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Federal gas tax holiday: Biden says it will provide ‘a little bit of relief’ – but experts say even that may be a stretch

President Joe Biden called on Congress to suspend the federal gas tax to “bring families just a little bit of relief” as average gasoline prices exceed US$5 a gallon. The tax is 18.4 cents on regular gasoline and 24.4 cents on diesel. Biden’s proposal would rescind both taxes for 90 days. Several states, such as [...]

What is curtailment? An electricity market expert explains

Curtailment has a special meaning in electric power systems. It describes any action that reduces the amount of electricity generated to maintain the balance between supply and demand – which is critical for avoiding blackouts. Recently, curtailment has made news in states like California and Texas that are adding a lot of wind and solar [...]

Back to the Future: How Not to Write a Regulation

What role do consumer protection rules play according to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC)? When are they appropriate, and what processes and procedures should be used to develop them? On June 1, AEI’s J. Howard Beales III and Timothy J. Muris sat down with Baker Botts’s Maureen K. Ohlhausen for a panel discussion on the [...]

Big Tech is Not Going Away: Competition and Interoperability/Portability

Data portability and interoperability have often been promoted as ways to increase competition between digital platforms, but there is a debate on when and how data portability and interoperability could be implemented and how effective they would be in boosting competition and innovation. On June 1, the Bipartisan Policy Center hosted a virtual discussion with [...]

A New Twitter Is a Threat to Meta, Not to Democracy

Progressives and their media allies have been fretting loudly that Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter might enable more free speech online. They shouldn’t be afraid, at least not if their ideas can compete legitimately with those of traditional liberals, conservatives and libertarians. Who should be afraid of a Musk-led Twitter, however, [...]