The publication of in-depth investigative reporting on complex regulatory issues is a phenomenon that has become as rare as hen’s teeth, and I greeted the front-page story in Sunday's New York Times on the perils posed by atrazine with a big cheer. Unfortunately, despite reporter Charles Duhigg’s best efforts, the response of Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) spokespeople and other commentators garbled the issue substantially. What the story revealed is that even on this mammoth and controversial environmental problem, Obama’s EPA has not yet made plans to defuse the booby traps set up by the Bush Administration. It also left the unfortunate impression that experts think that it’s a reasonable public health policy to tell pregnant women to stop drinking tap water to protect their babies from atrazine “spikes.” This mindset that it is up to consumers to protect themselves by avoiding contaminated food, water, and even outside air is another tragic legacy of the Bush Administration and it should have vanished from the policymaking arena yesterday.
It’s too soon to condemn an underfunded and understaffed EPA for failing to beat a very tenacious industry team headed by Syngenta, the leading manufacturer of atrazine. After all, the political appointee who will direct the effort to defuse Bush era sabotage just moved into his office. But the EPA staff’s statements to the New York Times indicate that their first time up at bat was a strike, not a ball or a hit. Instead of taking responsibility for wading into the mess and defusing the booby traps soon, EPA staff said they are working on “competing priorities.”
Here’s the truth about atrazine:
Sen. Charles Grassley (R-IA), of late in the news for his role as power player in the health care debate, has long enjoyed a reputation as a Republican maverick. One reason for that reputation is his highly publicized crusade to improve ethics in the medical profession, specifically with respect to “ghost writing” of medical journal articles. In recent years, it’s become disturbingly common for pharmaceutical companies to hire public relations firms to write summaries of scientific research supporting their products and then pay hefty fees to high-profile academic researchers who sign the drafts and submit them for publication without disclosing their affiliation with their corporate sponsors.
Grassley’s campaign was first featured on the front page of the New York Times in June 2008, with an exposé on a Harvard child psychiatrist who failed to disclose the money he earned from manufacturers of antipsychotic medicines for pushing their use for children. The newspaper has also reported on a spate of ghost-written articles pushing the use of hormone replacement therapy for women. On Wednesday, it was Grassley’s demand that the National Institutes of Health crack down on the practice. Specifically, he wants to know what that august institution plans to do about its own individual researchers, as well as the primary investigators on its grants who have violated “medical ethics.”
Ghost-writing is a troubling practice in the context of academic research, and the failure to disclose such affiliations violates the policies of leading medical journals such as the New England Journal of Medicine, the Lancet, and the Journal of the American Medical Association. Universities should craft policies on the practice and educate their faculty members on its ramifications. Scientists who are careless about what they do and don’t disclose run the risk of compromising their reputations, not least of all with their peers.
But as reported by the media, Grassley’s crusade has taken on characteristics of a witch hunt, especially because the senator, who is himself well-funded by the pharmaceutical industry, seems much more interested in exposing individual scientists who have crossed his line in the sand than criticizing the companies for sponsor the ghost-writing. It’s hard to muster much sympathy for a prominent research scientist who takes millions in payments from drug companies, forgets to mention those affiliations when reporting on supposedly dispassionate research, and then gets challenged by his fellow scientists. But implying that an arm of the federal government should take steps to establish a process for punishing those individuals could degenerate into persecution, especially because analogous efforts to challenge the integrity of individual researchers have such a troubling history.
Full textBy now, followers of the controversy over the appointment of Cass Sunstein to serve as Obama Administration “regulatory czar” can do little but shake their heads in astonishment. The controversy over the Harvard professor’s nomination to OMB’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs has taken on a picaresque quality, as one bizarre delay follows another. The latest development in the Sunstein saga is reportedly the placement of another, as-yet unidentified senatorial hold on the nomination, perhaps at the behest of cattle rancher and National Rifle Association interests, with Majority Leader Harry Reid promising to take steps in September to release the nominee from limbo.
Meanwhile, as I have noted before in this space, like other nominees with delayed confirmations, Sunstein appears to be in firm control of his 50-odd person staff at the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) where he has worked in a consultant capacity for several months. The nominee has left no discernible paper trail demonstrating his influence and, until recently, was also refusing to meet with outsiders or talk to the press. (He did meet with the ranchers in an effort to reassure them regarding his stance on animal rights, ultimately persuading Sens. Saxby Chambliss (R-GA) and John Cornyn (R-TX) to lift their holds.) Given Sunstein’s seeming ubiquity in the Old Executive Office Building, his high energy level and broad interests, the relatively small size of the office, and his stalwart commitment to doing this job, it is hard to imagine that much happens at OIRA without his knowledge and, most likely, his direct supervision.
