Politics
Research? We Don’t Need No Stinking Research!
Yes, this post is about the House GOP. How did you guess? Lamar Smith, chair of the House science committee, has opened an unprecedented investigation into five NSF research projects, demanding copies of peer reviews and other information in a letter to the NSF director. I looked up the abstracts for the five projects that …
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CONTINUE READINGA Strong OIRA Pick
I was traveling and missed the news about the selection of Howard Shelanski to replace Cass Sunstein as head of OIRA, the White House office that oversees government regulations. Or, regulatory czar, in simpler terms. He’s a terrific pick. Howard was on the faculty here when I first came to Berkeley and got to know …
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CONTINUE READINGEnvironmental Justice, Metrics & California’s San Joaquin Valley
This week the California Environmental Protection Agency issued a disturbing but worthwhile report on environmental justice issues in California. That report confirms what many environmental justice advocates and state residents already assumed: that the San Joaquin Valley is–far and away–the most environmentally-challenged region of the state. According to the CalEPA press release accompanying the report, …
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CONTINUE READINGCalifornia’s Unspent Water Funds: An Instinct for the Capillary
The AP reports today that California has failed to spend $455 million of federal money for improving the state’s water infrastructure, even though many of the state’s communities suffer from unclean water. The state has received more than $1.5 billion for its Safe Drinking Water State Revolving Fund over the past 15 years, but has failed …
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CONTINUE READING(Another) Bad Day for Economists
One interesting project for future intellectual historians will be figuring out how economics became the queen of the social scientists when virtually none of their predictions have come true and so much of their empirical work is downright shoddy. Perhaps it will lie in the way ideology can take over the discipline because of data …
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CONTINUE READINGAre Filibusters of Executive Branch Nominees Constitutional?
President Obama’s announcement today making three nominations to the National Labor Relations Board should remind us that the GOP is the party of permanent constitutional crisis. It has been quite clear from the beginning of the Obama Administration that the Republicans simply have no interest in allowing the NLRB to function. That shouldn’t be much …
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CONTINUE READINGWho’s Afraid of Environmental Regulations? (Not Small Businesses)
There has been a lot of chatter about the burden of regulations on small businesses. It turns out that small business owners do worry about regulations a lot — but not so much environmental regulations. According to a new survey, what they really care about are licensing and tax regulations. Environmental regulations just don’t matter much.
CONTINUE READINGWhen streamlining environmental review really means undermining it
The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee has unanimously endorsed S 601, the Water Resources Development Act of 2013. Although it’s nice to see some bipartisanship in the capitol — S 601 is co-sponsored by Committee chair Barbara Boxer (D-CA) and ranking minority member David Vitter (R-LA) — the bill as approved by the Committee …
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CONTINUE READINGMajor Progress on Climate Legislation
Well, I certainly didn’t expect this one: Senator James Inhofe (R-OK) announced today that is reconsidering his long-held position that climate change represents “the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people.” Oklahoma is currently suffering under the worst drought since the Dust Bowl, and thousands of farmers across the state have gone bankrupt. “The …
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CONTINUE READINGCongress Increases Climate Research Funding!
…even if they didn’t intend to. The Republican War on Science has morphed into a more general war on knowledge. As Dan has pointed out previously, the GOP has now declared war on social science funding, and particularly on political science. Last night, the Senate accepted the amendment of Senator Tom Coburn (R – Olduvai …
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