Op-Eds
The adventures of ‘Richard Windsor’ — EPA e-mail dump due today
Sometime Friday, the Environmental Protection Agency is expected to deliver a tranche of “Richard Windsor” emails to the Competitive Enterprise Institute. Those emails may shed…
Op-Eds
CEI Responds to the 2013 State of the Union
National Review
Re: Out of the Woods
Forbes
Doctor Shortage? Let Idled Postal Workers Fill In! (Satire)
Rejoice, one of Obamacare’s great mysteries has been solved: Namely, the question of how we are going to provide free medical care to 30 million…
National Post
Frum Wrong About Budget Cuts
David Frum claims modest automatic budget cuts scheduled to go into effect in the U.S.A. in March will somehow harm the economy if they aren’t…
National Post
‘Blunting’ the decline of unions
Some say the organized-labor movement is going to pot — but at least one union is looking to pot for its salvation. US labor unions…
The American Spectator
The Anti-Democracy Index
The United States Constitution gives “all legislative powers herein granted” to Congress. Neither the judicial nor the executive branch has the power to make laws,…
Investor's Business Daily
New Green Rules In California Take Safe Chemicals Out Of Use
If at first you don't succeed, try, try again. That's the approach California bureaucrats are taking to implement the state's 2009-passed "green chemistry" law. Unfortunately,…
Townhall
Lessons in Green Chemistry
“Green chemistry” has become the latest craze and now government agencies are sponsoring programs to teach it to kids in school. But what exactly is…
Wall Street Journal
E-Verify’s ‘Hang Everyone’ Approach
This op-ed was coauthored by Laura Murphy, director of the ACLU's Washington Legislative Office If you hang everyone, the old saying goes, you…
Forbes
Atlas Shrugged Producer Shares Insights And A Surprise That Awaits In Atlas III
Forbes
Why a ‘small’ bailout for little Cyprus is a big deal
The bailout of Cyprus is garnering much less attention than did the help provided to other struggling euro zone members. Cyprus is tiny, and rescue…
Forbes
Obama Administration Errors Set The Stage For The First Green Trade War
Trade wars benefit nobody, but we may need to brace for one soon. This month, China is set to decide on whether to…
Forbes
France’s disappointing labor reforms
Businesses in France have long faced a hostile environment at home, with the country’s rigid labor laws among their chief complaints. This matters, as France…
Forbes
Safety shouldn’t be NASA’s top priority
It has been a century since the Panama Canal was completed. It was the greatest transportation project of its time, made possible only by new…
Washington Examiner
Letter to the Editor: Sequestration Cuts Will Increase Long-Term Growth
Re: "Drop in GDP a preview for area," Jan. 31 This article falsely claims that the U.S. economy shrank in the last quarter of 2012…
Richmond Times-Dispatch
McDonnell’s transportation plan veers off-course
Gov. Bob McDonnell’s transportation plan has earned critics on both the left and right. On the left, many are upset the governor’s plan would transfer…
Richmond Times-Dispatch
Is It Time to Get Rid of the EPA?
When I joined the Food and Drug Administration in 1979, I was essentially apolitical and knew next to nothing about federal regulation. A science nerd,…
Financial Times
Letter to the Editor: Companies should never apologise for making products people enjoy
Sir, The key (if unintended) message of Alan Rappeport’s analysis of Coca-Cola’s response to New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s “anti-obesity” measures is that corporate appeasement…
Forbes
It’s Time For A Transparency-In-Government-Statistics Law
Question: When does a government agency chartered with collecting and disseminating economic data morph into a propaganda ministry? Answer: When it allows unaccountable bureaucrats answerable…
Forbes
The EPA’s Lisa Jackson: The Worst Head of the Worst Regulatory Agency, Ever
President Obama and his minions seem to think that freedom is a four-letter word. His administration has imposed an array of intrusive, nanny-state, financial, environmental…
Forbes
Value Destroyers Like Bernanke Fancy Themselves Magician Economists
Economics is not magic. Yet today, many prominent economists insist on pulling off an economic rabbit hat trick when they propose getting something for nothing.
