Sunday, February 5, 2017
Tasmanian Devil 1995 Rare Collectible Watch TAZ Warner Bros Musical Armi...
The Tasmanian Devil, commonly referred to as Taz, is an animated cartoon character featured in the Warner Bros. "Looney Tunes" and "Merrie Melodies" series of cartoons. Though the character appeared in only five shorts before Warner Bros. Cartoons closed down in 1964, marketing and television appearances later propelled the character to new popularity in the 1990s. His first name is revealed in the 1957 short Bedeviled Rabbit, when his wife addresses him as "Claude."
Taz is generally portrayed as a ferocious, albeit dim-witted, omnivore with a notoriously short temper and little patience. His enormous appetite seems to know no bounds, as he will eat anything in his path. He is best known for his speech consisting mostly of grunts, growls, and rasps (in his earlier appearances, he does speak English with primitive grammar) as well as his ability to spin like a vortex and bite through nearly anything.Taz does have one weakness: he can be calmed by almost any music. While in this calm state, he can be easily dealt with.
In 1991, Taz got his own show Taz-Mania which ran for four seasons in which Taz was the protagonist.
Robert McKimson based the character on the real life Tasmanian devil, or more specifically its carnivorous nature, voracious appetite, and surly disposition. Owen and Pemberton suggest that the character of the Tasmanian Devil was inspired by Errol Flynn.:153 The most noticeable resemblance between the Australian marsupial and McKimson's creation is their ravenous appetites and crazed behavior. Although the bipedal Tasmanian Devil's appearance does not resemble its marsupial inspiration, it contains multilayered references to other "devils": he has horn-shaped tufts of fur on his head (similar to the Devil's appearance) and whirls about like a dust devil (similar in appearance to a tornado) which sounds like several motors whirring in unison. Taz is constantly ravenously hungry. His efforts to find more food (animate or inanimate) are always a central plot device of his cartoons.
Tuesday, January 31, 2017
Presidential Executive Order on Reducing Regulation and Controlling Regulatory Costs
Yesturday mister Trump has new order!
EXECUTIVE ORDER
- - - - - - -
REDUCING REGULATION AND CONTROLLING REGULATORY COSTS
By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, including the Budget and Accounting Act of 1921, as amended (31 U.S.C. 1101 et seq.), section 1105 of title 31, United States Code, and section 301 of title 3, United States Code, it is hereby ordered as follows:
Section 1. Purpose. It is the policy of the executive branch to be prudent and financially responsible in the expenditure of funds, from both public and private sources. In addition to the management of the direct expenditure of taxpayer dollars through the budgeting process, it is essential to manage the costs associated with the governmental imposition of private expenditures required to comply with Federal regulations. Toward that end, it is important that for every one new regulation issued, at least two prior regulations be identified for elimination, and that the cost of planned regulations be prudently managed and controlled through a budgeting process.
Sec. 2. Regulatory Cap for Fiscal Year 2017. (a) Unless prohibited by law, whenever an executive department or agency (agency) publicly proposes for notice and comment or otherwise promulgates a new regulation, it shall identify at least two existing regulations to be repealed.
(b) For fiscal year 2017, which is in progress, the heads of all agencies are directed that the total incremental cost of all new regulations, including repealed regulations, to be finalized this year shall be no greater than zero, unless otherwise required by law or consistent with advice provided in writing by the Director of the Office of Management and Budget (Director).
(c) In furtherance of the requirement of subsection (a) of this section, any new incremental costs associated with new regulations shall, to the extent permitted by law, be offset by the elimination of existing costs associated with at least two prior regulations. Any agency eliminating existing costs associated with prior regulations under this subsection shall do so in accordance with the Administrative Procedure Act and other applicable law.
(d) The Director shall provide the heads of agencies with guidance on the implementation of this section. Such guidance shall address, among other things, processes for standardizing the measurement and estimation of regulatory costs; standards for determining what qualifies as new and offsetting regulations; standards for determining the costs of existing regulations that are considered for elimination; processes for accounting for costs in different fiscal years; methods to oversee the issuance of rules with costs offset by savings at different times or different agencies; and emergencies and other circumstances that might justify individual waivers of the requirements of this section. The Director shall consider phasing in and updating these requirements.
Sec. 3. Annual Regulatory Cost Submissions to the Office of Management and Budget. (a) Beginning with the Regulatory Plans (required under Executive Order 12866 of September 30, 1993, as amended, or any successor order) for fiscal year 2018, and for each fiscal year thereafter, the head of each agency shall identify, for each regulation that increases incremental cost, the offsetting regulations described in section 2(c) of this order, and provide the agency's best approximation of the total costs or savings associated with each new regulation or repealed regulation.
(b) Each regulation approved by the Director during the Presidential budget process shall be included in the Unified Regulatory Agenda required under Executive Order 12866, as amended, or any successor order.
(c) Unless otherwise required by law, no regulation shall be issued by an agency if it was not included on the most recent version or update of the published Unified Regulatory Agenda as required under Executive Order 12866, as amended, or any successor order, unless the issuance of such regulation was approved in advance in writing by the Director.
(d) During the Presidential budget process, the Director shall identify to agencies a total amount of incremental costs that will be allowed for each agency in issuing new regulations and repealing regulations for the next fiscal year. No regulations exceeding the agency's total incremental cost allowance will be permitted in that fiscal year, unless required by law or approved in writing by the Director. The total incremental cost allowance may allow an increase or require a reduction in total regulatory cost.
(e) The Director shall provide the heads of agencies with guidance on the implementation of the requirements in this section.
Sec. 4. Definition. For purposes of this order the term "regulation" or "rule" means an agency statement of general or particular applicability and future effect designed to implement, interpret, or prescribe law or policy or to describe the procedure or practice requirements of an agency, but does not include:
(a) regulations issued with respect to a military, national security, or foreign affairs function of the United States;
(b) regulations related to agency organization, management, or personnel; or
(c) any other category of regulations exempted by the Director.
Sec. 5. General Provisions. (a) Nothing in this order shall be construed to impair or otherwise affect:
(i) the authority granted by law to an executive department or agency, or the head thereof; or
(ii) the functions of the Director relating to budgetary, administrative, or legislative proposals.
(b) This order shall be implemented consistent with applicable law and subject to the availability of appropriations.
(c) This order is not intended to, and does not, create any right or benefit, substantive or procedural, enforceable at law or in equity by any party against the United States, its departments, agencies, or entities, its officers, employees, or agents, or any other person.
Trump to keep Obama LGBT workplace protections
Washington (AFP) - President Donald Trump will continue to protect the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people in the workplace, the White House said Tuesday.
An executive order signed by then President Barack Obama in 2014, which protects employees "from anti-LGBTQ workplace discrimination while working for federal contractors, will remain intact at the direction of President Donald J. Trump."
People in the gay and lesbian community in the United States have expressed fears of a backlash under Trump because of the presence of arch conservatives in his government who have a record of opposing same-sex marriage and other hard-fought rights.
The White House statement was issued on the day that Trump has said he will announce his candidate to fill a vacancy on the Supreme Court. Trump has promised to nominate a conservative.
Trump "is determined to protect the rights of all Americans, including the LGBTQ community," the statement read.
The president "continues to be respectful and supportive of LGBTQ rights, just as he was throughout the election."
Breaking silence, Obama speaks out on Trump immigrants order
WASHINGTON (AP) — Former President Barack Obama praised protesters who amassed across the country in opposition to President Donald Trump's immigration orders, breaking his silence on political issues for the first time since leaving office.
"The president fundamentally disagrees with the notion of discriminating against individuals because of their faith or religion," Obama's spokesman, Kevin Lewis, said.
In his first statement on behalf of the former president, Lewis said Obama was "heartened" by the amount of engagement taking place in U.S. communities. Lewis, a former White House official, pointed out that Obama used his last official speech as president to talk about Americans' responsibility to be "guardians of our democracy," even in nonelection years.
"Citizens exercising their constitutional right to assemble, organize and have their voices heard by their elected officials is exactly what we expect to see when American values are at stake," Lewis said.
Lewis didn't specifically invoke Trump's immigration order. But he rejected comparisons between Trump's recent actions and Obama's foreign policy decisions.
Trump said he took cues from Obama by temporarily banning travel to the U.S. from citizens of seven countries that Obama's administration identified as places of terrorism concern. But Obama's designation related strictly to eligibility to enter the U.S. without a visa; he never considered a travel ban.
Obama's office also circulated excerpts from a speech the former president gave in November 2015, in which he called the idea of a ban on Muslims "shameful."
"That's not American. That's not who we are. We don't have religious tests to our compassion," Obama said in the aftermath of attacks in Paris that prompted calls for the U.S. to restrict Syrian refugees from entering the United States.
Trump and the White House have vigorously disputed the notion that Trump's order is a "Muslim ban." Trump's halts all refugee admissions for 120 days, suspends the Syrian refugee program indefinitely and also suspends entry to the U.S. from seven majority-Muslim countries for 90 days. But the White House has stressed that dozens of other Muslim-majority countries aren't included.
Lewis' comments mark the first time Obama has weighed in on Trump's actions since Obama left office on Jan. 20. In his final weeks as president, Obama said he planned to follow George W. Bush's example by giving his successor room to govern without being second-guessed.
Yet Obama pointedly reserved the right to speak out if Trump violated what Obama called basic American values. He suggested a ban on Muslims or a move by Trump to deport immigrants brought to the U.S. illegally as children would cross that threshold.
