White House 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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Pro-Cost-Benefit but Anti-Dudley

Aug 7, 2006 by Guest Blogger

Be sure to check out Brad DeLong's Semi-Daily Journal on the Dudley nomination. DeLong supports the role of cost-benefit analysis in regulatory decisionmaking, but he is nonetheless not a kindred spirit of Dudley: I had always thought that the benefit-cost ratio from flame-retardant pajamas was high. The fact that Susan Dudley sees this as an example of government overreach.... As someone who believes in getting the benefit-cost analysis right, I find this... disturbing.

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How Important is This Dudley Nomination?

Aug 6, 2006 by Guest Blogger

It's an obscure office that most people have never heard of, but the post of administrator of the White House OMB's Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs wields enormous power over regulatory policy. Susan Dudley promises to be ten times worse in that job than her predecessor, John Graham. So how bad is that? Take a look back at Graham's tenure with The Graham Files.

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A Look at Risk Assessment

Aug 5, 2006 by Guest Blogger

Click here for Rachel's Precaution Reporter's reprint of a Nature magazine article covering the White House's Proposed Risk Assessment Bulletin.

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Industry-Backed Radical Named as White House Reg Czar

Aug 2, 2006 by Guest Blogger

OMB Watch and other public interest groups have been following rumprs for the last several months that the White House intended to nominate industry-funded extremist Susan Dudley, currently housed at anti-regulatory think tank the Mercatus Center, to become the White House reg czar. The White House just made it official. Click here for a statement from OMB Watch, and here for commentary from Public Citizen. Meanwhile, here is PR Watch's take, under the headline Free-Market Fox Nominated to Henhouse Post:

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White House Appoints Industry-Backed Extremist as Regulatory Czar

Statement of J. Robert Shull, Director of Regulatory Policy
Corporate special interests are about to have the best friend they could have wished for installed in the White House office that oversees regulatory policy. The White House announced today its intention to nominate Susan Dudley, an anti-regulatory extremist from the industry-funded Mercatus Center, to an obscure but powerful office, where she would have the power to gut the federal government's very ability to protect the public.

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Attack on FOIA

Jul 7, 2006 by Guest Blogger

How would you like to celebrate the 40th birthday of the Freedom of Information Act? By weakening it?

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Hints Dropping Like Milk Duds

Jun 30, 2006 by Guest Blogger

The rumors have been swirling, and now the inside Washington press has picked up on them: that the White House is vetting Susan Dudley as the next administrator of OIRA. Frank O'Donnell of Clean Air Watch wins the award for Most Memorable Quote (for Washington): "She makes John Graham look like Ralph Nader." If the rumors are true, expect to hear all about how Dudley is bad for workplace health and safety, bad for the public's right to know, bad for water quality and safe drinking water, bad for consumer safety, and, well, just bad.

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U.S. Promoting Paralysis by Analysis Worldwide

Jun 27, 2006 by Guest Blogger

What's bad for America is being touted as great for the rest of the world: By year's end, the European Union is expected to adopt REACH, a proposal that would "require manufacturers to test industrial chemicals used in the manufacturing process to gather health and safety data." REACH stands for "Registration, Evaluation and Authorization of Chemicals." The bill "has prompted a U.S.-led coalition of 1

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PARTial Responses

Jun 14, 2006 by Guest Blogger

A couple of responses to some points raised in yesterday's hearing on PART:

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e-Rulemaking and PART Get Dinged

Jun 12, 2006 by Guest Blogger

E-rulemaking and performance assessment are topics so wonky they rarely are occasion for anyone to say WOW. Ah, but check out the House Appropriations Committee's report to accompany the Transportation/Treasury approps bill, which was just reported out on Friday.

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