Free Republic

“The buck didn’t stop with The Big Guy, that’s where it started,” Rep. Clay Higgins says, referring to a bribery allegation against President Joe Biden....... The White House dismisses the revelation that a government whistleblower implicates President Joe Biden in a bribery scheme, calling the accusation no different than other investigations of the president’s family “going on five years.” But this allegation is quite different, noted one member of the House Oversight and Accountability Committee. “This is the first time there has been a direct link to President Biden and influence peddling,” Rep. Russell Fry, R-S.C., told The Daily Signal...

The White House has kicked off several federal projects aimed at influencing how Americans react to certain policy reforms, going so far as to solicit behavior experts to join a British-style “Behavioral Insights Team” to help nudge voters into accepting key political programs. “Behavioral sciences can be used to help design public policies that work better, cost less and help people to achieve their goals,” a document on the government program states, Fox News reported. The document, emailed by White House senior adviser Maya Shankar and obtained by Fox News, also seeks applicants to join the federal government’s behavior modification...

The term "pedestrian" has a derogatory meaning because peasants walked while nobles were "equestrians" and rode horses. The industrial revolution eliminated this class difference, as it did so many others, by making car ownership available to the masses until eventually Herbert Hoover was able to boast that "Republican prosperity has reduced and increased earning capacity” to "put the proverbial 'chicken in every pot' and a car in every backyard to boot." Democrats have spent two generations trying to get those cars out of every backyard. Biden is trying to bring back Obama's mileage standards that were estimated to raise car...

Rush Limbaugh says Obama's “Nudge Squad” is designed to promote certain behavior. I'm sure he just misspoke. The Nudgers themselves admit they are attempting to do much more than just promote. Government can and already does produce commercials that merely promote an agenda. No, the “Nudge Squad” is not a promotional group. These “behavioral scientists” are charged with steering us into making the “correct” decisions.And who gets to determine what’s the correct decision? Why, the administration. They are the arbiters of right and wrong, good and bad behavior.Do you recall the statement by Bill Clinton, circa 1999? Thanks to the...

On September 15, 2015, Barack Obama signed an Executive Order with the intent on implementing “Behavioral Science Insights to Better Serve the American People.” The Executive Order (EO) is based on a “growing body of evidence demonstrating that behavioral science insights — research findings from fields such as behavioral economics and psychology about how people make decisions and act on them — can be used to design government policies to better serve the American people.” Furthermore, the EO continues, “Where Federal policies have been designed to reflect behavioral science insights, they have substantially improved outcomes for the individuals, families, communities,...

Obama Issues Executive Order for the government to use individual's behavioral data.

Have you ever heard of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, otherwise known as OIRA? Yeah, neither had I. As someone who prides himself on being a relatively informed citizen, it is always shocking and disturbing when I learn of a powerful organization operating in the shadows of America’s faux democracy with which I am almost entirely unfamiliar. While I’m sure I’ve read many articles in which OIRA was mentioned, I had never fully understood exactly what it is, and how it is used by lobbyists and large corporate interests to further entrench the established oligarchic power structure. We...

As the U.S. government’s regulatory bureaucracy has ballooned, one agency has been left behind: the office that oversees the regulators. The number of people working in federal agencies with regulatory authority has doubled to about 292,000 under both Republican and Democratic administrations during the past 30 years. In the same period, the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, the White House bureau that reviews most major rules, has shrunk to 45 employees from 90, according to data compiled by researchers at George Washington University and Washington University in St. Louis. That means there are fewer people to carry out the...

Cass Sunstein, President Barack Obama’s nominee to head the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA), has advocated a policy under which the government would “presume” someone has consented to having his or her organs removed for transplantation into someone else when they die unless that person has explicitly indicated that his or her organs should not be taken. Under such a policy, hospitals would harvest organs from people who never gave permission for this to be done. Outlined in the 2008 book “Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness,” Sunstein and co-author Richard H. Thaler argued that the...

President Obama's choice to head the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs had Sen. John Cornyn, Texas Republican, so upset that he blocked it - a move that puts only a temporary hold on the appointment. Now the U.S. Sportsmen's Alliance, a hunter advocacy group, says American sportsmen need to step in to make sure the block stays in place. According to the U.S. Sportsmen's Alliance, Cass Sunstein supports animal rights. This is an important office that has the authority to block rules, including those that protect hunting and conservation. The pro-hunting organization says Sunstein has mentioned the possibility that...

