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I think it's true that the election gives no one a mandate--that it was not a sweeping victory for a particular set of policies. But it's a tough day for those of us who thought the policy deficiencies of the past four years were obvious. Clearly, we have work to do, and lessons to learn.

Our principles are not wrong, or insufficient for today's challenges, but we have clearly not sufficiently persuaded the American people how those principles directly benefit them in their daily lives.

We have to convince the American people that freedom is better for them than Big Government. We have to provide support and analysis for our allies in Congress, and we have to work to strengthen their resolve and to help them navigate some difficult policy problems.

Update: More from CNET.

Well, the nanny state bureaucrats did it--they've run another successful American small business into the ground.

BuckyBalls are a desktop magnetic toy, and they're ingenious. They're basically tiny magnets in a variety of colors and shapes--balls, cubes, and rods.

They are targeted at adults, and they've been highly successful. Two entrepreneurs in an apartment with $2,000 started the company in 2009, and in a short period of time BuckyBalls became highly successful, sold in specialty retail stores.

But the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) came after them, and despite the fact that BuckyBalls has jumped through every hoop presented to them by CPSC, finally this year CPSC dropped the hammer. You can read the whole story, in detail, at this link.

Not to brag too much, but I kinda predicted the release of the Benghazi emails.

Kinda.

During the debate between the candidates for Vice President, when Joe Biden threw the State Department under the bus and blamed them for knowing about the terror attack and not telling the White House, I sent out this tweet:

In the same week that IPI resident scholar Dr. Merrill Matthews warns that time is running out before the US takes a dive off an entitlement cliff, record welfare spending makes headlines.

A new memo released today by the Congressional Research Service report that welfare spending has jumped 32% in just four years, reaching $746 billion in 2011.

Ed Komenda of the Sun-Sentinel cites IPI's music piracy study in the following article about a Delray man who says he profited from piracy for at least seven years. Thanks to global music piracy, the U.S. economy takes a $12.5 billion hit each year.

Komenda writes:

Gregory King told authorities he made a living selling pirated music for seven years - but deputies say his reign ended Saturday at the center of a Lake Worth flea market.

In Politico's The Arena, IPI president Tom Giovanetti responds to tonight's Vice Presidential debate, saying that undecided voters saw substance in Ryan, whereas Biden came across "almost as bipolar."

The Pirate Party tried to get accredited with WIPO as an NGO. Right.

A group that rabidly opposes intellectual property, that breaks the law and exists solely to oppose creators and innovators rights to own their creations, wants to participate in meetings of an organization that exists to further intellectual property understanding and protection.

WIPO correctly turned them aside, at least for now.

Our rabid IP-hating friends over at KEI are up in arms because someone at WIPO dared to suggest that it might be a good idea to set aside a day where actual innovators and creators get a chance to interact with and speak with international delegates to WIPO and with WIPO staff.

Predictably, Mike Masnick over at TechDirt could be counted on to amplify and exaggerate this idea, calling it an "IP Maximalist Agenda Day," and asserting that for some reason public interest groups would be locked out of the event.

Over at the Huffington Post (which I hate to link to), there is a good piece about how Internet piracy harms small, independent creators, in this case an independent movie producer.

Some excerpts:

Over half of Internet users admit to pirating movies. As a result, broadcasters and distributors are paying less money for content. In fact, in the last five years dozens of major movie companies, including Paramount Vantage, Fine Line, Miramax, Bob Yari and MGM have effectively stopped making and buying films all together.

I frequently participate in Politico's "Arena" group policy blog, and last night I posted my reaction to the presidential debate here.

Taxes are going up in 2013, and I mean REALLY up, as a result of a) Obamacare, and b) expiration of the "Bush tax cuts."

Here's a summary of the tax increases that will be hitting in just a few months, absent some kind of agreement between Congress and the Obama administration, which I seriously doubt.