“The 9/12 Tea Party in Washington, D.C., reminded me of the contents of Raoul Duke’s trunk in Hunter S. Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. The delusional right was out in full force – a whole galaxy of uppers, downers, screamers, laughers. As I wriggled through the crowd of birthers, truthers, Beck-boosters, Wilson-drafters, and Palin-backers, I couldn’t help but lament the amount of effort that some protestors were wasting on fear and loathing.”
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Administrative
As President Obama gears up to increase regulation of the financial markets, he may face opposition from an unlikely source: his own appointee to the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, Cass Sunstein. One of Sunstein’s big ideas is to force government agencies to extend the principle of cost-benefit analysis (CBA) in regulation to financial regulatory agencies like the SEC.
Read more at:
http://www.newmajority.com/new-obama-appointee-targets-inefficient-regulations
http://www.newmajority.com/new-obama-appointee-targets-inefficient-regulations
Administrative
When Sunstein’s nomination was announced at the beginning of the year, the Center for Progressive Reform, fretted that the Harvard scholar’s “track record on regulatory issues is decidedly conservative.” Frank O’Donnell, the president of Clean Air Watch, argued that the deregulation-minded Sunstein “shouldn’t get a pass just because he was nominated by Obama.”
Their concern: Sunstein’s long record of academic writings urging more stringent review of the business impact of government regulation. In works like The Cost-Benefit State, Risk and Reason, Laws of Fear, and Worst-Case Scenarios, Sunstein has argued for strict cost-benefit analysis of government regulations. Ironically – given that Beck and others would later accuse Sunstein of environmentalist fanaticism – Sunstein’s most recent work has debunked the “precautionary principle,” the ultra-strict regulatory standard that European agencies have invoked to justify bans on genetically modified plants.
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http://www.newmajority.com/who-is-cass-sunstein
Administrative
