zed?

Hey Kirk!
You raggin’ on that uber-patriot/DFH’s dream Cass Sunstein again?

Oof. This is a tough one to swallow.

Didn’t he just marry Samatha Power, after meeting in the campaign?

AEI??? WTF, PEBO?

And Dugg right here.

hi newton! what, me criticize? *g*

sorry bonkers: this really is hard to swallow. blergh.

Thnaks, newton. Folks, please do Digg.

And “lurkers” – folks who haven’t commented before – please jump in!

Regulations sometimes give rise to substitute risks. DDT, for example, is often regulated in the interest of protecting birds and human health. In poor nations, though, DDT bans eliminate what appears to be the most effective way of combating malaria – and thus significantly undermine public health.

Jeez, it’s like he was inviting the good doctor to jump up and down on him.
Kirk, was the invitation engraved?

Freemarkets only work if consumers have the same information that producers have?
If this guy gets in who is going to trust non organic catfood, Meat etc?

With this new Administration, we’re gonna hafta proceed with Precaution.

Sure looked like it *g*

but Cass’ big invitation went to the Federalist Society. Kathy at The G Spot has more:

When I had him as a professor for my labor and employment law class, Sunstein steered clear of politics and his ideology wasn’t easy to discern. I did know he had a reputation for being a liberal, though — which is why I was startled at remarks he made during one campus event. I can’t remember what it was about, exactly, but I do remember that the Federalist Society — the ultra-conservative legal group dedicated to jampacking the courts and the federal bureaucracy with their own and fighting off liberal nominees and liberal ideas by any means necessary — was hosting the event, and Sunstein, I believe, was introducing the speaker. In his introduction, shamelessly sucked up to Federalist Society. It wasn’t just the usual polite ”thank you for organizing this event” kind of thing — Sunstein went on and on about wonderful the Federalist Society was, and how much they’d improved the tone of the debate and nurtured the discussion of ”ideas.” He also defended them from what he’d said were unfair attacks by liberals, and I think he may have even said something to the effect that they really weren’t all that conservative.

I was shocked and appalled. Here was a man I greatly respected as a teacher, who was saying things that were breathtakingly shallow and naive — either that, or they were baldfaced lies. I must say, it left a really icky taste in my mouth. At that moment, to me, he forever became the legal world’s equivalent of Alan Colmes — the conservatives’ favorite liberal, because he accepts their terms of the debate and has no compunction about kissing their asses with the utmost enthusiasm, the honor of liberalism, or his own self-respect, even, be damned. Either he has no clue how dangerous and destructive these right-wing extremists are, or he doesn’t care. And I’m not sure which is worse.

- Once called for changing the Clean Air Act to require a balancing of costs and benefits in setting national clean air standards – a fundamental weakening long sought by big polluters who believe it would help them resist cleanup;

If you tilt the questions to industry a lot that might help them. But breathing problems and allergies will go down if we lower air pollution.
Fish and Farming should improve Honey bees would be less sick.

As long as the wealthy people’s interests are being protected, I don’t think we should criticize Obama’s choices. After all, isn’t this just another example of his super-smart three-dimensional chess playing? Surely the toddler market for poisons will sort this out, right?

And to people who complain that our sour posts don’t provide an alternative, I say: in the case of Cass, anyone else will do.

We all knew Cass Sunstein would end up someplace where he could do harm.

Isn’t there some cliche about being known by your friends and Sunstein/Powers are Obama’s BFF.

Is this a Senate-confirmable position? And what Committee will he see about a job?

I’ll bet Kristol is just thrilled as punch at his AEI coworker’s appointment. Sardonicus will crow that Obama has swung even more to the right. Mayhaps for once he’ll be right.

I didn’t vote for Obama so that we’d have the AEI in power — I voted for him to rid our government of this outrageous and scandalous influence. This isn’t post-partisanship I can believe in.

I don’t know if the position requires Senate confirmation, but I’d sure like to. Great question!

Sunstein’s AEI ties blow me away, too. Why not just hire Monsnato’s corporate counsel and end the pretense of regulation?

(oh wait — I think that already may have happened. really.)

Is it possible to sue OMB?

