by: Roger Gay
When we talk about the Obama administration's troublesome attitude toward unfriendly voices in the media, Cass Sunstein is a guy we need to pay attention to. He is a legal scholar (sort of) who Obama chose to head up the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA). We could also call this the White House Office for Counter-Revolutionary Blogs (OCRB).
Sunstein is also known for his involvement in the animal rights movement. Was it Sean Hannity that reported that Sunstein advocates that animals have lawyers? Sunstein also has some pretty interesting ideas about the Bill of Rights, which I won't go into here. It is what he has written on the subject of information on the Internet that raises my eyebrows.
In 2001, Sunstein wrote a book, Republic.com, in which he argued that the "Internet may weaken democracy because it allows citizens to isolate themselves within groups that share their own views and experiences, and thus cut themselves off from any information that might challenge their beliefs, a phenomenon known as cyber balkanization." (Wikipedia)
I wonder what he thinks about blogs that criticize the president?
Sunstein also co-authored "Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth, and Happiness" (Yale University Press, 2008) with some guy named Richard Thaler of the University of Chicago. This book describes how public and private organizations can help people make better choices in their daily lives!
Yes. We all need government to help us make better choices in our lives!
"People often make poor choices - and look back at them with bafflement! We do this because as human beings, we all are susceptible to a wide array of routine biases that can lead to an equally wide array of embarrassing blunders in education, personal finance, health care, mortgages and credit cards, happiness, and even the planet itself." (Wikipedia)
(That's where Government comes in.)
In his book "Democracy and the Problem of Free Speech" Sunstein says there is a need to change the First Amendment. According to Sunstein, the present “situation in which like-minded people speak or listen mostly to one another,”and thinks that in “light of astonishing economic and technological changes, we must doubt whether, as interpreted, the constitutional guarantee of free speech is adequately serving democratic goals.” He proposes a “New Deal for speech that would draw on Justice Brandeis' insistence on the role of free speech in promoting political deliberation and citizenship." (Wikipedia)
Taxes? Great thing, according to Sunstein. He has been quoted as saying that "we should celebrate tax day."
The last thing you need to know about Cass is that he is married to Samantha Power. She is the lady who worked on Obama's campaign until she called Hillary Clinton a "monster" and had to resign.
Now here's the tricky part. I know I'm a simple guy, but I went to the website of the OIRA to see what the hell these people do. After browsing around their site for about an hour, I still don't know what these people do. All I know is that this bureaucracy was created by Congress in 1980 as part of the Paperwork Reduction Act!
I found one memo on the site about the subject of risk. This was a long memo that went into great bureaucratic detail about RISK (to health, safety and the envirnment), but that's it. No mention of what specific risk they are talking about-hurricanes, AIDS, crime, terror, nothing-just risk. Risk assessment, risk management, risk analysis, Presidents Council on Risk, etc.
What are these risks?
What scares me here is this past talk from Sunstein about like-minded people getting all their information from each other as being a threat to democracy and all that. What is he talking about? Cyberbalkinization? Do I detact the sinister shadow of Mark Lloyd, the Diversity Czar over at FCC?
Of course, he can't be all bad. After all, his wife knows that Hillary Clinton is a monster.
8 Comments: