Regs Talk: The CSS Blog
Blogs are authored by CSS members and policy experts, and have been reprinted with permission.
Goldman’s 20-Year RAP Sheet of Illegal Behavior Reviewed as it Reveals its Plans for Targeting Main Street
By Better Markets Goldman Sachs is holding its very first investor meeting in New York today where it is expected to disclose its business plans for targeting Main Street consumers and investors in the coming years. We thought this was an appropriate time to detail Goldman’s 20-year breathtaking record of illegal conduct, which includes more […]
The Bully in the Lunchroom: The U.S. Moves to Weaken Mexico’s New Junk Food Labeling Law
By Sharon Anglin Treat, Institute for Agriculture & Trade Policy I suppose you have to give the junk food industry credit for persistence. The industry’s proposed junk food provisions in the New NAFTA, known in the United States as the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, went down in flames in 2018 when negotiating text was leaked on the front page […]
Stopping Crooks From Keeping the Money They Rip Off From Investors
By Better Markets One of the most basic principles of law is that – not matter what else –– a crook should and must give up the money he or she took from the unsuspecting victims, often called “ill-gotten gains.” That is the legal concept of “disgorgement” and it is overwhelmingly important because, otherwise, crooks […]
Trump’s Dirty Water Rule: EPA Ignorance Is Polluters’ Bliss
By Jon Devine, Natural Resources Defense Council On January 23, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Army Corps of Engineers unveiled a regulation that dramatically restricts what kinds of water bodies the Clean Water Act protects. The rule excludes rain-dependent streams and countless wetlands and ponds from a variety of pollution prevention, control, and cleanup […]
In 2021, Let’s Set the Bar Higher for Our Government
By Genna Reed, Union of Concerned Scientists A new Union of Concerned Scientists report released today provides recommendations for the next administration on how to restore science in policymaking. One element of ensuring independent science informs decisions is blocking opportunities for political interference and undue influence. The U.S. Constitution defined government to have checks and balances to […]
Half of CFPB Complaints in 2019 About Credit Reports as House Brings Reforms to the Floor
By Ed Mierzwinski, U.S. PIRG On Wednesday, 29 January, the full U.S. House is expected to vote on a broad credit reporting reform package, HR3621, the Comprehensive CREDIT Act. Meanwhile, a PIRG analysis finds that half of all complaints reported into the CFPB’s Public Consumer Complaint Database in 2019 concerned credit reporting. Further, complaints about the Big […]
How Environmental Justice Became a Matter of Governance
By Anita Desikan, Union of Concerned Scientists “All my life I’ve been sick and tired. Now I’m sick and tired of being sick and tired.” One of the leaders of the civil rights movement, Fannie Lou Hamer, famously said these words during the 1964 Democratic National Convention to protest the injustices that the Black community had […]
America’s Wetlands: Vital, Ignored and Now Defined Away by the Trump Administration
By Genna Reed, Union of Concerned Scientists Last week, the Trump administration finalized its rollback of the expanded definition of the waters of the United States. Now fewer water bodies, including wetlands and ephemeral streams, will be protected under the Clean Water Act. The quality of more than half of the country’s wetlands and 18 percent of its streams […]
Undermining a Fundamental Law
By Larissa Liebmann, Waterkeeper Alliance Since 1970 the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) has been a vital tool for the public to ensure that decisions made by federal agencies that impact the environment are made in a transparent, well-informed manner. NEPA requires agencies to take a “hard look” at the potential impacts of their decisions, […]
Five Quotes Capturing the Debate Over Dietary Guidelines
By Sarah Reinhardt, Union of Concerned Scientists Last week in Houston, a federal advisory committee convened for the fourth time to deliberate the science that will shape the 2020-2025 Dietary Guidelines for Americans. Revised every five years to reflect current science, these guidelines are the nation’s leading set of evidence-based nutrition recommendations, and they influence the food […]
The CFPB’s Disappointing Abusiveness Policy Statement
By Jeff Sovern, St. John’s University School of Law On Friday, the CFPB issued a Policy Statement on Abusive Acts or Practices. The Policy Statement is disappointing in several respects. First, it is intended to address a problem that has never been shown to exist. The Bureau explained that the Policy Statement is designed to ensure that […]
With Trump’s NEPA Rollback, It’s Conservatives Against Conservatives
By James Goodwin, Center for Progressive Reform When the Trump administration released its recent proposal to gut the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), it trumpeted the action as a long-overdue step to “modernize” the law’s implementation by “simplifying” and “clarifying” its procedural and analytical requirements for federal agencies. If these words sound familiar, that’s because they’re the disingenuous claptrap […]
The Trump Administration’s New Housing Rules Will Worsen Segregation
By Richard Rothstein, Economic Policy Institute In “The Neighborhoods We Will Not Share,” an article published online at The New York Times, I describe how the Trump administration has proposed a rule that will make it virtually impossible to challenge many policies that reinforce residential racial segregation. This is no small matter. Segregation underlies many of our […]
EPA’s New Water Rule a Mockery of Science and the Clean Water Act
By Derrick Z. Jackson, Union of Concerned Scientists With the Environmental Protection Agency’s own data showing that nearly half of our rivers and streams and a third of our wetlands are in “poor biological condition,” and with millions of Americans exposed to unsafe chemicals in water systems, this is a bad time to make a mockery of the Clean Water Act. […]
Trump Cars Rollback Is a Dangerous Mess
By Luke Tonachel, Natural Resources Defense Council When the Trump administration proposed its ridiculous rollback of clean car standards in 2018, it pretended that the increased costs for drivers at the pump, the loss of jobs and devastating pollution impacts were worth it because of some safety benefits. It was clear from day one that […]
Trump Administration Moves to Finalize Extremely Dumb Fuel Economy and Vehicle Emissions Rule
By Dave Cooke, Union of Concerned Scientists A little over a year ago, EPA and NHTSA proposed rolling back fuel economy and vehicle emissions standards based on deeply flawed analysis. Earlier this month, EPA and NHTSA finally got around to “fixing” the plethora of errors and have submitted the updated rule over to the Office of Management and […]
Automakers Must Stand Up for Clean Cars
By Luke Tonachel, Natural Resources Defense Council Several of the biggest names in automobiles are siding with the Trump administration in efforts to roll back clean car standards and strip states of their authority to set standards needed to protect public health. NRDC’s President and CEO Gina McCarthy says that these automakers need to reverse […]
Secretary Perdue and the Trump Administration See Environmental Regulation as a Weapon. That’s Not Just Dumb, It’s Dangerous.
By Karen Perry Stillerman, Union of Concerned Scientists In the latest assault on science and the nation’s health and safety, the Trump administration recently proposed a rule that would upend the way federal agencies work to assess and minimize the harm their actions can do to the environment we all depend upon. The move threatens […]
Trump’s Interior Department Doesn’t Care What You Think
By Paul Rauber, Sierra Club You always suspected it was true, but here comes the Center for Western Priorities with the receipts. Its analysts looked at proposed rule changes by the Interior Department since 2017 that garnered more than 500 comments and found 10—all rollbacks of existing environmental protections. In each one, more than 95 percent […]
EPA Flunks Science 101 With Its Dirty Water Rule
By Jon Devine, Natural Resources Defense Council The Trump administration’s plan to radically restrict which water bodies are protected by the Clean Water Act is “simplistic.” It “neglects established science,” introduces “substantial new risks to human and environmental health,” and excludes water bodies that pose a “serious threat to public health and safety.” Furthermore, the […]