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The Gore Report: Keeping Tabs on Our Favorite Environmentalist
Debatable Behavior The Washington Post reports that Al Gore’s campaign has been sending a man dressed up as an ear of…
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Odds & Ends: Animal Rights Conundrum; Washington Psychopaths; Evil Vegetables; Who Needs the Constitution?
Animal Rights Conundrum, Part I What do you do when a cougar waltzes up to your house and eats your dog? Donald and Nelda…
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Too Much Fear, Too Few Facts
This article is adapted from Facts, Not Fear: Teaching Children About the Environment (1999, Regnery Publishing), by Michael Sanera and Jane S. Shaw.
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More Sorry Than Safe
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In the Dark at Sun
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Method to Telecom Merger Madness
The telecommunications world was rocked in October with news of the merger between MCI-WorldCom and Sprint–in dollar terms the largest merger in US history.
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Stop Banking on Failure: A Half Century Wasted at the World Bank
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Rush to Tax Could Produce Net Loss
In the great Kurosawa Akira movie, The Seven Samurai, a bandit gang rides to a hillside and looks down on a small village. One…
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KEMP: The Folly of Kyoto
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Odds & Ends: Toking at the DoE, Pepe LePew Raises a Stink, Fabio, Square Dancing
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Environmental Sweetheart Suits
Environmental sweetheart suits.
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Taking Humor Seriously
With summer coming to an end, we at CEI have been spending some time mulling over some of the great questions facing our country.
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Cows or Buffaloes?
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Lance Armstrong — Going Postal
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Lessons From Cypress Bay
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The Gore Report
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Odds & Ends: Koala Kondoms, Courtroom Insanity, Superdisasters, The Folly and the Ivy
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Court Invalidates EPA Rules
With a pro-regulation White House and a timid Republican Congress, the judicial branch currently stands as the only real roadblock to federal regulatory excesses.
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Odds and Ends: Tort King’s Comeuppance; Brown vs. Barons of Education; Slandering Produce; Al Gore’s Math
Don’t Slander that Carrot! Among the poisonous fallout from the Alar apple scare a decade ago is a spate of food…
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New Protection Against Natural Disaster Losses
It’s time to rewrite the script for that long-running disaster movie – "When Dangerous Public Policies Attack Insurance Policyholders and Taxpayers!!!"…
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15 Years and Counting — Milestones In CEI History
March 9, 1984 — CEI is founded. First offices were in Fred Smith’s kitchen. After the first few months, he’d spent a few thousand dollars,…
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Smart Growth Stupidity
For years, redevelopment has been pushing Austin’s low-income Latinos eastwards. A couple decades ago, the culprit was a highway: IH35, a road that runs…
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What A Congress
As1998 draws to a close, it’s appropriate to look back at the most significant deregulatory successes that have been achieved during the year. Where should…
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Predation’s Problems (Continued)
The case against predatory pricing is much stronger than argued by Donald Boudreaux in "The Problem with Predation" (CEI UpDate, September 1998). Boudreaux relies primarily…
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Could Kyoto Kill?
Whether or not the United States should ratify an international treaty to limit greenhouse gases is the most prominent question in today’s environmental policy debate.
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Airline Deregulation – The Next Step
In the 20th anniversary year of airline deregulation, air travel is again at the forefront of public policy. Policymakers have been besieged with a variety…
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Cars and Communism
The following is excerpted from a forthcoming CEI monograph on mobility and the fall of Communism. Our grandparents told us…
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Specious Species Act
Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt is one of the Endangered Species Act’s most aggressive apologists. In the face of almost three decades of abject…
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Urban Sustainability
The grand cliché of environmental policy, "sustainable development," has migrated into urban affairs, where the native politicians and bureaucrats have made it their own.
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Out of Thin Air
"If we do it dumb, it will cost a lot; if we do it smart, it won’t cost much." Thus sayeth theKyoto apologists in…
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ATF Documents Reveal Ban on Protected Speech
We have previously reported on CEI’s pending lawsuit with the bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) challenging the constitutionality of the agency’s ban…
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Cashing in on Global Warming
The Kyoto global warming treaty may pose a looming threat to the U.S. economy, but it has spawned a cottage industry based in the…
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A Time and Place For Solar
The Clinton Administration’s "Comprehensive Electricity Competition Plan" announced on March 25, 1998 proposes a Renewable Portfolio Standard that would require 5.5 percent of all…
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The EPA’S Latest Injustice
Convent is a small, relatively poor town in St. James Parish, Louisiana, that lies along the Mississippi River between Baton Rouge and New Orleans.
