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CEI Achievement Report 2019
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California Ride Share Contracting Legislation Is a Solution in Search of a Problem
California Governor Gavin Newsom signed Assembly Bill 5 (A.B. 5) into law on September 18, 2019.[1] The legislation, which generally takes effect…
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Union Time on the Taxpayer Dime
“Forcing free and independent individuals to endorse ideas they find objectionable is always demeaning,” Justice Samuel Alito wrote in the majority opinion in Janus v…
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The Push to Raise the Legal Age to Buy Tobacco to 21 Has Little Basis in Fact
The notion that raising the tobacco purchasing age to 21 helps reduce adolescent smoking seems plausible enough. But there is little evidence in support of…
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Federally Funded Children’s Environmental Health Centers Do Little to Promote Public Health
October is Children’s Health Month, a time when official federal agencies call attention to important efforts and policies designed to advance childhood health and safety.
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Democratic Capitalism: Why Political and Economic Freedom Need Each Other
Is capitalism destroying democracy? It is an old question that political thinkers have long wrestled with.
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Selling Your Data without Selling Your Soul
Humans have always sought to defend a zone of privacy around themselves—to protect their personal information, their intimate actions and relationships, and their thoughts and…
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Minimum Wages Have Tradeoffs
Raising the minimum wage is currently a top policy issue at the federal, state, and local levels. This paper opposes increases for three reasons, and…
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How the Ex-Im Bank Enables Cronyism and Wastes Taxpayer Money
The U.S. Export-Import Bank (Ex-Im) is a federal agency that seeks to boost exports by private U.S. businesses. It pursues its mission through loan guarantees,…
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The Case against the Protecting the Right to Organize Act
The Protecting the Right to Organize Act of 2019 (H.R. 2474) would radically overhaul United States labor relations law to facilitate labor union organizing without…
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Modernizing the Passenger Facility Charge to Increase Airport Investment, Reduce Federal Spending, and Save Travelers Money
The passenger facility charge (PFC) is a congressionally authorized, federally regulated local airport user fee. The PFC exists alongside the Airport Improvement Program (AIP), a…
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What the Green New Deal Could Cost a Typical Household
In early 2019, a handful of progressive Democrats galvanized their party around a set of ideas that—even if only partially implemented—would restructure vast areas of…
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What the Green New Deal Could Cost a Typical Family
In early 2019, a handful of progressive Democrats galvanized their party around a set of ideas that—even if only partially implemented—would restructure vast areas of…
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Authorizing Automated Vehicle Platooning, 2019 Edition
Automated vehicles have captured the public’s imagination in recent years following successful on-road demonstrations by developers such as Waymo (its parent company, Alphabet, also owns…
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A Citizen’s Guide to Climate Change
Climate change is not a hoax, but as a political matter, it is a persistent pretext for expanding government control over the economy, redistributing wealth,…
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Transforming Surface Transportation Reauthorization
The United States Interstate Highway System serves as the backbone of American commerce and personal travel. Funded as a pay-as-you-go basis largely through federal excise…
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A Policy Maker’s Guide to Climate Change
Thanks to the ingenuity of U.S. businesses, but also to the Republican rollback of the prior administration’s anti-energy policies, America is positioned to be a…
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Ten Thousand Commandments 2019
Ten Thousand Commandments is the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s annual survey of the size, scope, and cost of federal regulations, and how they affect American consumers,…
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The Case against Antitrust Law
Politicians and pundits across the ideological spectrum often call for greater competition in the marketplace. While their favored means vary widely, the view that current…
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Cryptocurrency and the SEC’s Limitless Power Grab
Many questions are being asked about cryptocurrency. Is it a major innovation that will improve standards of living in ways we cannot yet imagine? Or…
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Anti-E-Cigarette Puritans Put Lives at Risk
Big tobacco companies were publicly pilloried when they were found to have misled the public about the dangers of their products. To this day, that…
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EPA’s Flawed IRIS Program Is Far from Gold Standard
Environmental activists claim that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Integrated Risk Information System (IRIS) represents the gold standard for risk assessment.[i] In…
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CEI Achievement Report 2018
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Free to Prosper
CEI’s Agenda for the 116th Congress highlights specific steps lawmakers can take to rein in unlawful overreach by executive agencies, reduce the costs of federal regulations,…
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Antitrust FAQ
1. What is antitrust? Today’s body of antitrust laws is the culmination of over one hundred years of unclear objectives, contradictory interpretations, and controversial court decisions.
