Political 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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Mismanagement Failing to Keep America Safe

Oct 25, 2005 by Guest Blogger

The dramatic (and heavily covered) speech by former State Dept. Chief of Staff Lawrence Wilkerson is most noted for its reference to a White House "cabal" that drove America into war with Iraq, but it's worth noting that Wilkerson's speech addressed a fundamental problem of mismanaging government that has not just international but also domestic policy consequences:

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Small Business is Not So Small

Oct 21, 2005 by Guest Blogger

The government's definition of small business is so expansive that billion dollar corporations are receiving Katrina cleanup contracts dedicated to small businesses. From the Washington Post: The government's list of small businesses receiving Katrina-related federal contracts along the Gulf Coast includes one of the largest debris-removal firms in the country and a billion-dollar corporation that boasts former vice president Dan Quayle on its board of directors.

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NSR: A Second Bite at the Apple

Oct 20, 2005 by Guest Blogger

With slim chances of passing in Congress, a controversial change to the designation of new source review is now snaking its way through the regulatory system. The regulation would allow power plants to make modifications to existing equipment without installing new pollution technology if their hourly emissions rates do not increase. By changing the way power plant emissions are calculated from an annual output to an hourly output, plants would be allowed to pollute more per year by operating for longer hours. From the New Standard:

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Gone With the Wind

Oct 17, 2005 by Guest Blogger

John Graham, administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs in the White House Office of Management and Budget, will be leaving that post to become dean of the RAND Graduate School, effective March 1. Perhaps he will teach his students to do a better job in public policy than he did at OIRA. “John Graham comes to RAND with an outstanding track record," RAND insists, but his legacy at the White House is a brutal one for the public: