CEI Projects

FT says “nay” to Hillary choice for State

by Fran Smith on November 24, 2008 · 1 comment

in International, Politics as Usual, Trade

As pundits bet that Sen. Hillary Clinton is a done deal for Secretary of State, today’s editorial in the Financial Times calls it a poor choice for a variety of reasons. In the piece extolling President-ele

ct Barack Obama’s picks for his economic team, the FT says that’s not the case for Hillary and hits her lack of experience, her ambitions, and her personality.

Economics aside, the biggest surprise among Mr Obama’s rumoured appointments is Hillary Clinton, whose selection as secretary of state is said to be “on track”. This is a far more questionable choice, since Mrs Clinton is so lacking in foreign policy experience. The appointment gives rise to unhelpful speculation about the new president’s motives. Is he attempting to bind his party’s wounds? His victory already did that, and governing well would assure a full recovery. Is he attempting to neutralise her as a rival for the presidency in 2012? If things go badly for him, it will take more than this to quell another Clinton bid.

Could Mrs Clinton subordinate herself to Mr Obama, and devote herself to making his presidency a success? That is doubtful and, with many far better qualified candidates available, is a risk there is no need to take.

CEI has criticized that choice for different reasons — Sen. Clinton, who has strong anti-trade, anti-globalization positions, would not temper the in-coming president’s lack of support for trade, which could cause not only more economic problems for the U.S. and the developing world but also geopolitical ones.

FreeRoots

by Iain Murray on October 31, 2008 · 10 comments

in Bureaucrash, Culture, Economy, Global Warming, International, Nanny State, Personal Liberty, Privacy

Some of the brightest minds in the online conservative movement — John Hawkins, Patrick Ruffini and Mark Tapscott — are discussing what it would take to build a “rightroots” movement, aimed at replicating the political activism of the left “netroots.” As Patrick makes clear in a further post, this is not about building a partisan shilling machine (if it was, the effort would deserve to fail), but about a grassroots-driven insurgency and about harnessing ideological lightning (of which lots more later) to power the political world.

This is a worthy effort. They are right to say that the right is having its clock cleaned electorally as a result of the online community’s deficiencies in the areas of fundraising and online activism, yet I think there are two more important problems identified. First, as Mark points out, the net holds massive promise for investigative journalism, a point that Paul Chesser of the Carolina Journal has made repeatedly; look at his revelations about the Center for Climate Strategies and the way leftist donors have used it to impose alarmist global warming policies on governors around the country. Meanwhile, here at CEI, we established the Warren Brookes Fellowship to keep alive the tradition of a great columnist who never let opinion or prejudice get in the way of fact. And in the UK, it is conservative and libertarian bloggers who have often pushed against the Labour government when the official opposition was too timid to do so. Guido Fawkes is a great example.

The second problem is identified well by John:

Just to give you an example of what I’m talking about, here’s a generic conversation, some variation of which I’ve had with different congressional aides at least half-a-dozen times over the last four years.

Anonymous Aide: Hawkins, I want to ask your advice.
John Hawkins: Shoot.
Anonymous Aide: We’re thinking about doing idea x.
John Hawkins: Are you out of your mind? That’s going to be a disaster!
Anonymous Aide: Well, they’ve already decided to do it. How do we sell it to the bloggers?
John Hawkins: You’re asking me whether you should put mayonnaise or mustard on a sh*t sandwich. I can give you some advice, but it’s not going to go over well no matter how you spin it.

John is right. The net provides the single best method yet devised of allowing the individual supporter into the messy business of policy formulation. Again, a look across the pond is valuable. The Conservatives in Britain have realized exactly that — ConservativeHome has become a sort of guardian of the Tory conscience, where individual party members have their say on emerging policy issues. The Party’s guarded retreat from the excesses of greenery and the re-emergence of tax as a defining issue have in some degree or another been driven by net-based activism. One might even suggest that the era of the political consultant or guru is over. Creative destruction in action!

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FCC Might Actually Roll Back an Outdated Regulation!

by Ryan Radia on October 15, 2008 · 1 comment

in Tech & Telecom

If you wanted to communicate over long distances in real-time 25 years ago, you had little choice but to rely on your local phone company for carriage. Email and mobile phones were still oddities, and neither SMS text messages nor tweets had even been conceived.

Federal regulators, concerned that some companies might not maintain a  high level of service, imposed reporting requirements so the FCC could monitor phone companies and ensure calls were being handled properly.

