Time Magazine has a piece this week on Cass Sunstein’s likely nomination to be the Obama Administration’s “regulatory czar” (director of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs) and the debate over the use of cost-benefit analysis it has touched off. Despite Professor Sunstein's progressive views on most issues, progressives are concerned that his methods of regulatory analysis, if and when he’s confirmed, may not differ significantly from those used during the Bush years. The Time story, here, captures the budding debate.
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Matthew Freeman | February 24, 2009
Time Magazine has a piece this week on Cass Sunstein’s likely nomination to be the Obama Administration’s “regulatory czar” (director of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs) and the debate over the use of cost-benefit analysis it has touched off. Despite Professor Sunstein's progressive views on most issues, progressives are concerned that his methods […]
Matthew Freeman | February 23, 2009
Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reporters Susanne Rust and Meg Kissinger are about to pick up some well deserved hardware for their series on bisphenol A (BPA) – a plastic hardener that leaches from plastic when microwaved. The substance causes neurological and developmental hazards, but it is ubiquitous in food storage containers, including water bottles and baby bottles. […]
James Goodwin | February 20, 2009
In recent weeks, an unusual convergence of events has served to elevate somewhat the public profile of cost-benefit analysis (CBA). Before then, CBA was an obscure and highly complex tool of policy analysis—the kind of thing that hardcore policy wonks would wonk about when the subjects of their usual policy wonkery weren’t wonkish enough. Foreseeable […]
Holly Doremus | February 19, 2009
This item is cross-posted by permission from Legal Planet, “the Environment, Law and Policy Blog.” New EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson has granted the Sierra Club’s petition to reconsider a memorandum issued by outgoing Administrator Stephen Johnson in December. Almost two years after the Supreme Court declared, in Massachusetts v. EPA, that CO2 is […]
Matthew Freeman | February 19, 2009
CPR Member Scholar Nina Mendelson has a piece today in The New York Times’s “Room for Debate” feature on the news that EPA is working its way toward regulating carbon dioxide emissions under the Clean Air Act. As The Times quite directly and correctly puts it, “Under orders from the Supreme Court, which the Bush […]
Matthew Freeman | February 18, 2009
Over on Legal Planet, CPR Member Scholar Holly Doremus of UC-Davis and -Berkeley posted a blog Sunday on an upcoming decision on whether to introduce the Suminoe oyster, native to China and Japan, to the Chesapeake Bay. She writes: The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers issued a draft EIS last fall considering the impacts of […]
Shana Campbell Jones | February 17, 2009
You’ve heard it before, and you’ll hear it again: climate change is different from traditional environmental problems. It’s global, for one thing. Carbon dioxide isn’t a traditional pollutant, for another. It doesn’t cause cancer. It doesn’t kill fish. Plants use it in photosynthesis; every human and animal emits it. The problem is that combustion creates […]
Matthew Freeman | February 16, 2009
Editor’s Note: Following is the last of four posts focused on federal preemption issues and featuring CPR Member Scholars Thomas McGarity and William Buzbee. In December, both published books on the issue. (The first blog post in the series includes some background on the issue. The second discussed the very real impact the outcome of […]
Matthew Freeman | February 13, 2009
Editor’s Note: Following is the third of four posts focused on federal preemption issues and featuring CPR Member Scholars Thomas McGarity and William Buzbee. In December, both published books on the issue. (The first blog post in the series includes some background on the issue. The second discussed the very real impact the outcome of […]