Noteworthy new reports from the Congressional Research Service that have not been made readily available to the public — despite the widely–noted publication and republication of other CRS reports by wikileaks.org this week — include the following (all pdf).
“Iran’s Economic Conditions: U.S. Policy Issues,” updated January 15, 2009.
“U.S. Foreign Aid to the Palestinians,” updated January 30, 2009.
“The Google Library Project: Is Digitization for Purposes of Online Indexing Fair Use Under Copyright Law?” February 5, 2009.
“FEMA’s Disaster Declaration Process: A Primer,” January 23, 2009.
“Nuclear Waste Disposal: Alternatives to Yucca Mountain,” February 6, 2009.
This rule gives agencies significantly more authority over certain career policy roles. Whether that authority improves accountability or creates new risks depends almost entirely on how agencies interrupt and apply it.
Our environmental system was built for 1970s-era pollution control, but today it needs stable, integrated, multi-level governance that can make tradeoffs, share and use evidence, and deliver infrastructure while demonstrating that improved trust and participation are essential to future progress.
Durable and legitimate climate action requires a government capable of clearly weighting, explaining, and managing cost tradeoffs to the widest away of audiences, which in turn requires strong technocratic competency.
FAS is launching the Center for Regulatory Ingenuity (CRI) to build a new, transpartisan vision of government that works – that has the capacity to achieve ambitious goals while adeptly responding to people’s basic needs.