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FTX Hearings Should Probe Fraud Charges and the SEC’s Misplaced Priorities
In the wake of the arrest of and charges of fraud against Sam Bankman-Fried, the disgraced founder and former CEO of the FTX…
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Conversations from COP27: Kent Lassman Interview Series
CEI President Kent Lassman attended the annual COP27 conference in Sharm el Sheikh, Egypt as a non-governmental observer, formally the 27th meeting of the Conference…
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Living in Capitalism: The Fat of the Land
Some of capitalism’s critics like to depict a market economy as a ruthless system in which making a living and paying expenses is inherently (or…
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Does Artificial Intelligence Have a Statist Bias?
I recently asked the ChatGPT AI to “write an essay critiquing the Biden administration’s trade policy.” This is what I got:…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
A former president called for terminating the U.S. Constitution. Socialism failed again, this time in Peru. Congress passed a bill to protect…
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Gas Prices Are Lower than a Year Ago: What Does that Mean for Inflation?
Even with inflation near 40-year highs, gas prices are lower than a year ago, and not just in real, inflation-adjusted terms. They’re lower even…
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COP27: CEI’s Kent Lassman Interviews Rep. Miller
CEI President Kent Lassman attended the annual COP27 conference in Sharm el Sheikh, Egypt as a non-governmental observer, formally the 27th meeting of the Conference…
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COP27: CEI’s Kent Lassman Interviews Rep. Palmer
CEI President Kent Lassman attended the annual COP27 conference in Sharm el Sheikh, Egypt as a non-governmental observer, formally the 27th meeting of the Conference…
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Regulatory Reform in Mississippi
Washington isn’t the only place that needs regulatory reform. States have their own excesses to deal with. To that end, our friends at the Mississippi…
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COP27: CEI’s Kent Lassman Interviews Rep. Cloud
CEI President Kent Lassman attended the annual COP27 conference in Sharm el Sheikh, Egypt as a non-governmental observer, formally the 27th meeting of the Conference…
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Quick Observations on NDAA in Light of the Biden “Whole-of-Government” Agenda
Across the board, the Biden administration’s policies call for agencies to “prioritize action on climate change in their policy-making and budget processes, in their…
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COP27: CEI’s Kent Lassman Interviews Rep. Weber
CEI President Kent Lassman attended the annual COP27 conference in Sharm el Sheikh, Egypt as a non-governmental observer, formally the 27th meeting of the Conference…
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Setting a Baseline for Proposed Rules Affecting Small Business
In what way are proposed rules affecting small business rising or falling, and should policy makers be on guard? The answer to the second part…
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COP27: CEI’s Kent Lassman Interviews Rep. Curtis
CEI President Kent Lassman attended the annual COP27 conference in Sharm el Sheikh, Egypt as a non-governmental observer, formally the 27th meeting of the Conference…
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A Surge in Small Business Burdens May Propel Regulatory Reform
Given heavy post-COVID spending and regulation, sentiments against expanding government have not been as strong as those in favor of Washington’s growth. It remains…
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Will the Second Chapter of the Renewable Fuel Standard Be Worse than the First?
Enacted in 2005 and expanded in 2007, the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) requires that specified amounts of biofuels like ethanol and biodiesel be added to…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
The World Cup is underway in Qatar and the labor market had another good month. Meanwhile, agencies issued new regulations ranging from canola oil jet…
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Some Climate-Related Items that Recently Caught My Eye
Manhattan Contrarian Francis “Buddy” Menton hit two homers this week. In “Don’t Be So Sure the Climate Extremists Have Won,” Menton offers hopeful words…
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More on Moore: A History of Direct Taxes and their Application to Moore v. United States
Many politicians, such as Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), advocate taxes on wealth. These taxes are easy to abuse, which is why the Founders placed…
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Retro Review: George Selgin, Less Than Zero: The Case for a Falling Price Level in a Growing Economy (Institute of Economic Affairs, 1997)
This year, inflation reached levels not seen in 40 years. The Federal Reserve spent most of 2022 trying to undo its runaway money creation in…
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Biden Hits the Brakes on Possible Railroad Strike
President Biden’s call on Monday for Congress to intervene in contract negotiations between railroad workers and the industry to prevent a strike is…
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Why Choke Point Should Bar Gruenberg from Being FDIC Chair
Tomorrow morning, the Senate Banking Committee will hold a hearing on President Biden’s nomination of Marty Gruenberg to once again serve as Chair of the…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
We hope everyone enjoyed Thanksgiving and/or Black Friday. Meanwhile, agencies issued new regulations ranging from nuclear drug tests to food tracing. On to the data:…
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Ninth Circuit Refuses to Reconsider Allowing Wealth Taxes
Moore v. United States—a case in which CEI represents the Moore family—is likely to be the most important tax case of the 21st century. Yesterday’s…
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New Angles on Finance and Faith
I recently had the pleasure of making my way down to Lynchburg, Virginia, to the campus of Liberty University to attend the Networking the…
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Somebody Better Hit the Brakes Soon in Railway Dispute
Three railroad unions have now voted to reject a contract negotiated by the Presidential Emergency Board (PEB) that had been accepted by eight other…
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This Thanksgiving Biden Pardons Poultry, Plucks Public with Spending and Regulation
Another year is flying by, and each time as I await the ever-delayed fall edition of the Unified Agenda of federal regulations I enjoy taking…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
The 2022 Federal Register surpassed 70,000 pages on Friday, and is on pace for 79,617 pages. The first Artemis moon mission rocket launched. The…
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Could China’s Status as a Developing Nation in Climate Treaties Finally Be Coming to an End?
