the case for closing Ex-Im, one argument at a time. See also…
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Reasons to Oppose the Ex-Im Bank, Part 7: Mercantilism
The Export-Import Bank’s charter expires on June 30. This series of posts makes the case for closing Ex-Im, one argument at a time. See also…
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Reasons to Oppose the Ex-Im Bank, Part 6: Ex-Im’s Strange Dual Mandate
The Export-Import Bank’s charter expires on June 30. This series of posts makes the case for closing Ex-Im, one argument at a time. See also…
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CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation
The Federal Register passed the 35,000-page mark with new regulations covering everything from food additives to chimpanzees. On to the data: Last week, 81 new final regulations…
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Reasons to Oppose the Ex-Im Bank, Part 5: Corruption
The Export-Import Bank’s charter expires on June 30. This series of posts makes the case for closing Ex-Im, one argument at a time. See also…
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Reasons to Oppose the Ex-Im Bank, Part 4: False Economic Catastrophism
The Export-Import Bank’s charter expires on June 30. This series of posts makes the case for closing Ex-Im, one argument at a time. See also…
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Reasons to Oppose the Ex-Im Bank, Part 3: It Favors Big Business
The Export-Import Bank’s charter expires on June 30. This series of posts makes the case for closing Ex-Im, one argument at a time. See also…
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Reasons to Oppose the Ex-Im Bank, Part 2: Its Favors for Some Businesses Hurt Other Businesses
Reasons to Oppose the Ex-Im Bank, Part 2: Its Favors for Some Businesses Hurt Other Businesses The Export-Import Bank’s charter expires on June 30. Unless…
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Reasons to Oppose the Ex-Im Bank, Part 1: It’s Pro-Business, Not Pro-Market
The Export-Import Bank’s charter expires on June 30. Unless Congress votes to reauthorize that charter, Ex-Im will soon cease to exist. This would be a…
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CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation
It was a prolific week for the Federal Register, with more than 1,700 pages covering everything from real estate appraisal to water banks. On to the…
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Abolish Ex-Im Bank, Don’t Reform It
Over at the American Spectator, University of Chicago lecturer Frank Schell recently published a column arguing that the Export-Import Bank should be reformed, not…
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Bad Tradeoff: Ex-Im vs. a Weak Dollar
At this point, it looks like Congress will let the Export-Import Bank’s charter expire on June 30. This is not a big deal in grand scheme…
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CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation
New regulations last week covered everything from growing cherries to airport security fees to preventing collisions at sea. On to the data: Last week, 65…
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Both Parties Should Oppose the Export-Import Bank
Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-Texas) chairs the House Financial Services Committee. The Export-Import Bank’s reauthorization falls under his jurisdiction, and he has been one of the…
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Henry Hazlitt and the Ex-Im Bank
Henry Hazlitt is most famous for his book Economics in One Lesson. Export-Import Bank supporters have consistently ignored a very important part of Hazlitt’s simple…
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Ex-Im and Boeing, Sitting in a Tree
In most years, nearly half of the Export-Import Bank’s business is for Boeing’s benefit. The relationship between the two is so cozy that Ex-Im’s informal…
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CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation
It was a four-day work week because of the Memorial Day holiday, but regulators still had a busy week, with new regulations covering everything from…
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Politics vs. Principle: Export-Import Bank Edition
On the merits, the case for closing the Export-Import Bank is a slam-dunk. This has made life difficult for the bank’s supporters, especially since the…
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CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation
The big regulatory news from last week was the publication of the semiannual Unified Agenda, which lists most upcoming regulations from rulemaking agencies at various…
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CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation
It was a slow week despite more than 1,300 Federal Register pages, with just 36 proposed regulations and fewer than 50 final regulations, ranging from spearmint oil…
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Ten Thousand Commandments
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CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation
Last week’s raft of new rules covers everything from school lunch workers to Flugzeugbau gliders. On to the data: Last week, 65 new final regulations…
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CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation
The 1,000th new regulation of 2015 was published in Friday’s Federal Register, which itself hit the 25,000-page mark on the year. Even so, agencies are still…
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CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation
The big news in regulation for the week came from Canada, which made official its one-in, one-out policy for new regulations. New regulations from agencies…
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Export-Import Bank Update
Things have been busy on the Export-Import (Ex-Im) Bank front. For those not in the know, the Ex-Im Bank makes loans and guarantees loans for…
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CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation
It was a fairly typical week, with nearly 70 final regulations and more than 50 proposed regulations hitting the books, covering everything from potato handling…
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CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation
Along with last wwek’s usual slew of final regulations covering everything from power plants to televisions, an additional 55 proposed regulations also hit the books.
