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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Linking Tobacco to Risk Assessments

Apr 20, 2006 by Guest Blogger

Tobacco industries employed scientists “to convince public health officials not that cigarettes were safe, but that there was not yet sufficient evidence of their danger to justify limiting places where tobacco could be smoked,” according to Environmental and Occupational Health Professor David Michaels. Now, under laws like the Data Quality Act, manufacturing doubt to keep harmful substances in the air and on the market is common practice. In a great Op-Ed for the

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Sunset Commission Proposal Would Put Gov't Programs on Chopping Block

House conservatives have reportedly secured a floor vote for a radical sunset commission proposal that would ram program terminations through Congress. A Brief Overview To ensure passage of the House Fiscal Year 2007 budget resolution, House Majority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) reportedly struck a deal with Republican Study Committee (RSC) leaders for floor consideration of several proposals, including a presidential line-item veto and a proposal to institute sunset commissions.

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More White House Spin

Apr 13, 2006 by Guest Blogger

OIRA's annual draft report on the costs and benefits of regulations is now out. For whatever reason -- cynically, one might assume the election year has something to do with it, or maybe just the lack of an official OIRA administrator while John Graham's replacement is still being sought -- the White House did not use it this year as a vehicle for anti-regulatory shenanigans. No hit list; no new policy on, say, Quality-Adjusted Life Years; nope, nothing of that sort at all.

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2006 OIRA Regulatory Accounting Report

Downloads for OIRA's 2006 annual report: Draft reportDownloads for OIRA's 2006 annual report:

Draft report

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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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White House Says, 'Let's Have More Arsenic in Drinking Water'

Apr 2, 2006 by Guest Blogger

You might have read in the news about an EPA plan to make it easier for drinking water systems to reduce the quality of your drinking water, even when it comes to such hazards as arsenic, radon, and lead.

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Wetlands Disappearing? Depends on What You Call a Wetland.

Mar 31, 2006 by Guest Blogger

The NYTimes reports that the record increase in national wetlands recently lauded by Interior Secretary Gale Norton and Agriculture Secretary Mike Joahnns is based on a very liberal definition of wetlands that includes manmade ponds and lakes.

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Half-Baked and PART-Broiled

Mar 22, 2006 by Matthew Madia

We already know that there's a significant mismatch between PART scores, actual program performance, and budget/management policy decisions. We usually hear of a good program that gets a bad PART score, based on criteria that don't really apply to the program, and then is slated for budget cuts. Don't forget, though, that the White House is notorious for claiming that its budget cuts are based on programs' ineffectiveness -- even when most of the programs slated for cuts haven't actually been assessed by even this worthless tool.

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PART Strikes Again

Mar 22, 2006 by Matthew Madia

Independent oil and gas producers are joining the chorus of voices criticizing the White House's political performance measurement tool, PART. From the industry source, here's a look at what's at stake: Independent producers are back fighting what has become an annual spring battle to preserve federal support for domestic oil and gas research and development. But the stakes are much greater than a few tax breaks, an Independent Petroleum Association of America official said.

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Climate Change, Whistleblowers, and Politicizing Science

Mar 20, 2006 by Guest Blogger

If you missed it last night (what, you were watching basketball?), 60 Minutes had a segment on the Bush administration's tendency to rewrite the science of climate change. Here's a brief look: What James Hansen believes is that global warming is accelerating. He points to the melting arctic and to Antarctica, where new data show massive losses of ice to the sea. . . . . "The natural changes, the speed of the natural changes is now dwarfed by the changes that humans are making to the atmosphere and to the surface."

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