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Union Bosses Order Verizon Workers to Strike
Today, union bosses ordered 36,000 Verizon workers on the east coast to strike. Nearly all of these employees, 99 percent, service the Verizon…
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Congress Should Strip the FCC of the Power to Regulate Broadband Prices
The U.S. House of Representatives will soon vote on a bill known as the “No Rate Regulation of Broadband Internet Access Act.” Just as…
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If You Build It, They Won’t Come: The Failure of Field of Dreams Transit Planning
Following decades of excessive local government fare regulation that led to a terminal decline in the private mass transit industry, government began taking over the…
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CEI Will Surmount Crimethink Persecution
Feisty, aggressive, unwavering, and sometimes unconventional—all terms I heard prior to joining CEI last week as president. The descriptions were spot-on. But before the first conversations ended,…
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PBGC’s Perverse Incentives Undermine Multiemployer Pensions
For years, the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC), the federal agency that insures private sector defined benefit (DB) pension plans, has been severely underfunded below…
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Our Take: The Climate-Related Subpoena
Since CEI was subpoenaed on April 8 for a decade’s worth of work from 20 years ago, many have asked “Why?” and “How?” Here is…
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Obama’s 7 Years of Regulation Easily Outstrip Bush’s 8
Annually, despite ups and downs, the number of federal rules and regulations tops 3,400. While the overall rule counts in the Federal Register and…
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What Others Are Saying about CEI’s Climate Change Subpoena
Since CEI was subpoenaed by the attorney general of the U.S. Virgin Islands on April 8, 2016, for energy and climate work from 20 years…
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Federal Minimum Wage: The Case of Puerto Rico
Puerto Rico is in crisis and drowning in debt. Now it looks like the island’s Development Bank, set up to raise living standards in the…
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Netflix’s Throttling Scandal: Possibly Illegal, But Not an FCC Matter
As one of the chief agitators behind the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) controversial effort to regulate Internet service providers like public utilities, Netflix has long portrayed…
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RealClear Radio Hour: Enterprising Africa & Entrepreneurial Allure
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How to Address Income Inequality
Over at the Foundation for Economic Education, Iain Murray and I give a short preview of our two forthcoming CEI papers on income inequality…
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Ed Snider: Farewell to a Business Legend
Today is a sad day for fans of capitalism and Philadelphia sports alike. Entrepreneur, philanthropist, and sports industry legend Ed Snider passed away over…
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Minimum Wages Tradeoffs: Are They Worth It?
Minimum wages help some workers, but only at other workers’ expense. Whether or not these tradeoffs are worth it is for each individual to decide.
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California Minimum Wage Hike Could Cost State Taxpayers $10 Billion
California’s legislative analyst projects that the recent increase the state’s minimum wage to $15 an hour will cost taxpayers $3.6 billion more a year in…
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CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation
Another Friday meant another 699-page Federal Register, which now exceeds 20,000 pages on the year. The big news is a fiduciary rule for retirement planning, but…
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Obama Administration Releases New Climate Scare Report
The Obama administration last week released The Impacts of Climate Change on Human Health in the United States: A Scientific Assessment. The 333-page report “significantly…
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Wisconsin Judge Rules that Workers’ Wages are Unions’ Property
On Friday, April 8, a Wisconsin judge handed unions a surprising victory—surprising because of the argument behind his decision.
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Attorney General’s Climate Investigation Subpoenas CEI
The attorney general of the U. S. Virgin Islands, Claude E. Walker, has subpoenaed the Competitive Enterprise Institute for a stunningly wide array of documents…
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RIP Merle Haggard
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State-Sponsored Slavery and the Destruction of Small Businesses
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Attorneys General Launch Intimidation Campaign with Subpoena against CEI
Days after CEI criticized investigations of Exxon by State Attorneys General over its speech related to climate change, CEI was hit with a subpoena demanding…
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Is GE a Capitalist Good Guy or a Corporate Bad Guy?
General Electric CEO Jeff Immelt has an interesting op-ed today in the Washington Post, hitting back against charges that his company is “destroying…
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Air Traffic Control Reforms Will Give Us Modern Technology, Not Union Giveaways
Guest Post by David Grizzle Former Chief Operating Officer and Chief Counsel, FAA As the former chief operating officer and chief counsel at the…
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Building a Better Society with a Better Mousetrap
Last night, the Smithsonian American Art Museum here in Washington hosted a fascinating book event featuring a presentation by Alan Rothschild, co-author of…
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Final Fiduciary Rule: Dave Ramsey May Get Relief, But the Rest of Us Don’t
While the final rule may have been less severe, it still won’t keep middle-class savers from losing access to brokers and insurance agents.