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Human Achievement of the Day: Guitars
When Human Achievement Hour rolls around each year, I make sure to do two things. One is to play an electric guitar. The other is to…
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CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation
New rules published in the last week include everything from the IRS and Executive Office of the President declaring themselves exempt from select transparency laws,…
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CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation
An otherwise slow week ended with a bang on Friday, with 27 new regulations, or nearly half the week’s total, covering everything from calorie counts…
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CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation
The Supreme Court heard oral arguments on the King v. Burwell case last week. The decision, likely to appear in June, will determine in part whether regulatory…
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CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation
The FCC, inspired by a law passed in 1934, unveiled its controversial plan to regulate the Internet as a public utility. Beyond that it was…
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CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation
In a very cold, holiday-shortened week, federal agencies issued 40 final and 33 proposed regulations covering everything from lithium-ion batteries to small fish in Oregon.
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Does Regulation Hurt Innovation?
How much does regulation crimp innovation? Not very much, according to a new study from the U.S. Census Bureau’s Nathan Goldschlag and George Mason University’s Alex…
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CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation
In a week like any other, regulatory agencies issued more than 50 new rules covering everything from from rockfish to wine. On to the data:…
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CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation
Last week’s batch of new rules covered everything from fluorescent lights to postage rates. On to the data: Last week, 59 new final regulations were…
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CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation
Regulators stepped up their pace last week, with nearly 80 regulations covering everything from defibrillators to Korean oranges. On to the data: Last week, 77…
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Don’t Reauthorize the Ex-Im Bank
Here’s a letter I wrote to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette that appears in today’s paper: The Post-Gazette’s editorial board calls on Congress to reauthorize the Export-Import…
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CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation
Even in a shortened work week due to Martin Luther King Day, federal agencies still put out 40 final regulations and more than 50 proposed…
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CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation
40 new regulations, from solid waste to washing machines.
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CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation
Happy New Year to all of our regulatory followers! Wayne Crews previously summed up 2014’s year-end statistics in this post. Among the highlights are 3,541…
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20 States Raise Minimum Wage: Happy New Year?
The minimum wage is one of the most popular policies for fighting poverty, and proposed increases to it usually poll very well. But the twenty…
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CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation
The federal government took Thursday and Friday off to celebrate the holidays. Despite the rare three-day work week, agencies still published 25 proposed regulations, more…
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CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation
69 new regulations, from washing machines to plants for planting.
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CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation
While Congress was busy with the 1,603-page Cromnibus bill (full text), agencies added nearly that many pages to the Federal Register with new regulations for everything…
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New Minimum Wage Study: Tradeoffs Exist
Many progressives strongly support minimum wage increases. This is troubling, because the effects those increases actually have on many poor people are regressive. Signaling your concern for…
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CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation
While the number of new regulations last week was normal, their cost was abnormal, totaling well over half a billion dollars just for the four…
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Towards a Humbler Monetary Policy
Is it possible for opposite policies to both be wrong? Over at the Washington Examiner, I argue that it is. The U.S. is ending…
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CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation
Regulators had much to be thankful for during the short Thanksgiving work week, with new rules covering everything from grocery store ads to wireless signal…
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CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation
It was a bit of a slow week as these things go, but regulators still published new rules on everything from stress testing to sage…
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CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation
The Federal Register took Tuesday off to observe Veterans’ Day. The short week was still a busy one, with Thursday’s edition alone totaling 783 pages. On to…
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CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation
Election week was a busy one on the regulatory front, with new rules on everything from fuel taxes to wireless spectrum. With the Senate changing…
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Gordon Tullock, R.I.P.
Imagine making Nobel-worthy contributions to a discipline in which you had almost no formal training. It’s an amazing feat. Gordon Tullock is one of the…
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CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation
In the final week before the midterm election, agencies published new regulations ranging from dairy profits to Japanese oranges. Fittingly, the total number of new…
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Minimum Wages Have Tradeoffs
Minimum wages help some workers, which is why they are so popular. But they aren’t a free lunch. There are tradeoffs. They aren’t always easy…
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CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation
It was business as usual, with new rules hitting the books on everything from political speech restrictions to butterflies to football broadcasts. On to the…
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CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation
The federal government took Monday off for Columbus Day, but still managed to pack more than 50 new regulations into a short week. On to…
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CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation
Even with a mid-term election coming up next month, agencies are cranking out a dozen or so new regulations every workday. The federal government also…
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A Pen and Phone Strategy to Shrink Government
President Obama is right that Congress doesn’t do much. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, of course. But the pen and phone strategy Obama proposed…
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CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation
The Federal Register topped the 60,000-page mark on Friday, and is on pace for the 6th-highest page count in its 79-year history. Along the way,…
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CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation
A busy week ended with a flourish, with Friday’s Federal Register alone containing 28 final regulations and 542 pages.
