The Fourth Branch

By Rich Kozlovich

Paradigms are defined in following manner.

A set of assumptions, concepts, values, and practices that constitutes a way of viewing reality for the community that shares them, especially in an intellectual discipline.

In short; it is how we look at the world. How we perceive reality. It is the basis of how we judge our actions and the actions of others.

Fully 25 percent of all federal regulations that have been passed involve environmental issues and EPA has only been in existence since 1970. Since that time we have a plethora of regulatory bodies at the state level to meet the minimum federal standards and in some states, like California, they go way beyond federal standards, and the Federal Registry increased from 62,000 pages to 75,000 pages in one three year period. President G.W. Bush passed more federal regulations than any president since Richard Nixon; and Nixon created, among other things, the EPA and OSHA.

Now we have a host of federal and state agencies, along with researchers and their universities imposing their views on society without regard to the impact of their actions. Yet we have to ask; what terrible thing happened to impose these kinds of costs and to give state and federal bureaucrats the authority to overturn the protections under the fourth amendment against unlawful search and seizure and self-incrimination under the fifth amendment of the U.S. Constitution?

I did the research and found that this was fought up to the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) and it was decided that in these cases state and federal bureaucrats, and their regulations, usurp the protections “guaranteed” by the Constitution. What regulation passed by any regulator to make society safer was not already covered under criminal and civil penalties of state or federal law?

Why is it when you ask everyone if they think it is okay that they say, for the most part; yes it is necessary. Environmental paradigms have become everything! It started with Rachel Carson when she wrote Silent Spring in 1962. Her book, which was lauded and continues to be lauded, launched the modern environmental movement. Yet, almost everything she touted in her book was conjecture, prediction or lies.

Her book was never peer reviewed because it didn’t start out as a published book. I started out as excerpted installments in New Yorker magazine. That presentation was so popular the book followed, and when you read her work you can understand why.  She was a magnificent writer. I have been re-reading Silent Spring and I am now amazed at how poor her science was, in spite of the fact that her acolytes praise her as a scientist unendingly.

Her work was not science because it hadn’t been peer reviewed before publication. When it was, after the fact, it was discovered that everything she predicted failed to come true and in at least one case she knowingly and deliberately misrepresented the facts. Her book is full of anecdotal evidence (stories), which may or may not have been true, but there was no way to check it because she didn’t footnote source information for these stories. That isn’t science! She became the Mother Superior of the green movement, but in reality she was the mother of junk science.

Ultimately, this book was the justification for the formation of EPA by Richard Nixon, with the primary purpose of eliminating DDT. Everything you know about DDT is a lie. Yet the regulations and impositions continue! Now we have Non-Governmental Organizations (NGO’s) imposing their will and jumping on the “funding” bandwagon.

In 1790 the fledgling U.S. Federal government passed the Whiskey Tax. The result was that in 1792 they had armed rebellion that President George Washington had to put down with the Federal army. Who were the biggest supporters of this bill? The whiskey distillers in the large cities! Why? Because this would give them the competitive edge they needed over the backwoods farmers who made moonshine, which was easier to transport into the towns than corn was. Far more profitable too!

Apparently having all these government imposed regulators and regulatory agencies aren’t enough to satisfy large industry. We now have regulators for hire who are just like bureaucrats; they need activity to give the impression of accomplishment. And what is the only activity we can expect from a regulator? More regulations! And more regulations and taxes put the largest companies in a position that will allow them to avoid real competition.

 Just as was the case with the Whiskey Act. Large companies and corporation love regulations and taxes. That is why they support all sorts of greenie nonsense because they believe they will profit from it and believe they will still survive, even if it is in some other form. But what about the consequences to society for adopting regulations that will restrict pesticides and pesticides applications to humanities detriment? That is the problem. These people never have to pay the consequences for their actions.

In order to generate some heterodoxy, I have four questions I would like to ask.

1. What terrible event or series of terrible events took place that would justify a SCOTUS decision that would give bureaucrats and government agencies the right to ignore the rights guaranteed under the Fourth and Fifth Amendments of the U.S. Constitution against illegal search and seizure and self incrimination?
2. What civil and criminal penalties in state and federal pesticide laws administrated by state and federal agencies were not already covered under criminal and civil law?
3. Have we been lied to regarding the need for all these regulations?
4. Will there ever be enough regulations?

