Here’s an excerpt from an early 1980s Office of Management and Budget report:
An agency subject to the provisions of the Federal Reports Act may enter into an arrangement with an organization not subject to the Act whereby the organization not subject to the Act collects information on behalf of the agency subject to the Act. The reverse also occurs.
The Pentagon’s official brownie recipe is 26 pages long. If you don’t care to read document MIL-C-44072C in its entirety, here are some highlights:
-The water used in this recipe must adhere to EPA drinking water regulations.
-The eggs must comply with USDA “Regulations Governing the Inspection of Eggs and Egg Products (7 CFR Part 59).”
-The brownies must also comply with rules and standards from HHS, The American Association of Cereal Chemists (AACC), the American Oil Chemists Society (AOCS), the American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM), the Association of Official Analytical Chemists (AOAC), and the National Academy of Sciences’ Food Chemicals Codex.
-The coating must be exactly right:
3.3.5 Brownie coating. The brownies shall be completely enrobed with a continuous uniform chocolate coating (see 3.2.14) in an amount which shall be not less than 29 percent by weight of the finished product.
-Like pecans on your brownies?
3.2.5.2 Nuts, pecans, shelled. Shelled pecan pieces shall be of the small piece size classification, shall be of a light color, and shall be U.S. Grade No. 1 Pieces of the U.S. Standards for Grades of Shelled Pecans. A minimum of 90 percent, by weight, of the pieces shall pass through a 4/16-inch diameter round hole screen and not more than 2 percent, by weight, shall pass through a 2/16-inch diameter round hole screen. The shelled pecans shall be coated with an approved food grade antioxidant and shall be of the latest season’s crop.
And so on.
By contrast, delicious recipes from allrecipes.com and cooking.com are less than a page each.
UPDATE: Reason’s Katherine Mangu-Ward has more; her post was picked up by Fark, too. The comment thread is pretty entertaining.
Posted in Regulation of the Day
Tagged aacc, allrecipes.com, aoac, aocs, astm, brownie recipe, brownie recipes, cfr, code of federal regulations, cooking.com, epa, food, food chemicals codex, nas, pentagon, recipes, regulation, Regulation of the Day, usda
Some of the stranger governmental goings-on I’ve dug up recently:
-Since 1960, it has been illegal to fly a kite in Schaumburg, Illinois.
-If you are a tree in need of help, the federal government has a Tree Assistance Program.
–$18,881 of stimulus money spent on a single sign in Wyoming.
-Concerned about your fecundity? Consult the federal government’s Reproductive Health Drugs Advisory Committee.
-Northern Arizona University spends $75,000 in stimulus funds to install electronic sensors to see if students skip class. (hat tip to The Wall Street Journal‘s Kim Schatz)
-In Alabama, it is against the law to sell artificially colored potatoes.
-Need help with your math homework? Consult the government’s North American Numbering Council.
-In Yukon, Oklahoma, it is illegal for a patient to pull a dentist’s tooth.
Comments Off on Friday Regulation Roundup
Posted in regulation
Tagged 1960, alabama, dentist, dumb laws, dumb regulations, dumb rules, fecund, fecundity, illinois, kim schatz, kites, nanc, nau, north american numbering council, northern arizona university, obscure regulations, oklahoma, potatoes, regulation, reproductive health drugs advisory committee, rhdac, sadistic dentist, schaumburg, schaumburg il, silly laws, silly regulations, silly rules, Stimulus, tap, tree assistance program, trees, wy, wyoming, yukon, yukon ok
Today’s Daily Caller features an article from me about CEI’s entry in the EPA’s YouTube video contest on regulations, expertly produced by my colleagues Drew Tidwell and Nicole Ciandella.
The theme of the video contest is “Let your voice be heard.” The problem is that over-regulation drowns out your voice in a cacophony of commands and controls from the minute you get up in the morning until you go to bed at night. The Code of Federal Regulations is 157,000 pages long. And it’s still growing. Enough is enough.
Hopefully CEI’s video isn’t the only entry that makes that important point.
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Posted in Publications, regulation
Tagged cei, daily caller, day in the life, epa, let your voice be heard, regulation, tucker carlson, video contest, youtube
The EPA ($10,500,000,000 budget, 17,000+ employees) is holding a YouTube video contest where entrants make videos about how great regulations are, and why we need more of them. The winner gets $2,500 of taxpayers’ money.
CEI decided to enter the contest. Our view of regulation is less sanguine, as you can see below.
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Posted in regulation
Tagged cei, epa, let your voice be heard, regulation, video contest, youtube
This morning, the 2010 Federal Register passed the 25,000 page mark with an “Issuance of Order for Implementation of Additional Security Measures and Fingerprinting for Unescorted Access to Florida Power and Light Company” from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
After 87 working days, the Federal Register stands at 25,098 pages. That’s an average of 288 pages every single day of proposed rules, final rules, notices, and other federal doings.
Assuming 250 working days in a year, the Register is on pace for 72,121 pages, a slight increase over 2009’s 69,676 pages.
Back in January, it was on pace for a mere 63,187 pages. The pace has been accelerating since.
Can President Obama top President Bush’s final Federal Register, which ran to 79,435 pages? We shall see what the coming months bring.
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Posted in regulation
Tagged big government, federal register, nrc, Nuclear Regulatory Commission, regulation
If you work for the Department of Energy’s Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, a regulation requires you to keep records of your off-the-record communications.
Which means off-the-record communications aren’t really off the record.
In fact, 18 CFR 385.2201(b) requires FERC to post a notice in the Federal Register whenever this happens. There was one today, for example. It’s public!