Forbes
EPA Cannot Regulate Water Flow, Federal Court Rules
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency cannot lawfully restrict the amount of rainwater that enters a creek, a federal district judge ruled, in a victory for…
Washington Times
Letter to the Editor: Under Obama, a Failing America
Washington Times
Not All Austerity Is Equal
Prominent economists, politicians, and pundits throw around the term “austerity” as if policies by…
Right Side News
Economic Freedom Declines Again; Government Control Is Bad for Your Health
Economic freedom has declined under the Obama administration, and America’s rank has repeatedly fallen on the Index of Economic Freedom and other rankings issued by…
Forbes
Deconstructing Obamanomics: What Is The Real Goal?
As President Barack Obama begins his second term, democratically returned to office by a majority of Americans who seem to buy what he is selling, it…
Huffington Post
Greece Shows Us How Poverty Degrades the Environment
Missoulian
Baucus can help Montana by opposing Internet tax
As chairman of the powerful Finance Committee and senior senator from a non-sales tax state, Montana’s Max Baucus is uniquely positioned to protect both American…
The Hill
Partisanship Perverts the NLRB
When former SEIU Associate General Counsel Craig Becker left his post at the National Labor Relations Board in December 2011, he quickly segued into a…
Forbes
The Logic, Illogic And Political Calculus Of The Great Gun Control Debate
Whenever you see a parade outside, you can count on politicians to jump out in front of it to demonstrate their leadership. Even better is…
Forbes
Letter to the Editor: Circumventing the WTO is dangerous
Sir, Jean-Pierre Lehmann’s letter (“Focus on EU-US deal risks further damage to…
Forbes
Why All The Green Pork In A Deal Meant To Avoid The Fiscal Cliff?
When President Obama’s autopen turned the fiscal cliff deal into law, Americans might have thought that the federal government had begun to walk down the…
Real Clear Politics
Obama Blinks: No Emperor’s New Coin
It looks like the American people have been cheated out of a precious teachable moment. Demonstrating their ability to think two moves ahead, something their…
Real Clear Politics
E-Verify: Immigration Reform’s Threat To Legal Workers
Ken Nagel thought it would be no problem to hire his daughter at his Phoenix restaurant. He had not considered that Arizona’s new employment verification…
Forbes
A Barrage Of Legal Threats Shuts Down Whistleblower Site, Science Fraud
Cato
The Ripple Effects of Flawed Agbiotech Regulation
The modern techniques of genetic engineering—also known as biotechnology, recombinant DNA technology, or genetic modification (GM)—offer plant breeders the tools to make old crop plants…
Cato
EPA Rejects Arizona Haze Plan
Arizona consumers can expect higher electricity costs as a result of new EPA restrictions on three Eastern Arizona power plants. Arizona state environmental officials say…
Forbes
Federal Regulation: The Costs of Benefits
The premise that national top-down regulation of the economy brings substantial net benefits dominates public policy. But forget the philosophical debate over laissez-faire vs. the…
Forbes
Fiscal Justice Trumps Fiscal Sanity, Progressivism Marches On
In his first New Year’s Eve address since taking office, French President François Hollande—progressive poster boy and role model for class warriors the world over—defended his…
Forbes
Alleged Conflict of Interest on FDA Tobacco Panel
U.S. District Court Judge Richard Leon has allowed a lawsuit seeking an injunction by R.J. Reynolds and Lorillard Tobacco to proceed against the Tobacco Products…
Forbes
Italy’s Zombie Politicians Have Crossed The Atlantic
Zombies have overrun Rome—and they’re spreading to Washington. Politics on both sides of the Atlantic is stuck in limbo between life and death as politicians…
The Environmental Forum
Missing in Action: Constitutional Environmentalism
The most important thing the Obama administration could do in its second term to promote public health is terminate its regulatory war on affordable energy.