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Fear Profiteers
The rise of a vibrant market for e-cigarettes has been a blessing for many smokers. After many failed attempts to quit, e-cigarettes provide an exciting…
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How Antitrust Regulation Hinders Innovation and Competition
Few economic concepts elicit such strong reactions as that of monopoly, and the policy intended to address it—antitrust regulations (called competition policy in the European…
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Will the Trump Fuel Economy Reform Proposal Create Deadly Air Pollution?
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) have proposed to partially roll back the corporate average fuel economy…
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A Partial Eclipse of the Administrative State
Deterioration of checks and balances via regulatory overreach and over-delegation by Congress to agencies are central to most modern critiques of the administrative state. Less…
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The Kigali Amendment to the Montreal Protocol: Myth vs. Fact
Beginning in the 1970s, concerns that the refrigerants used in most air conditioners and refrigerators were leaking into the air and depleting the Earth’s ozone…
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Common Myths and Facts about Trade
International trade, usually a low-key issue, has sparked a heated debate under the current administration. As with any hot issue, several common misperceptions afflict the…
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U.S. Should Stop Funding the International Agency for Research on Cancer
Numerous scientific bodies around the world, both public and private, attempt to assess the cancer-causing potential of various industrial chemicals. Ideally, those research programs should…
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Government for Rent
This paper is based on documents obtained by CEI and other public policy groups over the course of more than a year, beginning in June 2017,…
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Law Enforcement for Rent
This paper is based on documents obtained over two and a half years from open records requests and, in some cases, subsequent litigation. Due to…
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“Whatever the Cost” of the Endangered Species Act, It’s Huge
For years, the snail darter, a little fish found in the upper Tennessee River basin, has been a symbol of the extraordinary regulatory power of…
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Traders of the Lost Ark
View Full Document as PDF With contributions by Fred L. Smith Jr., Marc Scribner, Daniel Press, and Ryan Khurana Profiles in Capitalism August…
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Authorizing Automated Vehicle Platooning, 2018 Edition
Automated vehicles have captured the public’s imagination in recent years following successful on-road demonstrations by developers such as Waymo.[1] The prospect of…
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EPA Transparency Rule Will Bolster Science and Improve Rulemaking
Transparency is a cornerstone of the scientific process and a well-recognized goal long-extolled within the scientific community.
