Policy Wonkery

by hilzoy This is wonderful: "The Obama administration today plans to propose tough standards for tailpipe emissions from new automobiles, establishing the first nationwide regulation for greenhouse gases. It will also raise fuel efficiency targets to 35.5 miles per gallon for new passenger vehicles and light trucks by 2016, four years earlier than required under … Read more

by hilzoy I wanted to highlight one other bit of the GQ story on Rumsfeld. The author writes: "What Rumsfeld was most effective in doing," says a former senior White House official, "was not so much undermining a decision that had yet to be made as finding every way possible to delay the implementation of … Read more

by hilzoy Michael Crowley catches an important development: "Obama's new budget plan includes a little-noted sea change in U.S. nuclear policy, and a step towards his vision of a denuclearized world. It provides no funding for the Reliable Replacement Warhead program, created to design a new generation of long-lasting nuclear weapons that don't need to … Read more

by hilzoy Reading this post by Merrill Goozner (it's very good) reminded me that I meant to write about the articles on comparative effectiveness research in the recent New England Journal of Medicine. One, by Jerry Avorn, concerns the backlash against CER: "The contested provisions were designed to support studies comparing the efficacy and safety … Read more

by hilzoy Here's a fascinating article on global demographics (h/t): "Something dramatic has happened to the world’s birthrates. Defying predictions of demographic decline, northern Europeans have started having more babies. Britain and France are now projecting steady population growth through the middle of the century. In North America, the trends are similar. In 2050, according … Read more

by hilzoy Via Kevin Drum, bad news from Sen. Jeff Bingaman:  "Sen. Jeff Bingaman, a New Mexico Democrat who chairs the energy panel, said earlier that any climate bill that passes the Senate is unlikely to adhere to the administration's plan that the government auction all the permits to emit greenhouse gases because such a … Read more

by hilzoy A renewable energy standard is a requirement that utilities get a certain percentage of their power from renewable energy. It's a market-based system: utilities that exceeded the requirement would get credits that they could sell to other utilities who weren't doing as well, enabling us to meet the standard in the most cost-effective … Read more

by hilzoy Yesterday, the House passed the Captive Primate Safety Act, which would make it illegal to "import, export, transport, sell, receive, acquire, or purchase in interstate or foreign commerce" any nonhuman primate. (Humans are covered by the 13th Amendment.) This is one of those small-bore but really, really good bills that I've been rooting for … Read more

by hilzoy I’ve been trying to understand the problems of the auto industry, and on a couple of points I can’t quite seem to figure out what’s going on. So I thought: why not ask? (1) A quote from Business Week: “Everyone knows that GM is over-branded. (…) At the core of GM’s problems is … Read more

by hilzoy A bankruptcy judge in the Washington Post: “Homeowners are the only ones who cannot modify the terms of their secured debts in bankruptcy. Corporate America flocks to bankruptcy courts to do precisely this — to restructure and reamortize loans whose conditions they find onerous or can no longer meet. Airlines are still flying … Read more