by Charles Huang
November 20, 2009 @ 11:05 am
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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As John Lott has so effectively demonstrated time and time again, widespread citizen gun possession is an effective way of increasing public safety. His policy suggestions have never been more relevant than in today’s world where the military has disarmed its troops exposing them to the horrors recently experienced in Camp Hood, where U.S. ships remain far too exposed to pirate attacks.
Yet, an article in the Washington Times today quotes Roger Middleton, a piracy specialist at the London-based Chatham House: “the international…
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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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Oh dear! Staunch trade proponent Fred Bergsten of the Peterson Institute is in bed with radical trade opponent Lori Wallach of Public Citizen in a joint op-ed in the Washington Post today. It seems Bergsten thinks there’s no chance of a legislative cap on CO2 emissions unless the U.S. does something to address the competitiveness issues, and he’s against “border tax adjustments” because of its potentially devastating effect on the world trading system.
That’s the good part. The bad part is…
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by Charles Huang
November 13, 2009 @ 11:31 am
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 13, 2009
>>CEI Commemorates the 20th Anniversary of the Fall of the Berlin Wall
[Video] CEI Studios Produces Video Commemorating the Fall of the Berlin Wall
CEI marked the…
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In Japan, it is illegal for men to have a waist larger than 33.5 inches. The limit for women is 35.4 inches. Those in violation are forced to undergo counseling (Hat tip to CEI colleague Megan McLaughlin).
The law, passed last year, is part of an effort to keep obesity rates low and avoid related health problems.
One problem with using wasitlines as the primary metric is that results can vary among measurers. According to one article, “Satoru Yamada, a doctor at…
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Uh-oh. Senator Max Baucus (D-Montana) is raising the stakes on a U.S. climate bill by endorsing the idea of some sort of tariff on goods from countries that haven’t taken steps to suppress fossil fuel use. According to Reuters, Baucus, Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, yesterday said:
“We must push our trading partners to do their part to curb harmful emissions and we must devise a border measure, consistent with our international obligations, to prevent the carbon leakage that would occur…
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Unemployment is now higher in the U.S. than in Europe, reports the Washington Post. “The official U.S. unemployment rate, reported last Friday, now stands at 10.2 percent,” compared to “9.7 percent” in Europe. This is the highest rate in more than 26 years, and marks a huge change from the recent past, in which unemployment was double the American rate in much of Europe, such as in France.
Unemployment is at 10 percent in France, which refused to adopt a U.S.-style stimulus…
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On November 9, 1989, the Berlin Wall came crashing down. Today marks the twentieth anniversary of that great day – one of the greatest in the history of human freedom. Communism in Germany finally collapsed, setting off a domino effect that would reach Moscow within two years. Families torn apart for nearly three decades came together in tearful, happy reunions as the world watched. The Cold War was finally, mercifully, ending.
Many historians cite World War I as the twentieth century’s…
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A Muslim solder, Nidal Hasan, shot dead 13 people at Fort Hood yesterday. Hasan had earlier exhibited extremist, anti-American propensities, including applauding terrorist attacks against U.S. soldiers. There are different theories as to how this could have happened.
One school of thought attributes the tragedy to politically-correct double standards imposed on the military that kept the alarm bells from going off.
Other commentators point to a gun-control policy that disarms soldiers while on military bases to create “gun-free zones,” leaving them defenseless in the face…
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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…
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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…
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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.
…
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The small country of Honduras did not agree to return its authoritarian ex-president to power after all. Press reports said it did, but The Wall Street Journal says it merely agreed to submit a request for his return to Honduras’s Congress and Supreme Court, which previously backed the ex-president’s removal, in exchange for an end to U.S. sanctions and U.S. recognition of upcoming election results. Under continuing U.S. pressure, they may soon allow his return to office, but it hasn’t happened yet.
The…
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Under U.S. pressure, Honduras’s leader has reportedly agreed to return to power its authoritarian ex-president, Manuel Zelaya, in exchange for an end to U.S. sanctions and U.S. recognition of its upcoming election results, and Zelaya’s agreement to turn over control of the military to a tribunal. It is not absolutely certain, however, that Honduras’s Supreme Court or Congress will approve the agreement, which appears to violate Honduran law.
Honduras removed ex-president Zelaya after he systematically abused his powers: he sought to circumvent constitutional…
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The Obama administration and congressional allies like Senator John Kerry (D-Mass.) are seeking to silence government lawyers who point out their mistakes and misinterpretations of the law:
“A month ago, the Law Library of Congress reviewed the removal of Manuel Zelaya from his post as President of Honduras, an act that the Obama administration called a ‘coup’ and demanded reversed for its illegality. To the embarrassment of the White House and State Department, the Congressional body determined that Honduras acted lawfully in removing…
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Today, President Obama signed into law a bill that will dramatically expand the federal hate crimes law, enabling prosecutors to bring federal charges against people who were previously found innocent of hate crimes in state court. The hate-crimes provisions were added to a defense appropriations bill, which the President signed in a White House signing ceremony this afternoon at around 2:30 p.m.
The new law dramatically expands the reach of the existing federal hate-crimes law that was already on the books, by…
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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…
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Yesterday, Congress approved a measure to dramatically expand the existing federal hate crimes law, by adding it to an unrelated defense appropriations bill. The measure would expand current law to cover virtually all hate crimes already covered by state law (both by adding gender, sexual orientation, disability, and transgender characteristics to a law originally designed to protect racial minorities, and by getting rid of the requirement that a hate crime effect federally-protected activities to be prosecuted in federal rather than state court.)
The…
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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…
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