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European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation and Lessons for U.S. Privacy Policy
The European Union’s (EU) General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which enters into effect on May 25, 2018, is the most significant policy change regarding data…
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The CFPB and the Equal Credit Opportunity Act
View Full Document as PDF Freedom, equality, and justice are all bedrock principles of the American experiment. Yet it is no secret…
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Platform Economy Bibliography
View Full Document as PDF It is hardly news that the growth of the online economy has upended a wide array of…
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Ten Thousand Commandments 2018
View the Full Report Here Ten Thousand Commandments is the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s annual survey of the size, scope, and cost of federal regulations,…
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Online Sales Taxes Make Government Bigger and Undermine Federalism
View Full Document as PDF The rapid growth of online retailing has prompted state and local government officials to seek greater authority…
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Legalizing Sports Betting in the United States
Every March, millions of Americans join friends, relatives, and coworkers in “March Madness” betting pools, centered on the National Collegiate Athletics Association (NCAA) Men’s Basketball…
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The New National ID Systems
View Full Document as PDF The past few years have seen growing awareness and concern about U.S. government surveillance of the American…
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Supreme Court Can Strike a Victory for Worker Freedom in Janus Case
View Full Document as PDF Mark Janus is a state child support specialist in Illinois. He works to ensure that children receive…
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How the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s Payday Loan Rule Hurts the Working Poor
View Full Document as PDF Ariane is a 22-year-old single mother from Oakland, California. Working a low-wage job, she gets by paycheck…
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Modernizing Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards
View Full Document as PDF Thousands of times per year in the United States, automobile drivers are temporarily blinded by the high…
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Improving America’s Broadband through Competition, Not Regulation
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The Case against the Volcker Rule
View Full Document as PDF The 2010 Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act has severely restricted business and consumer access…
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A Veneer of Certainty Stoking Climate Alarm
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Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac Still Endanger U.S. Economy
View Full Document as PDF Nearly a decade since the housing bust of 2008 sent the U.S. economy into a tailspin, much…
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Let States Regulate Sports Gambling within their Borders
View Full Document as PDF Every year, millions of Americans gamble on sports. Whether betting on the Super Bowl or filling out…
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The Case against the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau
The CFPB was meant to protect American pocketbooks and property. But the unconstitutionally structured agency is harmful to consumers.
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Bureaucratic Dark Energy
View Full Document as PDF There are thousands of felonies committed every day in Washington, D.C. Not in the places one might…
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What’s the Difference between “Major,” “Significant,” and all those other Federal Rule Categories?
View Full Document as PDF Bureaucracy, rather than interaction with elected representatives, dominates the relationship of the individual to the government. The…
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Shrinking Government Bureaucracy
View Full Document as PDF Shrinking Government Bureaucracy is a series of policy proposals by Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) experts to rein in…
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Union Time on the Taxpayer Dime
View Full Document as PDF Published with the James Madison Institute Over the past 20 years, Floridians have consistently made conscious decisions…
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Rethinking the Environmental Protection Agency
View Full Document as PDF The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) budget is the most impenetrable of all federal department and agency…
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Rethinking the Federal Communications Commission
View Full Document as PDF Created by the Communications Act of 1934, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) wields broad authority to regulate…
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Rethinking the National Labor Relations Board
View Full Document as PDF The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), the federal agency that oversees private sector labor relations in the…
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Rethinking the Securities and Exchange Commission
View Full Document as PDF The nation’s securities laws and the very existence of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) are premised…
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Rethinking the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau
View Full Document as PDF The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) should be abolished. In its current form, it undermines the constitutional…
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Rethinking the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation
View Full Document as PDF The Franklin D. Roosevelt administration and Congress created the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) during the Great…
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Rethinking the Department of Commerce
View Full Document as PDF The Department of Commerce’s mission statement is a charter for government interference in markets. It employs 47,000…
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EPA Denial of Chlorpyrifos Ban Sets Pro-Science Precedent
View full document as PDF Some consumers may wonder why some staples of a healthy diet, such as orange juice and many…
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Ending the EPA’s Billion-Dollar Green Energy Rip-Off