___
White House calls outrage over omitting Jews in Trump’s statement on Holocaust ‘pathetic’
The White House says President Trump is aware of some of the criticism from the American Jewish community over the omission of Jews in his statement on International Holocaust Remembrance Day, but White House press secretary Sean Spicer called the controversy “ridiculous” and “pathetic.”
“He’s aware of what people have been saying, but I think by and large he’s been praised for it,” Spicer told reporters at his daily briefing on Monday.
“The president recognized the tremendous loss of life that came from the Holocaust,” Spicer said. “To suggest otherwise, I mean, I’ve got to be honest: The president went out of his way to acknowledge the Holocaust.”
Spicer became defensive during the briefing when he was again asked about the backlash.
“To suggest that remembering the Holocaust and acknowledging all of the people — Jewish, Gypsies, priests, disabled, gays and lesbians — frankly, it’s pathetic,” Spicer said. “The idea that you’re nitpicking a statement that sought to remember this tragic event that occurred and the people who died in it is just ridiculous.”
Trump’s six-sentence statement, issued by the White House on Friday, honored “victims, survivors [and] heroes of the Holocaust,” but made no specific mention of Jews:
It is with a heavy heart and somber mind that we remember and honor the victims, survivors, heroes of the Holocaust. It is impossible to fully fathom the depravity and horror inflicted on innocent people by Nazi terror.
Yet, we know that in the darkest hours of humanity, light shines the brightest. As we remember those who died, we are deeply grateful to those who risked their lives to save the innocent.
In the name of the perished, I pledge to do everything in my power throughout my Presidency, and my life, to ensure that the forces of evil never again defeat the powers of good. Together, we will make love and tolerance prevalent throughout the world.
Spicer said the statement “was written by an individual who is both Jewish and a descendant of Holocaust survivors.”
But its omission of Jews did not go unnoticed.
“The Final Solution was aimed solely at the Jews,” John Podhoretz, a conservative columnist, wrote in Commentary magazine. “The Holocaust was about the Jews. There is no ‘proud’ way to offer a remembrance of the Holocaust that does not reflect that simple, awful, world-historical fact. To universalize it to ‘all those who suffered’ is to scrub the Holocaust of its meaning.”
On NBC’s “Meet the Press” Sunday, White House chief of staff Reince Priebus was asked by host Chuck Todd if the administration was effectively whitewashing anti-Semitism.
“I’m not whitewashing anything, Chuck,” Priebus said. “It’s a terrible time in history. And obviously I think you know that President Trump has dear family members that are Jewish. And there was no harm or ill-will or offense intended by any of that.”
Trump’s daughter, Ivanka, and her husband, Trump senior adviser Jared Kushner, are Jewish. Kushner’s paternal grandparents were Holocaust survivors who came to the U.S. as refugees.
The Haaretz newspaper ran an op-ed criticizing Kushner for staying silent on both the Holocaust statement and Trump’s executive order, issued the same day, temporarily banning immigration from seven predominantly Muslim countries.
“After the Holocaust Day refugee bombshell announcement, any solace that could be found in Kushner’s Jewishness is gone,” Allison Kaplan wrote in a column titled “Shame on You, Jared Kushner.”
Priebus was asked if the administration regretted not including Jews in the president’s statement.
“I don’t regret the words,” Priebus said. “I mean, everyone’s suffering in the Holocaust including obviously all of the Jewish people affected and the miserable genocide that occurred is something that we consider to be extraordinarily sad and something that can never be forgotten and something that if we could wipe it off of the history books we [would]. But we can’t.”
The Anne Frank Center for Mutual Respect, a U.S. civil and human rights group, condemned Priebus’ explanation.
“Wake up and smell the Antisemitism in the White House,” Steven Goldstein, the organization’s executive director, said in a statement. “President Trump and his administration are engaging in the kind of Holocaust denial we have seen elsewhere from the most offensive scoundrels of history. Is that what we have come to deal with here?”
Jonathan Greenblatt, chief executive and national director of the Anti-Defamation League, blasted Trump for “overlooking the defining aspect of Holocaust Remembrance Day — the horror that befell the Jewish people.”
“As if this were not a sufficient error, repeated statements by White House surrogates in the days that followed only compounded the sin,” Greenblatt wrote. “Rather than acknowledge the oversight, Administration officials suggested that there was nothing amiss. As one official put it, ‘Everyone suffered in the Holocaust, including the Jewish people.’
“Wrong,” Greenblatt continued. “The suffering of the Jewish people is not an afterthought, a prepositional phrase to be bolted onto the end of a sentence. The suffering of the Jewish people is the whole reason that the concept of the Holocaust was defined.”
Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine was equally critical. “This is what Holocaust denial is,” Kaine said on “Meet the Press.” “It’s either to deny that it happened or many Holocaust deniers acknowledge, ‘Oh, yeah, people were killed. But it was a lot of innocent people. Jews weren’t targeted.’ The fact that they did that and imposed this religious test against Muslims in the executive orders on the same day, this is not a coincidence.”
Following Spicer’s press conference, the Washington, D.C.-based U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum issued its own statement on International Holocaust Remembrance Day:
The Holocaust was the systematic, state-sponsored murder of six million Jews by Nazi Germany and its collaborators. Nazi ideology cast the world as a racial struggle, and the singular focus on the total destruction of every Jewish person was at its racist core. Millions of other innocent civilians were persecuted and murdered by the Nazis, but the elimination of Jews was central to Nazi policy. As Elie Wiesel said, “Not all victims were Jews, but all Jews were victims.”
The Holocaust teaches us profound truths about human societies and our capacity for evil. An accurate understanding of this history is critical if we are to learn its lessons and honor its victims.
Thank you yahoo
“He’s aware of what people have been saying, but I think by and large he’s been praised for it,” Spicer told reporters at his daily briefing on Monday.
“The president recognized the tremendous loss of life that came from the Holocaust,” Spicer said. “To suggest otherwise, I mean, I’ve got to be honest: The president went out of his way to acknowledge the Holocaust.”
Spicer became defensive during the briefing when he was again asked about the backlash.
“To suggest that remembering the Holocaust and acknowledging all of the people — Jewish, Gypsies, priests, disabled, gays and lesbians — frankly, it’s pathetic,” Spicer said. “The idea that you’re nitpicking a statement that sought to remember this tragic event that occurred and the people who died in it is just ridiculous.”
Trump’s six-sentence statement, issued by the White House on Friday, honored “victims, survivors [and] heroes of the Holocaust,” but made no specific mention of Jews:
It is with a heavy heart and somber mind that we remember and honor the victims, survivors, heroes of the Holocaust. It is impossible to fully fathom the depravity and horror inflicted on innocent people by Nazi terror.
Yet, we know that in the darkest hours of humanity, light shines the brightest. As we remember those who died, we are deeply grateful to those who risked their lives to save the innocent.
In the name of the perished, I pledge to do everything in my power throughout my Presidency, and my life, to ensure that the forces of evil never again defeat the powers of good. Together, we will make love and tolerance prevalent throughout the world.
Spicer said the statement “was written by an individual who is both Jewish and a descendant of Holocaust survivors.”
But its omission of Jews did not go unnoticed.
“The Final Solution was aimed solely at the Jews,” John Podhoretz, a conservative columnist, wrote in Commentary magazine. “The Holocaust was about the Jews. There is no ‘proud’ way to offer a remembrance of the Holocaust that does not reflect that simple, awful, world-historical fact. To universalize it to ‘all those who suffered’ is to scrub the Holocaust of its meaning.”
On NBC’s “Meet the Press” Sunday, White House chief of staff Reince Priebus was asked by host Chuck Todd if the administration was effectively whitewashing anti-Semitism.
“I’m not whitewashing anything, Chuck,” Priebus said. “It’s a terrible time in history. And obviously I think you know that President Trump has dear family members that are Jewish. And there was no harm or ill-will or offense intended by any of that.”
Trump’s daughter, Ivanka, and her husband, Trump senior adviser Jared Kushner, are Jewish. Kushner’s paternal grandparents were Holocaust survivors who came to the U.S. as refugees.
The Haaretz newspaper ran an op-ed criticizing Kushner for staying silent on both the Holocaust statement and Trump’s executive order, issued the same day, temporarily banning immigration from seven predominantly Muslim countries.
“After the Holocaust Day refugee bombshell announcement, any solace that could be found in Kushner’s Jewishness is gone,” Allison Kaplan wrote in a column titled “Shame on You, Jared Kushner.”
Priebus was asked if the administration regretted not including Jews in the president’s statement.
“I don’t regret the words,” Priebus said. “I mean, everyone’s suffering in the Holocaust including obviously all of the Jewish people affected and the miserable genocide that occurred is something that we consider to be extraordinarily sad and something that can never be forgotten and something that if we could wipe it off of the history books we [would]. But we can’t.”
The Anne Frank Center for Mutual Respect, a U.S. civil and human rights group, condemned Priebus’ explanation.
“Wake up and smell the Antisemitism in the White House,” Steven Goldstein, the organization’s executive director, said in a statement. “President Trump and his administration are engaging in the kind of Holocaust denial we have seen elsewhere from the most offensive scoundrels of history. Is that what we have come to deal with here?”
Jonathan Greenblatt, chief executive and national director of the Anti-Defamation League, blasted Trump for “overlooking the defining aspect of Holocaust Remembrance Day — the horror that befell the Jewish people.”