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Illinois Pension Reform that Can Pass State Supreme Court Muster
When you’re in a hole, stop digging. That seems like such a simple concept that it shouldn’t need stating, but in the area of public…
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Senate FAA Bill Betrays Free Market and Fiscally Conservative Principles
Last month, I wrote about why everyone should be disappointed by the Senate’s FAA reauthorization bill: it fails to include key air traffic control reforms contained…
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RealClear Radio Hour: Scandinavian Bliss or Myth?
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Obama Unveils Fiduciary Rule this Week, Putting Middle Class Investors in a Bind
Today, the Labor Department plans to unveil new regulatory restrictions on 401(k)s and IRAs. That means less access to financial advice and fewer options for…
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CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation
The week ended with precisely 800 new final regulations on the year, with new rules covering everything from chairs to obesity. On to the data:…
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Obama’s Climate Diplomacy: Bilateralism in the Service of Multilateralism
President Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping on Thursday issued a joint statement pledging that the United States and China will sign the Paris Agreement on…
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State Attorneys General Conspire To Shake Down Big Oil
New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, former Vice President Al Gore, and attorneys general from Massachusetts, Virginia, Connecticut, Maryland, Vermont, and the U. S. Virgin…
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No, the AIRR Act’s Air Traffic Control Reforms Do Not Grant Controllers Strike Powers
Capital Research Center, a conservative policy group in Washington, D.C., recently published an extended essay, “PATCO’s Revenge: Capitol Hill cronyism may give the air…
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Trust in Government: A Bad Strategy for the Chemical Industry
There is a reason why people laugh when you say: “Trust me, I come from the government.” Governments are not particularly trustworthy because bureaucracies are…
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Senators Reward Agency Overreaching with Proposed Budget Increase for Office for Civil Rights
Twenty-two senators are proposing a nearly 30 percent budget increase for the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights. OCR is the agency that has pressured colleges and …
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Federal Government Is Good for U.S. Economy
If you’re a fellow free-market advocate and did not arrive at this page from social media (or missed our #AprilFools joke), don’t…
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Individual Liberty: The Greatest Remedy for Terrorism
USA Today reports that lines at airports are getting longer and people aren’t signing up for the registered traveler program, TSA PreCheck, in sufficient…
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Shady Marketing Claims for “Green” Cleaning Products
Serena Ng of The Wall Street Journal reports today on the murky world of marketing for “green” and “natural” household products. Ads for these…
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President Obama Promotes Myth of Excellent Health Care and Education in Cuba
In his recent remarks in Cuba, President Obama offered glowing praise to institutions in that communist country that did not deserve it. The president called Cuba’s…
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Subway Footlong Sandwich Settlement Now on Appeal
CEI’s Center for Class Action Fairness has appealed the district court’s approval of the Subway Footlong settlement to the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. The…
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Haiku: “No Energy Left”
Inspired by SunEdison’s near bankruptcy (among other terrible news for the solar power industry) and infused with the spirit of Japanese culture…
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State Legislatures Can Dampen Friedrichs Ruling’s Blow to Worker Freedom
Today, the Supreme Court announced a 4 to 4 spilt decision in Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association, a decision that keeps alive the Abood…
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Small Scale Entrepreneurs Are Nothing New
The rise of the sharing economy and related trends, by which individuals are exercising more control over their work schedules and income flow, garners a…
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House Energy and Environment Notes
Both chambers of Congress are in recess now, but there were some goings-on in the House last Wednesday that merit mention. The first was EPA…
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Senators Urge EPA to Burst RFS Blend Wall
A bipartisan group of 19 Senators led by Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) is urging EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy to get the Renewable…
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Freedom of Contract at Risk in Carcano v. McCrory
Virginia’s Dillon rule prevents cities and counties from regulating the employment practices of private businesses. That bars them from setting minimum wages higher than…
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Illinois’ Narrow Road to Pension Reform
On March 24, the Illinois Supreme Court struck down a Chicago pension reform bill that sought to address the city’s considerable pension shortfall. In…
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RealClear Radio Hour: Satire, Art, & Politics
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Common Property, Gains from Trade—and Statehood
Historian Staughton Lynd argued that the contemporaneously drafted Constitution and Northwest Ordinance of 1787 were themselves components of a larger implicit package that harmonized the…