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CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation
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Lesson from Ex-Im Fight: More Agencies Should Have Sunsets
Congress hasn’t voted just yet on the Continuing Resolution that includes the Export-Import Bank’s reauthorization. But we already know that it will pass this week,…
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CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation
The number of new regulations topped 2,500 on the year, while the Federal Register added 1,853 pages to end the week just shy of the…
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Dueling Ex-Im Commentary
A vote on the Continuing Resolution, which includes the controversial Export-Import Bank reauthorization was originally scheduled for today, but has been pushed back to next…
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Don’t Tie Ex-Im Renewal to Government Shutdown
It appears Congress will decide the Export-Import Bank’s short-term fate this week. There are several bills with different reauthorization terms, and Rep. Justin Amash and…
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CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation
It was a short week due to the Labor Day holiday, but agencies still managed to issue more than 60 new regulations and push the…
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Ex-Im Update
Congress comes back from its annual August recess next week. One of the top items on its agenda is deciding the Export-Import Bank’s fate. Ex-Im…
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CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation
In a week like any other, federal agencies issued regulations for everything from dairy farmers’ profit margins to Canadian apple exports.
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CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation
The Federal Register burst past the 50,000-page mark with Friday’s 878-page effort, which also contained 21 final regulations and four “significant” documents.
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New RegData Site Makes it Easier to Track Regulation
About three years ago, our friends at the Mercatus Center launched a website called RegData that compiles a searchable database on many facets of…
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CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation
75 new regulations, from tax delinquents to spectrum auctions.
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The Ex-Im Bank’s Unilateral Disarmament Fallacy
One of the weakest arguments against free trade is the "unilateral disarmament" fallacy--that a country should refuse to liberalize its trade policies until other countries…
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CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation
Despite another 47 proposed regulations and 80 final regulations last week, 2014 remains on pace to have the smallest number of new regulations of any…
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The Case for Closing the Export-Import Bank
Over at American Banker’s BankThink blog, I have a piece making the case for closing the Export-Import Bank, mostly on corruption grounds: The…
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The Let Me Google That for You Act
When it comes to government transparency, more is better. As a general principle, the government should make public as many of its documents as possible…
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CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation
Ninety-eight new regulations, from Moroccan blueberries to home furnaces.
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CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation
Seventy-four new regulations, from spearmint oil to insurance exchanges.
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CEI Podcast for July 24, 2014: Victory in Halbig v. Burwell
General Counsel Sam Kazman talks about what the Halbig decision means for the Affordable Care Act, as well as broader principles such as taxation…
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CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation
In addition to 100 final regulations, 62 proposed regulations made their way to the Federal Register last week.
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Ten Reasons to Abolish the Export-Import Bank
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CEI Podcast for July 15, 2014: Time to Close the Export-Import Bank
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CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation
63 new regulations, from poultry plans to headaches. …
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CEI Podcast for July 10, 2014: The Wire Act and Online Gambling
Michelle Minton argues that the Wire Act applies only to interstate sports gambling, not online gambling as a whole. The Wire Act's 50-year history…
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Cronyism and the Export-Import Bank
Over at Rare, I have a piece on the cronyism angle of the Export-Import Bank debate. The Senate will likely vote this on month on whether…
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CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation
It was a short work week due to the 4th of July holiday, but a busy one. Monday’s Federal Register topped 500 pages, and Tuesday alone saw 29…
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CEI Podcast for July 1, 2014: John Holdren’s Poor Data Quality Control
General Counsel Sam Kazman talks about presidential science advisor John Holdren's refusal to comply with the federal Data Quality Act when CEI questioned…
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Is John Boehner’s Lawsuit the Best Way to Rein in the Executive Branch?
House Speaker John Boehner plans to sue President Obama over perceived abuses of the separation of powers. Over at the Daily Caller, I argue that…
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CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation
There were no major regulations this week, but more than 80 little ones, covering everything from a religious exemption to the federal tanning tax to…
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Ex-Im’s Invitation to Corruption
When government has a lot of money and power, it is natural for people to curry its favor. It is just as natural for those…
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CEI Podcast for June 24, 2014: TSA Still Flouting the Law on Body Scanners
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CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation
The Federal Register topped the 35,000-page mark last week. New regulations cover everything from tariffs on foreign cheese to dental implants to fireworks shows.
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Ex-Im Reauthorization Fight: Release the Reagan
The Export-Import Bank is up for reauthorization in September. If the vote fails in Congress, the Bank and its $140 billion portfolio will cease to…
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CEI Podcast for June 17, 2014: CEI Celebrates 30 Years
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Laughing All the Way to the Export-Import Bank
The Kronies are back with a video about the Export-Import Bank, one of the federal government’s largest corporate welfare programs. While the video is less than…
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CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation
Seventy-nine new regulations, from olive assessments to phone calls from prison.
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CEI Podcast for June 12, 2014: CEI Sues the NSA
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CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation
New regulations published last week cover everything from what to call UV lamps used for tanning to the federal government’s National Sheep Industry Improvement Center.
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Regulatory Improvement Commission
That idea is now captured in a bi-partisan bill in Congress. Wayne Crews and I wrote about it this week in The Washington Times:…