The United States Constitution created three branches of government consisting of the Executive, the Legislative and the Judicial branches. The result of all of these regulations is that there are now actually four branches of the United States government; now we have the Bureaucracy.  After the laws are passed these people are the ones who make the rules, they change the rules, they make all the decisions as to how the laws that are passed are to be interpreted; and without consequence. Why? They never have to answer for their actions.

They were not chosen by the people; they went to college, took a test and got hired. Most of them never have done anything except go to school and go into government, which we call “public service”!

How is it that those who create jobs, meet the payrolls and create the economy that we all enjoy aren’t considered public servants, but those who do nothing except undermine those who do are?

Why in the world would we think these people could possibly have any special insights as to how the economy or anything else should work? I find it interesting that in 1900 “government spending at all levels (local, state, and federal) represented 7.5 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Out of that amount 66 percent occurred at the local and state levels. Local government spent 55 percent, state government spent 11 percent, and the federal government spent the remaining 34 percent.”

Did it occur to anyone to ask; do we really need all these rules and regulations? Did it occur to anyone to ask; what would happen if these bureaucracies were eliminated and these people were fired?

 Comments will not be accepted that are rude, crude, stupid or smarmy. Nor will I allow ad hominem attacks or comments from anyone who is "Anonymous”, even if they are positive!

The 2019 Unconstitutionality Index: 12 Federal Agency Rules for Every Law Congress Passes

Clyde Wayne Crews • December 31, 2018

Even in an administration attempting to cut regulation, the number of rules from hundreds of federal agencies (nobody really knows exactly how many) will vastly outstrip the number of laws that Congress passes. That represents the triumph of the Administrative State over the Constitution, and this it even holds under President Trump.

The year 2018 and the 115th Congress have drawn to a close, so let’s look at Trump’s second calendar year.

The 116th Congress gets underway The 116th Congress gets underway January 3, 2019, in the wake of the Trump administration’s touting notable regulatory rollback achievements in a 2018 Regulatory Reform Status Report on the adminstration’s “one-in, two-out” goals for regulation. It’s available on the Unified Agenda web page, although it must be said that it becomes harder over time, for a president acting alone, to streamline anything. ..............As 2018 wound down, the Federal Register ended at 68,082 pages. Within those pages, agencies issued a total of 3,367 rules..........To Read More....

The World’s Most Depressing Tweet

December 7, 2018 by Dan Mitchell @ International Liberty

I periodically will make use of “most depressing” in the title of a column when sharing bad news.

 

And new data from the Census Bureau definitely qualifies as bad news. It confirms what I’ve written about how the Washington region has become the richest part of America.

 

But the D.C. area didn’t become wealthy by producing value. Instead, it’s rolling in money because of overpaid bureaucrats, fat-cat lobbyists, sleazy politicians, beltway-bandit contractors, and other grifters who have figured out how to hitch a ride on the federal gravy train.

 

Anyhow, here’s a tweet with the bad news (at least if you’re a serf elsewhere in America who is paying taxes to keep Washington fat and happy).

Most of my friends who work for the federal government privately will admit that they are very fortunate.

 

But when I run into someone who denies that bureaucrats get above-market compensation, I simply share this data from the Labor Department. That usually shuts them up.

 

By the way, there’s strong evidence from the European Central Bank that overpaid bureaucrats have a negative impact on macroeconomic performance.

 

And the World Bank has produced a study showing how bureaucrats manipulate the political process.

…public sector workers are not just simply implementers of policies designed by the politicians in charge of supervising them — so called agents and principals, respectively. Public sector workers can have the power to influence whether politicians are elected, thereby influencing whether policies to improve service delivery are adopted and how they are implemented, if at all. This has implications for the quality of public services: if the main purpose of the relationship between politicians and public servants is not to deliver quality public services, but rather to share rents accruing from public office, then service delivery outcomes are likely to be poor.

Here’s my video explaining how bureaucrats are overpaid. It was filmed in 2010, so many of the numbers are now out-dated, but the arguments are just as strong today as they were back then.

 

 

But keep in mind that the bureaucracy is only one piece of the puzzle.

