CPR Member Scholars William W. Buzbee and Victor Flatt have an op-ed in this morning’s Atlanta Journal-Constitution offering a critique of the “discussion draft” of the Waxman-Markey climate-change bill. Several CPR Member Scholars have blogged extensively about the bill here on CPRBlog, and with this op-ed, and a similar piece published the week before last in the Houston Chronicle, Professors Buzbee and Flatt take that discussion to the opinion pages of two important regional newspapers.

In the Atlanta J-C piece, they write:

The Waxman-Markey bill is smart and comprehensive, covering energy, fuels, cars and more.  Despite some shortcomings, it’s nevertheless a good place to start the congressional discussion about how to fix the most serious environmental problem the planet has ever faced. Polluting industries have mounted a scare campaign to persuade us that it’s too severe, will cost jobs, choke the economy, and more …

This morning, the Center for Progressive Reform's Rena Steinzor testifies before the House Science and Technology Committee’s Subcommittee on Investigations and Oversight.  In her remarks, she calls on the White House to reshape the role of the director of OMB's Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs -- the so-called regulatory czar.  All too frequently OIRA has been the place where protective regulations go to get weakened or killed, and Steinzor argues forcefully that there's a better role for the OIRA director:  a defender of federal regulatory agencies and their missions, rather than an impediment to regulation.  She says:

The Obama Administration and Congress should define a new mission for the regulatory czar.  The American people need more, not less regulation on every front, from mortgage lending to workplace hazards. The regulatory czar’s mission should be to rescue struggling regulatory agencies by helping them …

This morning, the Center for Progressive Reform's Rena Steinzor testifies before the House Science and Technology Committee’s Subcommittee on Investigations and Oversight.  In her remarks, she calls on the White House to reshape the role of the director of OMB's Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs -- the so-called regulatory czar.  All too frequently OIRA has been the place where protective regulations go to get weakened or killed, and Steinzor argues forcefully that there's a better role for the OIRA director:  a defender of federal regulatory agencies and their missions, rather than an impediment to regulation.  She says:

The Obama Administration and Congress should define a new mission for the regulatory czar.  The American people need more, not less regulation on every front, from mortgage lending to workplace hazards. The regulatory czar’s mission should be to rescue struggling regulatory agencies by helping them …

The Bush Administration earned its reputation for being contemptuous of science. From suppressing an EPA global warming report so as not to put the federal government’s imprimatur on the scientific consensus that climate change was real and human-caused, to simply refusing to open an email containing formal scientific findings inconvenient to its policy objectives, the Bush crowd took manipulation of science to previously unknown extremes. But as CPR President Rena Steinzor points out, the Bush Administration didn’t invent the practice. Science and scientists have been under political pressure from a variety of sources and in a variety of ways for quite some time now.

That’s why the departure of the Bush political appointees who did the most egregious manipulating does not alone solve all the problems. In a letter sent today to John Holdren, the President’s top science advisor, Center for Progressive Reform …

On Tuesday, March 31, House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman (D-CA) and Rep. Edward Markey (D-MA) released a “discussion draft” of the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 – a climate change bill that will serve as the starting point for long-delayed congressional action on the world’s most pressing environmental program. CPRBlog asked several Center for Progressive Reform Member Scholars to examine different aspects of the 648-page Waxman-Markey bill. Their detailed responses are posted individually on CPRBblog, but here are some highlights:

Citizen Suits. Member Scholar Nina Mendelson applauds the bill’s provisions on citizen enforcement suits. She writes, “Environmental statutes traditionally provide for citizen enforcement suits as a critical supplement to governmental enforcement, especially in a world of limited budgets…. Supreme Court decisions have, however, created uncertainty regarding when and which citizens can bring such suits to protect the environment, particularly in …

Late last week, the EPA sent over to the White House a preliminary “finding” that greenhouse gas emissions are a threat to public health, and therefore subject to regulation under the Clean Air Act. It’s a simple conclusion, not hard to justify in terms of the science or the statute. But it’s momentous, in its way, because unless the White House has a sudden change of heart and blocks it somehow, it will fairly commit the federal government to actually doing something about climate change, at last.

It remains to be seen how the White House will respond, of course. But the very fact that we know the message was transmitted and will be considered by the White House Office of Management and Budget is progress. To fully appreciate that, a little history is in order. The Bush Administration had long resisted taking action on …

CPR Member Scholar Thomas McGarity had op-eds over the weekend in three Texas newspapers -- the Dallas Morning News, Houston Chronicle and Austin American-Statesman.  His topic is Wyeth vs. Levine, last week's blockbuster case from the Supreme Court, in which the Court rejected the Bush Administration's multi-year effort to use the federal regulatory process as a backdoor method of shielding manufacturers from lawsuits brought by customers their products injure.

The case was brought by professional musician Diana Levine, who went to a clinic with a migraine headache, and received nausea medication that eventually resulted in her arm being amputated.  Such outcomes were a possibility known to Wyeth, the manufacturer, but the label on the drug, according to the jury that decided the case in Levine's home state of Vermont, failed to adequately warn about how to prevent it from happening.  Wyeth argued in court that …

After suffering years of neglect at the hands of the Bush Administration and conservatives in Congress, Superfund may be on the verge of springing back to life. That at least is the objective of a new proposal from President Obama, included in his recent budget outline, calling for the reinstatement of a tax on polluting industries to fund toxic waste cleanup efforts.

Congress created Superfund in 1980, responding to national furor over the toxically infamous Love Canal. Its mission was to clean up such toxic waste sites across the nation, first identifying sites in need of cleanup, then prioritizing them, then forcing the relevant polluters to clean up their mess, or, if no polluters could be identified or made to take responsibility, paying for the cleanup. The bill for this latter set of cleanups was to be footed by a multi-billion dollar trust fund (hence, Superfund), supported …