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Dear Cass: As you know, we picked a spat with the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) last week over Randy Lutter’s supposedly temporary detail appointment to your office. It’s not the first time we’ve criticized the workings of OIRA, and almost certainly won’t be the last.  I’ve spoken to a number of people in […]

As the first week of formal negotiations at the Copenhagen Climate Summit comes to a close, the United States and China are exchanging barbs and little progress is being made … but behind the scene many negotiators remain confident that at least some form of a political agreement can be reached that will move global […]

The below item is written by Celeste Monforton and cross-posted from The Pump Handle. The first regulatory agenda under OIRA chief Cass Sunstein was published Monday in the Federal Register (link to its 237 pages.)  The document includes a narrative of Labor Secretary Solis’ vision for worker health and safety, mentioning these specific hazards: crystalline silica, […]

A few notes on the Chinese drywall issue from the past weeks: The CPSC announced that it was expanding its investigation to include some American-made drywall, following some reports of similar problems — bad odors and pipe corrosion. But meanwhile, the Bradenton Herald asked “Is scope of Chinese drywall problem exaggerated?” Reporter Duane Marsteller notes […]

Today, EPA made its long-expected official finding: climate change is real, and we human beings are the cause. More than two years after the Supreme Court ordered EPA to address the issue, EPA has now formally ruled that greenhouse gases cause climate change that endangers human health or welfare. EPA also found that motor vehicles […]

Today, the 15th Conference of the Parties (COP) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) opens in Copenhagen. I will be a credentialed observer from non-governmental academic and research organizations including the Center for Progressive Reform and the Center for Law, Environment, Adaptation, and Resources (CLEAR) at the University of North Carolina […]

CPR Member Scholars Victor Flatt and David Hunter, along with several guest contributors, will be writing for CPRBlog from the climate talks in Copenhagen. Stay tuned.

Once upon a time, EPA and other agencies labored under the yoke of a cruel regime that was contemptuous of the “reality-based community,” but intimately aware of the needs and desires of the energy industry. Climate policy didn’t really happen in those days. Then the world changed. In the first year of the new regime, […]

As reporters dug deeper on our post yesterday about the return of Randy Lutter, chief economist at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) under the George W. Bush Administration, to “regulatory czar” Cass Sunstein’s office, OMB spokesman Tom Gavin worked to downplay the significance of Lutter’s reappearance. Gavin confirmed that Lutter was in fact ensconced […]