Monthly Archives: August 2011

Some of the stranger rules I’ve dug recently:

• In New Hampshire, ventriloquism is a licensed occupation.
• A 1482 English law states that only royalty may own or touch swans. It was never repealed, and causes difficulties to this day.
• In Turin, Italy, failing to walk your dog at least thrice daily is punishable with a €500 fine.
• In Juneau, Alaska, regulations prohibit animals from entering barbershops. Unlike Florida’s recent bestiality law, Alaska does provide a definition of “animal” that excludes humans.
• It is illegal to counterfeit cat and dog tags in Grand Forks, North Dakota.
• In New Hampshire, it is illegal to have a ferret in your possession while on your way to a hunting trip.
• According to § 7-1-1(Q) of Minooka, IL’s village code, it is illegal “To suffer any bitch or slut.”

CEI just put out a press release quoting my colleagues Iain Murray and Wayne Crews, and me. President Obama’s recent executive order will result in as many as 500 regulations coming off the books. We think that’s a good start. But there is much more to do. You can read the press release here; my remarks are below.

Ryan Young, Fellow in Regulatory Studies: “For every thousand dollars that businesses and consumers spend to comply with regulations, this executive order will save them about one. Better than nothing, yes. But let’s not call this real reform. An independent commission should be going through the books, not the agencies themselves. And they should do it every year. Agencies have no incentive to rein in their own size and scope, hence the token cuts and tiny savings. An independent commission does not share that incentive problem. At over 165,000 pages, there is much to trim from the Code of Federal Regulations. Let’s get to it.”