If OIRA under Sunstein – if and when he’s finally confirmed – is going to be something other than what it was during the Bush Administration, one might already expect to see green shoots of real change emerging from the place. Unfortunately, it looks a lot like business as usual during this early period of the Sunstein era. The most recent indication of that is the approach OIRA has followed on one crucial toxics controversy, and the experience suggests that Sunstein has no intention of reversing some of the most destructive traditions established by his Bush Administration predecessors.
Full textMichael Livermore is right to suggest that environmentalists should be focused on Cass Sunstein’s first official day as regulatory czar for the Obama Administration. After months of delay over the Harvard professor’s eclectic and provocative writings, he will eventually take office if he can placate cattle ranchers concerned about his views on animal rights. Whatever their level of paranoia about Sunstein’s ability to grant animals standing to bring lawsuits, the likely character of his reign was more accurately predicted by the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal, which applauded Sunstein’s devotion to cost-benefit analysis, the major weapon of Presidents Reagan, Bush I, and Bush II to smother health, safety, and environmental protections.
Livermore, an advocate of kinder, gentler cost-benefit analysis that he hopes will lead to regulatory controls more palatable to conservatives, offers a depressing list of priorities for Sunstein on his first day. They boil down to continuing the mission of George W. Bush’s regulatory czars: using number-crunching of “costs” and “benefits” (e.g., a life saved by regulation is worth anywhere from $1-10 million) as the transcendent tool in making decisions on climate change, public health protections, worker safety, and sustainability. I cannot help but remember many economists’ awesome failure to predict and avoid the global economic meltdown and wonder why their predictions in the health and safety arena should be even more essential these days.
Many progressives fear that, despite Lawrence Summers and Timothy Geithner’s claims that they are interested in “true” reform of a fatally corrupt banking system, the two men have essentially missed the opportunity of this generation to overhaul it—and the recent comebacks of the largest firms seem to underscore these fears. In a similar vein, we should be very disappointed if Sunstein does not deliver on the president’s promise of “change we can believe in.” To do that, he should:
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This post is co-written by CPR President Rena Steinzor and Policy Analyst Matt Shudtz.
Just as the traditional media finished a breathless cycle of reporting on how prospective Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor had renounced her claim that a “wise Latina” would make different decisions than a white man, an article in USA Today reminded us of the need for many more wise Latinas in the corridors of power in Washington. According to data compiled by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, workplace deaths of Hispanics have increased by 76 percent since 1992, even though total fatalities in all jobs nationwide dropped by almost 10 percent.
What explains these tragic figures? Admittedly, there are simply more Hispanic workers in the United States today.
And the jobs involved are the meanest and the dirtiest. In 2003, 42 percent of workers in the meat and poultry industry, which includes dangerous meatpacking jobs, were Hispanic. These jobs also attract undocumented immigrants with few other options for employment. Twenty-six percent of workers in the meat and poultry industry were foreign-born noncitizens in 2003. BLS data show that other dangerous industries such as construction, transportation and warehousing, natural resources and mining, and agriculture are where the most Hispanic workers are dying on the job. And, while companies are required to provide employees with safety training, they often fail to make adequate efforts to deal with language barriers. OSHA has some materials available online in Spanish, but workers laboring for a subsistence wage are unlikely to look these instructions up on their Blackberries from the job site. Undocumented workers are far less likely to complain to federal and state officials about job dangers, further isolating them from outside intervention to correct workplace hazards.
Under the leadership of Labor Secretary Hilda Solis—a wise Latina if there ever was one--the Obama Administration is beginning to address these problems. The President’s FY 2010 budget requested $564 million for OSHA, which is $51 million, or 10 percent more than that agency received in FY 2009. This funding will pay for 160 new enforcement staff, many of whom will be bilingual. Overall, the Department of Labor expects to hire nearly 1,000 new employees, restoring worker protection staffing to FY 2001 levels. Unfortunately, however, this comparison omits the depressing context that OSHA funding has remained essentially flat in constant dollars since the agency was created in the early 1970’s. A strong trend away from heavy manufacturing and toward safer service industry jobs has translated into a steady reduction of workplace injuries and deaths despite OSHA’s steadily weakening capacity to enforce the law. Hispanic workers have not benefited as much as the average worker in terms of decrease in fatality rate.
Full textBowing to right-wing political pressure, Cass Sunstein, nominee for “regulatory czar” in the Obama Administration, broke months of official silence to plead his case with the cattle ranchers and agribusiness lobby who have engineered a hold on the nomination by Senator Saxby Chambliss (R-GA). Sunstein’s move was all the more troubling because his absence from the public eye has included an across-the-board refusal to meet with or respond to any inquiries from a wide range of progressive groups and mainstream news reporters. Everyone who has tried to approach Sunstein has been shunned—from reporters at several top news outlets to representatives of labor unions and advocacy groups. The strict wall of “no comment until I am confirmed” has persisted despite the fact that Sunstein has been working at OMB for months, actively participating in a series of decisions by the Obama Administration on regulatory matters.