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A Titanic Question of Public Policy
Ok, I’ll admit it. Last month I became perhaps the last human being in this section of the solar system to see the movie…
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The Mother of All Food Fights
Someone once commented that, if the federal government regulated restaurant fare, there’d be blood in the streets. Vegetarians would be fighting with meat-eaters, Jews…
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Rethinking Insurance Regulation–1998
NATURAL DISASTERS AND CATASTROPHIC INSURANCE The morning’s panel focused on the issue of natural disasters and catastrophic risks and the financing problems posed…
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The Promise of Private Conservation
Private individuals, groups, and associations provided conservation amenities long before the birth of the environmental movement, but today these efforts are often subsumed by…
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Rethinking Insurance Regulation–1998
NATURAL DISASTERS AND CATASTROPHIC…
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How Green Was Common Law?
On December 17, the Center for Private Conservation hosted a roundtable on the Common Law Approach to Pollution Prevention to assess the extent…
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The Other Roosevelt Legacy
America’s current political dilemma the dominant progressive belief that government is a force for unlimited good — has many roots, but special honor goes…
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Derivatives Regulation: Problems and Prospects
Derivatives regulation in the United States is a jumble of legal fields, including banking, securities, commodities, and bankruptcy law. And any time multiple areas…
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Told Ya’ So: The Trojan Pony’s Revenge
On March 16, the General Accounting Office reported that people who exercised their rights under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996…
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Crying Silicon Tears
If one set out to design vicious special- interest legislation to loot productive companies and distribute the spoils to lesser competitors, one could scarcely do…
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Perry Mason Hearings
Blame it on inexperience, minority-itus, or El Niño, but some of our friends on Capitol Hill still imagine that the purpose of hearings is…
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Home Not Alone – Part Deux
On February 23 the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear the case of Ziman v. New York State, ending a regulatory saga so long-running…
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Flush With Anger
The federal government does a lot of dumb things. Perhaps the dumbest was Congress’ decision to have the federal government redesign household appliances. In…
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Fishing For Solutions
While dramatic stories of thedepletion of the world’s fish stocks frequently grab the spotlight in the popular press, reports of the death of fishing…
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We Luv Our Suvs
For a country so concerned about the well-being of soccer moms, it is hard to understand the recent verbal assault on their transportation of…
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Back to the Future
Over the past several years, America has faced a disturbing trend. It started with the disco revival and John Travolta’s return to the silver screen.
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Flirting With Disaster
Congress is again exploring new ways to undermine the private market for homeowners insurance in disaster-prone parts of the country. On February…
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Who’ll “Manage” Managed Care?
Public anxieties over the quality and limitations of managed health care are fueling a new round of federal proposals to regulate the medical marketplace. The…
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Bail Out For The Foolish
My Daddy always said never get between a fool and his mistake – it would sacrifice the only good that might come from the…
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Free Market Mission to Kyoto
Japan’s Foreign Minister opened the United Nations climate conference in Kyoto by calling it "an event that could change the history of mankind." Hoping to…
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Farmland Everywhere
To just about anyone who has driven non-stop from St. Louis to Denver it is practically inconceivable that American is running out of farmland. Yet…
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The Economy of the Mind
Address to the Competitive Enterprise Institute ANA Hotel, Washington D.C. Tuesday, October 21, 1997 Thank you, Stan [Evans]. As Bill Clinton says…
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Deja Vu All Over Again
History doesn’t repeat itself, but the machinations of big-government politicians are vexingly repetitious. Perhaps nothing better illustrates the plus ca change, plus ca meme…
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Schell’s Game in Seattle
In November, Seattle voters elected Paul Schell mayor. Few were surprised. Schell was the anointed candidate, the establishment favorite. Populist challenger Charlie Chong, by contrast,…
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Every Air Bag A Wanted Air Bag
Last December, as news spread of the risks posed by air bags to children and other vulnerable groups, President Clinton promised that “car dealers…
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Whose Information Is It Anyway?
Everyone is for privacy, but not everyone agrees what “privacy” means. Privacy as used in popular parlance can become little more than an…
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Air Rules Challenged In Court
The Congressional leadership is unwilling to challenge the Environmental Protection Agency’s new air quality standards. But this does not mean the standards will last. As…
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Privatizing The Inner City
Suburbanites have long benefited from the control over their immediate surrounding environment that they get from the system of land use controls in their areas.
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Australia Cool To Warming
In the later stages of the application process for Australia’s foreign service, candidates are provided with an armful of documents detailing the nation’s foreign policy.
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Ready! Fire! Aim!
