Last Sunday’s Packers-Vikings game was a big one. Brett Favre beat his old team on its home turf. If you’re not sick of all the hype, check out my take on what the game means for Packer fans over at The American Spectator Online.

Read the full story

Today’s American Spectator Online has a piece by CEI VP Wayne Crews and I on curbing Congressional abuse of unfunded mandates. If the term is new to you, unfunded mandates are basically an accounting gimmick that lets government understate how much it costs taxpayers:

rather than fund a new federal job training program through a Department of Labor appropriation, Congress could mandate that all Fortune 500 firms provide, and pay for, such training. The first appears on the federal budget, the…

Read the full story

A new ordinance in Dudley, Massachusetts makes it illegal to own more than three cats without government consent. (Hat tip: Drudge)

Having solved all of the community’s other problems, regulators now have the time to turn their attention to what is apparently a spat between neighbors. One resident is upset that the 15 cats (!) owned by a neighboring woman have been sullying his yard.

I might suggest that Coaseian bargaining might be a better solution than a law.

A fiat decision in favor…

Read the full story

Regulation begets rent-seeking. When government assumes the power to regulate imports, domestic firms will lobby to use that fact to their advantage.

Case in point: Home Products International (HPI), an American company, makes ironing tables. So does Hardware, a Chinese company. I personally have no idea which firm makes the better ironing table. That’s for consumers to decide.

Or at least it should be for consumers to decide. But it doesn’t always work that way in practice. HPI seems to have already…

Read the full story

Some people want to cure malaria by reducing carbon emissions. Others want to cure it with mosquito nets, better health care and sanitation. Which is a more effective use of our limited resources? The answer is important; malaria kills about one million people every year. Getting it wrong costs lives.

According to Bjørn Lomborg, “For the money it takes to save one life with carbon cuts, smarter policies could save 78,000 lives. ”

Let’s pursue those smarter policies, then.

…

Read the full story

This month’s issue of Info Tech & Telecom News contains an article by yours truly on certain states’ attempts to collect sales taxes from out-of-state businesses. Key point:

Economists have known for a long time that when you tax something, you get less of it. Apparently some state legislators want less commerce in their states.

Read the full story

Russ Roberts’ testimony in front of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform is superb. Read it (it’s short). Wall Street deserves plenty of blame for the financial crisis. But Washington deserves more:

When your teenager drives drunk and wrecks the car, and you keep giving him a do-over—
repairing the car and handing him back the keys—he’s going to keep driving
drunk. Washington keeps giving the bad banks and Wall Street firms a do-over. Here are
the keys. Keep driving. The story always…

Read the full story

My colleague Richard Morrison brought to my attention a new FDA rule that requires oysters harvested between April and October to be sterilized before they are eaten. The goal is to prevent a rare – and sometimes fatal – bacteria from harming anyone.

An unintended consequence is that the state of Louisiana is up in arms. The sterilization rule essentially bans raw oysters, a local delicacy, for seven months every year. Sterilization also affects the flavor of cooked oysters, a common ingredient…

Read the full story

“Supervisors in Dunkard Township say they are taking the steps for safety reasons,” reads a recent news article describing a new regulation. Regulators often cite safety to explain their latest doings. But it might be a bit of a stretch for justifying what Dunkard Township is doing: banning trick-or-treating.

That’s right. Regulators have banned a staple of childhood. Trick-or-treating is dangerous. Far too dangerous for children. Yet some parents were going to let their kids go anyway. Officials were left with…

Read the full story

A quick point to add to Fran Smith’s excellent post on Sweden’s experiment in labeling food and menus for their carbon footprints: don’t read too much into the labels.

The New York Times notes that “the emissions impact of, say, a carrot, can vary by a factor of 10, depending how and where it is grown.” With that much imprecision built in, if the labels change consumer behavior as much as supporters hope, it’s entirely possible that eco-concsious diets could result in more…

Read the full story

If you sell poultry or livestock, it’s a good idea to weigh them first. Makes it easier for buyer and seller to agree on a fair price.

For some reason, seven sections of the Code of Federal Regulations (see here, here, here, here, here, here, and here) deal with the use and maintenance of the scales used to weigh the animals, the people operating them, proper procedure, and finally, weighing the animals again.

Is this really a federal matter? If so, what…

Read the full story

Bjørn Lomborg, head of the Copenhagen Consensus, brings some much-needed common sense to the global warming debate. Reporting from Vanuatu, he finds that many of the locals haven’t even heard of global warming.

Torethy Frank is one of them. She has other priorities, such as escaping crushing poverty: “Torethy and her family of six live in a small house made of concrete and brick with no running water. As a toilet, they use a hole dug in the ground. They have no…

Read the full story

Sit back and think for a minute about what man has the potential to create. Think about the magnitude of our achievements in just the last century. Life expectancy has doubled. Population has sextupled. For the first time in history, famine is primarily a political phenomenon, not a natural one. The human mind is capable of creating limitless, endless wealth.

Unfortunately, the human mind is nearly as adept at preventing that wealth from being created. Sacramento, California is home to some…

Read the full story

Rep. Diana DeGette is, without any apparent cognitive dissonance or trace of irony, proposing:

1) Require, by law, that people buy health insurance.

2) Remove health insurers’ antitrust exemption. But only after legally requiring everyone to buy their product.

You figure it out. Insurers are set to receive one of the largest coroporate welfare grants in history. No wonder so many firms are salivating over this year’s health care legislation. But they may pay an antitrust price for their legally mandated windfall.

Perhaps this…

Read the full story

It is illegal to be a sports agent in New Hampshire without a Secretary of State-issued certificate (see page 14). Don’t forget your biennial renewal!

Read the full story

Many, if not all, people depend on government employees to be positive role models for their children. They can give kids something to which to aspire; to show what they can be if they only work hard and stay in school. To give us all a walking, talking example of a life well lived.

It is in that spirit that Executive Order No. 13513 prohibits federal employees and contractors from texting while driving while on duty.

As the Order reminds us, “With nearly…

Read the full story

President Bush’s $400 billion budget deficits were the largest in history. He deserved every bit of criticism he got for his big-spending ways.

Now comes news that the budget gap is up to $1.4 trillion. President Obama has broken Bush’s record by a trillion dollars. It took him less than a year.

A trillion.

Wow.

Read the full story

James Buchanan was one of the founding fathers of public choice theory, along with Gordon Tullock and some others (Bill Niskanen, Mancur Olson, et al). Public choice, despite the obscure name, is quite simple. It says that market behavior does not end where government begins. Politicians and other government actors are not angels. They are just as self-interested as you or I. Public choices are subject to the same incentives as private choices.

Buchanan’s simple, powerful insight won him the economics…

Read the full story

Some of the consequences of increasing government’s role in health care are easy to predict. One is that cutting costs requires cutting the amount of care. That means rationing. People judged not deserving of care would be denied it.

Another is that if government uses its increased bargaining power to lower drug prices, there will be less money for R&D. That means less innovation. That could well mean the end of increasing life expectancies.

Some people see these consequences and oppose more…

Read the full story

On November 4, California regulators may vote to ban big-screen televisions. The large sets use more energy than they would prefer.

Commissioner Julia Levin claims the ban “will actually save consumers money and help the California economy grow and create new clean, sustainable jobs.”

It is easy to imagine the ban costing tv manufacturing jobs; less so the jobs that would take their place.

Fortunately, the ban isn’t terribly enforceable. Consumers can just drive to Arizona, Nevada, or Oregon to get the kind…

Read the full story