All Posts Tagged With: "lobbying"
Regulatory Failure by the Numbers
Between the current financial mess and the debate over carbon dioxide emissions controls, there is a lot of talk about regulation these days. We are told, for example, that the recession would have been prevented if proper regulations had been in place. While it is true that (by definition) the “right” regulations would have prevented [...]
25Aug2010 | and Robert L. Bradley Jr. | 5 comments | ContinuedFinancial Regulation Snake Oil
Recent turmoil set off by the threat of Greek insolvency shows how fast markets change. Fear about the inability of European governments to pay their debts caused the 2010 turbulence. By contrast, the 2008–2009 havoc was rooted in the collapse of property values. The next crisis will be about something else, possibly another government’s debt. [...]
25Aug2010 | Chidem Kurdas | 1 comment | ContinuedObamanomics: How Barack Obama Is Bankrupting You and Enriching His Wall Street Friends, Corporate Lobbyists, and Union Bosses
In his previous book, The Big Ripoff (reviewed in the June 2007 Freeman), author Timothy Carney launched an attack on two of America’s preeminent political myths—that the Democrats are “the party of the little guy” and the Republicans are “the party of free enterprise.” Both notions are useful to candidates in the endless quest for [...]
20May2010 | George C. Leef | 1 comment | Continued“We Want to be Regulated”
Efforts in Washington to write a major climate-change law are causing some Bootlegger/Baptist coalitions to fall apart and new ones to emerge. In late September Exelon Corporation, a major electric utility, followed industry partners Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) and PNM when it resigned from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. The Chamber opposed the Waxman-Markey [...]
5Jan2010 | Bruce Yandle | 6 comments | ContinuedLobbying Trumps All
The medical reformers promise miracles if only the government will spend billions of dollars to create a nationwide electronic medical records system. Barack Obama believes it, so his “stimuls” packaged contained $36.5 billion to get the system up and running. There’s plenty of reason to doubt that the huge promised savings or other benefits will [...]
20May2009 | Sheldon Richman | 0 comments | ContinuedBroadband: A Basic Right?
It’s 2006. You really want a broadband high-speed Internet connection, but you live in a small American city with a population of 100,000. So the broadband providers have decided it would not be profitable to come to your town at this time. What do you do? First, get mad. Then, form an interest group. Finally, [...]
1Mar2006 | Max Borders | 0 comments | ContinuedBusiness and Ethics
The Rev. Edmund Opitz is a contributing editor and a former member of FEE’s staff and board of trustees. This is reprinted from the December 1983 issue of The Freeman: Ideas on Liberty. Mr. X manufactures gizmos in a plant which uses the varied skills of a thousand employees. These people might cheerfully acknowledge that [...]
1Jan2004 | Edmund A. Opitz | 2 comments | ContinuedIronic Triangle
“No man’s life, liberty or property are safe while the legislature is in session.” -Unidentified New York Surrogate Court judge, 1866 “President Bush has strongly hinted that he will sign any bill that emerges from Congress.” -New York Times, July 17, 2002 Did you hear the one about the congressional committee that grilled the businessman [...]
1Oct2002 | Sheldon Richman | 0 comments | ContinuedThe Fraud of Seat-Belt Laws
On the promise of reducing highway fatalities and auto insurance rates, seat-belt laws began to pass in state legislatures throughout the United States beginning in 1985. While such laws had been proposed before 1985, they were rejected by most state legislators since they knew the vast majority of the people opposed them. “The Gallup Opinion [...]
1Sep2002 | William J. Holdorf | 54 comments | ContinuedEnron Shows Need for More Regulation?
In his December 24, 2001, Business Week column, journalist Robert Kuttner claimed the Enron scandal “suggests the need for tougher regulation.” That Kuttner would make such a statement is not surprising; he consistently advocates increasing the government’s power over our economic lives. But even many people who are generally sympathetic to economic freedom are questioning [...]
1Jul2002 | David R. Henderson | 0 comments | ContinuedSay It Isn’t So, Jerry Lewis
It was a disappointing day for me, that day last year when comedian Jerry Lewis testified before a Senate subcommittee seeking taxpayer funding for muscular dystrophy research. It drove home how in the past 70 years the virtue of charity has been corrupted from a matter of individual choice and initiative to one of group [...]
1Jun2002 | P. Gardner Goldsmith | 0 comments | ContinuedA Phone of Our Own: The Deaf Insurrection Against Ma Bell by Harry G. Lang
Gallaudet University Press · 2000 · 242 pages · $29.95 Reviewed by Andrew P. Morriss In A Phone of Our Own, Professor Harry Lang (National Technical Institute for the Deaf) provides an accessible, thoroughly researched history of the development of the TTY (teletype) system used by the hearing-impaired to communicate over telephone lines. Relying on [...]
1Aug2001 | Andrew P. Morriss | 0 comments | ContinuedWhy Term Limits?
Early in the 1990s a grassroots movement to limit the terms of elected officials in various public offices blossomed nationwide. Term-limit ballot initiatives passed in 19 states, usually by landslide margins. The U.S. Supreme Court threw out all state-imposed term limits on federal positions in 1995, but those for state and local offices were affirmed. [...]
1May2001 | Lawrence W. Reed | 4 comments | ContinuedThe Other Political Story
Unfortunately, last year’s presidential election was a mess. Unfortunately, the congressional elections were not.
While it proved difficult to determine who won the presidency, it was not difficult to determine who controlled Congress. Only six House incumbents lost, yielding a re-election rate of 98.5 percent.
1Apr2001 | Doug Bandow | 0 comments | ContinuedCampaign-Finance Reform Will End Corruption?
People with an investment in government power will torture logic like a medieval inquisitor rather than face the facts. Consider campaign-finance reform. The standard reformist wisdom is that campaign contributions corrupt the democratic process: Candidates need money to run for office. Corporations and wealthy folks offer to provide the money in return for favors when [...]
1May2000 | Sheldon Richman | 1 comment | ContinuedOpening Pandora’s Box
Dan Fylstra has been involved in the PC industry since its inception. He was founding associate editor of BYTE Magazine in 1975, and founder of VisiCorp in 1979. He is currently president of the PC software vendor Frontline Systems, Inc. This is excerpted from a longer “open letter” distributed on the Internet. Last year, Netscape [...]
1Nov1998 | Dan Fylstra | 0 comments | ContinuedThe Welfare State and the News
In the welfare state, news reporting has been taken over by lobbying that masquerades as news. Nearly every news item in magazines and the papers, or on radio and television, except for something truly earthshaking and unique (a peace agreement between England and Northern Ireland or winners of the Nobel Prize), amounts to featuring some [...]
1Dec1996 | Tibor R. Machan | 0 comments | Continued-
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