Bush Administration EPA Administrator William Reilly once quipped that his agency’s standard approach when faced with a policy decision could best be characterized as…
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Abusing Discrimination
In America at century’s end, the surest way to obtain special treatment for a social group is to assert that its members suffer…
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Playing Politics With ATMs
If you’ve ever said to yourself, "There ought to be a law," then you have a friend in the U.S. Senate, and his name…
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Another Take On Takings
Imagine a federal law that prohibits people from “taking” something. No, it’s not the U.S. Constitution’s forgotten Takings Clause, which states, “nor shall…
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Save Elephants–Buy Ivory
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No Quarter for Kyoto
Most policy disputes are first and foremost rhetorical battles for the moral high ground. Is affirmative action unfair racial preference or justice to minorities?…
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Back Into Busting Trust-Busters
CEI’s work on antitrust reform may surprise some readers. Antitrust, after all, has been heraled as the "touchstone of a free market." Antitrust…
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Rethinking Antitrust Rules
Excerpts from Judge Alex Kozinski's speech at CEI's June 27, 1997 conference on antitrust regulation Printed in the July 1997 issue of CEI…
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CAFE’S “Smashing” Success
If at first you cannot succeed in pushing a bad idea, try, try again – just use different rhetoric. Twenty years ago, when corporate average…
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End OPIC Investing
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Hurricane Hype
The Clinton-Gore Administration has seized upon recent weather extremes to promote the fear of global warming. Speaking in North Dakota after this spring's floods, President…
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Asthma, Roaches And Regulations
They are repulsive and annoying, multiply rapidly, scurry off in unexpected directions, and harm human health. Cockroaches and bad federal regulations have more in common…
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Disparate Impact Dangers
On March 10 one of the nation's largest property and casualty insurers, Nationwide Insurance Company, agreed to part with $13.2 million to settle allegations…
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Precautionary Petard
The Precautionary Principle – the proposition that new technologies or products should not be permitted until we know they won't endanger health, safety, or…
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Officious Intermeddlers
With its April 4 decision to block Staples' planned merger with Office Depot, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) provided fresh evidence that antitrust is economically…
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Washington Waterworld
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Are the CFTC’s Days Numbered?
In the final movement of Gustav Mahler's Sixth Symphony, his hero is hit by what the Viennese composer calls "three hammer-blows of fate" that ultimately…
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Chemical Weapons Convention Sell-out
Not since "read-my-lips" George Bush raised taxes and destroyed his presidency has a Republican leader so soiled the GOP's claim to be a party of…
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Species-Friendly Tax Cuts
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EPA’s Hazy Air Rules
In the first major environmental effort of the Clinton Administration's second term, the Environmental Protection Agency proposed new rules tightening the nation's standards for two…
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Immorality of the Airbag Mandate
While the air bag issue occupies the full-time attention of dozens of technocrats, its ethical aspects have largely been ignored. At CEI's request, Bowling Green…
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NAIC Insures Privileged Access
Thousands of insurance executives and regulators converged on Orlando, Fla., in March to attend the spring meeting of the National Association of Insurance Commissioners…
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The Ark That Wouldn’t Float
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Green Grantmaking in D.C.
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Better Late Than Never
The Food and Drug Administration has long been criticized for delaying the approval of new medical drugs and devices. Under outgoing Commissioner David Kessler, the…
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New Choices in Auto Insurance
The high cost of auto insurance is a serious concern for many people across the country. Annual premiums can run into thousands of dollars.
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Tyranno-Soros
It always makes me queasy when a successful capitalist uses his wealth and talent to sell anti-capitalism. Not because such behavior is a form of…
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Drivers Caught in the Full-Cost Trap
Over the past several years, the push to limit Americans' use of their automobiles has gained a great deal of momentum. Advocacy groups and government…
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Pension Reform Not So Simple
For years, pension analysts have warned of the unintended consequences of federal pension regulation. In 1996, even President Clinton acknowledged that the growth of regulation…
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Defenders of Wildlies
Have you ever been told you were wrong when you knew you were right? Sure, it happens all the time. You say the…
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Anti-Environmental Enforcement
Expanding enforcement of environmental “crimes” is at the top of Carol Browner's agenda for 1997. Browner, Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, wants to…
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More Kid Stuff
Advocates of politically controlled universal health care coverage have retooled their offensive game plan. Uninsured children will serve as blocking backs for an end run…
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Cars and Civil Rights
1996 was the Centennial of the Car; it should have been called the Censorial of the Car. From magazine cover stories to interminable PBS…
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Legalized Gambling in the United States
Legalized gambling in the United States is increasingly under attack, not only within individual states regarding its proposed expansion into new jurisdictions, but also on…
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Real Patient Protection
An old political maxim has it that "as Maine goes, so goes the nation." A few decades ago, however, the balance of political trend-setting power…
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No Basis in Reality
"If there is one event that causes the diverse environmental community to hyperventilate in unison, it is an assault on the ESA (Endangered Species Act),"…
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Air Bags
Air bags were one of my first issues when I began working in public interest law twenty years ago. I had just started as…