New and updated reports from the Congressional Research Service obtained by Secrecy News include the following.
Rio+20: The United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development, June 2012, June 18, 2012
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB): A Legal Analysis, June 7, 2012 (published June 20)
Job Creation in the Manufacturing Revival, June 20, 2012
Double-Dip Recession: Previous Experience and Current Prospect, June 19, 2012
Morocco: Current Issues, June 20, 2012
January saw us watching whether the government would fund science. February has been about how that funding will be distributed, regulated, and contested.
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.