Ed Crane writes today in the Los Angeles Times that “Limited-government conservatives have been undermined by big-government neoconservatives,” and that “it is difficult to find noninterventionists in either party.”

The Democrats demonstrate a disdain for capitalism, free trade and the validity of contracts. They cheer the restriction of certain types of speech on campus and in federal law….Lately, the Democrats have been popularly associated with principled opposition to waging war in far-flung corners of the globe. But evidence on the…

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Senators John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC) published a curious op-ed in Sunday’s New York Times titled, “Yes We Can (Pass Climate Legislation).”  The bill that they claim to support and that can pass the Senate is not the 821-page draft bill that Senators Kerry and Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) released two weeks ago.  It is a fantasy designed to get the support of Senator Graham and other fuzzy-minded Senators with visions of lots of new nuclear plants, billions for technology…

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Federal Communcations Commission broadband coordinator Blair Levin, charged with coming up with a “U.S. National Broadband Plan,” by February, says the 8,500 pages of comments (surely he’s read them all) received so far exhibit “sloppiness” and “”lack of seriousness and purpose,” and contain “very little in the 8,500-something pages that moves the ball forward.” Perhaps he has something better in mind. Here at CEI we filed initial comments, then again in the reply comment phase, for which the deadline was…

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More restraint is in order when it comes to the Obama administrations intent to escalate “antitrust” enforcement against business and enterprise in America.

A skeptical interpretation of antitrust’s realities—up to and including recent campaigns targeting Intel, Google, XM-Sirius; and earlier campaigns against Microsoft and the AOL Time Warner merger, as well as rejected mergers like Echostar/DirecTV—is that antitrust often advances the well being of various species of political predators rather than consumers.

Antitrust is a form of economic regulation. And…

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Newt Gingrich’s new “Strategy Memo: Time for a Real Stimulus Bill” is helpful on highlighting tax cuts that could stimulate business’ capacity for job and wealth creation–but it needs a vastly more developed vision of limited government than it contains.

When I first read the piece today I didn’t’ think he had any government spending cuts or reductions in scope of govt at all, then noticed some welcome liberalization of offshore drilling, and some privatization. But apart from that, the…

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Hundreds of people turned out in the pouring rain for Washington, DC’s Tea Party - one of many tax protest events taking place around the U.S. today. A sea of multi-colored umbrellas filled Lafayette Park, which is situated near the White House. Many protesters made a family day of the outing, carrying homemade signs expressing outrage at the unprecedented government bailouts of the banking and auto industries over the past year, along with the high level of government spending to…

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Washington spends and regulates, and it’s hard to make it stop doing either. Government agencies and programs attract constituencies that want to keep them around, however wasteful.

Such big problems require big solutions that spread the risk of political fallout, by assembling a bi-partisan package of cuts and requiring an up-or-down vote.

So, against the backdrop of a $3.5 trillion federal budget, trillions in deficit spending, and over $1 trillion in annual regulatory costs besides, comes H.R. 1023, the “Federal…

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CEI President Fred L. Smith, Jr. dropped by CPAC today to speak on a panel about government bailouts. He also made appearances on Radio Row at CPAC.

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Removing burdensome regulations on small business hasn’t figured much into the economic recovery program thus far. Too bad.

Alternatives to “spendulus” and the “Bailout to Nowhere” exist.  A “Liberate to Stimulate” campaign would include spending/tax reforms, “deregulatory stimulus,” infrastructure liberalization, financial sector reforms that shift risk back on the institutions rather than toward taxpayers, a “regulatory reduction commission” and much more. Starting from the basics–what exactly is it that limited government entails–can go a long way toward laying the right foundation…

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The Small Business Administration’s Regulatory Review and Reform initiative (r3) has a new compilation of rules that need reform, according to small businesses across America who were asked to submit comments. The unpopular regulations come from all across the federal government’s swarm of agencies: IRS, Transportation, Labor, EPA. These are the kind of reforms that count as genuine stimulus,, and should be duplicated on a grand scale with a bipartisan “Regulatory Reduction Commission.” In any event, the small-business “Top Ten”…

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Well, the Spendulus/Stimulus will be signed into law within minutes. We’ll soon learn that even this Leviathan-In-A-Box is only the beginning of the Age of Intervention, barrelling ahead as if creating jobs really was something in the political sector’s toolkit. Politicians–as creators of wealth and jobs; Color me incredulous. I see the “package” elements as unrelated to economic recovery but as ends in themselves servicing the goal of political sector growth.

It’s a good to time to reflect on the question…

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Ran across this excerpt from a Wall Street Journal piece that I thought I’d pass along. And this was before the Anti-Stimulus added heft to Washington:

A long line of judge-made law since the Supreme Court’s New Deal era decision in Wickard v. Filburn (1942) says there is almost no limit, under the commerce clause of the Constitution, to the regulatory reach of the federal government.

Thus, a united president and Congress can, as a practical matter, do all or any of…

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Today CEI and other free-enterprise analysts and advocates are making one last pitch to stop the anti-stimulus package that President Obama is likely to sign tomorrow. In this weblog and elsewere we’ve often noted that the stimulus package, like those in decades past, is unrelated to economic recovery and serves other ends of career politicians, many of whom haven’t paid for so much as a potato with money they’ve earned or “created” in the private sector. Moreover, the uncertainty generated…

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From the introduction to One Nation, Ungovernable?, A Bipartisan Agenda for Economic Liberalization & Restraint on Political Power:

Rahm Emanuel, President Barack Obama’s incoming chief of staff, recently commented: “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste.” Now, we at the Competitive Enterprise Institute are at least as concerned about the nation’s current economic crisis—but we are even more concerned about bad policies that may come out of this crisis.

Still, Emanuel’s point is valid. Crises expose unexpected—and often misunderstood—weaknesses…

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