Ooh, I sure hope so. Anyone know?

What is the up side for Obama in appointing this guy? Does he hope to curry favor with wingnuts, or what?

According to Wiki, it has been reported that Sunstein will head the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. Is that the same as OMB?

Gutting Federal regs can mean billions for potentially regulated industries. They are the constituency Obama serves here.

The rest of us can go eat poison.

That is a component of OMB.

way high on the WTF gauge.

Is that the place where political appointees gut rewrite regulations written by scientists? I thought that was supposed to end with the Bush administration…

Part of it.

More from Sunstein’s Wiki bio.

His 2001 book, Republic.com, argued that the Internet may weaken democracy because it allows citizens to isolate themselves within groups that share their own views and experiences, and thus cut themselves off from any information that might challenge their beliefs, a phenomenon known as cyberbalkanization.

Gee whiz, up until now I was only worried that I might become vulcanized.

Putting a person who hates regulation in charge of regulatory “affairs”, meaning I guess that he will screw them, is straight out of W’s playbook.

That was the action that prompted my question about suing.

Well, let’s see how long it is before the first SCOTUS retirement & Sunstein put up as replacement.

I guess we’re going to have to wait for the Democratic version of market fundamentalism to be discredited, too. The upside is, I don’t think we’ll have to wait long. The downside is, people will suffer.

Reagan really got the ball rolling with regard to gutting federal regulatory agencies.

Tell me who elected Cass Sunstein? If America wanted to continue Libertarian policies, they would support the Iraq reconstruction: a pure example of attempting a Libertarian Utopia.

And I don’t need to tell anyone how “successful” the Iraq reconstruction has been…

OMB org chart. OIRA covers a lot of ground. Shit.

Good show doc… my sentiments: ICK

Live long, and prosper.

I wish I knew the answer to your question. My general understanding has been that, with major exceptions, the law does not favor governmental immunity. I have no specific knowledge of any laws that might create such an exception for OMB, but such may exist.

Term Limits

Limit the damage

Got Krugman’s Conscience yesterday. Hard to put down. Thanks for the hit.

Raygun: “Government is the problem…”

oops: that was for ratfood’s 29

Here’s Sunstein talking about Nudge with Amy Goodman. Amy asks, “What makes you different from Milton Friedman?”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DD-fUJs5t_k

Raygun: “Government is the problem…”

And if it isn’t now, we’ll make damned sure it is by the time we’re finished.

Referencing my prospective Vulcanization? When the rubber hits the road…:-)

neurophius: “Raygun was the problem…”

Is this guy up for Senate Confirmation? I know that we should pick and choose our targets but next to Holder as AG is there anyone worse amoung the Obama appointees?
Maybe the blogs should have meeting and go after the top 5 losers and the top 2 losers everyday?
As more information comes in the list should be changed.

Likely to be my best book of 2009. Glad you seem to agree so far. Will write him a long letter & will write a diary if he replies.

Among the issues, he completely misses why U.S. medical care is so expensive. Will enlighten him & also have that planned for a diary.

The Village will love him: he serve’s their masters.

No wonder he’s the most-cited legal “scholar”: he does for the megacorps what Yoo did for torture.

Shrub just stuck us with something like 45 3-6 year appointees as more grit in the grease.

“Raygun was the problem…”

and now the the problem is going to be Cass Sunstein?

Criteria for a list past evil and the potential to create future evil. I am all for promoting evil people to jobs where they can do less harm for example.

Kirk, you have had two excellent posts today. But if you run out of topics,here are a couple more.

FDA scientists have claimed that the neo-con leadership is endangering the health of Americans.

Nine scientists at the Food and Drug Administration have written a letter to President-elect Barack Obama and his transition team, alleging gross mismanagement at the agency that has “placed the American public at risk.”
FDA scientists wrote a letter to President-elect Barack Obama, saying the agency is “fundamentally broken.”

Or we have another story about dirty coal residues threatening the health of Americans.

Millions of tons of toxic coal ash is piling up in power plant ponds in 32 states, a situation the government has long recognized as a risk to human health and the environment but has done nothing about.

