Monthly Archives: August 2012

Regulation Roundup

Posted on August 31, 2012 | Comments Off on Regulation Roundup


Some of the latest goings on in the world of regulation:

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Posted in Nanny State, regulation

The Other Side Must Not Win

Posted on August 30, 2012 | Comments Off on The Other Side Must Not Win

I’m a bit late to this, but here is a brilliant bit of satire from A. Barton Hinkle:

The past several weeks have made one thing crystal-clear: Our country faces unmitigated disaster if the Other Side wins.

No reasonably intelligent person can deny this. All you have to do is look at the way the Other Side has been running its campaign. Instead of focusing on the big issues that are important to the American People, it has fired a relentlessly negative barrage of distortions, misrepresentations, and flat-out lies.

I dare you to read the whole thing and not smile.

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Posted in Elections, Political Animals

CEI Podcast for August 30, 2012: Delayed FDA Rules Should Be Scrapped

Posted on August 30, 2012 | Comments Off on CEI Podcast for August 30, 2012: Delayed FDA Rules Should Be Scrapped


Have a listen here.

Major forthcoming rules from a variety of agencies have been delayed until after the November elections, possibly for political reasons. Among them are FDA food safety regulations with a $1.4 billion annual price tag. Senior Fellow Greg Conko argues that these rules should be scrapped altogether for two reasons: they will do little to improve food safety, and they will give large food corporations an unfair competitive advantage over smaller producers.

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Posted in CEI Podcast, Economics, regulation

Regulation of the Day 227: Returning from the Moon

Posted on August 30, 2012 | 1 comment


Neil Armstrong died last weekend at the age of 82. He was an inspirational figure for a lot of reasons besides the obvious one of being the first man to walk on the moon. He took great pride in being a nerdy, pocket-protector wearing engineer. In so doing, he inspired a lot of nerdy kids to keep their chins up, work hard, and accomplish great things. His stoic example made the world a better place.

Armstrong also handled his fame well.  He always maintained a calm, quiet dignity. His steady demeanor presented a sharp contrast with his no-less heroic colleague Buzz Aldrin, who is something of a showman at heart. Armstrong didn’t much care for the spotlight, and happily lived a quiet life in his native Ohio.

Which brings us to today’s Regulation of the Day. It turns out that when Armstrong, Aldrin, and Michael Collins returned to Earth after the Apollo 11 mission, they actually filled out a customs form. The Atlantic recently unearthed the document. It’s hard to tell if the form was an exercise in dry humor or the crew really was required to fill it out.

It’s worth a read. The “Departure from” field is filled in with simply, “moon.” The flight routing proceeds: Cape Kennedy; moon; Honolulu, Hawaii, U.S.A. The cargo manifest includes “moon rock and moon dust samples.” An ominous note sounds in the “Any other condition on board which may lead to the spread of disease” field: a typewritten, all-caps “TO BE DETERMINED.”

One wonders if today’s astronauts still fill out customs forms when they return home.

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Posted in regulation, Regulation of the Day

Conventions Cost Taxpayers Up to $136 Million

Posted on August 30, 2012 | 1 comment

Neither party has much to offer, but they do have a lot to take. And so it appears that their nominating conventions this week and next will cost taxpayers as much as $136 million.

Voters have known for a while who the candidates will be, and most have already made up their minds, defeating two of the three reasons to have a convention in the first place.

The third, party solidarity, is important. A party with low morale and little enthusiasm isn’t going to do well in the polls. But independents like this writer shouldn’t be on the hook for the political equivalent of trust fall exercises. Nor should Democrats be paying for the GOP’s convention, and vice versa.

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Posted in Elections, Political Animals

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New Study Affirms the Obvious

Posted on August 29, 2012 | Comments Off on New Study Affirms the Obvious


WTOP: Study: D.C. drivers are worst in the country

Allstate says drivers in D.C. get into a crash and file a claim once every 4.7 years, making them 112 percent more likely to do so than a typical driver elsewhere in the country.