“As if this were not a sufficient error, repeated statements by White House surrogates in the days that followed only compounded the sin,” Greenblatt wrote. “Rather than acknowledge the oversight, Administration officials suggested that there was nothing amiss. As one official put it, ‘Everyone suffered in the Holocaust, including the Jewish people.’
“Wrong,” Greenblatt continued. “The suffering of the Jewish people is not an afterthought, a prepositional phrase to be bolted onto the end of a sentence. The suffering of the Jewish people is the whole reason that the concept of the Holocaust was defined.”
Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine was equally critical. “This is what Holocaust denial is,” Kaine said on “Meet the Press.” “It’s either to deny that it happened or many Holocaust deniers acknowledge, ‘Oh, yeah, people were killed. But it was a lot of innocent people. Jews weren’t targeted.’ The fact that they did that and imposed this religious test against Muslims in the executive orders on the same day, this is not a coincidence.”
Following Spicer’s press conference, the Washington, D.C.-based U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum issued its own statement on International Holocaust Remembrance Day:
The Holocaust was the systematic, state-sponsored murder of six million Jews by Nazi Germany and its collaborators. Nazi ideology cast the world as a racial struggle, and the singular focus on the total destruction of every Jewish person was at its racist core. Millions of other innocent civilians were persecuted and murdered by the Nazis, but the elimination of Jews was central to Nazi policy. As Elie Wiesel said, “Not all victims were Jews, but all Jews were victims.”
The Holocaust teaches us profound truths about human societies and our capacity for evil. An accurate understanding of this history is critical if we are to learn its lessons and honor its victims.
Thank you yahoo
Trump’s regulatory clampdown called more flash than substance
Putting the order into practice isn't as simple as Trump's flashy ‘one in, two out’ slogan suggests.
By ANDREW RESTUCCIA 01/30/17 03:53 PM EST
President Donald Trump's crackdown on federal regulations could take months, if not years, to implement and likely faces costly court challenges.
The executive order, which Trump signed on Monday, requires that federal agencies and departments identify at least two existing federal rules that can be eliminated every time they issue a new regulation. It also seeks to dramatically limit the cost of rules, declaring that the total price tag of new final regulations combined with repealed regulations "shall be no greater than zero" in fiscal year 2017.
Trump aides cast the order as the most significant regulatory reform effort in decades, arguing that the president is making good on his promise to ease the burden of government on businesses.
But putting the order into practice isn't as simple as Trump's flashy "one in, two out" slogan suggests.
"It’s just a very indirect and gimmicky way of deregulating," said Eric Posner, a law professor at the University of Chicago.
It could take years for the administration to fully eliminate regulations that are already on the books. And in some cases, agencies are mandated by law to write regulations, which could make it impossible in some cases to completely abandon them.
The order would also put a heavy burden on agencies with limited resources and shrinking budgets. It relies on these agencies to come up with a proposal to satisfy the order's requirements — potentially setting off a complicated game of musical chairs in which federal workers are scrambling to find ineffective rules that neatly offset the cost of a new regulation.
“The rulemaking process is not a bazaar where rules are traded without regard to content,” said Rena Steinzor, a law professor at the University of Maryland who has tracked regulations for decades. Before modifying or killing a regulation, agencies must publish their reasoning for public comment, she noted.
And when outside groups inevitably challenge the administration's decision to scrap key regulations, it will fall on the agencies to defend the decision in the courts with a policy-specific rationale for killing them.
"A court will demand reasons for a repeal and the reasons would have to be something connected to the underlying purpose of the statute," Posner said. "I’m reasonably confident that a court would not accept Trump’s executive order as a basis of withdrawing the regulations. There has to be a substantive reason."
Progressive groups strongly criticized the order, arguing that it opens the door to steamrolling environmental and public health protections, among other things.
"Are they saying that if you were going to address climate change that you have to stop protecting clean water?" asked David Goldston, director of government affairs at the Natural Resources Defense Council. "Where’s the logic?"
Robert Verchick, president of the Center for Progressive Reform, called the order "short-sighted" and said it doesn't taken into account the benefits of regulations that limit exposure to toxic chemicals or protect drinking water, for instance.
The order appears likely to halt some regulations that industry wants, including rules that would mandate the disclosure of GMOs in food products. Congress asked the agriculture department to come up with the regulations after industry groups lobbied aggressively for federal preemption to avoid a patchwork of state GMO labeling laws.
“I think the executive order at least in the near term is likely to have its intended effect of slowing down, if not stopping, the adoption of new regulations,” said Stuart Pape, an attorney at Polsinelli and former lawyer at the FDA.
The order instructs the director of the White House Office of Management and Budget to issue guidance to agencies to help them comply with the requirements. But Trump's nominee to head the OMB, Rep. Mick Mulvaney (R-S.C.), has not yet been confirmed by the Senate. Trump has not yet nominated anybody to head the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, which would likely play a central role in implementing the order.