An Associated Press analysis of the most recent Energy Department data found that 156 coal-fired power plants store ash in surface ponds similar to one that ruptured last month in Tennessee. On Friday, a pond at a northeastern Alabama power plant spilled a different material.

I have not heard Mr. Sunstein has any concerns about corporate criminals poisoning the environment. Kirk, if we can stop this neo-con Sunstein’s appointment, would you be available to work at OMB?

Great question, Things – Teddy asked it, too. I’m hoping someone here will know the answer.

WRT to harm, Sunstein, Holder, and Jackson (EPA) all seem like they’ll bring a world of hurt.

Grit in the grease, is that anything like sex on the beach?

In the Goodman interview, Cass makes a point of discussing the fundamental importance (that has been lacking) of educating or informing the public of the toxicity it is a about to ingest, breathe or swallow.

Exposing corporate malfeasance is a nudge, according to Sunstein.

Is it possible he’s afraid to take on the health care/insurance disgrace industry?

Frank33, thanks for your kind assessments and great leads. Though I’d be delighted to go slog at OMB, neither wing of the Corporatist Party would ever select me. That’s OK: I’e no formal experience.

What isn’t OK is that nerither wing of the CP would ever allow public interest attorneys to take senior OMB posts. Too many campaign contributions bribes at stake.

Uh, are we gonna have to listen to Sunstein say UH, every other word for the next 4 years?

Susan Dudley was nominated by the President on July 31, 2006, and appointed on April 4, 2007, to serve as the Administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) of the Office of Management and Budget.

From her bio at OMB site. The way it’s written I can’t tell by this if she had to go through confirmation or not.

We’ve endured these libertarians ad nauseum for 8 years – witness Lynn Scarlett at Interior.

There seems to be a kind of assault on the precautionary principle in vogue in some unexpected quarters these days. I was at a Climate Conference this summer where the Climate Person from a Big Green Group pretty much said we should throw it out in acting swiftly to do whatever is the latest greatest Action Du jour needed to stop Global Warming. It appears some folks see it as a hurdle to breakneck development of the public lands for big wind and big solar.

Not.

Caroline does it too. Let’s blame it on Harvard.

Uh, yes.

Here’s a Canadian CBC interview with Sunstein’s wife Samantha Power. She talks about the late De Mello fellow and her embarrassment at calling Hillary a monster.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v…..re=related

No. I have a dog in this fight, as I think I’m the only person to have discovered the reason. (Raise the drawbridge said the flea floating down the river on his back with a hard on.) Krugman attributes high medical cost inflation to expensive technology. That is the conventional wisdom. But fails the laugh test, because in all other industries with a smidgeon of competition, technology lowers costs. I identify the problem as the knowledge gap between buyers and sellers as what gives sellers pricing power. Plus the customer is vulnerable (sick) giving the seller even more pricing power.

Uh, let’s blame the perps, not the institutions. UGH.

Uh, I, uh, think you’re right.

In a perfect world, Sunstein’s nudge principle could work. In a world of corruption and pay to play, it doesn’t seem like the strongest method of instituting the fast reform necessary to stop poisoning the earth and stopping Global Warming.

Thanks SD – that helped me search out this:

Dudley is the first OIRA administrator (other than acting administrators) not to be confirmed by the Senate. While recess appointments may occur in other parts of the government, it has never happened at OIRA. This may be because the position is so central to the operation of government that presidents have recognized the need for legitimacy through the Senate confirmation process.

I almost told that joke here yesterday.

New post

This may be because the position is so central to the operation of government

That statement makes this appointment reeeeeeely scary.

Government policy tends to reactive (and inefficient). They don’t do proactive at all.

But wait, there’s more:

Finally, the 1986 amendments to the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1980 required Senate confirmation of the OIRA Administrator. This was a further demonstration by the Committee of the importance that it accorded to OIRA’s functions and in the Committee’s oversight of those functions.

New post upstairs, but please digg this one on your way up!

When I first became aware of behavioral economics, I loved it (about 15 years ago). It filled a niche (not a nudge). It was a construct to understand irrational economic behavior like why that 5th restaurant opened opened up in the same space where 4 had previously gone bankrupt. Thaylor, Sunstein’s collaborator, was a genius for looking at economics in a way no one had before, and in challenging a previously sacred assumption of rationality.