View Full Document as PDF The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in recent years has established a pattern of making industrial policy…
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Why Wall Street Loves Glass-Steagall
View Full Document as PDF Debates over financial regulation often refer to “Wall Street” and “Main Street” as shorthand for, respectively, 1)…
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Authorizing Automated Vehicle Platooning, 2017 Edition
View Full Document as PDF Automated vehicles have captured the public’s imagination in recent years following successful on-road demonstrations by developers such…
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Dispelling Six Myths on Air Traffic Control Reform and Labor Relations
View Full Document as PDF In 2016, when House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman Bill Shuster (R-Pa.) introduced legislation to reform the…
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Air Traffic Control Reform 2017: Frequently Asked Questions
View Full Document as PDF The air traffic control reforms contained in the 21st Century Aviation Innovation, Reform, and Reauthorization (21st Century AIRR)…
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Ten Thousand Commandments 2017
The burden of federal regulations on the American public reached a record $1.9 trillion last year. That amounts to a hidden tax of nearly $15,000 per…
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The World Bank’s Trail of Sorrows
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Kyoto: The Issue Is Power
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Free Market Environmental Bibliography
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Getting It Wrong: Energy Forecasts and the End-of-Technology Mindset
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Ecology as Religion: Faith in Place of Fact
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Dirty Dozen
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A Net Neutrality Primer
View Full Document as PDF If you have watched Last Week Tonight with John Oliver recently, you will have noticed that its…
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The Legal and Economic Case Against the Paris Climate Treaty
Failure to withdraw from the Paris Climate Treaty would entrench a constitutionally damaging precedent, set President Trump’s domestic and foreign policies in conflict, and ensure…
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Polluted Logic Taints WHO Reports on Children’s Health
View Full Document as PDF The world has been getting wealthier in recent decades. That economic growth has enabled millions of people…
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Five Key Financial Regulation Reforms
View Full Document as PDF First there was “fintech,” now there is “regtech.” Fintech—short for “financial technology”—is the popular term to describe…
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Economic Freedom Is Key to African Development
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It Is Time to End Official Time
View Full Document as PDF For years, federal employee unions have enjoyed a government subsidy that enables their members to perform union…
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A Case for Property Rights in the Electromagnetic Spectrum
View Full Document as PDF The air that surrounds us may appear empty, but it is full of information that travels across…
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Toward Performance-Based Transportation Safety Regulation
View Full Document as PDF Businesses and entrepreneurs have long complained about having to comply with unnecessarily rigid regulations that stress adherence…
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Mapping Washington’s Lawlessness
With regulatory dark matter, there are tens of thousands of documents that agencies can use to circumvent Congress, allowing the federal government to inject itself into…
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Time to End the Madness around March Madness
View Full Document as PDF This March, millions of Americans will join friends, relatives, and coworkers in the annual rite of betting…
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Pirates at the Parchment Gates
View Full Document as PDF In recent years, state attorneys general (AGs), have partnered with private lawyers working on a contingency fee…
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Resale Pricing in the Contact Lens Industry
View Full Document as PDF More than 30 million Americans wear contact lenses. In recent years, contact lens technology has improved, offering…
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Shaking up the Conventional Wisdom on Salt
View Full Document as PDF The notion that if you eat too much salt you will have high blood pressure has been…
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First Steps for the Trump Administration: Champion Affordable Energy
View full document as PDF While President Trump will need legislative approval by Congress to accomplish parts of his economic policy agenda,…
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First Steps for the Trump Administration: Support Technology and Innovation
View full document as PDF The frontier sectors that define the new high-tech economy are uniquely vulnerable to political predation and cronyism.
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First Steps for the Trump Administration: Unleash America’s Labor Force
View full document as PDF During the Obama administration the Department of Labor (DOL) and National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) failed to…
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First Steps for the Trump Administration: Restore Financial Freedom
View full document as a PDF Over the past 15 years—beginning with the George W. Bush administration and accelerating rapidly in the…
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First Steps for the Trump Administration: Rein in the Regulatory State
View full document as PDF President-elect Donald Trump has instructed members of his transition team to “develop a list of executive actions…
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Free to Prosper
The 115th Congress is poised to tackle regulatory reform. Check out CEI's recommendations to move America toward economic growth, prosperity, and liberty.
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REINing In Regulatory Overreach
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Why Internet Sales Taxes Bolster Bigger Government
View Full Document as PDF The rapid growth of online retailing has led to calls from state and local officials for greater…
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Regulatory Hurdles Impede Zika Control
View Full Document as PDF Ever since the discovery that the mosquito-transmitted Zika virus can cause serious birth defects, policy makers have…