Economic liberty is essential to human progress. CEI believes that people improve their lives not through decisions made by Washington bureaucrats, but by making their own choices in a truly free society. We believe in fairness, and that this land offers boundless opportunity, where people can better all aspects of their lives: themselves, their children, their families, and their communities through hard work, and the freedom necessary to climb the ladder of economic mobility. Part of CEI’s mission is to promote economic liberty for all people, and work against any attacks on that freedom. Read more on economy at CEI.org.
In a time when the federal government’s involvement in the economy appears to only grow, it’s encouraging to see at least one industry where the trend may soon move in the opposite direction, even if at the state level. Virginia Governor-elect Bob McDonnell has proposed priviatizing the state’s liquor stores — known as ABC stores, for Alcoholic Beverage Control.
As Garrett Peck, author of The Prohibition Hangover, notes in The Washington Post, this is long overdue. (The op ed is due to…
CEI Weekly is a compilation of articles and blog posts from CEI’s fellows and associates sent out via e-mail every Friday. Also included in the Weekly newsletter is a brief description of CEI’s weekly podcast and a feature on a major CEI breakthrough made during the week. To sign up for CEI Weekly, go to http://cei.org/newsletters.
CEI Weekly
November 6, 2009
>>CEI Blasts Antitrust Lawsuit Against Intel
CEI’s Ryan Radia criticized New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo and his groundless antitrust case again Intel.…
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…
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…
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…
It’s been a year since the president was elected, and he’s already piled up an impressive list of lies and broken promises.
The broken promises include his pledge to enact a “net spending cut,” his promise not to raise taxes on anyone making less than $250,000 a year, and his promise not to sign bills without first giving the public five days of notice.
The Congressional Budget Office says that Obama’s proposed budgets will explode the national debt through massive spending increases, increasing the already large deficits…
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…
From attempting to manipulate the definition of “supervisor” to changing the way in which workers are organized, the above seems to be a guiding principle in organized labor’s bold new approach to increasing union membership. Consistent with that, some union friendly government officials are trying to change the way in which votes for some workers are counted.
Today, as The Wall Street Journal reports, National Mediation Board chair Elizabeth Dougherty wrote to more than a dozen Republican senators, protesting her colleagues’ proposed rule…
The recent announcement that the GDP grew in the third quarter at an annualized rate of 3.5 percent was referred to by Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner as proof that the economy is finally improving. But a quick glance at history demonstrates that this is not the case.
Between 1934 and 1937—during the heart of the Great Depression—GDP grew at by an average of 9.5 percent annually. In 1934, GDP grew by nearly 11 percent, but it would be six more years…
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.
I’ll admit it: William Greider is an easy target. The former Rolling Stone reporter and current national affairs correspondent at The Nation has a habit of making a fool out of himself, to the delight of the right and to the chagrin of the brighter segments of the left. Left-wing economist Paul Krugman, reviewing his 1997 anti-globalization book One World, Ready or Not, said that “the main lesson one really learns from [Greider's book] is how easy it is for an intelligent,…
CEI Weekly is a compilation of articles and blog posts from CEI’s fellows and associates sent out via e-mail every Friday. Also included in the Weekly newsletter is a brief description of CEI’s weekly podcast and a feature on a major CEI breakthrough made during the week. To sign up for CEI Weekly, go to http://cei.org/newsletters.
CEI Weekly
October 30, 2009
>>Iain Murray Testifies in Senate About Cap-and-Trade Failures in Europe
Iain Murray testified on Thursday, Oct. 29th, in front of the Senate Committee on…
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…
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…
After months of talk about solutions that would rev up job growth and the economy, today the House Financial Service Committee may finally adopt a true bipartisan stimulus. Led by Democratic Reps. Carolyn Maloney of New York and John Adler of New Jersey, two amendments will likely be introduced to the Investor Protection Act that would truly stimulate the economy by partially liberating investors, entrepreneurs and innovators from the shackles of a seven-year-old “investor protection” law that has added billions…
Liberals are busy sending each other twitters falsely claiming that Justice Antonin Scalia, one of the more conservative members of the Supreme Court, said that he would have voted to uphold school segregation in Brown v. Board of Education (1954).
There’s just one problem: he never said any such thing. He said the very opposite!
A liberal reporter for Capitol Media Services, Howard Fischer, made the claim that Scalia said he would have voted to uphold segregation, in a story carried in the East…
The federal government has no problem paying exorbitant sums of money to people who head failed government agencies like Freddie Mac. Its CEO will receive compensation estimated at $5.5 million. The Federal Housing Finance Agency took direct control over Freddie Mac, a government-sponsored enterprise, after it ran up tens of billions of dollars in red ink buying risky mortgages, without adequate capital reserves. At the direction of the Obama administration, Freddie Mac is now running up $30 billion in losses to…
Question: What do you get when you combine a $700 billion “stimulus” package, $1.1 trillion in wealth-destroying regulatory compliance costs, a mountainous non-discretionary entitlement obligation, bailouts for large manufacturers, an small army of unelected czars, and a $1.4 federal budget deficit?
Answer: Way too much government!
In a new CEI paper, One Nation, Ungovernable?, Clyde Wayne Crews lays out an agenda for setting America on the path to economic recovery. From lifting burdensome regulations and restrictions on executive compensation to fostering competition and…
In the Washington Post, Robert J. Samuelson explains in the “Public Plan Mirage” how the so-called “public option” contained in congressional health-care reform bills is just a gimmick: “It pretends to control costs and improve access to quality care when it doesn’t.” Steve Chapman wrote earlier about the “‘Public Option’ Health Care Scam.”
In other news, a study by PriceWaterhouseCoopers found that the provisions in the Senate health care “reform” bill sponsored by Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.) would add $1,700 a year…
Expect to see more bad mortgages as a result of a House committee’s vote Thursday to create the so-called “Consumer Financial Protection Agency.” That agency, contrary to its deceptive name, will harm savers and consumers by forcing banks to make loans to people with bad credit, leaving banks with less money to pay interest. “The agency would be in charge of enforcing the Community Reinvestment Act, a law that prods banks to make loans in low-income communities.”
Government pressure on banks to make more risky…
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