 

The D.C. metropolitan region is unjustly rich because of everyone else who has figured out how to divert taxpayer money into their pockets. That includes disgusting examples of Democrat sleaze and Republican sleaze.

 

Simply stated, Washington is riddled with rampant corruption as insiders get rich at our expense. No wonder many of them object to my license plate!

 

P.S. Here’s some data comparing the size and cost of bureaucracy in various nations.

Bureaucrats Behaving Badly

February 18, 2018 by Dan Mitchell @ International Liberty
 

Time for a confession.

I routinely mock bureaucrats, but I don’t really think they are any worse than other people. Indeed, I have plenty of friends and acquaintances who work for various levels of government and they are fundamentally decent people.

The real problem is that bureaucracies create bad incentives. So even people who are generally good will be tempted to exploit rules that reward bad behavior.

And some of these folks, operating in systems with bad incentives, will morph into bad people. Heck, some of them are so awful that I elect them to the Bureaucrat Hall of Fame.

But it’s also important to recognize other bureaucrats – as well as the perverse rules that encourage their bad actions.

Let’s start with a cop in New Jersey who went above and beyond the call of duty, at least if the call of duty involves ripping off taxpayers.

…former Police Chief Philip Zacche…could spend the first decade of his retirement in federal prison after he admitted to stealing $31,713 from an agency that serves the city’s neediest families. Federal prosecutors said Friday that Zacche filled out phony time sheets to get paid for security work that he never performed for the Jersey City Housing Authority. …As a member of the department’s brass, Zacche pulled a six-figure salary before overtime. He earned even more by working an off-duty part-time gig as a security officer for the Authority’s Marion Gardens housing development. When he retired in June, city taxpayers had to cut Zacche a check for $512,620 to compensate him for 450 unused comp and vacation days. The 61-year-old Manalapan resident is now set to collect a pension of at least $11,946 every month for the rest of his life.

That’s a pension of more than $140,000 per year. And he gets it well before age 65. No wonder New Jersey is a fiscal mess.

Let’s also highlight a senior federal bureaucrat who specialized in exploiting immigrants to steal money.

A chief counsel at US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has admitted stealing immigrants’ identities to defraud banks. Raphael Sanchez, 44, forged identity documents on his government computer to open bank accounts and credit cards in the names of seven immigrants. He racked up more than $190,000 (£135,000) in personal loans, transferred funds and card-spending during the four-year scam. …He claimed three were dependent relatives on his tax returns for 2014 to 2016. …He resigned from his role at the ICE’s Office of the Principal Legal Advisor after his crimes came to light.

I’m almost impressed by this guy’s depravity. Not only did he steal identities, but he even listed some of the victims as dependents on his tax return. That’s real chutzpah!

And notice that theft and fraud apparently are not enough to get a bureaucrat fired. Instead, he resigned.

And since we’re on the topic of bureaucrats doing bad things and not getting fired, we may as well note that the guy who sent the false alert in Hawaii is still getting checks from the taxpayers he terrified.

The worker who sent a false missile alert to Hawaiian residents on Saturday has reportedly been reassigned. The civil defence employee has been moved to another role, but not fired, according to multiplemedia reports. In a press conference on Saturday, the head of Hawaii’s Emergency Management Agency, Vern Miyagi, said the worker “feels terrible.” …The Post also confirmed that there are no plans to fire the employee.

Here’s a fourth example, dealing with a former Obama appointee who was unmasked for screwing taxpayers.

Vikrum Aiyer liked to commute to his government job by taxi. On at least 130 occasions over two years — the majority during a four-month stretch in 2016 — the then-chief of staff for the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office called a taxi to pick him up near his home in the District. He was chauffeured across the Potomac River 10 miles or so to the agency’s headquarters in downtown Alexandria. And then…Aiyer billed the government for each ride. To escape notice, Aiyer impersonated current and former high-level agency officials, writing their names on cab receipts and vouchers he submitted to the taxi company, which then billed the government, investigators found. …Aiyer…released a statement saying he had a “misunderstanding of agency taxi rules.”

Hmmm…, I think I’ll go to the grocery store later today and slip a couple of steaks into my jacket. If I get caught leaving the store, I’ll say I had a “misunderstanding of store rules.”
The good news, at least if we’re grading on a curve, is that it only took about two years for the government to realize what was happening.