At the 27th Conference of the Parties (COP27) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC) currently underway in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, representatives…
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Climategate 2.0: EPA’s New Social Cost of Greenhouse Gases Report
When the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) last week proposed to adopt more aggressive methane emission standards for the oil and gas sector, it also…
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Gensler Fiddled with ESG and Power Grabs while FTX Burned
When asked on CNBC about the implosion of crypto exchange FTX, Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Chairman Gary Gensler turned the focus away from the…
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Regulation Population Update: Checking in on Code of Federal Regulations Statistics
In a recent post we noted that, while the online Federal Register database depicts 3,257 final rules for 2021, the 73,000-page Federal Register’s count actually…
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The Unfairness of the FTC’s Policy Statement Regarding the Scope of Unfair Methods of Competition
The latest in a stream of regulatory dark matter is the Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) November 10, 2022 “Policy Statement Regarding the Scope…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
The midterm elections happened, and most of us (sorry, Georgia) are finally free of misleading, scaremongering political ads. Inflation slowed down slightly. Meanwhile,…
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Not Your Grandfather’s Bank Branch
What should financial services do? And how should they look like going forward as they try to serve more people? Some presenters are the recent…
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Who’s Not Buying Electric Vehicles? Single Vehicle Households, for One
Proponents of electric vehicles (EVs) have little to say about the one-third of American households that own only a single car or truck. That isn’t…
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October Inflation Slightly Improves: Time for Less Politics and More Policy
Thank goodness the election is over. One of the frustrating parts of midterm season was that many people were more interested in how inflation would…
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Why Cops Should Be Chasing the Bad Guys, Not the Big Bucks
A recent episode of Archer featured a dialogue between two FBI agents, both riding on jet skis, chasing a wrongdoer’s boat. Agent…
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We Need to Pay More Attention to AI
Artificial intelligence (AI) is one of the most important emerging technologies today. It has the potential to revolutionize many industries and sectors, including health care,…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
The Federal Reserve raised the federal funds rate again, though it remains less than the rate of inflation. Employment increased by 261,000 in…
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Federal Reserve Raises Interest Rate; Uncertainty Strengthens Case for a Policy Rule
As expected, the Federal Reserve raised the federal funds rate by 0.75 percentage points coming out of this week’s Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC)…
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A Dose of Reality Over “Zero-Emissions” Electric Vehicles
Far too many journalists sound like cheerleaders when the topic is electric vehicles (EVs). That’s why RealClear Investigations’ Zero Emissions From Electric Vehicles? Here’s…
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Retro Review: Jared Diamond—Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies (Norton, 1997)
In 1972, Jared Diamond was researching bird evolution in New Guinea. While walking along a beach, he had an hour-long conversation with a local politician…
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Rules and Regulations Increase 45 Percent during Biden Administration
You’ve heard plenty from this quarter on broken disclosure and transparency in the Biden administration, which eliminated the “Deregulatory” designation for rules implanted…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
Happy Halloween! CEI released the latest edition of Wayne Crews’s Ten Thousand Commandments report, which gives a big-picture overview of the federal regulatory state.
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NLRB Seeks to Gag Amazon Management
The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) recently alleged that Amazon chief executive office Andy Jassy violated federal labor laws by publicly saying that he…
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Meta’s Drop in Stock Price Unlikely to Dissuade Antitrust Inquiries, but It Should.