Forbes
Happy New Year? Fiscal Cliff, Meet The Costberg
How the largest government on earth plans to expand our liberties in the new year of 2013 by forcing “the rich” to pay somebody’s idea…
Daily Caller
EPA costs US economy $353 billion per year
Transparency is the lifeblood of democracy. Washington needs more of it, especially in the all-too-opaque world of regulation. The…
The Hill
BPA resin replacements may be more harmful
As the year winds down, it’s a good time to look back at what was one of the biggest alarm stories of the year: the…
Forbes
Clement Moore Revisited: Twas The Night Before Fiscliff
Twas the night before Fiscliff, when all through the House Not a statesman was stirring, not even to grouse. Neither bills nor amendments…
AJC
Tax pledge proves its worth
Grover Norquist’s Tax Pledge isn’t perfect. But it successfully forces lawmakers and taxpayers to address America’s current fiscal path. Opponents of the pledge say it…
AJC
Italian politics: 1970s stuck on repeat
BRUSSELS – The inevitable loop of Italian politics repeated again this month when former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi – fresh from a tax fraud conviction…
Washington Times
Federal rules cost $10,000 per employee
What do the Progressive Policy Institute, former Sen. Phil Gramm of Texas, former presidential candidate Herman Cain and the Competitive Enterprise Institute have…
Forbes
Lesson From The Google Case: There Is No Such Thing As Antitrust Policy
“Don’t get Scroogled‘” Seen that one yet? It’s a Microsoft Bing TV ad criticizing Google‘s search results for causing a kitchen fire. It’s cute, emblematic…
The American Spectator
We Cheer for Michigan
What a difference. This week’s enactment of a right to work law by Michigan lawmakers comes only three years after the 2009 government-directed bankruptcies of…
Forbes
Can Union Backed Crowdfunding Rescue Hostess From Bankruptcy?
By now you’ve heard at least two opposing versions of the Tale of the Tearful Twinkies. In the first, a great American brand was driven…
Forbes
Regulation Vs. Jobs: Assessing The Employment Impact Of Rules and Regulations
One might think there’s some official acceptance that the thousands of regulations issued annually in Washington have a dampening impact on job creation. But no;…
Human Events
The Return of Gunboat Diplomacy
Co-authored with Riley Walters. Last September, China deployed six surveillance ships in response to the Japanese government’s attempt to buy the disputed Senkaku islands,…
Huffington Post
Transatlantic Free Trade Must Be Done Right
There's a buzz, says Washington Post columnist David Ignatius, in both Berlin and D.C. these days, for free trade as a potential path back to…
Huffington Post
Tobacco rules substitute one problem for another
“Cigar smoking knows no politics. It’s about the pursuit of pleasure, taste, and aroma,” someone once said. Premium cigars are enjoyed by adults as much…
National Review
Do as Reagan Did, And Free Credit Unions
In their post-mortem on the election, National Review’s editors stressed the need to “make the case that conservative policies would make the broad mass of…
Forbes
Why Grover Norquist’s Tax Pledge Works
Listening to the media these days, it seems Grover Norquist is Public Enemy No. 1. His insistence lawmakers keep their promises to voters—in the form…
Forbes
A Tax Both Ayn Rand And Ralph Nader Could Love
Here is a puzzler worth pondering as Congress scrambles to find enough tax revenue to feed its insatiable appetite for spending. Can you come up…
The Washington Times
Internet sales taxes attack states’ rights
Proponents of Internet sales taxes are asking the lame-duck Congress to bless their state tax cartel as part of a larger tax reform package by…
Forbes
Grover Norquist’s Gnomes Duke It Out With The Tax Fairness Fairy
No one seriously believes that federal spending is going to be brought under control any time soon. Regardless of what deals are cut during the…
Op-Eds
Senator Durbin is wrong on energy drinks ban
Several lawmakers have called on the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to “do something” to protect the public from the alleged threat of energy…
Forbes
Regulatory Uncertainty Drives A Fish Farmer To Foreign Waters
Feeding 7 billion people is no small challenge. As it has from time immemorial, high quality protein harvested from the sea plays a major role…
Washington Examiner
EPA administrators invent excuses to avoid transparency
The Environmental Protection Agency is the latest Obama bureaucracy exposed for embarrassing efforts to avert transparency. Its administrator, Lisa Jackson, has been using the email…
Washington Examiner
Opportunity And Wealth Remain In America, Not Europe
The presidential election proved Americans have embraced European-style social democracy and that ObamaCare is but the first chapter in a new era of big government.
