Regulatory Policy - RegWatch

RegWatch:

News & Analysis | REG•WATCH Blog | Press Room

Thursday, December 15, 2005

More on Cable a la Carte
National Journal has an interesting take on the cable a la carte issue here. Click here for some background on the position that the FCC appears to be now retreating from.

This case is an interesting example of the potential schism between the corporatist wing of the conservative movement and the family values side. The Bush administration's pro-industry bias against regulatory protections of the public interest was embodied in the FCC's original decision to offer a warped cost-benefit analysis to justify siding with the cable industry against consumers. As the interview with the Parents Television Council suggests, the FCC's about-face appears to resonate with the family values and quasi-religious rhetoric that have been another hallmark of this administration.

Posted by Robert Shull, 03:32:13 PM

Tuesday, December 13, 2005

More on NHTSA's Unequal 'Regional' Recalls
Public Citizen recently argued an appeal of a terrible court decision that upheld NHTSA's practice of unfairly denying the rights of many across the nation to recall notices and free repairs in certain auto defect cases. NHTSA has been allowing regionally-restricted recalls, which PubCit argues violate the Safety Act. Download their appeal brief and reply brief.

Posted by Robert Shull, 09:31:30 PM

Friday, December 09, 2005

Bush Administration Actually Does Something for Public?
Could it be? The administration might be ready to do something to protect the public? Here's a report from Congress Daily:

SEC Chairman Christopher Cox said the agency will propose regulations to crack down on hidden executive pay as early as next month, Bloomberg News reported. The SEC is drafting rules that would require companies to put salary, bonus, stock and option awards, and all benefits into a single figure. Cox plans to have the regulations ready "shortly" after Jan. 1. "Today's regulatory regime permits obfuscation or worse when it comes to executive compensation," Cox said in an e-mailed statement. "The notorious abuses, such as never-before-disclosed exit payments, are the byproduct of this leaky regime." The SEC's current rule on compensation disclosure is 13 years old. It allows U.S. companies to scatter details of executive compensation in different parts of the proxy statements that they distribute to shareholders.

Given the decline of pensions, many regular Americans now have their retirement savings in the stock market through IRAs and 401(k)s. Those same ordinary Americans have witnessed their salaries and wages decrease with the outsourcing of valuable manufacturing jobs or increase at a much slower rate than the compensation packages given to fatcat CEOs. If this report is accurate, then we may be poised to get better information about where our retirement money is going (and how well CEOs are being paid for exporting American wealth).

Posted by Robert Shull, 02:45:22 PM

Monday, December 05, 2005

Country of Origin Labels... for Socks
The FTC just announced an updated rule on country-of-origin labeling for socks. Meanwhile, we still can't get country-of-origin labels for the food we eat. The slogan should be "Buy American -- for footwear, not for food."

Posted by Robert Shull, 06:40:24 PM

Thursday, December 01, 2005

Open Gov meets Right to Know meets Reg Policy
Here at OMB Watch, we have separate programs for open government, the public's right to know about industry harms (although we stick to environmental right to know), and regulatory policy. Every now and then, an issue comes along that hits all those areas at once.

Latest case in point: NHTSA has access to documents showing that, "throughout the late 1990s, Ford successively weakened the roof of its Ford Explorer and that the vehicle has an extremely low margin of safety in rollover crashes." These documents are directly relevant to a pending rulemaking on roof strength that, so far, fails to demand the level of safety that is both possible and cost effective. NHTSA has decided nonetheless to suppress those documents, which were unearthed in a lawsuit. Meanwhile, the court presiding over the lawsuit that produced the documents has sealed the documents.

Public Citizen wants consumers to know what's at stake and wants NHTSA to own up to the implications of these documents in the pending roof crush rulemaking. Although PC obtained the documents legally, Volvo threatened to sue the group if it chooses to publish them.

Now, PC and Trial Lawyers for Public Justice are challenging the order sealing the documents. Learn more here.

Posted by Robert Shull, 11:38:10 AM

Latest Entries by Theme

Cost-Benefit Analysis

In Congress

Publications

Consumer Issues