Aiyer’s unauthorized rides apparently went unnoticed for at least two years by budget officials who reviewed the invoices from Alexandria Yellow Cab, which has a contract to provide authorized taxi services for agency officials. The patent office paid the taxi company more than $4,000 for Aiyer’s rides, the report says. …For most of the cab rides, Aiyer was picked up on a street corner a tenth of a mile from his home, according to the report. But he wrote on the invoice that he was leaving from Commerce Department headquarters in downtown Washington. …investigators found…that he “used the Agency’s Cab Company account to facilitate his weekend social activity… Aiyer also racked up $15,000 in expenses on his government-issued credit card, charging for food and drink at local bars, clubs, coffee shops, restaurants, grocery stores, dry cleaners and at least one liquor store, the report said. …The report says he also misstated his educational credentials on résumés he submitted to the Obama administration, claiming to have a postgraduate degree that he did not receive.

By the way, the article mentioned that Aiyer was a technology adviser for the White House. Did he advise on how to lie on your resume and how to get taxpayers to finance one’s social life?
A common problem in most of these stories is that politicians and bureaucrats conspire together to create rules that enable bad behavior.
Government employee unions, for instance, give lots of money to politicians and then sit down with those lawmakers to “negotiate” pay and benefit packages.

Needless to say, the interests of taxpayers don’t get represented. And that’s why many state and local governments are careening toward bankruptcy.

What’s especially discouraging is how these deals often include loopholes that are designed to be exploited.

For instance, the Los Angeles Times has a very depressing exposé showing how senior bureaucrats in the police and fire departments benefited from a scam allowing them to double dip. But not just double dip. They get extra compensation and oftentimes then don’t do any work.

When Capt. Tia Morris turned 50, after about three decades in the Los Angeles Police Department, she became eligible to retire with nearly 90% of her salary. But like many cops and firefighters in her position, the decision to keep working was a financial no-brainer, thanks to a program that allowed her to nearly double her pay by keeping her salary while also collecting her pension. A month after Morris entered the program, her husband, a detective, joined too. Their combined income for four years in the Deferred Retirement Option Plan was just shy of $2 million, city payroll records show. But the city didn’t benefit much from the Morrises’ experience: They both filed claims for carpal tunnel syndrome and other cumulative ailments about halfway through the program. She spent nearly two years on disability and sick leave; he missed more than two years… The couple spent at least some of their paid time off recovering at their condo in Cabo San Lucas.

Yes, I’m sure they were “recovering” at their luxurious place on the beach.
Just like the other bureaucrats who exploited the system.

The Morrises are far from alone. In fact, they’re among hundreds of Los Angeles police and firefighters who have turned the DROP program — which has doled out more than $1.6 billion in extra pension payments since its inception in 2002 — into an extended leave at nearly twice the pay… Former Police Capt. Daryl Russell, who collected $1.5 million over five years in the program, missed nearly three of those years because of pain from a bad knee, carpal tunnel and multiple injuries he claimed he suffered after falling out of an office chair. …Former firefighter Thomas Futterer, an avid runner who lives in Long Beach, hurt a knee “misstepping off the fire truck,” three weeks after entering DROP, according to city records. The injury kept him off the job for almost a full year.Less than two months after the knee injury, a Tom Futterer from Long Beach crossed the finish line of a half-marathon in Portland, Ore.

Yes, you read correctly. His knee supposedly was so damaged that he couldn’t work, but he nonetheless runs long-distance races.

I’m beginning to think that firefighters in big cities are the most cossetted of all bureaucrats. I now understand the hostility in this video.

Here’s some background on the DROP scam.

The idea of allowing retirement-age public employees to collect their pensions while working and receiving paychecks originated more than three decades ago in tiny East Baton Rouge, La. …the goal was the opposite: to discourage older employees from staying so long that they limited upward mobility for younger workers. And it had a two-year time limit. Since then, versions of the program have been adopted by dozens of states, counties and cities across the country. The details vary — some have short terms to encourage early retirement, others have long terms to retain experience — but the central appeal for employees is constant: two large checks instead of one. …former Mayor Richard Riordan…said: “Oh, yeah, that was a mistake…it’s total fraud.” …in recent years, a growing number of jurisdictions have abandoned or drastically scaled back DROP programs because the math doesn’t work. …Instead of saving money, or remaining “cost-neutral,” the programs lead to ballooning pension costs and accusations that employees are simply double-dipping.

