CEI Today: Suing EPA, capitalism’s false prophets, and computer fraud

Today in the News

SUING EPA

CEI.org: Back to Court to Seek Answers on EPA’s Fee-Waiver Denials

Officials at the Environmental Protection Agency unlawfully seek to impose fee barriers as a means of denying and, at minimum, delaying groups EPA deems as unhelpful to its agenda from obtaining public information, according to a lawsuit filed today by the Competitive Enterprise Institute in U.S. District Court. CEI’s lawsuit also indicates that this stands in stark contrast to EPA’s notorious collaboration with environmental pressure group allies, who are instead treated as extensions of EPA.

CEI’s lawsuit asks the court to order EPA to comply with what is known as a “simple” request under the Freedom of Information Act—which EPA nonetheless has refused to even acknowledge—seeking copies of all determinations to grant or deny FOIA fee waiver requests for approximately the past year.

 

CAPITALISM’S FALSE PROPHETS – BILL FREZZA

Forbes: We Can’t Save Capitalism Unless We Denounce Its False Prophets

A debate is raging among free market advocates regarding the proper posture to take with respect to Too Big to Fail (TBTF) banks. This has become an increasingly important issue as the financial sector has grown to take up an unprecedented share of our economy. While cleaving to tried-and-true libertarian defenses of finance as vital to the economy, some of us fear that the machinations of the crony capitalists running the TBTF banks—in cahoots with their allies in the Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve—will result in not only another global financial collapse, but a populist anti-capitalist backlash that could destroy what’s left of our free enterprise system. >

 

COMPUTER FRAUD – RYAN RADIA

April 4, 2013: Reining in the CFAA

Congress is mulling an update to the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) of 1984. Under the CFAA, it is currently a federal crime to enter an incorrect age on your Facebook profile or an incorrect weight on a dating website profile. Associate Director of Technology Studies Ryan Radia suggests that the CFAA should be reined in, instead of expanded, as a draft currently circulating around Capitol Hill proposes.