Climate, Energy, Justice: The Policy Path to a Just Transition for an Energy-Hungry America
With the nation approaching a pivotal election, 19 CPR Member Scholars contributed to a series of white papers proposing policy solutions for a just transition from carbon-based energy to renewables, with a particular focus on the environmental justice implications.
Read PDF Read Online
Author(s): Shalanda H. Baker, William Buzbee, Alejandro Camacho, Daniel Farber, Robert Fischman, Victor Flatt, Robert Glicksman, Alice Kaswan, Alexandra Klass, Christine Klein, Sarah Krakoff, Joel Mintz, Uma Outka, Dave Owen, Dan Rohlf, Karen Sokol, Joseph Tomain, Hannah Wiseman, Sandra Zellmer
Cost-Benefit Analysis Is Racist
In this web article, James Goodwin describes the ways that cost-benefit analysis as used in the regulatory process perpetuates racial injustice and reinforces race-based inequities.
Read Online
Author(s): James Goodwin
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg: Reflections and Remembrances
CPR's Member Scholars and staff reflect on the life and work of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
Read Online
Beyond 12866: A Progressive Plan for Reforming the Regulatory System
Rebuilding our regulatory system is a key though often overlooked imperative for the broader progressive movement as it works to achieve its vision of a more equitable and just society. The rebuilding will ultimately require legislation, but considerable progress can be achieved through unilateral actions by the president, including executive orders. Building on its previous work to advance the cause of progressive regulatory reform, CPR is compiling on this page resources and materials that should inform the development of new executive orders for progressive regulation that would replace Executive Order 12866 and any subsequent executive orders and memoranda built on its framework.
Read Online
Author(s): James Goodwin
The Progressive Case Against Cost-Benefit Analysis
In James Goodwin's article on the workings of cost-benefit analysis, he writes, "In cost-benefit analysis, small government ideologues and corporate interests have fashioned a powerful weapon for attacking regulatory safeguards and undercutting landmark laws. Much of that power derives from the elaborate mythology that its proponents have woven around the methodology over the course of the past four decades.... For its supporters, the real genius of the cost-benefit analysis myth is that it distracts from the fact that the methodology is in fact neither neutral nor objective."
Read Online
Author(s): James Goodwin
The Progressive Case Against OIRA
The White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs may be the most important group of bureaucrats many Americans have never heard of. But CPR's Member Scholars and staff keep careful watch on the office of the so-called "regulatory czar." Over the years, the office has come to play an increasingly destructive role in the regulatory process, weakening, gutting, and killing rules designed to protect health, safety and the environment. In this web article, James Goodwin lays out the case for a radical overhaul of OIRA's mission and methods.
Read Online
Author(s): James Goodwin
OSHA's Next 50 Years: Legislating a Private Right of Action to Empower Workers
The nation's workplaces are not nearly as safe or healthy as they need to be to protect all workers, and workers lack the power they deserve to speak up against exploitation without fear of significant retaliation. Fixing the current system requires an updated and vastly improved labor law that empowers workers to speak up about health and safety hazards, rather than risk their lives out of fear of losing employment and pay. It also requires that workers be empowered to fight back when government agencies fail to enforce safety and health requirements. The authors propose guaranteeing all workers a private right of action to enforce violations of the law, coupled with incentives for speaking up and strong whistleblower protections.
Read PDF Read Online
Author(s): Michael C. Duff, Thomas McGarity, Sidney Shapiro, Rena Steinzor, Katie Tracy
EPA Clean Air Act ‘Benefits-Busting’ Rule: Topline Analysis
With the calendar running out of pages on Donald Trump's first term, EPA is pushing hard to adopt its "benefits-busting" rule, hoping to defeat efforts to implement the Clear Air Act's protections by tilting the cost-benefit analysis process ever more to industry's favor. James Goodwin offers an analysis of the effort.
Read PDF
Author(s): James Goodwin
Fact Sheet: Toxic Floodwaters in Chesapeake, Norfolk, and Newport News
CPR's June 2020 fact sheet describes the threat of toxic floodwaters resulting from more and more severe weather events combined with a concentration of industrial facilities subject to flooding in the Hampton Roads region. Such toxic floodwater events would have a particularly severe impact on low-income and minority communities in the region.
Read PDF
Protecting Workers in a Pandemic: What the Federal Government Should Be Doing
The "re-opening" of the American economy while the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 is still circulating puts workers at heightened risk of contracting the deadly virus. In some blue-collar industries, the risk is particularly acute because of the inherent nature of the work itself and of the workplaces in which it is conducted. And the risk, for a variety of reasons, falls disproportionately on people of color and low-income workers. With governors stay-at-home orders and other pandemic safety restrictions, CPR Member Scholars Thomas McGarity, Michael Duff, and Sidney Shapiro examine the federal government's many missed opportunities to stem the spread of the virus in the nation's workplaces, and make recommendations for what needs to happen next to protect employees on the job.
Read PDF Read Online
Author(s): Thomas McGarity, Michael C. Duff, Sidney Shapiro