Category Archives: CEI Podcast

CEI Podcast for October 27, 2011: How Much Do Undocumented Immigrants Cost?

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A widely cited study from the Federation for American Immigration Reform claims that undocumented immigrants cost taxpayers $113 billion per year. Policy Analyst Alex Nowrasteh, author of the new CEI Web Memo “A FAIR Criticism: A Critique of the Federation for American Immigration Reform’s ‘The Fiscal Burden of Illegal Immigration on United States Taxpayers.'” finds that the study counts costs but ignores benefits, uses shoddy data, and is harmful to the ongoing immigration debate.

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Posted in CEI Podcast, Fun with Statistics, Immigration

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CEI Podcast for October 20, 2011: Congress Passes Free Trade Agreements

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CEI Adjunct Fellow Fran Smith, coauthor of the new CEI study “Free Trade without Apology,” talks about the recently passed free trade agreements with Colombia, Panama, and South Korea. The agreements will lower tariffs and other trade barriers between the U.S. and the other countries, and are expected to reap billions of dollars of economic benefits. The agreements also contain a number of trade-unrelated provisions, such as labor and environmental standards. These erode our trading partners’ sovereign lawmaking power, and are best avoided in future agreements.

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Posted in CEI Podcast, Economics, Trade

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CEI Podcast for October 13, 2011: Occupy Wall Street

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CEI Founder and President Fred Smith compares the Occupy Wall Street movement with the Tea Party movement and finds similarities as well as differences. Both oppose bailouts and other forms of corporate welfare. But, as he points out in a recent USA Today op-ed, he fears the Occupiers are confusing such crony capitalism with the real thing. If corporations have undue influence over government, making that government bigger and more powerful will only worsen the problem. The solution is separation of corporation and state.

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Posted in CEI Podcast, Economics, The Partisan Mind

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CEI Podcast for October 6, 2011: How to Deregulate the Economy

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Vice President for Policy Wayne Crews is author of the new CEI study, “The Other National Debt Crisis: How and Why Congress Must Quantify Regulation.” He discusses a few of his many ideas for deregulating the economy, including a regulatory budget, improved cost analysis, and lowering the threshold of “economically significant” regulations from $100 million to $25 million. This would require OMB to review more than the roughly 5 percent of new rules that it currently analyzes. The other 95 percent should not slip through the cracks.

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Posted in CEI Podcast, regulation

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CEI Podcast for September 29, 2011: The End of Free Debit Cards

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Every time you use your debit card, the merchant has to pay a fee to the company that issued your card, usually about 1 percent of the purchase price. On October 1, that price will be capped by law to 21 cents. John Berlau, Director of CEI’s Center for Investors and Entrepreneurs, explains the unintended consequences that will hurt consumers, merchants, and banks alike. John has written on interchange fees for The Wall Street Journal, Investor’s Business Daily, The American Spectator, and other outlets.

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Posted in CEI Podcast, Economics, Price and Wage Controls

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CEI Podcast for September 22, 2011: E-Verify

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E-Verify is a program that checks the immigration status of new hires. The House is expected to vote on legislation that would make E-Verify mandatory nationwide. Policy Analyst Alex Nowrasteh thinks E-Verify should be scrapped altogether. Not only does it make it more expensive for companies to hire people, it misses over half of the undocumented immigrants it is supposed to identify.

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Posted in CEI Podcast, Immigration

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CEI Podcast for September 15, 2011: Solyndra

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Myron Ebell, Director of CEI’s Center for Energy and Environment, takes a look at the brewing Solyndra scandal. Solyndra is a company that makes solar panels and recently declared bankruptcy. In 2009, the federal government gave Solyndra a $535 million loan even though its own analysts predicted the company would go bankrupt in 2011. The company’s cozy relationship with political figures, including a major political donor with an investment stake, make the loan — and its low interest rate — look rather suspicious.

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Posted in CEI Podcast, Spending, Stimulus, The New Religion

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CEI Podcast for September 8, 2011: The Infrastructure Bank

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In a speech tonight, President Obama is expected to announce the creation of a government infrastucture bank as part of his plan to reduce unemployment. Vice President for Policy Wayne Crews explains why it won’t work as planned, and offers an alternative idea: liberalization.

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Posted in CEI Podcast, Economics, Spending, Stimulus

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CEI Podcast for September 1, 2011: The Blocked AT&T-T-Mobile Merger

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The Department of Justice sued this week to stop the proposed AT&T-T-Mobile merger. Associate Director of Technology Studies Ryan Radia thinks this is a mistake. The evidence that the merger would make the wireless market less competitive is unconvincing. Nobody knows if the merger will succeed or not. Either way, consumer harm is unlikely.

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Posted in Antitrust, CEI Podcast, Economics, Technology

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CEI Podcast for August 25, 2011: Mr. Fuddlesticks

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Mr. Fuddlesticks is an anonymous YouTube user who posted embarrassing videos about the Renton, Washington police department. They convinced a judge to let them request Mr. Fuddlesticks’ personal information from Google, YouTube’s parent company. While the charges were eventually dropped, Research Associate Nicole Ciandella thinks this highlights a major problem in applying telephone-era laws to the Internet era.

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Posted in CEI Podcast, Technology

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