Needless to say, the taxpayers who finance all this aren’t treated nearly as well as government insiders.

When most Los Angeles taxpayers reach the standard retirement age, 65, they face a stark choice: keep working and collecting their paychecks or quit and start collecting Social Security, which replaces only a small fraction of annual wages for most people.When city firefighters or police officers reach their retirement age, 50, the choices are far better. They can keep working for a paycheck, they can retire with up to 90% of their salary in pension and city-subsidized health insurance for life, or they can enter DROP. For many, the choice is easy. …they keep working and collecting their paychecks for up to five years while their pension checks are deposited into a special account. …the city guarantees 5% interest on the money in the account. The city also adds annual cost-of-living raises to the pension checks to make sure they keep pace with inflation.

Disgusting.

Let’s close by speculating whether Trump will do anything to fix this mess, at least the part that occurs on the federal level.

Some pro-Trump readers sent me this story from the Washington Post and suggested it shows that the President is making progress.

…a year into his takeover of Washington, President Trump has made a significant down payment on his campaign pledge to shrink the federal bureaucracy… By the end of September, all Cabinet departments except Homeland Security, Veterans Affairs and Interior had fewer permanent staff than when Trump took office in January — with most shedding many hundreds of employees, according to an analysis of federal personnel data… The falloff has been driven by an exodus of civil servants, a diminished corps of political appointees and an effective hiring freeze. …Federal workers fret that their jobs could be zeroed out amid buyouts and early retirement offers that already have prompted hundreds of their colleagues to leave, according to interviews with three dozen employees across the government. Many chafed as supervisors laid down new rules they said are aimed at holding poor performers and problem workers to account. …“Morale has never been lower,” said Tony Reardon, president of the National Treasury Employees Union, which represents 150,000 federal workers at more than 30 agencies. “Government is making itself a lot less attractive as an employer.”……Agencies have told employees that they should no longer count on getting glowing reviews in their performance appraisals, according to staff in multiple offices, as has been the case for years. Housing and Urban Development managers, for example, are being evaluated for the first time on how effectively they address poor performers.

If I was planning to die in the next month, I would probably agree with readers that Trump made progress in this area.

But as I wrote last year, the only way to successfully shrink bureaucracy in the long run is to shrink government.

Yet Trump just capitulated to a budget deal that increases spending.

I’m willing to praise this President when he does good things, but his weak record on spending almost surely is going to translate into a bigger bureaucracy over time. Though I hope I’m wrong.
Here are two final additional passages from the story that deserve some attention. Starting with an honest bureaucrat.

…some civil servants said they welcome the focus on rooting out waste and holding federal workers to high standards. “Oftentimes we run on autopilot and continue to fund programs that don’t produce the results that were intended,” said Stephanie Valentine, a program analyst at the Education Department. “You can’t keep blindly spending because that’s what we’ve always done.”

And since I’ve previously contrasted Bill Clinton’s good record and Obama’s bad record, this passage is added confirmation of my findings.

Trump already has begun to reverse the growth of the Obama era, when the government added a total of 188,000 permanent employees, according to Office of Personnel Management data. …The last time federal employment dropped during a president’s first year, President Bill Clinton was in the White House.

It’s also worth noting that the bureaucracy didn’t contract during the big-government Bush years.
I’ll conclude by circling back to my original point. Most bureaucrats are no better or no worse than the rest of us. Given the perverse “public choice” incentives inherent in government, however, the good bureaucrats often are lured into bad behavior and the bad bureaucrats frequently become scam artists and crooks.

P.S. If my conclusion was too grim and pessimistic, you can cheer yourself up with another example of bureaucrat humor.

A Shocking Twist in Bundy Ranch Case, New Video Proves BLM Aggression!

