With the Detroit auto industry floundering, the United Auto Workers is turning its attention to…day care provider. And to do so, the UAW partnering with the American Federation of State, County & Municipal Employees, a union that organizes workers in the one sector where unionization is growing: government. That’s because some 40,000 Michigan home day care providers have now found themselves classified as working for the state.

Home care providers are government employees? Defining them as such is a novel strategy…

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The Code of Federal Regulations has 28 sections on food containers. Metal, glass, plastic, flexible, rigid – if you can put food in it, there are rules for it.

Recent innovations, such as easy-open tabs on cans, have prompted the Department of Agriculture to issue a 13-page update to its food container inspection regulations. If you have some spare time on your hands, you can have a look by clicking here.

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New Jersey residents pay the highest state and local taxes in the nation, notes the New Jersey Taxpayers’ Association (NJTA). And what do they get for all that money? For most New Jerseyites, not much more than residents of other states, but for government employees, the benefits are great, according to a NJTA analysis of the state’s public employee compensation.

For example, a police officer who retires with a $105,000 salary after 25 years of service can end up making more…

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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 20, 2009

>>[Video] CEI Encourages Al Gore to Debate on Global Warming
In an attempt to convince Al Gore to change his mind about refusing to…

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In light of the news about stimulus job creation statistics not being as advertised — complete with made-up Congressional districts — I offer another surprisingly relevant insight from Mises’ Human Action. Turns out there is a reason stimulus advocates are resorting to trickery:

“If government spending for public works is financed by taxing the citizens or borrowing from them, the citizens’ power to spend and invest is curtailed to the same extent as that of the public treasury expands. No additional jobs are…

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Yesterday, Tower Investments filed a motion to dismiss the Nashville-chartered Metropolitan Housing and Development Agency’s Petition for Condemnation of the company’s 5.6-acre downtown property. MHDA is attempting to clear land for the proposed Music City Convention Center, the construction of which is currently projected to cost nearly $600 million.

What makes this case particularly interesting is that Tower doesn’t oppose the development plan per se; rather, it wants to build a hotel “in such a way that enhances and accommodates the convention center.”…

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This morning I read with interest - and amazement - the above headline.  Does our president live in the same world that I inhabit?  He’s worried about America’s increasing indebtedness and is pushing for a massive expansion of health entitlements (aka wealth redistribution programs) and the cap-and-tax global warming initiatives (aka wealth redistribution programs) and a host of other other wealth-destroying regulatory programs. Yet, he’s worried about America’s growing debt?

Our political system is only now perhaps emerging from a foolish…

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The National Federation of the Blind and the American Council of the Blind are seeking a preliminary injunction in federal court to stop ASU’s plan to use Kindles in place of traditional textbooks. Their objection was based on the point that it is far from easy for a blind individual to access the Navigation Features of this device.  And they’re right - the “Home Menu” lists the books stored but that order changes as soon as they’re accessed and that list…

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More cash/Fewer Clunkers

Via the Von Mises blog:  According to the consumer pricing index report released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics report, the price of used cars rose 3.4% in October thanks to the government’s cash-for-clunkers that spirited away a large portion of the used-car inventory. So, for those of us who chose not to buy a new “greener” car last month, and who want to purchase a dirty old used car, we have a smaller pool from which to select.…

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“[A] government can spend or invest only what it takes away from its citizens… its additional spending and investment curtails the citizens’ spending and investment to the full extent of its quantity.”

-Ludwig von Mises, Human Action, 4th ed., (Irvington-on-Hudson New York: Foundation for Economic Education, 1996 [1949], p. 744.

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FCC regulators want to provide wider and cheaper broadband access by subsidizing it, raising taxes, and forcing network owners to share their network infrastructure with competitors.

A few things the FCC should consider:

-Subsidies don’t make broadband access any less expensive. They just change who pays for it. In this case, that would be anybody with a phone. Which probably includes you. The great economist Ludwig von Mises observed that “A government can no more determine prices than a goose can lay hen’s…

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David Michaels, a left-wing ideologue who supports junk science and seeks to restrict gun possession, has been approved by the Senate Health Committee to head the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). Only two committee members, both Republicans, voted against Michaels.

