Cass Sunstein
judyhalper | June 26, 2014The last lecture of the last session was by Cass Sunstein. Sunstein is one of the architects of "nudge" thinking. He is a law professor, but he works with behavioral economists to develop his ideas and policy proposals. He has worked with the Obama government to develop "nudge" policies and his ideas are being copied all over the world, especially in the UK, which has a nudge unit.
Sunstein thinks of the policies he develops as "paternalistic libertarianism," a label that could ruffle more than a few feathers. I think one needs to approach Sunstein and his fellow nudgers with an open mind.…
cmonforton | November 18, 2013This week will mark the 90-day point of the Labor Department submitting for White House review one of its top priority regulations to protect coal miners' health. It's a rule to prevent black lung disease. The director of the office that conducts those reviews, Howard Shelanski, promised earlier this year during his confirmation hearing that timely review of agencies' regulations would be a top priority. Mr. Shelanski said:
“I absolutely share the concern you just raised about timeliness. ...I recognized that EO 12866 establishes the initial 90 day review process, and it would be one of my…
cmonforton | April 4, 2013On this blog, we've not minced words about the damaging impact on new worker safety and other public health regulations by the actions of the White House's Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA). It began causing trouble for OSHA the moment it was created by President Reagan, and its interference continues to this day.
During those early hope-and-change days, I had my fingers crossed that our new President had a fresh vision about the role of his regulatory czar. But in January 2009 my hope was dashed when President Obama nominated law professor Cass Sunstein to lead OIRA. …
cmonforton | January 25, 2012A group of 300 scientists, physicians and public health experts are urging President Obama to direct his Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to complete its review of a proposed Labor Department health standard on the carcinogen crystallline silica. OMB's Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) has been reviewing the proposed rule for nearly a year, although the Executive Order (EO) giving OIRA authority for such review sets a four-month maximum time limit.
The signatories on the letter to President Obama, many of whom are members of the Union of Concerned Scientists or the…
cmonforton | January 3, 2012When an organization fails to get the little things right, I have difficulty believing they are competent to get the big things right either. That's the way I feel about the White House's Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA).
OIRA is part of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), was created by the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1980, and is charged with reviewing certain proposed federal regulations and approving agencies' requests to collect data from the public. One of OIRA's responsibilities, as outlined in the 1993 Executive Order (EO) 12866, is coordinating the…
cmonforton | November 28, 2011A new report by the Center for Progressive Reform (CPR) confirms what some of us have suspected: there's not much difference between the Obama Admininstration's and GW Bush Administration's Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) when it comes to meetings with industry lobbyists and giving lip-service to transparency.
In "Behind Closed Doors at the White House," CPR offers a 10-year analysis of the 6,194 draft regulatory actions reviewed by OIRA, a step in the rulemaking process dictated by Executive Order (EO) 12866 for rules of particular significance. Their assessment examined…
bioephemera | March 19, 2009
Illustration by David Parkins, Nature
Today, Nature released a news feature by Geoff Brumfiel on the downturn in mainstream science media. We've all known that this is happening; the alarms become impossible to ignore when Peter Dysktra and his team at CNN lost their jobs last year. For mainstream outlets like CNN or the Boston Globe to cut science may seem appalling - but in an unforgiving economic climate which has already triggered the collapse of major newspapers like the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, such cuts are logical, because science reporting isn't a big money-maker. The question…