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Thursday, July 28, 2005

Running on Empty: The Politics of Fuel Economy

According to the New York Times, EPA has withheld a report showing that due to loopholes in fuel efficiency standards, manufacturers have been allowed to produce cars that, on average, are significantly less fuel efficient than cars sold in the late 1980s. The loopholes give car manufacturers credits towards their fuel economy standards if they produce dual-fuel cars in their fleet—those that can run on both ethanol blend and gasoline. The credit then allows the manufacturers to add more inefficient cars such as SUVs and trucks to their fleet. Since so few gas stations have ethanol pumps, most consumers can't actually take advantage of the dual-fuel capabilities; manufacturers receive the fuel economy credit while most of the cars will never run on alternative fuel sources.

EPA plans to withhold the report on fuel economy until after the vote on the energy bill, which despite promises to greatly reduce the U.S's oil dependency, does little to improve fuel efficiency. The House passed the bill today, and the Senate is scheduled to do so as well. Read more:

Releasing the report this week would have been inopportune for the Bush administration, its critics said, because it would have come on the eve of a final vote in Congress on energy legislation six years in the making. The bill, as it stands, largely ignores auto mileage regulations.
The executive summary of the copy of the report obtained by The Times acknowledges that "fuel economy is directly related to energy security," because consumer cars and trucks account for about 40 percent of the nation's oil consumption. But trends highlighted in the report show that carmakers are not making progress in improving fuel economy, and environmentalists say the energy bill will do little to prod them.

Read the text of the embargoed report, provided by New York Times. For more on fuel economy, check out Public Citizen.

Posted by Genevieve Smith, 03:26:35 PM

Thursday, July 21, 2005

Decision on Plan B Expected by Sept. 1
After much delay, FDA has now promised to make a decision on the over-the-counter status of Plan B by Sept. 1. The administration has been dragging its feet on a decision on the "morning after pill," despite broad support from the FDA advisory committee. Only after Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY) and Patty Murray (D-WA) stalled the nomination of FDA head Lester Crawford did the administration finally promise to decide on the OTC status. Read more about Plan B here:

FDA Ignores Experts, Rejects Plan B for Over-the-Counter Use (5/17/2004)
Details Emerge on Data Rejected in Morning-after Pill Decision (6/28/2004)

Posted by Genevieve Smith, 04:22:28 PM

Thursday, July 14, 2005

Anti-Worker OSHA Bills Pass House
The House passed Norwood's four pernicious OSHA bills yesterday, paving the way for increased "flexibility" for employers at the expense of occupational health and safety enforcement. Read more about the bills on Thomas:

Posted by Genevieve Smith, 05:36:48 PM

Monday, July 11, 2005

Worker Safety Threatened

The package of bad OSHA bills introduced earlier this year is scheduled for a House vote on July 12. AFL-CIO gives analysis of the four bills:

H.R. 742 Occupational Safety and Health Small Employer Access to Justice Act - This bill requires taxpayers to pay the legal costs of small employers (defined as employers with 100 or fewer employees and up to $7 million net worth) who prevail in any administrative or enforcement case brought by OSHA or any challenge to an OSHA standard, regardless of whether the action was substantially justified.

H.R. 741 Occupational Safety and Health Independent Review of OSHA Citations Act - This bill would radically change the implementation and enforcement of the OSHAct, and would undermine the Secretary of Labor’s authority to interpret and enforce the law. The bill would overturn a 1991 Supreme Court decision and say that deference should be given to the OSHA Review Commission, and not the Secretary of Labor, in interpreting OSHA standards.

H.R. 740 Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission Efficiency Act - This bill expands the number of members on the OSHA Review Commission from three to five, and mandates that all members have legal training.

H.R. 739 Occupational Safety and Health Small Business Day in Court Act - This bill would excuse employers from the fifteen-day deadline for contesting OSHA citations and “failure to abate” notices if they can show “mistake, inadvertence, surprise, or excusable neglect” as the reason.

The bills passed the House last year but stalled in the Senate. Rep. Charles Norwood (R-GA), who introduced the bills, expects them to pass with a greater margin in the House this year. HELP Employment and Workplace Safety Subcommittee Chair Johnny Isakson (R-GA) is expected to support the bills.

Posted by Genevieve Smith, 01:01:59 PM

Friday, July 08, 2005

Agency whistleblowers and experts at risk
Two developments put at risk the agency workers who must draw conclusions contrary to industry's bottom line or who alert the public of malfeasance and inefficiency in government:

The White House continues to press for plans to scrap the current civil service system for federal workers and replace it with a pay-for-performance system. As we have already seen with the administration's use of the Program Assessment Rating Tool, "performance" is a good government concept that the White House knows how to use for bad government ends. Performance-based pay could put at risk the agency experts who, like David Graham at the FDA, must reach conclusions about public health and safety that corporate special interests do not like.

The National Journal's subscription-only Congress Daily is reporting that "House and Senate lawmakers offering legislation to protect federal government whistleblowers are split over whether the provisions should apply to workers at the Homeland Security Department." A Senate version sponsored by Collins "would apply to nearly all government employees -- except those who work in intelligence, counterintelligence or at the Transportation Security Administration," while a House version sponsored by Platts would also exempt Homeland Security personnel. Without whistleblowers at the FBI like Colleen Rowley and Sibel Edmonds, we would not be fully aware of the administration's colossal failures to protect the public during the months before 9/11.

Posted by Robert Shull, 12:43:42 PM

Thursday, July 07, 2005

Sunset perspective
With the White House's release of a proposal to give itself the power to restructure government at whim through the use of sunset and results commissions, it's worth revisiting an online conversation with Osha Davidson, Rolling Stone reporter who covered the sunset/results proposals back when they were first threatened, from the blogs Booman Tribune and Daily Kos. Here's a glimpse at the experience in the states of sunset commissions:

The success of sunset laws in the "laboratories of Democracy" has been overstated by proponents of a federal version. The only thing I found that was close to a true study of state sunset laws was a joint effort by The National Legislative Program Evaluation Society and the National Association of State Legislatures. It was presented in August 2001 at the NCSL's annual meeting. Forty-five states responded to a survey about sunset provisions. Of those 45: 13 never had any sunset provision, 16 states had once had a sunset provision but had since dropped it, and 16 states reported that they still had a sunset provision of some kind. As many states have ended their sunset laws as have kept them, and nearly as many never adopted them in the first place.
BTW, I asked Clay Johnson if OMB had studied the success/failure of state commissions. He said (from my interview notes): "No, because they operate differently in each state. There's nothing magical about a sunset commission. It's all about the spirit in which they're launched and the spirit in which the commission is formed. They have to be created with the best intentions in mind."

Don't trust that these new commissions would be "created with the best intentions in mind." The Bush administration's regulatory record is a pattern of failure to serve the public as the White House essentially allows special interests to take over the government programs that should be protecting the public.

Posted by Robert Shull, 11:09:32 AM

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