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Ben Somberg | August 3, 2010

CPR’s Shapiro Testifies in Congress on ‘Agency Capture’ by Industry

The Minerals Managements Service’s coziness with an industry it was supposed to be monitoring has brought attention back to an all-too-pervasive problem: regulatory agencies becoming “captured” by the regulated industries. This morning the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Administrative Oversight and the Courts is holding a hearing on “Protecting the Public Interest: Understanding the Threat […]

Thomas McGarity | July 28, 2010

The New Consumer Protection Agency and Bureaucratic Reality

Now that Congress has passed legislation creating a new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in the Treasury Department, attention has shifted to how the Obama Administration will implement the new law. The issue of who President Obama should appoint to head the new agency is now front and center. Consumer groups and many members of Congress […]

Catherine O'Neill | July 27, 2010

EPA’s New Guidance on Considering Environmental Justice in Rulemaking a Welcome First Step

The EPA released a guidance document on Monday that promises to integrate environmental justice considerations into the fabric of its rulemaking efforts. Titled the Interim Guidance on Considering Environmental Justice During the Development of an Action, EPA’s Guidance sets forth concrete steps meant to flag those instances in which its rules or similar actions raise environmental […]

Daniel Farber | July 26, 2010

Using Disclosure as a Smokescreen: How Behavioral Economics Can Deflect Regulation

Cross-posted from Legal Planet. A key figure in behavioral economics recently issued a warning about over-reliance on its findings.  In a NY Times op. ed, Dr. George Lowenstein raised questions about some uses of behavioral economics by government policymakers: As policymakers use it to devise programs, it’s becoming clear that behavioral economics is being asked […]

Ben Somberg | June 29, 2010

Regulatory Policy on Late Night TV

The second segment of last night’s Daily Show interview with David Axelrod featured a couple minutes on the broken regulatory system and questions of trust in government competence in the wake of the BP disaster. Axelrod: “I think we’ve tested the proposition of what no regulation means, and what you get is .. the leak, […]

Wendy Wagner | June 28, 2010

Steinzor-Shapiro Metrics on Display in EPA’s June 2010 Strategic Plan

There is plenty of environmental despair right now . . . spreading oil in the Gulf, legislative inaction on climate change and a host of other issues, and the sense that for every step forward, there is a special interest that will take the nation two steps back.  So, in this downward spiral of disappointments, […]

Rena Steinzor | June 22, 2010

Eye on OIRA: Regulation Goes Opaque

Across the full spectrum of outside cognoscenti who are focused on the reality that a small office at the White House has final authority over the agencies charged with preventing catastrophes like the BP oil spill and the Big Branch mine disaster, one threshold assumption is sacrosanct. This tiny Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, now […]

Amy Sinden | June 21, 2010

Wall Street Journal Editorial Revives the Sport of Precaution Bashing

With characteristic audacity, the Wall Street Journal editorial page today is arguing against the precautionary approach to environmental policy that undergirds our system of environmental laws, even as the oil continues to gush into the Gulf of Mexico. Instead, they want to shift the burden of proof and only allow regulators to restrain corporate greed when […]

Matthew Freeman | June 18, 2010

The People’s Agents: Steinzor Op-Ed on Regulatory Reform in Baltimore Sun

CPR President Rena Steinzor has an op-ed in this morning’s Baltimore Sun on the various regulatory failures at work in the BP oil spill. She writes that important questions need to be answered “about how the federal regulatory system allowed BP and other oil companies to drill in waters so deep without effective fail-safes,” and continues: In […]