“We don’t even know what it is yet.” That’s how the theatrical depiction of Mark Zuckerberg described “The Facebook” to his then co-founder Eduardo…
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Reining in Biden CFPB’s “Junk” Policies with Fifth Circuit Ruling
When the federal Fifth Circuit Court Appeals ruled last week, in Community Financial Services v. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, that the funding structure of…
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Mandatory Union Fees are Junk Fees
The White House yesterday called up federal agencies to target “junk fees” charged to consumers, arguing that these hidden costs are exploitative and drag…
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New Whole-of-Government Initiative on Junk Fees Comes with Unintended Consequences
Today the Biden administration announced a new whole-of-government initiative on junk fees from airlines and other industries. The news comes on the same day…
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Talking Points on Biden’s “Whole-of-Government” Regulatory Escalations
Among much else, the 2022 edition of Ten Thousand Commandments presents a $2 trillion undercount of regulatory costs and showcases the march of rulemaking…
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Ten Thousand Commandments 2022 Released
The 2022 edition of Wayne Crews’s Ten Thousand Commandments report is out now. Now in its 28th year, it has its usual panoply of…
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Workers Should Be Able to Hear from Both Sides Before Union Votes
Workers at an Amazon fulfillment center in Albany, New York, opposed forming a union by a nearly two-to-one margin last week. It was the…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
Just two more weeks until the relentless barrage of misleading election ads goes away. The Energy Information Administration warned that heating bills could get…
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Policy and Politics Are Different Things
What is more important this election: The culture wars or policy issues like inflation? In an op-ed as part of a point-counterpoint series from…
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Not a Policy Paper, Just a Thought: Anti-Merger Mania
What is the correct number of corporate mergers that should be allowed? The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) thinks it knows the answer: less. It has…
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Seizing the Ecomodernist Moment
I recently had the good fortune to attend Ecomodernism 2022, a conference hosted in northern Virginia by the Breakthrough Institute. The theme was “Deregulating…
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One Year on, FDA Sodium Guidance Still Wanting
It is the one year anniversary of the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) Guidance for Industry setting out goals to reduce sodium content in…
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Jason Feifer on Managing Change in Life and Society
I recently wrote a review of Build for Tomorrow, the new book from Entrepreneur magazine editor-in-chief Jason Feifer. The book is a…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
Inflation took a turn for the worse and the January 6 Committee voted to subpoena former President Trump over his role in the…
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A Tough Winter Ahead for Heating Bills, According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration
High gasoline prices will soon have an equally unpleasant partner in the form of high energy bills this winter, according to the U.S. Energy Information…
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CPI Rises 0.4 Percent in September, 8.2 Percent over Past Year
September’s Consumer Price Index (CPI) inflation numbers came out this morning, and they aren’t pretty. The month-to-month increase was 0.4 percent, after rising just…
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Unmeasured Costs of Regulation are Accelerating under Biden
During a recent Senate hearing on the nomination to head the Office of Management and Budget’s (OMB) Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA)—the…
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Excerpts from Austin Keynote: How CBDCs Could Be the New Operation Choke Point
This week, I attended the exciting INFiN MoneyTrends conference in Austin, where I gave the Regulatory Keynote address on Monday. The conference is a…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
Aaron Judge finished the baseball season with 62 home runs, setting a new American League season record. President Biden pardoned the sentences of all…
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“Abracadabra”: European Union Regulators Make Innovation Disappear
Members of the European Parliament are eagerly awaiting their Hogwarts acceptance letters to attend the famous school of wizardry. In their view, they have…
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Questions the 118th Congress Should Ask OMB’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs
The Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee recently held a hearing on the nomination of Richard L. Revesz to be Administrator of the…
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Illinois Ballot Measure to Allow Unions To “Keep Our Foot on the Gas”
Here’s a riddle: Why would unions in Illinois promote a ballot measure to establish a right to collective bargaining when that state is…
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A One-Pager on an “Abuse-of-Crisis Prevention Act”
In recent months CEI has presented the case for a “Abuse of Crisis Prevention Act” to counter and prevent the political predation that continues to…
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Tackling Unmeasured Government Growth Must be Prioritized in the 118th Congress
Fred L. Smith Jr., the founder of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, refers to the regulatory state as the least disciplined part of the federal enterprise.
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CEI Leads Coalition Comment Critical of DOE’s Proposed Furnace Regulation
Several recent Department of Energy (DOE) efficiency standards for appliances have been a bad deal for consumers, but the latest proposed standard for residential natural…
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Gonzales v. Google: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Algorithms
Today the Supreme Court agreed to hear Gonzales v. Google, LLC, a case that evaluates how broadly the liability protection is for platforms in…
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Senate Bill Challenges China’s Status as a Developing Nation in New Treaty
Most United Nations environmental treaties are a bad deal for the United States, and some are made even worse because they give China a competitive…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
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Troubling Inflation News: Core PCE Increases 0.6 Percent
The Federal Reserve’s preferred inflation indicator, Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE), was updated this morning with August’s numbers. PCE measures inflation more accurately than the…
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Are Nord Stream Methane Leaks “Catastrophic for Climate”?
