When former Harvard Law Professor and eclectic intellectual Cass Sunstein was named administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA), conservative, industry-oriented Wall Street Journal editorial writers enthused that his appointment was a “promising sign.” A slew of subsequent events has proved their optimism well placed, as we have noted repeatedly in CPRBlog.
But nothing beats hard, empirical evidence. In a report released today, CPR announces the results of an exhaustive six-month analysis of the barebones information OIRA has eked onto the web regarding 1,080 meetings held over a ten-year period (October 2001-June 2011) with 5,759 outside lobbyists, 65 percent of whom represented industry and 12 percent of whom represented public interest groups. The results were shocking even to us, long-time and admittedly jaded observers of OIRA’s one-way ratchet toward weakening public health and other protections.
Despite his selection of experienced and well-respected appointees to lead health and safety agencies—most notably, Lisa Jackson at the EPA, Margaret Hamburg at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and David Michaels at the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA)—President Obama has not made lasting commitments to substantially increase their budgets, has not supported them when they are politically attacked, and done next to nothing to press for updating the outmoded laws that hamper their efforts to police corporate misconduct. Worst of all, he has continued the Reagan and Bush tradition of enthroning OIRA as the final arbiter of whether public health and environmental protections see the light of day.
Centralized White House regulatory review shoves policymaking behind closed doors, wastes increasingly limited government resources, confuses agency priorities, demoralizes civil servants, and, worst of all, costs the nation dearly in lost lives, avoidable illness and injury, and destruction of irreplaceable natural resources.
Rena Steinzor, CPR President; Professor of Law, University of Maryland Carey School of Law. Bio.
1 What did you expect? Had you listened to Rush Limbaugh or Glenn Beck you would have already known who these people are and what they intended to do. Otherwise, you listend to the media and progressive idiology of collective salvation and blindly accepted these people into office and thus your life. Don't accept anything! Question everything! If you dont know who you are and what you stand for you'll fall for everything. sheeple. -- yuri vincent |
2 Please see a detailed response here: http://www.law.upenn.edu/blogs/regblog/2011/12/cpr-report-on-oiras-meetings-ignores-their-context.html -- Stuart Shapiro |
3 Stuart Shapiro "CPR is an advocacy group, and its recent report should be read as simply that, a piece of advocacy."
Duh, they are "progressives", of course they will promote that agenda. I'm glad that you agree that the OIRA meets about the EPA and their regulatory ruling of our carbon based lives more often than anything else. -- yuri vincent |