I've been harping on this idea for almost as long as I've been running this blog. My most popular piece from the early days (2010) concerned how regulations are growing like weeds, how "Regulation and litigation are sand in the gears of society", and the costs of those regulations on businesses. I repeatedly call for throwing out 2/3 or 3/4 of the Code of Federal Regulations. Plus I've posted my "Tales from the Over Regulated State" series on an irregular basis 22 times, now. Unfortunately, I didn't start numbering them until recently, so the numbers start with 18.
Trump has actually called for deregulation and talks about it fairly regularly. I haven't heard him talk about throwing out "yuuge" chunks of the CFR, but from my standpoint, they might have to spend the next eight years undoing what was passed in the last eight.
This is actually the project I was working on yesterday. I wanted to draw the scene, but my "first-grade level" art skills couldn't close to being this good. Instead, I found this as Free Clip Art. I'd be honored if other people agreed and spread this around.
Not sure how a sunset clause would work for 14CFR.... It's hard enough juggling the amendments as is.
ReplyDeleteIt would cause them to reopen it every (10? 15?) years to re-examine what's necessary. Being so occupied would limit the number of new regulations, especially if budgets are cut, too. Perhaps a more relevant question is: what do you see in your day to day life that needs more regulations? That can't be handled by the existing ones?
DeleteThere have been an additional 6,279 regulations enacted in the last 90 days. With the exceptions of sprints to higher numbers, that site has been reporting around 6000 new ones every 90 days as long as I've been aware of it.
Right now we're in this extra-constitutional mode where legislators don't legislate. They write vague wishes and have the regulatory organizations write the actual black letter law. Not supposed to be that way. Maybe this could get it back to legislators writing the actual legislation, and not things like the EPA being a rubber stamp for various green lobbyists.
The debt ceiling was sold as a measure to force legislative reflection before increasing it. But it's a rubber stamp.
ReplyDeleteThere is a game theory problem here, you are wishing that Darwinian evolution of human predators against human prey would vanish. You are doing magic, and hoping reality would alter merely by the power of your mind. Right? Because you do not offer a roadmap to gain your policy result by electoral means.
If you ask a politician whether politicians should have less power, the answer will always be "no". For example, Ron Paul never advocated taking the ability to create legal tender away from congress. Apparently Ron Paul the legislator didn't read Ron Paul the author's books. Or he was just doing the usual sort of magical thinking most humans do.
If you want freedom, you will have to claw, by force and threat of force, each and every little tiny piece of freedom away from the envious voters who vote for central planning by Democrats and Republicans. You will have to constantly maintain that defensive force with eternal vigilance.
for Executive Orders by Obozo, a simple stroke of the pen and presto ... gone. Overturned. Undone. Illegitimate to begin with.
ReplyDeleteFor the rest of the regulation producing bureaucracy, a moratorium should be called to halt further production until 1) the current mess is cleaned up and trimmed down and 2) a new method of developing, reviewing and passing regulations can be approved. Far too much crap is being generated, but then that is the product of bureaucracy to begin with. Like sucker fish, only sucking the life out of the host, a parasite, shitting and pissing away and producing nothing of value in return and once the host is dead, moving on to a new one.
Right now we're in this extra-constitutional mode where legislators don't legislate. They write vague wishes and have the regulatory organizations write the actual black letter law. Not supposed to be that way.
ReplyDeleteWord.
One (partial) fix for that would be abolition of most of the executive branch agencies, forcing Congress into assuming its Constitutional duties. Ex: HUD (Housing and Urban Development, but closer to Hopeless, Useless and Depressing). If one searches the text of the Constitution one cannot find the words "housing" or "mortgage," indicating the federal government has no authority to be involved in the housing industry, much less possess an executive branch agency to do so. Same for mortgages, no Constitutional justification for Fannie Mae (Federal National Mortgage Association), Freddie Mac (Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation), Sallie Mae (Student Loan Marketing Association), FHA and VA mortgages, Farm Bureau loans with Dept of Agriculture, etc. There are more, but you get the idea.
But....
Near the end of WWII Churchill cautioned Stalin about considering the impact of the vatican, and Staling responded with the famious line “How many divisions does the Pope of Rome have?”
Along those lines, if it is not already too late to herd the fed dot gov back into its Constitutional corral, it's a fair bet it will not go willingly; the Stalin - Pope comment has relevance in that context.