"The workability of the initiative will hinge on the guidance to the agencies from OMB," said John Graham, the who headed OIRA during the George W. Bush administration, explaining that the guidance should provide greater clarity.
Trump aides said Monday that any regulatory withdrawal will comply with existing federal review processes, which include public notice and comment periods. They said the administration is still working out the exact process, but the White House will have final say on which orders are implemented and eliminated.
After fiscal year 2017, when the total net cost of new and repealed regulations should be zero, the OMB director will prescribe "a total amount of incremental costs that will be allowed for each agency" for the upcoming fiscal year, according to the order.
"No regulations exceeding the agency's total incremental cost allowance will be permitted in that fiscal year, unless required by law or approved in writing by the director," the order says.
The order does not apply to regulations related to the "military, national security or foreign affairs function of the United States."
Presidents already have a great deal of discretion to nix burdensome regulations. President Ronald Reagan signed an executive order in 1981 mandating that benefits of a regulation must outweigh the costs, putting in motion a complicated evaluating process used for federal rules that still exists today.
"[T]he right approach is not 'one in, two out' but a careful check on issuing new rules, with the help of cost-benefit analysis — accompanied by an ambitious program to scrutinize rules on the books to see if they should be scrapped," Cass Sunstein, President Barack Obama's former OIRA chief, said in November after Trump first proposed the policy.
"The Trump administration doesn’t need a gimmick to make progress on both fronts," he added in a Bloomberg View column.
Sunstein said the policy is "likely to be a bit of a mess," but Trump "might be able to make it work" if he gives his administration flexibility to implement it.
Helena Bottemiller-Evich contributed to this report.
By ANDREW RESTUCCIA 01/30/17 03:53 PM EST
President Donald Trump's crackdown on federal regulations could take months, if not years, to implement and likely faces costly court challenges.
The executive order, which Trump signed on Monday, requires that federal agencies and departments identify at least two existing federal rules that can be eliminated every time they issue a new regulation. It also seeks to dramatically limit the cost of rules, declaring that the total price tag of new final regulations combined with repealed regulations "shall be no greater than zero" in fiscal year 2017.
Trump aides cast the order as the most significant regulatory reform effort in decades, arguing that the president is making good on his promise to ease the burden of government on businesses.
But putting the order into practice isn't as simple as Trump's flashy "one in, two out" slogan suggests.
"It’s just a very indirect and gimmicky way of deregulating," said Eric Posner, a law professor at the University of Chicago.
It could take years for the administration to fully eliminate regulations that are already on the books. And in some cases, agencies are mandated by law to write regulations, which could make it impossible in some cases to completely abandon them.
The order would also put a heavy burden on agencies with limited resources and shrinking budgets. It relies on these agencies to come up with a proposal to satisfy the order's requirements — potentially setting off a complicated game of musical chairs in which federal workers are scrambling to find ineffective rules that neatly offset the cost of a new regulation.
“The rulemaking process is not a bazaar where rules are traded without regard to content,” said Rena Steinzor, a law professor at the University of Maryland who has tracked regulations for decades. Before modifying or killing a regulation, agencies must publish their reasoning for public comment, she noted.
And when outside groups inevitably challenge the administration's decision to scrap key regulations, it will fall on the agencies to defend the decision in the courts with a policy-specific rationale for killing them.
"A court will demand reasons for a repeal and the reasons would have to be something connected to the underlying purpose of the statute," Posner said. "I’m reasonably confident that a court would not accept Trump’s executive order as a basis of withdrawing the regulations. There has to be a substantive reason."
Progressive groups strongly criticized the order, arguing that it opens the door to steamrolling environmental and public health protections, among other things.
"Are they saying that if you were going to address climate change that you have to stop protecting clean water?" asked David Goldston, director of government affairs at the Natural Resources Defense Council. "Where’s the logic?"
Robert Verchick, president of the Center for Progressive Reform, called the order "short-sighted" and said it doesn't taken into account the benefits of regulations that limit exposure to toxic chemicals or protect drinking water, for instance.
The order appears likely to halt some regulations that industry wants, including rules that would mandate the disclosure of GMOs in food products. Congress asked the agriculture department to come up with the regulations after industry groups lobbied aggressively for federal preemption to avoid a patchwork of state GMO labeling laws.
“I think the executive order at least in the near term is likely to have its intended effect of slowing down, if not stopping, the adoption of new regulations,” said Stuart Pape, an attorney at Polsinelli and former lawyer at the FDA.
The order instructs the director of the White House Office of Management and Budget to issue guidance to agencies to help them comply with the requirements. But Trump's nominee to head the OMB, Rep. Mick Mulvaney (R-S.C.), has not yet been confirmed by the Senate. Trump has not yet nominated anybody to head the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, which would likely play a central role in implementing the order.
