Madeleine Morgenstern
The Blaze
8/3/2012
Cass Sunstein, President Barack Obama’s “regulatory czar,” will leave his administration post and head back to Harvard Law School later this month, Politico reported Friday morning:
Sunstein, a celebrity academic who met Barack Obama when they were both teaching at University of Chicago Law School was among the world’s most-quoted law professors when he came to Washington in 2009. He was named the new president’s chief regulatory enforcer (often called the “regulatory czar”) as head of OIRA (“oh-eye-ruh”), an office that gets little attention but is among an administration’s most potent levers…
…Like Obama, Sunstein embraces “behavioral economics” – an emphasis on human behavior, rather than abstract theory, for identifying incentives to promote desired financial and environmental activity by individuals and corporations. The field of study supplied early underpinnings for Obama’s plans for health care and financial regulation.
Sunstein became a lightning rod for liberal activists who had hoped the administration would be more aggressive with regulatory policy.
…As The Blaze’s Erica Ritz defined earlier this week, “Sunstein has long-advocated “nudging” Americans in the direction they really ought to go, by defining their choices and making the less desirable ones more inconvenient. No one is forcing you to do anything…just helping to guide your decisions.”…
…News of Sunstein’s departure comes after a report last week that the Obama administration is holding off on implementing “costly and controversial” regulations until after the election, so as not to hurt the president’s chances.
Read the entire article at The Blaze.
Update: Holy Mama Cass: What Parallel Universe is This?
…That Sunstein isn’t left enough for today’s activist Left, and that an adult human being could write of “deregulation” during the Bush-Cheney years, shows how great the gulf is between Left and Right today.
Update 2: Is this why it’s sunset for Sunstein?
Update 3: Two years ago Sissy Willis wrote this excellent post: Cass Sunstein’s “libertarian paternalism”: Czar is “crazy” without the “y”