Despite acknowledging that the Nord Stream pipelines were likely bombed by saboteurs, the Associated Press yesterday focused on the ruptures as a climate threat…
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The Problems with the White House Competition Council
Sometimes seemingly little things slip under the radar that have big implications. One of those this week was the third meeting of President Biden’s…
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SEC Gives Crowdfunders Inflation Relief, Must Do More
The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) adjusted for inflation some limits for companies (issuers) raising capital through Regulation Crowdfunding (Reg CF). The adjustment raises the…
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The Jones Act vs. Puerto Rico, Again
Puerto Rico is almost entirely without power after Hurricane Fiona. Right now, there is a ship just offshore, ready to help. It has…
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The Manchin Bill Will Not Reform Permitting Process
The Manchin-Schumer permitting bill, which has been attached to the Continuing Resolution funding the federal government beyond September 30, contains many promising-sounding reforms that…
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Government May Not Avoid Just Compensation in Debt Seizures
Some state governments have been acting as if the Fifth Amendment’s requirement of just compensation doesn’t apply in the course of collection of government debts.
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
The Federal Reserve raised the federal funds rate by 75 basis points, with more increases likely to come. Meanwhile, agencies issued new regulations ranging…
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Senate Ratifies Anti-Consumer Kigali Amendment–but with A Silver Lining Regarding China
Last Wednesday, the Senate ratified the Kigali Amendment, a United Nations treaty restricting supplies of hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), a widely used class of refrigerants now targeted…
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Fed Raises Federal Funds Rate
As expected, the Federal Reserve raised the federal funds rate by 75 basis points as part of its inflation-fighting efforts. Its target range will…
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FTC To Use Algorithms in Bid to Hobble Gig Economy
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has announced that it will use its “full authority” to investigate “unfair, deceptive, and anticompetitive practices” by so-called gig…
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The Founding Fathers and Free Trade
There is an ongoing small cottage industry of historical revisionism aimed at showing that America since its founding was friendly to protectionism and that this…
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America Needs an Emergency Declaration to End All Emergency Declarations
Last night President Biden declared on 60 Minutes hat “The pandemic is over.” “If you notice, no one’s wearing masks, everybody seems to…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
CEI hosted its annual Julian Simon dinner on Thursday. The Consumer Price Index gave a mixed picture of inflation. A railroad strike was…
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FTC Goes Back to Bad ‘70s Policies in Motor Vehicle Dealer Rule
Last night at CEI’s annual Julian L. Simon Memorial Award Dinner, CEI celebrated the 1970s—both the fashions and the deregulation toward the end of the…
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FTC Hearing on Vaping Case Shows Antitrust at its Worst
Earlier this week, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) held a public hearing about a seemingly resolved antitrust case about the vaping market. In 2018,…
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No, We Don’t Need Federal Licenses for Big Tech
In the wake of congressional testimony by former Twitter security chief Peiter Zatko, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) has suggested that he will partner with…
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Virtual Reality and the Relevant Market Fallacy
The relevant market fallacy is one of the most common analytical mistakes in antitrust policy. One of the first legal questions in an antitrust…
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Inflation Reduction Act and West Virginia v. EPA: Legislative History Refutes Sen. Carper’s Spin
“And whatever interpretive force one attaches to legislative history, the Court normally gives little weight to statements, such as those of the individual legislators, made after the…
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Many Federal Agency Rules and Guidance Documents are Still Not Properly Reported to Congress and the GAO
A 2014 white paper prepared for the Administrative Conference of the United States (ACUS), “Congressional Review Act: Many Recent Final Rules Were Not Submitted…
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The European Union’s Crypto Protectionism Threatens Financial Freedom
Stablecoins, digital assets pegged to a financial asset like the U.S. dollar, are becoming increasingly popular around the globe. Some people use them as…
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Could Heating Costs Set Records This Winter?
Gasoline prices reached their peak at over $5 per gallon last June before declining to the current $3.70, but the worst may be yet…
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Why Railway Unions Oppose the Deal Biden Helped Arrange
The Chamber of Commerce today urged Congress to step in and impose a settlement should talks between the rail industry and the its…
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CEI Leads Coalition Opposing Increased Government Interference in Rail Operations
CEI and 21 other organizations and individuals have signed a letter opposing the misleadingly named Freight Rail Shipping Fair Market Act, which would…
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Mixed News on CPI: Headline Rate Improves, Core Rate Accelerates
The Consumer Price Index (CPI) for August is out. It increased 8.3 percent over the last year, down from 8.5 percent in July. The…
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This Week in Ridiculous Regulations
Queen Elizabeth II passed away at age 96. Meanwhile, in a four-day week, agencies issued new regulations ranging from St. Louis bridges to Atlantic krill…