Forbes
A Guide To Talking Politics At The Thanksgiving Table
“And remember, no talking politics. Most of the people there will be liberals and you know how badly they react to opinions different from their…
Forbes
Demise of the Twinkie reveals unions’ true priorities
Is there a more iconic American snack than the Twinkie? The long-ubiquitous “golden sponge cake with cream filling” has been around since 1930, when baker…
Daily Caller
‘Basel cliff’ looms for community banks
As if the “fiscal cliff” were not enough, banks of all sizes — and in turn the consumers and businesses that rely on their credit…
National Review
The EPA vs. State Economies
On Friday, the Environmental Protection Agency rejected petitions from the governors of Georgia, Texas, Arkansas, Delaware, Maryland, New Mexico, and North Carolina to suspend the…
Foundation for Economic Education
From the Sea, Freedom!
For as long as governments have overreached, people have sought escape. Indeed, some have dreamed of exiting the state completely. From the defunct Republic of…
Foundation for Economic Education
A fix for aging water lines
Municipal water lines in North Georgia are crumbling beneath residents’ feet. Aging iron pipes are breaking with greater frequency and inconveniencing businesses and commuters with…
Breitbart
Harry Reid’s Online Poker Folds on Freedom
The Internet Gambling Prohibition, Poker Consumer Protection, and Strengthening UIGEA Act of 2012, which Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) is expected to introduce soon,…
Foundation for Economic Education
The Enduring Lesson of I, Pencil
As President Obama embarks on his second term, we’ll have to see whether he conjures up the specters of his controversial campaign moments. Recall his…
Forbes
Chronicling The Decline And Fall Of Entitlement Democracy
It’s been a week of sober reflection, accompanied by a self-imposed news fast, during which I’ve struggled to understand the deeper meaning of our recent…
Forbes
Why You Should Care That Courts Overturn EPA’s Carbon Pollution Standard
The 2012 elections ensure that President Obama’s “war on coal” will continue for at least two more years. The administration’s preferred M.O. has been for…
Hoover Institution
Free Speech for Big Pharma
One of the most important elements of medicine is also among the least well known: the ability of physicians to prescribe approved medicines for purposes…
Hoover Institution
America must avoid Europe’s toxic tax remedy
With America threatening to run off the “fiscal cliff” of tax increases and spending cuts on Jan. 1, it risks repeating the mistakes of Europe.
Denver Post
Is Colorado’s “new energy economy” still viable in light of recent setbacks in the industry? No
It's been a rough stretch for Colorado's "new energy economy." Over the last few months, the Centennial State's green energy industry, which the new energy…
Denver Post
Competitve bidding solves Rome’s water problems
ROME’S AGING, corroded underground water pipes are crumbling beneath the feet of the city’s residents. Water main breaks are an inconvenience for businesses and commuters…
Denver Post
Competitive bidding solves water problems one drip at a time
Augusta’s water lines are literally crumbling beneath citizens’ feet. Water line breaks are an inconvenience for businesses and commuters alike. Last year, a major eight-foot…
Denver Post
Competitive bidding solves water problems one drip at a time
Augusta’s water lines are literally crumbling beneath citizens’ feet. Water line breaks are an inconvenience for businesses and commuters alike. Last year, a major eight-foot…
Forbes
American Voters Choose Obama To Lead Us – Down The Road To Ruin
Despite a good look at the bankruptcy of entitlement democracy playing out across the euro zone, Americans have gone to the polls demanding to join…
NJ
Repeal of Durbin Amendment would protect consumers from annual credit card fees
A year ago, the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Consumer Protection Act’s Durbin Amendment price controls went into effect, causing consumers to lose free checking and be…
Washington Post
Driverless Cars Are On the Way. Here’s How Not to Regulate Them.