Don’t get me wrong, on some level I feel some sympathy for Sunstein. Once again foiled by his own eclectic, even lush, scholarship, Sunstein is in trouble because he has written that animals are widely mistreated in our society and even suggested that, like children, they may deserve to have their “rights” protected in court (see, for example, his 2002 article entitled “The Rights of Animals: A Very Short Primer”). In the energetic and unrestrained tone that accompanies all his academic writing, Sunstein opined: “Do animals have rights? Almost everyone believes in animal rights, at least in some minimal sense; the real question is what that phrase actually means. [My argument] puts the spotlight squarely on the issues of suffering and well-being. … It strongly suggests, for example, that there should be extensive regulation of the use of animals in entertainment, scientific experiments, and agriculture.” He continues: “My argument—that we should consider refraining from certain practices if this is the only feasible way to avoid widespread suffering—raises a host of questions….Why couldn’t farms generally give their animals decent lives, as many farms now do? … If vegetarianism were widespread, would human health be undermined (as many contend) or improved (as many also contend)? … My suggestion is that on a reasonable reading of the facts, many practices will have to yield.” So, if Professor Sunstein is to be taken at his scholarly word, the cattle growers would be rightly as agitated as progressive groups have been about, for example, Sunstein’s equally provocative suggestion in a 2008 article that the Occupational Safety and Health Administration is unconstitutional.
Full textAs expected, Cass Sunstein's nomination for Administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) was approved Wednesday by the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs. Senator Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) alone voted against confirmation (we're guessing his vote was not motivated by concerns over Sunstein's past support for cost-benefit analysis and strengthening the institution of centralized regulatory review.) Sunstein is expected to be approved by the full Senate soon.
What now? In his confirmation hearing, Sunstein pledged he'd use underlying statutory standards to guide regulatory decision-making, and illustrated the point by acknowledging that some statutes do not allow agencies to take costs into account at all, such as the provisions of the Clean Air Act that direct EPA to set National Ambient Air Quality Standards. He said the agencies, not OIRA, must play the primary role in making regulatory decisions.
Sunstein also promised that he would not allow the exercise of regulatory review to put regulation in an "arithmetic straightjacket." He said that he believed that cost-benefit analysis should be "inclusive" and "humanized" -- that it should include the consideration of "soft variables" like moral values and distributional concerns.
These weren't the most ground-breaking promises, but they're important -- a starting point. Soon we'll see how Administrator Sunstein is able to live up to them.
Full textThe Chesapeake Bay watershed covers 64,000 square miles, measuring 200 miles in length and 35 miles at its widest point. The watershed is one of the most beautiful and economically productive in the world. Tourism, which depends to a large extent on the preservation of pristine environmental conditions, contributes billions of dollars to the economies of Delaware, Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Virginia. As Shana Jones recently wrote on CPRBlog, the Bay is plagued by so-called "nutrient loading," a condition where a river or stream is choked with organic matter discharged from sewage treatment plants and manufacturing facilities or washed into the water by rainwater runoff from hog and chicken farms, other agricultural lands, and urban centers.
Full textThis past Sunday’s New York Times Magazine had a terrific piece by Matt Bai on the Obama White House and how it is “taking” Capitol Hill, one battle at a time. After extolling the team of congressional insiders Obama has assembled, and emphasizing the importance of their attentiveness to key players on the issue du jour -- health care reform -- Bai predicts that Obama will be compelled to wade up to his neck in the messy details of the legislation because only his personal power will be enough to guide this behemoth through. This prediction, which has already begun to come true -- note the stories last week saying he’d be willing to consider taxing benefits -- could spell disaster for a different issue: climate change legislation.
Allow me to pause for just a moment, in fairness to the Obama team, to lament congressional gridlock, which has yet to be resolved by the Democratic leadership, especially in the Senate. Because Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) is unwilling to play even the mildest hardball with his recalcitrant Republican opposition on even the smallest issue (see, e.g., closing Guantanamo), the “wisdom” has taken hold there that everything declared controversial by the minority will have its content decided by whoever holds the 60th available vote -- or put another way, the 41st least oppositional senator. Not only is Reid unwilling to allow actual talk-all-night filibusters to proceed on issues that would affirmatively help Democrats politically, he has managed to send the signal that his own members can act up at will. So, for example, Sen. Evan Bayh, a Midwestern moderate, is suggesting that the United States should not act on climate change until China steps up with reductions of its own.
Full textCass Sunstein had his confirmation hearing Tuesday; it was well-attended and anti-climactic. President Obama's nominee to head the Office of Management and Budget's (OMB) Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) testified for about an hour, and Senate approval of the nomination seems assured. Ironically, in a perfect example of timing being everything, at about the same hour that Sunstein took his seat in front of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs, a story hit the media fan in Washington showing that for the past several months, it has been business-as-usual between OMB and EPA with respect to climate change, with the economists of the first subjecting the scientists of the second to a gauntlet of skeptical questions about whether responding to this urgent problem will cost too much. Full text