"The workability of the initiative will hinge on the guidance to the agencies from OMB," said John Graham, the who headed OIRA during the George W. Bush administration, explaining that the guidance should provide greater clarity.
Trump aides said Monday that any regulatory withdrawal will comply with existing federal review processes, which include public notice and comment periods. They said the administration is still working out the exact process, but the White House will have final say on which orders are implemented and eliminated.
After fiscal year 2017, when the total net cost of new and repealed regulations should be zero, the OMB director will prescribe "a total amount of incremental costs that will be allowed for each agency" for the upcoming fiscal year, according to the order.
"No regulations exceeding the agency's total incremental cost allowance will be permitted in that fiscal year, unless required by law or approved in writing by the director," the order says.
The order does not apply to regulations related to the "military, national security or foreign affairs function of the United States."
Presidents already have a great deal of discretion to nix burdensome regulations. President Ronald Reagan signed an executive order in 1981 mandating that benefits of a regulation must outweigh the costs, putting in motion a complicated evaluating process used for federal rules that still exists today.
"[T]he right approach is not 'one in, two out' but a careful check on issuing new rules, with the help of cost-benefit analysis — accompanied by an ambitious program to scrutinize rules on the books to see if they should be scrapped," Cass Sunstein, President Barack Obama's former OIRA chief, said in November after Trump first proposed the policy.
"The Trump administration doesn’t need a gimmick to make progress on both fronts," he added in a Bloomberg View column.
Sunstein said the policy is "likely to be a bit of a mess," but Trump "might be able to make it work" if he gives his administration flexibility to implement it.
Helena Bottemiller-Evich contributed to this report.
If Trump Tries to Make a Deal With Putin, He’s Already Lost
President Donald Trump believes that he can transfer his main professed skill in the private sector — deal-making — to the world of foreign policy. But foreign policy, and the diplomacy that supports it, cannot be reduced to cutting businesslike deals alone. When making short-term deals trumps long-term strategy, America loses. And this will create problems for the new president and his administration as they seek to implement their “America First” agenda.
Perhaps nowhere is Trump’s dangerous approach to foreign policy more concerning than in his apparent desire to accommodate Vladimir Putin’s Russia. It’s unclear whether Trump’s views are the product of foolishness or of Russian coercive leverage over him. But it’s not only his views on Putin and the Kremlin’s motives that should disturb all Americans. It’s that he has repeatedly talked about making deals as the way to improve the relationship.
What kind of deals would these be? We should all be concerned by what the president would be ready to give up to his Russian counterpart in order to reach an easy agreement. So far, Trump’s comments suggest that he’d be willing to trade away the two intertwined aspects of U.S. foreign policy since the end of World War II: strategic investment in a rules-based system of international politics and moral leadership grounded in a commitment to human dignity and freedom.
Never short on self-confidence, Trump may think he’s ready to sit down with Putin, put everything on the table, and come out a winner. Sadly, Trump appears to be moving forward with this flawed idea. At his Jan. 27 news conference with British Prime Minister Theresa May, Trump — after awkwardly reading his scripted remarks about the importance of the special relationship with the United Kingdom based on universal values — reaffirmed his desire to make nice with Putin, suggesting that the United States, on his watch, might have relationships with Russia and China that were just as strong as that with Britain. How quickly he forgot that our relationship with London is based on shared values and investment in the post-World War II system.
On Jan. 28, Trump pressed on during a phone call with Putin, just a day after Trump’s senior advisor told a morning show that removing sanctions on Russia was “under consideration.” According to readouts of the call, Trump and Putin had a pleasant back-and-forth and agreed to further talks on counterterrorism cooperation. And the two presidents agreed to discuss “restoring business ties” — code for, among other things, removing sanctions — Dmitri Novikov, a leading member of Russia’s Parliament, told Interfax.
Don’t be fooled. This isn’t statesmanship — it’s selling America’s hard-won leadership in the world, and selling it cheap. And to do that for a handshake with an autocrat like Putin isn’t just a shameful deal, it’s a bad deal.
Trump may think he’s being clever by baiting Putin with the notion of the United States accepting the illegal invasion and attempted annexation of Crimea, or with ending the sanctions for Russia’s actions on the peninsula and its manufactured conflict in eastern Ukraine. But what Trump and his team seem to have missed is that the moment they sit down to do deals — the sort of deals that Putin wants (like throwing out the principle that states should be free to choose their own security arrangements or accepting Russian limitations on NATO’s defensive posture) — America will already have lost.
This is because it doesn’t matter what price Trump and his team extract from the Kremlin. By doing deals with Putin that undermine the principles of international law, such as lifting sanctions prematurely or changing U.S. policy on Crimea, the White House will have bought into a system based on deals rather than on rules. And it’s exactly this kind of deal-making devoid of principles that Putin and other authoritarian leaders want, and that those working on behalf of world peace, global prosperity, and human freedom have toiled so hard to leave behind.
