Understanding Government

In the midst of the ruckus over the debt ceiling, Barack Obama announced strong new fuel efficiency standards for automobiles. This is something of a “man bites dog” story at a time of major cuts for the Environmental Protection Agency and Congress’s apparent inability to avoid a federal default. TIME’s Michael Grunwald writes that the standards represent “a big victory in the fight to reduce our foreign oil addiction, our carbon emissions, and our gasoline costs.” The success in writing such an ambitious law — that cars must go 55 miles per gallon by 2025 – seems largely due to the fact that Detroit automakers are literally indebted to the Obama administration, not to mention efforts by California to up tailpipe emission standards.

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According to the most recent U.S. Census, Detroit lost a staggering 25 percent of its population between 2000 and 2010, dropping from 951,000 residents to 713,000. Detroit Mayor Dave Bing responded by saying Detroit will challenge the results. “Personally, I don’t believe that the number is accurate,” Bing said when the figures were released in March. “The Census has a history of undercounting residents in urban areas like Detroit.”

Detroit can begin checking the Census Bureau’s results on June 1^st.  The effort is not a recount, but, according to former Detroit demographer Patricia Becker, “an extremely technical and painstaking process” done by city (not federal) workers to find uncounted residents. Moreover, no challenge can reverse the new reality Detroit faces:  rather than a major city in decline, Detroit is no longer a major city. (more…)

The ten-year census confirms what the eyes can see — Detroit is being deserted. Yet instead of using the new numbers as a moment for further civic reassessment, Detroit Mayor Dave Bing demanded a recount. Is there merit to Bing’s criticisms of the U.S. Census Bureau?

According to the census, the city lost 25 percent of its residents between 2000 and 2010. That is the single greatest ten-year exodus in American history by any city with more than 100,000 people, excepting New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. (more…)

The Wall Street Journal’s Neil King looks at all the “czars” in the Barack Obama White House, after green jobs czar Van Jones was pressured to resign earlier this week. Some Republicans have been real critical of the czars and they have a point if someone like, say, Energy Czar Carol Browner is performing bureaucratic duties normally done by the head of the Environmental Protection Agency and/or Energy Department. Browner, after all, didn’t have to go through the Senate confirmation process.

But: Browner’s role is not to run the EPA or Energy Dept. It’s to push for Obama policies like cap-and-trade legislation and tougher fuel standards. Given that EPA, particularly, had a bunch of a pre-existing problems before the Obama administration, it seems wise to separate out the roles of cheerleading for new Obama policies and cleaning up the old EPA structure.

Where arguments from Republicans like California Rep. Darrell Issa do resonate are czars like auto czar Ron Bloom who run an Obama administration program (here, the TARP auto bailout) that relies on money appropriated from Congress. In making Bloom a czar, Obama conveyed the message that the auto bailout is too important to leave to the politics and deliberative sluggishness of the Senate. This made some practical sense. But it was also kind of unconstitutional.-MB