Which brings up the following conundrum: if FERC policy is that off-the-record communications are actually on the record, then there are no off-the-record communications. Therefore, regulations applying to off-the-record communications are at best redundant , because there are no off-the-record comments.
Oh, never mind.
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Posted in Regulation of the Day
Tagged bureaucracy, dumb laws, federal register, ferc, government, regulation, Regulation of the Day, regulations
CORRECTION: It appears that I’ve been had. Commenter Dietsch at Jacob Grier‘s blog points out that the article was probably an April Fool’s joke. There are such things as beard net regulations on the books in various cities. But this particularly amusing story appears not to be true; probably for the better.
Hair nets have been a staple of the food service industry for a long time. They are not the most dignified fashion accessory. But they serve a useful purpose. Just like church and state, hair and food are best kept separate. Hair nets are a much easier way to accomplish that goal than, say, mandatory baldness for all kitchen staffs.
Which brings us to the latest fad in Brooklyn’s trendy Cobble Hill neighborhood: mustache nets. For some reason,Victorian-themed restaurants and bars are all the rage right now. Bars are redecorating with old-fashioned furniture and artwork. Bartenders are redecorating themselves with outlandish 19th-century facial hair, from mutton chops to handlebar mustaches.
Unfortunately, a regulation from approximately the same time period is getting in the way of all this nostalgic fun. New York State law requires all persons with facial hair who are serving food or drink to wear a mustache net.
Regulators have been cracking down on un-netted mustaches. They have cited several establishments, as Chow reports:
The crackdown was a surprise to restaurant employees—one bartender apparently panicked and attempted to hide behind a taxidermied warthog. However, many of those cited have remained defiant.
“I’d be happy to have my staff wear mustache nets—if I could find a sustainable source,” said a representative of one of the establishments targeted in the raid. “And so far, I have not found a mustache net farm whose mustache netting practices I believe in.”
It’s pretty easy to see why the nets aren’t very popular. A Google image search for “moustache net” yields this picture:
Doesn’t exactly befit the image of a chic bartender. But in New York, that’s the law.
Posted in General Foolishness, Regulation of the Day
Tagged brooklyn, hip, hipster, hygiene, moustache, mustache, mustache net, mustache nets, new york, regulation, Regulation of the Day, regulations, victorian era
The lede to this Denver Post article says it all:
RIDGWAY — Residents of this Old West- meets-New Age town can be fined if their fences are too high, they have too many chickens, their dogs aren’t on leashes or their weeds are out of control.
Tom Hennessy would like to add not voting to that list.
There are three things wrong with Mr. Hennessy’s proposed regulation. One is that mandatory voting is a violation of personal freedom. To vote or not is an important choice that people make for themselves. It is not Mr. Hennessy’s place to make that decision for others. Many countries have tried mandatory voting over the years, most notably the Soviet Union.
The second thing wrong with mandatory voting is that it violates freedom of speech. Mr. Hennessy is aware that compelled speech is just as unconstitutional as censored speech. That’s why he proposes a “none of the above” option on ballots. But some people are sending a deliberate message when they choose not to vote. Mr. Hennessy would fine them for sending that message.
The third point is that, maybe, some people shouldn’t vote. If I step into a voting booth not knowing a thing about the candidates or the issues, I am essentially choosing at random. And choosing wrong means voting against everything I stand for.
Even worse, human beings have built-in cognitive biases that affect their voting habits. Economist Bryan Caplan’s book The Myth of the Rational Voter identifies anti-foreign bias, anti-market bias, make-work bias, and pessimistic bias, for starters.
Even relatively informed voters fall prey to these biases. They vote accordingly. The difference of opinion between economists and the general public on economic issues is startling. Nobody argues relativity with a physicist thinking they’ll win. But voters from both parties argue against the laws of economics every election, often in error but never in doubt.
Despite its flaws, democracy has worked tolerably well in this country for a long time. Perhaps the best part of our particular democracy is that people are free to choose their level of engagement with it. That should be your choice. Not Tom Hennessy’s.
(Full disclosure: CEI takes no stance on whether to vote, or for whom. Neither do I. I personally have not voted since 2002, but seriously consider it every year.)
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Posted in Economics, Elections, Political Animals, Public Choice, Regulation of the Day
Tagged bryan caplan, co, colorado, compelled speech, Elections, first amendment, Free Speech, freedom of speech, hennessy, mandatory voting, not voting, politics, regulation, Regulation of the Day, ridgway, tom hennessy, voting
Tax Freedom Day was April 9. But when you factor in the cost of regulation (on which more here), it turns out we work nearly half the year just to pay for government. Wayne Crews and I give the details, as well as some ideas for regulatory reform, over at Fox Forum. The three we give are:
-Disclosure. Each year’s federal budget, or the annual “Economic Report of the President,” should include in-depth chapters exploring the regulatory state, along the lines of Ten Thousand Commandments. The more the public and policymakers know about regulatory costs, the more likely they are to do something about them.
-Eliminate obsolete rules. Congress should task the Office of Management and Budget with identifying rules to eliminate each year. Congress should also implement its own bipartisan packages of cuts to be voted on, up or down, without amendment. Mandatory 5-year sunsets for all new rules would also help. Congress can reauthorize useful rules, while obsolete or harmful ones would automatically expire.
-Most important of all, Congress needs to reassume its lawmaking responsibilities. It passed 125 bills last year—but federal agencies passed 3,503 final rules. This “regulation without representation” should end. There is too little accountability when it comes to regulation.
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Posted in Economics, Publications, regulation
Tagged 10kc, cost of government day, fox, fox forum, fox news, reform, regulation, regulatory reform, tax freedom day, ten thousand commandments
Inertia Wins! 