However, never did I envision that it would be more than a supplementary tool in a large kit bag. Now I find that it suddenly becomes the be-all of many macroeconomic policies. That it is not.

A classic.

Cass Sunstein is to Obama as Karl Rove is to Dubya. Each dork provides a part of his principal’s brain.

I hadn’t heard it before. Okay if I borrow it?

Oh – so this explains where “the precautionary principle shouldn’t be applied to climate” comes from. I had been wondering:

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/pa….._id=721562

Laws of Fear: Beyond the Precautionary Principle

Cass Sunstein, LAWS OF FEAR, BEYOND THE PRECAUTIONARY PRINCIPLE, Cambridge University Press, March 2005

Abstract:
What is the relationship among fear, danger, and the law? There are serious problems with the increasingly influential Precautionary Principle – the idea that regulators should take steps to protect against potential harms, even if causal chains are uncertain and even if we do not know that harms are likely to come to fruition. An investigation of such problems as global warming, terrorism, DDT, and genetic engineering shows that the Precautionary Principle is incoherent. ????????????????

Thanks for that guidance. In all sincerity, I admire your insightful posts and your expertise.

Not mine to give away (can’t remember where/when I originally heard it). It’s the height of hubris.

We need to develop a system for the in-group at FDL where a key phrase evokes a whole chain of thought. In this case: raise the drawbridge.

Thanks.

Works for me, I’ll file the shorthand version for future reference.

Yep. His “argument” about genetically modified organisms is something I’d flunk a med student for: all assertions, no data.

More broadly, he sets up a strawman “definition” of the precautionary principle, rather than citing de facto examples. THe bogeyman he chooses to create is, of course, not actually reflective of the pp.

The idea his shoddy work would get published, much less favorable reviews, illustrates the difference between the academic sciences and academic work in law/ foreign policy. The former relies upon empirical data; the latter upon Imperial favor.

Oh, and there’s another example from the Chicago school on the other side. Precious.

Posner argues in Catastrophe, that in the case of small probability, large consequence events, cost-benefit (i.e. pour all your resources into the catastrophe) analysis rules. Heh. Luv it when those Chicago sorts go off the deep end.

Thanks Kirk, I wondered where Sunstein would end up. It seems like our elites have a phobia about filling government positions with really qualified people. I suppose the idea is that if anyone showed up and really did their job well it would make the rest of them look bad. Sunstein is a great candidate that way. He’s the kind of guy who could be incompetent anywhere.

If we had had even a limited precautionary principle at work among regulators both the housing bubble and the financial meltdown could have been avoided.

Sunstein is a prime example of failing upwards.

Libertarian paternalism is an oxymoron. With such outstanding credentials, I suppose you earn to right to write and say anything and be beyond reproach.

Btw, I wasn’t aware of the collaboration between Brookings and AEI in the recent past. Alas, they had parting of the ways,

The AEI-Brookings Joint Center is no longer in operation.

For AEI-Brookings Joint Center archives and more recent work, please go to http://www.reg-markets.org

For AEI work, please go to http://www.aei.org

For Brookings work, please go to http://www.brookings.edu

Thank you for your support over the years.

Bob Hahn and Bob Litan

He sounds fascist-leaning to me.

Iv’e been checking and there seems to be more than a little anti-Sunstein commentary on various blogs. The consensus I read is that he’ll still get through, but that progressives should be worried. Another bad pick by Obama.

Cass Sunstein is the same putz who says that prosecuting the Bush administration would be oh so partisan and anti-Kumbaya.

Hey folks – One of our readers (a published author with a political science PhD from U of Chicago) kindly emailed me and pointed out Sunstein is a liberal democrat, rather than a libertarian. I’ve emailed the reader and invited them to expand upon the concept here, but with this being a Sunday they may not even have seen the email.

In any event, if folks have additional thought or ideas about whether Sunstein’s actually a libertarian, they are welcome here…… I cheerfully admit that I’m not able to find a universally consensed upon definition of libertarian.