The European Union (EU) is a large trading partner for the US and so the EU’s economic health matters to American consumers and workers.  We exchange goods and services from comparably skilled labor forces and from well-capitalized industries with comparable technology.  Our trade with the EU is not about offshoring jobs to subsistence-wage workers. While the [...]

Last week, Google announced they would be bringing their high-speed Internet and television service, Google Fiber, to Austin, Texas. This comes on the heels of last year’ announcement that they would do the same in Kansas City, Missouri, making it the first city to get Google’s new fiber service. This new service promises 1 gigabit [...]

Earlier we noted surprises in the budgetary emphasis on energy and transportation.  Without prose to explain its retreat, the White House slashed spending in its quest for cars that run on pure green thoughts.  All that remains is deep seated hostility to most families’ means of transportation. Some of the biggest reductions in the budget [...]

In the recent proposal for a 2014 budget, the White House offered consumers a 10-year outlook of proposed federal spending and revenues.  So far, tax hikes and entitlement cuts to Social Security and Medicare have attracted the most news coverage, but there are some remarkable budget numbers in the Energy and Transportation sections of Table [...]

ACI researcher Alan Daley has the written a piece on a new cyber-security legislative proposal.  You can read the piece on the HILL at http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/homeland-security/293379-cybersecurity-follow-through-is-welcomed.

There are thousands of ways for government to better accommodate business’ and consumers’ interests.  One of them is in adjusting customs duties on low-value shipments from abroad. When we return from travel to the U.S., we are allowed to import up to $800 in goods without paying customs duty.  Those purchases are scrutinized by US [...]

Most people know patents as tools to protect inventors and creators. Our patent system provides an incentive to follow through on a good idea or a new way of doing something. It ensures that inventors will be able to benefit financially from their invention, disallowing others from taking a product and selling it on their [...]

A few recent court cases have moved toward clarifying whether you can resell copyrighted goods.  In one instance, Costco was sued by a Swiss watch company for buying Swatches overseas and reselling them in the U.S.  An importer can often scoop up goods such as Swatches at prices far below those charged in the US [...]

Last week, the Senate voted to repeal a controversial tax found within the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare. The tax was a 2.3% levy on medical devices, which, once in effect, is expected to generate almost $30 billion in tax dollars. The tax would hit nearly every medical device imaginable—pacemakers, syringes, CT scanning machines, and [...]

Spamhaus and Cyberbunker are scuffling in the Internet and the public is their victim. Spamhaus, whose mission is to identify trouble spots on the Internet, identified Cyberbunker as a chronic spammer.  In retaliation, it appears that Cyberbunker used a bot-net to orchestrate the largest-ever denial of service attack focused against Spamhaus.  The attack spread delay [...]