Later this morning, the House Judiciary Committee is scheduled to hold a mark-up on the so-called "Regulatory Freeze for Jobs Act of 2012" (H.R. 4078), a farce of a bill that wrongly calls for a moratorium on public protections until the unemployment rate reaches six percent. This is the latest in a series of more than 190 attacks on regulatory safeguards in the House since the beginning of 2011.

In a new national poll commissioned by the American Sustainable Business Council, Main Street Alliance, and Small Business Majority, small business owners named weak customer demand, not standards and safeguards, as the most important problem facing their businesses right now. In fact, a majority of the small business owners surveyed agreed that fair, effective regulation of business is necessary to ensure competitiveness and fairness in a modern global economy. Small business owners also support policies that ensure environmental health, food safety, and worker protection for customers and communities. The results show that small businesses want real solutions to actual problems, not more anti-regulatory rhetoric from policymakers.

In last night’s State of the Union address, President Obama reiterated his support for the development of clean energy sources that will create jobs and protect the environment. But while developing clean energy is essential for moving us into the 21st century energy marketplace, the way we build our clean energy future also matters. We must develop energy without harming public health and the environment.

Today, government officials, academics, and the cantaloupe industry are meeting at the University of California, Davis, to try to determine how the 2011 Listeria outbreak could have begun at a facility that had just received a "superior" rating from a third-party food safety auditor.   A report issued earlier this week places the blame squarely on the third-party audit system, which allows private companies hired by food producers themselves to perform food safety inspections.