As I always tell out-of-towners, the first rule of driving in DC is don’t.

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Posted in General Foolishness

Congress Should Create a Repeal Committee

Posted on August 29, 2012 | Comments Off on Congress Should Create a Repeal Committee

There are a lot of old, musty, unused, and obsolete laws on the books. Congress should repeal them as part of its basic hygiene, but members have little incentive to do so. A standing repeal committee could help. David Deerson and I look at how such a committee might work in a piece over at RealClearPolicy:

The job would be a big one. All in all, the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) rambles on for 169,000 pages, many of which could be dispensed with and replaced with nothing. For example, one of the 50 titles in the CFR is dedicated entirely to the Panama Canal, which hasn’t been under United States jurisdiction since 1999. Elsewhere, an entire chapter consists of guidelines for dealing with the Y2K computer crisis that didn’t happen 12 years ago…

As old Washington hand Joseph Gibson points out in his book, A Better Congress, a repeal committee would almost certainly face strong opposition from members of other committees, who would see it as a threat to their own prerogatives. To soften this opposition, he suggests involving the committee with jurisdiction over the statute to be repealed through a secondary referral—subject to time limit to ensure that the committee cannot sit on a proposed repeal indefinitely.

Read the whole thing here.

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Posted in Public Choice, Publications, regulation

Brewers 4, Cubs 1

Posted on August 29, 2012 | Comments Off on Brewers 4, Cubs 1

It wasn’t a historic drubbing like Monday’s 15-4 victory, where the Brewers homered back-to-back-to-back for the first time since 2007. Even without extra innings in that game, the Cubs blew through their entire bullpen and had to use a position player as a pitcher for the first time since 1999.

There was none of that, but a regular old 4-1 victory counts just as much in the standings. More importantly, it brings the Brewers’ Cub-beating magic number down to 23, with 34 games left to play.

The Brewers have now beaten the Cubs 6 times in a row, and won 7 of their last 8 overall. They’re still not going anywhere near the playoffs, but it is good to see them playing well.

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Posted in Sports

Beat Those Cubs

Posted on August 27, 2012 | 1 comment

The Brewers’ magic number to finish with a better record than the Cubs is down to 27. The two teams begin a four-game series tonight at Wrigley Field. It is the last time they play each other this year.

Each Brewer victory during the series will lower the magic number by two, so a sweep would bring the magic number to 19. If Cubs manage a sweep, it will remain unchanged.

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Posted in Sports

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CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation

Posted on August 27, 2012 | Comments Off on CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation


Just another week in the world of regulation:

  •  76 new final rules were published last week, up from 65 the previous week.
  • That’s the equivalent of a new regulation every 2 hours and 13 minutes — 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
  • All in all, 2,507 final rules have been published in the Federal Register this year.
  • If this keeps up, the total tally for 2012 will be 3,872 new rules.
  • 1,687 new pages were added to the 2012 Federal Register last week, for a total of 52,597 pages.
  • At its current pace, the 2012 Federal Register will run 78,178 pages.
  • Rules are called “economically significant” if they have costs of $100 million or more in a given year. The 29 such rules published so far in 2012 have compliance costs of at least $16.5 billion. Two of the rules do not have cost estimates, and a third cost estimate does not give a total annual cost. We assume that rules lacking this basic transparency measure cost the bare minimum of $100 million per year. The true cost is almost certainly higher.
  • One economically significant rule was published last week.
  • So far, 250 final rules that meet the broader definition of “significant” have been published in 2012.
  • So far this year, 474 final rules affect small business. 64 of them are significant rules.

Highlights from final rules published last week:

  • Last week’s economically significant rule comes from the intimidatingly-named Safety and Environmental Enforcement Bureau. New oil and gas drilling regulations for the outer continental shelf will cost an estimated $131 million per year.
  • The state of New York wants to set its own odometer standards. They had to petition the federal government first.

For more data, go to TenThousandCommandments.com.

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Posted in regulation