Industry Influence and Interference

Feb 8, 2016

Top 400 Taxpayers See Tax Rates Rise, But There’s More to the Story

As Americans were gathering party supplies to greet the New Year, the Internal Revenue Service released their annual report of cumulative tax data reported on the 400 tax r...

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Feb 4, 2016

Chlorine Bleach Plants Needlessly Endanger 63 Million Americans

Chlorine bleach plants across the U.S. put millions of Americans in danger of a chlorine gas release, a substance so toxic it has been used as a chemical weapon. Greenpeace’s new repo...

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Jan 25, 2016

U.S. Industrial Facilities Reported Fewer Toxic Releases in 2014

The Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) data for 2014 is now available. The good news: total toxic releases by reporting facilities decreased by nearly six percent from 2013 levels. Howe...

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Jan 22, 2016

Methane Causes Climate Change. Here's How the President Plans to Cut Emissions by 40-45 Percent.

UPDATE (Jan. 22, 2016): Today, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) released its proposed rule to reduce methane emissions...

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more news

Beyond the Propaganda of Privatization

Apr 14, 2006 by Guest Blogger

Law professor and CPR member scholar Amy Sinden has a provocative new article takes down the arguments for market-based and privatization solutions to the tragedy of the commons: [A]s academics and policymakers clamor to distance themselves from the now dowdy and stilted fashions of 1970s-style “command-and-control regulation” and to embrace the virtues of the free market, privatization has replaced government intervention as the preferred solution to the tragedy of the commons. Right wing ideologues pump out books, articles, and monographs touting the virtues of “free-market

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Report Finds Animal ID System, Cattle Feed Rules Long Overdue, but Stalled by Industry Influence

Despite the discovery of three cows infected with bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), or mad cow disease, measures to ensure the safety of the food supply and to keep foreign markets open to American beef have been stalled, according to a report from the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI), OMB Watch, and Consumer Federation of America.

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How Now, Mad Cow?

Apr 6, 2006 by Guest Blogger

Despite the discovery of three cows infected with bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), or mad cow disease, long overdue measures to ensure the safety of the food supply and to keep foreign markets open to American beef have been stalled.

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Cow Sense: The Bush Administration's Broken Record on Mad Cow Disease

MadCow The Bush administration has failed the public time and time again on mad cow disease, putting corporate special interests above the public interest.

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Gaps Remain in Nuclear Facility Security

Apr 4, 2006 by Guest Blogger

New from the GAO:

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Questioning QALYs and CEA

Mar 27, 2006 by Guest Blogger

Merrill Goozner of CSPI has a blog with an entry helpfully going through Quality Adjusted Life Years: Medical economists conduct these cost-benefit studies to determine if a new drug, medical device or surgical procedure is worth its pricetag. But how do they determine benefits? Over the years, the profession has developed a tool for measuring medical value known as the quality adjusted life year, or QALY. One year of perfect health gets a score of one QALY. If a patient is bedridden and in constant pain for that entire year, it might be considered a .3 (three-tenths of a year) QALY.

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PRA Hearing Features Industry Anti-Reg Wish List

Testimony in a House hearing on the Paperwork Reduction Act (PRA) revealed industry groups' intentions of using PRA reauthorization to push an anti-regulatory agenda.

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OMB Watch to Testify Before Congress on Paperwork Reduction Act

Group maintains that reauthorization should be a step into the 21st Century, not a step backward
Congress should not use reauthorization of the Paperwork Reduction Act as an occasion to keep the public in the dark and threaten existing regulations that protect health and safety, and the environment, OMB Watch will tell Congress today. Instead, it should be an occasion to promote information technologies that reduce costs to government, make compliance easier for industry, and improve transparency.

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Cop off the Beat

Mar 2, 2006 by Guest Blogger

The latest NYTimes article on MSHA should come as no surprise to anyone who has followed this administration's enforcement record; the Bush administration has reduced penalties for mine safety violations in order to better relations with industry. From the article: In its drive to foster a more cooperative relationship with mining companies, the Bush administration has decreased major fines for safety violations since 2001, and in nearly half the cases, it has not collected the fines, according to a data analysis by The New York Times.

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Foxes in the Henhouse: OSHA, MSHA Nominees Appear Pro-Industry, Anti-Worker

Employing an all-too-familiar strategy, the White House has put forward two industry-insiders as its nominees for the top posts at the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) and the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA).

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