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Getting Rid Of Old Regulations

13 Comments

…is much too hard.

Since people in DC seem so big on “comprehensive solutions,” I propose a much broader effort than simply repealing ObamaCare. It should be called the “Liberty Restoration Act,” and should be festooned like a Christmas tree with a rollback of much of the federal code (e.g., the idiotic incandescent bulb ban, and toilet specs, and ethanol requirements).

13 thoughts on “Getting Rid Of Old Regulations”

  1. I don’t know if one can be so glib about purging the system of regulation, much as the apologists for the PPACA are still being glib about the massive application of regulations and redoing of existing regulations inherent in that project. Regulations, whether existing ones or completely new ones, are a “system” that one modifies with caution.

    I guess Mr. Obama and his close advisors never read “The Mythical Man Month.” I recently came across this: http://andstillipersist.com/2013/09/obamacare-and-the-thermocline-of-truth/.

    There are two problems. One is that Healthcare.gov is a massive software project, for whom the people advancing this as the centerpiece of health care reform, to make it easy to shop for mandated health insurance. The second is that the PPACA itself, the 1000 pages of law — I guess “the interfaces and header files” along with the tens of thousands of pages of regulations, the actual code, is an immense piece of software, subject to all of the problems of large software.

    Jim glibly dismisses the failure, and I guess people are finally coming around to admitting as much, of Healthcare.gov as being two out of the three Federal software projects that fail, so this is no big deal? Mr. Obama’s apologists and advisors are still talking about when “this all gets straightened out and we put the early glitches behind us” how popular the PPACA will be.

    As to the glib talk about the Website troubles being a near-term thing and how the Website is just the “eye candy”, just the “user interface” (user interfaces are the “easy” part?), the Web site troubles are in large measure to do with the complexity and difficulty of the entire law.

    The liberal knock on conservatives/Republicans/Libertarians/TEA party people is that liberals want to create and to solve problems whereas the “others” only want to repeal, obstruct, and push Grandma off the cliff in her wheelchair. So the “creating” and “wanting to solve problems” is well intentioned as well as sought after, so we have to salute this creative process when it is arrogant, harmful, and naive with respect to human nature?

    There is no humility after hubris?. Even Oedipus had his regrets, but for some people . . .

  3. Restore liberty? Do you want Godzilla, Baghdad Jim and the rest of the Eloi who post here to come down with severe depression and maybe kill themselves?

  4. Did y’all catch Obama’s press conference the other day where he blamed federal procurement regulations for healthcare.gov failures? He mentions it about 45 seconds in, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gQ8E0_p7Y2Q

    Granted he is blaming “the system” instead of the people in charge of the system but it shows that he finally understands the effects that over-regulation can have. It would have been nice if he noticed a couple years ago at the beginning of the process instead of after the roll out of his signature policy achievement. But is this really a revelation for Obama considering his administration regularly uses regulations as a weapon against industries and people that he doesn’t like?

    Given that Obama had unlimited time, money, and manpower to either comply, change, or suspend regulations, this is clearly a blame shifting excuse but in doing so he proves his detractors have good points about burdensome regulations in other areas. Will Democrats and their media recognize this? (We all know the answer)

    It will play out something like this, http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/10/20/1249082/-It-s-Not-the-Obamacare-Website-It-s-the-Government-Contractor-Stupid

  5. A constitutional ammendment creating two types of federal code. The first type is as it is now, but can only be added to by a 2/3 majority in both chambers of congress. The 2nd type may be added to using a simple majority but every change has a 5 year sunset clause.

  6. I like the simpler amendment that has been going around in pass-around emails for some years now. Congress shall enact no laws to which they are exempt.

    And another one I heard somewhere once – for every law passed, one other law must be repealed.

    1. That’s not an unuseful amendment, Kathy, but it’s really an entirely separate subject. Even if members of Congress had to live under all regulations, it wouldn’t necessarily affect their lives that much.

      1. It also attacks the symptom rather than the problem, and would not even do that. There is already a widespread problem of laws not having the same effect on members of the new aristocracy, regardless of what the letter of the law says. Too many bureaucrats have too much power and too much discretion in how to use that power. The result being that the nature of that discretion has as much impact on society as the letter or spirit of our laws.

  7. There are half a dozen countries without much regulation.

    1) China.

    2) Hong Kong Autonomous Zone.

    3) Somalia.

    4) Dubai.

    Have you considered moving there?

    If the regulations are making you crazy. The European settlers came to North America
    seeking freedom, there is nothing wrong with going somewhere freer.

    1. Are you daft? China has all kinds of regulations. So do the other countries you mentioned, even Somalia.

      When you parrot a common left wing attack it helps to pick examples specifically related to the type of regulations you are arguing about and not throw out blanket statements.

      If I were you, I would steer away from these canned lines because you don’t understand how they work or how to modify them for different arguments. This isn’t the first time you have failed at this.

  8. Maybe modify the old Icelandic method where each department head has to memorize and recite the regulations and anything they can’t remember ceases to be a regulation.

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