Nevada, Florida and California have all legalized driverless cars, and the District is considering whether to follow suit. The goal is worthwhile, and the potential…
Washington Examiner
Would a soda ban make D.C. thinner?
First, it was Mayor Michael Bloomberg telling New Yorkers what's good for them by banning large sodas. Is a Bloomberg-style schoolmarm mentality now coming to…
The American Spectator
Dodd-Frank’s Mystery SIFI Theater
Following the financial crisis, there was a desire to protect the nation against banks becoming so large that their failure would threaten the entire financial…
Washington Times
Police union puts bargaining rights ahead of public safety
On Nov. 6, Montgomery County voters will decide whether the police chief or the head of the police union should determine public-safety policy. The voter…
Daily Caller
The Real Fiat Scandal
Cowritten by Mark Beatty. The real outrage arising from the 2009 Chrysler bailout is not that its parent company, Fiat, is planning to build…
Forbes
President Obama’s Hidden Tax
Regulations are often called a hidden tax; but in President Obama’s case, it’s literally true. Despite the written commitment to transparency and…
Forbes
Hurricane Sandy, and the Invisible Hand of Recovery
Once again, a terrible natural disaster strikes, and Americans from the Carolinas to New England are doing their best to sort through the wreckage and…
Forbes
Paul Krugman’s Stimulus Batters The East Coast, Fueling Economic Growth
Mainstream economists, corporate executives, politicians, and pundits are still totaling up the windfall boost to the nation’s GDP, but most agree that the benefits from…
Forbes
Markets of Government: Whom Do You Trust?
Free-market advocates have the deck stacked against them in the marketplace of ideas (ironically) for a very simple reason: Markets are impersonal, intangible things, whereas…
Forbes
European Politics Increasingly Resemble Halloween
Politics in Europe is beginning to resemble Halloween. Trick-or-treaters like Greece and Spain come to the doorstep of Germany and the European Union for bailout…
Forbes
The threat striking fear into the hearts of weary airline travelers everywhere
On October 24th, 1978 President Jimmy Carter signed into law the Airline Deregulation Act, ending the nightmare of total government-control over air travel. But now…
CNET
Google is many things — but not an illegal monopoly
The Internet market is notoriously dynamic. Its giants rise and fall far faster than their brick-and-mortar counterparts. This dynamism perplexes and worries many — especially…
Forbes
President Obama Reverses Course, For Now, and We’re Better Off For It
“We’ve come too far to turn back now.” That’s been President Obama’s response, in his weekly address and elsewhere, to the jobs numbers from last…
Forbes
A Lack of Government Transparency: The Devil In The Detailing
Cowritten by Jeff Stier. A House Appropriations subcommittee has voted to move forward legislation that would cut $1.3 billion from the Department of Health and…
Forbes
Distorted Government Statistics Endanger Our Economic Health
What is the real inflation rate, calculated using an accurate technique that doesn’t change with time? What is the real unemployment rate, one that counts…
Wall Street Journal
Letter to the Editor: ‘Infostructure’ Is Fine but Roads Are Still Essential
Mr. Mead correctly identifies three major problems facing infrastructure funding: nimbyism, cronyism and an outdated vision of what infrastructure ought to be. However, there is…