This isn’t to say that the Trump administration should not engage in dialogue and negotiations with Moscow. The United States should be ready to negotiate on concrete initiatives that can advance international peace and security — as my team at the U.S. Mission to the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe did to achieve the mandate and budget for the organization’s Special Monitoring Mission to Ukraine — and agreements to counter foreign terrorist fighters, make progress on good governance, and fight anti-Semitism, among other things. These initiatives set a common agenda, with benchmarks and action items for which we can hold other countries — and they can hold us — accountable. But to negotiate with the Kremlin over the fundamental principles of the international system in which generations of U.S. political leaders and diplomats have invested so much is to lose before talks even begin.
American leadership, in concert with close partners and allies, and backed by American hard power and the NATO alliance, helped to build a system where the kind of deal-making (and inevitable deal-breaking) that had bloodied Europe for centuries would be left behind. Although Putin would like a “Yalta 2” — a 21st-century grand bargain dividing Europe into spheres of influence — to engage in such deal-making would be an unconscionable abandonment of American moral leadership, and one that leaves the world more dangerous.
The consequences of abandoning these principles wouldn’t be limited to Europe. The Chinese are certainly watching the U.S. commitment to defend the principle of sovereignty and territorial integrity in Ukraine as Beijing plots its next moves in the South China Sea. In effect, this would create a new age of uncertainty and usher in a world where anything goes. It’s a world where countries must jockey for the upper hand, including by deploying military capabilities, so that they can be the ones cutting deals rather than be the subject of deals.
This is one of the many things that Trump’s call for an “America First,” isolationist foreign policy gets wrong. One of the great strategic cornerstones of U.S. foreign policy has been the recognition that even in a world where the United States is by far the most powerful country, the interests of the American people are best served by a system that doesn’t depend on transactional encounters and instead creates long-term expectations of state behavior that allows for win-win arrangements. The peace and prosperity that have flowed from such a system has benefited Americans and U.S. allies around the world.
After Trump’s election in November, the diplomats I interacted with on a daily basis had two reactions: The Russian diplomats were gleeful and gloating — not only because the U.S. elections constituted perhaps the most successful Kremlin intel operation since the end of the Cold War, but also because they saw Trump’s desire to appease Putin as a harbinger for the end of American-led solidarity in holding the Kremlin accountable for its violations of international law. They saw a future where Moscow’s willingness to exercise destructive power would facilitate deal-making with the United States at the expense of Europe and its citizens.
The other diplomats — from all across Europe — were shaken and alarmed. First, they worried that the United States, which has been the guarantor of the European security system since World War II, was abandoning them and the rules intended to protect them from external aggression. In Helsinki in 1975, at the height of the Cold War, U.S. President Gerald Ford and Soviet General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev, along with 33 other heads of state and government, signed the Helsinki Final Act — which included commitments to open societies and markets, as well as to peacefully resolve disputes and respect sovereignty and territorial integrity. Ford wisely observed then that the leaders would be measured “not by the promises we make, but by the promises we keep.” For more than four decades, the United States has been Europe’s chief partner in upholding the promises made in Helsinki, thereby helping to preserve European security.
But in addition to their very real security concerns, my European counterparts despaired at the loss of an America they respected — an America, imperfect though it was, that could inspire people around the world. Even those diplomats who represented countries where the elites have loved to hate the United States admitted unabashedly that they loved America in the days after Nov. 8. These were diplomats from across Europe and Eurasia: Some represented NATO allies, some represented former Soviet states, some represented neutral or non-aligned countries, some represented our closest friends, and others represented more difficult partners. Within 48 hours, I got text messages and emails from more than a dozen ambassadors. “We all mourn with you” and “We need you, and American values, more than ever,” they wrote. It is not only the economic and military might, but also values — and the degree that our country consistently upholds them — that makes the United States a superpower.
Of course, the new administration must find effective channels of communication with Moscow, and the United States should be prepared to engage with Putin, especially to welcome and encourage actions that show he is ready to remedy some of the damage done by Russia’s attacks on the international order. But America’s objective should always be to reinforce the rules, not rewrite them.
Speaking at his inauguration 36 years ago, former U.S. President Ronald Reagan reminded the American people, “No arsenal, or no weapon in the arsenals of the world, is so formidable as the will and moral courage of free men and women.” The generations-long quest to build a system of international politics that is anchored in this truth has been the moral and strategic bedrock of American foreign policy since World War II, throughout the Cold War and after the collapse of the Soviet Union. America has led the world by standing up for the moral courage of free men and women. We should not stop now.
Photo Credit: MIKHAIL KLIMENTYEV/AFP/Getty Images
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