Cass Sunstein sees Web as anti-democratic, proposed 24-hour delay on sending e-mail WASHINGTON – Barack Obama's nominee for "regulatory czar" has advocated a "Fairness Doctrine" for the Internet that would require opposing opinions be linked and also has suggested angry e-mails should be prevented from being sent by technology that would require a 24-hour cooling off period. The revelations about Cass Sunstein, Obama's friend from the University of Chicago Law School and nominee to head the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, come in a new book by Brad O'Leary, "Shut Up, America! The End of Free Speech."...

Note: The following text is a quote: THE BRIEFING ROOM THE WHITE HOUSE Office of the Press Secretary For Immediate Release April 23, 2009 Please find below the complete text of a Memorandum signed by President Obama on January 30th and published in the Federal Register on February 3, 2009. Memorandum for the Heads of Executive Departments and Agencies SUBJECT: Regulatory Review For well over two decades, the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) at the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has reviewed Federal regulations. The purposes of such review have been to ensure consistency with Presidential priorities,...

WHOSE SIDE? Cass Sunstein's theories on cost-benefit analysis align him more with conservatives, critics say. Cass Sunstein, selected to be Obama's regulatory czar, has labor activists and environmentalists digging into his record. Reporting from Washington -- Harvard Law School professor Cass R. Sunstein, a widely admired intellectual and friend of President Obama, has spent years delving into the obscure issues of regulatory law and behavioral economics. Though he is generally described as left of center, Sunstein's academic interests in regulation have led him to raise questions about the constitutionality of liberal favorites such as workplace safety laws and the Clean...

Making an Ass of the Law Obama's "regulation czar" Professor Cass Sunstein wants animals to be able to sue. Animals can't reason or express themselves, naturally, so the litigation would be handled by human lawyers, acting as ventriloquists on behalf of the animal kingdom. Think Mister Ed the talking horse, crossed with Eliot Spitzer. "Any animals that are entitled to bring suit would be represented by (human) counsel, who would owe guardian-like obligations and make decisions, subject to those obligations, on their clients' behalf," according to Sunstein. The Harvard legal scholar first proposed the argument in 2002. "This doesn’t look...

The Center for Consumer Freedom says President-Elect Barack Obama’s pick for “regulatory czar” of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, Harvard Law School Professor Cass Sunstein, is a radical animal rights activist.The piece points to a 2002 paper written by Sunstein entitled “The Rights of Animals: A Very Short Primer” as Exhibit A. In this paper, Sunstein argues for the “rights” of animals and placing them on a par with the rights of human beings. He laments that current laws which protect animals from cruelty do not include hunting, medical research, and food animals.

Making an Ass of the Law

The next 8 years will be extremely rough for American hunters and livestock farmers. Cass Sunstein, Barack Obama’s pick for “regulatory czar,” : “[A]nimals should be permitted to bring suit, with human beings as their representatives, to prevent violations of current law … Any animals that are entitled to bring suit would be represented by (human) counsel, who would owe guardian like obligations and make decisions, subject to those obligations, on their clients’ behalf.” “We ought to ban hunting, I suggest, if there isn’t a purpose other than sport and fun. That should be against the law. It’s time now.”...

Ut oh: "Achieving social justice should be of greater importance than the purity of free markets. Markets, he argues, are themselves only possible through political guarantees of rights and the rule of law, and they should be subordinate to discussions of justice."

Barack Obama’s pick for “regulatory czar,” Harvard Law School Professor Cass Sunstein, may be the incoming president’s most popular appointment so far. Judging from his resume -- best-selling author, “pre-eminent legal scholar of our time,” and an endorsement from The Wall Street Journal -- we can almost understand why. Almost. Because as we’re telling the media today, there’s one troubling portion of the new Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) Administrator’s C.V. that has seems to have flown under everyone’s radar: Cass Sunstein is a radical animal rights activist. Don’t believe us? Sunstein has made no secret of his...

Barack Obama’s pick for “regulatory czar,” Harvard Law School Professor Cass Sunstein, may be the incoming president’s most popular appointment so far. Judging from his resume -- best-selling author, “pre-eminent legal scholar of our time,” and an endorsement from The Wall Street Journal -- we can almost understand why. Almost. Because as we’re telling the media today, there’s one troubling portion of the new Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) Administrator’s C.V. that has seems to have flown under everyone’s radar: Cass Sunstein is a radical animal rights activist. Don’t believe us? Sunstein has made no secret of his...