Fast forward to 2008, and the traditional phone company is but one of numerous firms providing voice and data services to consumers. From cable digital voice to cell phones to free, IP-based applications like Skype, there are a growing number of ways to talk to people in another part of the country. Yet federal regulators have continued enforcing strict reporting requirements on phone companies, forcing these firms to spend countless man-hours filling out forms that some Washington bureaucrat may one day glance over. And these FCC rules apply exclusively to phone companies, putting them at an unfair advantage simply because they happen to be older and more well-established.

As we’ve discussed many times before, the FCC’s paperwork-intensive service quality reporting rules impose millions of dollars in compliance costs on phone companies. These costs are passed on to customers, resulting in higher prices without any actual benefit.

The FCC’s service quality reporting requirements needlessly duplicate the function of a competitive marketplace. How could a phone company get away with subpar service without losing customers to superior competitors? Market discipline-not federal regulation-is ultimately what pushes telecom firms strive for high quality service.

Fortunately, in a notice published today in the Federal Register, the FCC describes its plans to provide regulatory relief to AT&T and Verizon, among others. This needed reform will help reduce unneeded regulations, possibly translating into more competitive offerings from telephone companies.

Of course, the Federal Register is loaded with myriad regulations that, collectively, cost Americans well over $1 trillion dollars per year (as CEI catalogues in its annual publication, Ten Thousand Commandments: An Annual Snapshot of the Federal Regulatory State). The FCC’s decision to relieve telcos of reporting rules is a welcome move, but we have a long way to go before the regulatory leviathan is in check.

Bailout fails — Move on to Mark-to-Market Reform

by John Berlau on September 29, 2008 · 13 comments

in Bailout Watch, Economy

Oh, Happy Day! And it certainly is for all those who value freedom, responsibility and the true free market in which individuals are free to profit from their risks on the condition that they don’t stick the rest of us with their losses.

It’s not hyperbole to say the Republican and Democratic backbenchers who defied both parties’ leadership to defeat this $700 billion package of Wall Street socialism literally saved America. Whatever their reasons, this defeat (or rather victory for freedom), means that America is much less likely to turn into France, Venezuela, or the old Soviet Union, as this bailout/nationalization package would have set us on the road to becoming.

Several great speeches on the Right and Left were given. Democrats Brad Sherman of California and Earl Blumenauer of Oregon gave powerful speeches against corporate giveaways. And conservative leaders of the Republican Study Committee — such as Jeb Hensarling, Jeff Flake, Mike Pence, and of course Ron Paul — spoke about how government intervention was largely the cause of this predicament, but the bailout would doom arguments for the free market form here on out. The idea of the government making this kind of outlay to high-flying risk takers just didn’t jibe with members, and certainly not with the American people.

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Stocks Climb as House Rejects Bailout

by Cord Blomquist on September 29, 2008 · 6 comments

in Bailout Watch

Though the bill may have been defeated for the wrong reasons—like the lack of freebies, giveaways, and handouts that many on the left had hoped for—the defeat of the bailout bill in the House has brought stocks out of their decent. The Dow Jones is now climbing.

But how can this be? How could a bill that was designed to save our economy, our country, and the world be the cause of the Dow’s drop today? Easy, the bill was introducing such incredible uncertainty into the market that investors were panicking.

It could also be that Wall Street—despite the recent bank closings—is still smarter than Washington. The reactions of investors suggests they realize the bill may have done more harm than good.

For more on why a defeated bailout bill is a very good thing and why the world doesn’t need saving, read John Berlau in today’s American Spectator.

Stay tuned to OpenMarket for John Berlau’s reaction to the bailout bill’s defeat. Also, check out our Bailout Watch page at CEI.org.

LibertyWeek 8: Cheese for Dogs

by Cord Blomquist on September 16, 2008 · 1 comment

in Podcast

Check out me and Richard Morrison doing another episode of CEI’s weekly podcast, Liberty Week.  This week we cover:

  • The “meltdown” on Wall Street
  • Hurricane Ike
  • Nancy Pelosi’s opposition to offshore drilling
  • The War on Bottled Waterâ„¢
  • A breakthrough for Paralympic athletes

Also, this week we have Radu Burnete (our Romanian intern) joining us to consider how European Union rules have made short cucumbers, uncurved bananas and unpasteurized cheese crimes against the people.