The vote occurred with no discussion, and no hearing was even held on his nomination, although hearings have consistently been held on OSHA nominees in the past, even for far less controversial picks.

Lawyer and Second Amendment expert, David Kopel explains how Michaels…

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Over at Investor’s Business Daily, Wayne Crews and I make the case against a Value Added Tax. Policy makers have been flirting with the idea as a way to reduce the $1,400,000,000,000 budget deficit.

We argue that a VAT is:

-Complex; it would require roughly doubling the size of the IRS.

-Untransparent; most VATs don’t show up on receipts the way sales taxes do. Taxpayers are clueless as to how much tax they actually pay.

-Vulnerable to special-interest tinkering; politically incorrect goods are routinely…

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Remember the raw oyster ban from a recent Regulation of the Day? I am happy to report a partial victory (hat tip to Jacob Grier).

The ban, due to take effect in 2011, has not been repealed outright. But, in response to public outcry, it has been delayed:

The FDA announced it would commission a study to explore alternatives to reducing the illness vibrio vulnificus, and also do an economic analysis of how the ban would impact the oyster industry.

“Before proceeding, we will conduct…

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President Obama’s $800 billion stimulus package creates imaginary jobs, while destroying ones in the real world.

Billions from the stimulus are being spent on creating tens of thousands of imaginary jobs in 440 phantom Congressional districts, according to the government’s own web site:

Just how big is the stimulus package? Well for one, it has doubled the size of the House of Representatives, according to recovery.gov, which says that funds were distributed to 440 congressional districts that do not exist. . . . The web site…

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ABC News broke the story this week of an executive administration that, ambitious to appear in control of the economy during this steep recession, reported patently false stimulus-related employment information. The Recovery Board, a task force created to track the $787 billion in federal stimulus spending, published on its website data for jobs “created or saved” in congressional districts that don’t even exist!

In one example, the stimulus tracking website reported that 30 jobs have been “created or saved” in Arizona’s…

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Federal affordable-housing mandates were a major factor in the mortgage crisis, fueling the housing bubble and the subsequent collapse of the housing and financial markets, which helped bring down the economy.  Even the liberal Village Voice has admitted that.  Who drafted those awful mandates?  ACORN, reports the Washington Examiner, in “How ACORN Destroyed the Housing Market.”

How did ACORN cause the “housing bubble” and “financial collapse”?  ACORN lobbyists drafted “affordable-housing” mandates to pressure the mortgage giants to buy up more risky loans and mortgages…

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The House is voting today on a bill to improve transparency in the TARP bailout program. TARP is, shall we say, rather opaque. 25 different agencies administer TARP funds. Each one uses different accounting standards. Keeping track of everything is almost impossible.

I wrote an article not too long ago saying that transparency is welcome symptomatic relief. But TARP itself is a disease. The only way to cure the disease of bailout programs is to abolish them. Russ Roberts said much the same…

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Workers may get violent if their wages are cut. The United Auto Workers union (UAW) has a monopoly and was an anchor on the Big Three U.S. automakers. These two ideas were professed by two labor leaders at the recent Federalist Society Convention in Washington, D.C.

There may be violence, says Damon A. Silvers, Associate General Counsel for the AFL-CIO and Deputy Chair of the Congressional Oversight Panel for TARP. Silvers spoke on last Friday’s panel “Labor: Wall Street, Labor Unions,…

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Over at the Washington Examiner’s Opinion Zone, Wayne Crews and I explain why New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo’s antitrust lawsuit against Intel is a mistake.

Calling Intel’s business practices “bribery” and “coercion” is little more than argument by assertion. Rebates and exclusivity deals are normal competitive behavior. Not only is Intel facing increasing competition in its home turf, that small segment is hardly the extent of the relevant competitive market. Intel faces an uncertain future as consumer tastes shift to smaller…

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