By Anthony Dephue February 13, 2017

The first of three Bundy Ranch Trials is finally underway and testimony from Government witnesses has begun but already a shocking development has occurred.   A video surfaced online showing previously unseen footage from the Bundy Ranch protest in 2014. Defendants have always insisted that the Government escalated tension in the Tuquop Wash on Saturday, April 12th 2014. Leaked video shows federal agents being instructed to sling or put their long guns out of view. Instead, Special Agent in Charge Daniel P. Love deployed militarized BLM and US Park Police agents who subsequently pointed their weapons at protesters. Body cam footage records agents laughing about shooting animals and speaking as if they wanted an armed confrontation.....More Here

CEI Supports Resolution to Undo Bureau of Land Management Planning 2.0 Rule

Myron Ebell February 6, 2017 @ Competitive Enterprise Institute

The Competitive Enterprise Institute supports H.J.Res. 44, a Congressional Review Act resolution, aimed at rescinding the Department of Interior’s Bureau of Land Management (BLM) Planning 2.0 Rule. Myron Ebell, director of CEI's Center for Energy and Environment explains:

"The BLM’s land management planning process has broken down, largely as a result of endless litigation from environmental pressure groups. Nonetheless, the 2.0 Rule promises to be worse than the current dysfunctional situation. Rather than improving the process by enlarging the role of local elected officials and local people who are directly affected by BLM land management (such as grazing permittees, recreationists, and landowners adjacent to BLM land), the 2.0 Rule would actually diminish their input. Improving management of BLM lands in the West requires less centralized control and more local control, which is why the CRA vote is crucial to overturning this rule."

 

Myron Ebell has long personal knowledge of the Bureau of Land Management and the agency’s lands-use policies. His family’s ranch adjoins BLM land in eastern Oregon.    

Taking on the Mandarins

The federal bureaucracy has become dangerously corrupted by politics in a way that the civil service reforms of a century ago were meant to eliminate.

By Jonathan F. Keiler

Bureaucrats benefit complex societies and are necessary to modern industrial states, but also impose costs and perils. Modelling the United States’ civil service in part on the Chinese use of mandarins, 19th-century government reformers hoped to create a highly skilled apolitical professional bureaucracy.

That bureaucracy is now monstrous and tilted dangerously towards one political alignment over another. The American professional bureaucracy’s barely concealed hostility to the Trump administration is but the latest evidence of this. The president has an opportunity to reform the civil service, but such a hazardous undertaking must be done doggedly and deliberately.........Nearly forty years on, much of the federal bureaucracy is a clique of entrenched Democrat apparatchiks, with job protections that make it difficult if not impossible to fire.........More

Republican bills to kill federal agencies face uphill battle

By Daniel Chaitin (@danielchaitin7) • 2/20/17

Republicans want to do a bit of house cleaning in government this year by trashing a number of federal agencies, but success is far from assured and may come in the form of more limited restrictions.  So far in the 115th session of Congress, which began Jan. 3, Republican lawmakers in the House and the Senate have offered bills to do away with at least three agencies: the Education Department, Environmental Protection Agency and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

The highest profile lawmaker to introduce department-killing legislation is Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, who last week unveiled the "Repeal CFPB Act," which would get rid of the independent agency that he said, "grew in power and magnitude without any accountability to Congress and the people." CFPB was created by Title X of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Act, signed by President Barack Obama in 2010 in response to the 2008 financial crisis........To Read More.....

My Take - The fact of the matter is this going to take a big fight and unfortunately most politicians don't have the stomach - or back bone - for it.  But.....we'll see, maybe they'll remember it's not all about them and they're supposed to be fighting for what's good for the nation, not getting re-elected term after term like John McCain, who has been there too long .... and it turns out ....too often....when never would have been better.  Having once been a hero can give someone the benefit of the doubt, but it doesn't give them a pass on the rest of life. 

 

What Congress must do to rein in regulators

Federal agencies are 'fiefdoms that reign over private industries'

Stephen Moore About | Email | Archive
 

Last summer, at the first meeting of the Trump Leadership Council – an advisory group consisting of top CEOs from major companies – Donald Trump asked business leaders what their biggest problems were.   I expected the answer to be America’s anti-growth tax system.

Almost all the CEOs did list the federal tax code as an albatross, but not the heaviest one. Instead, I was surprised to learn, most found the biggest restraint on growth to be federal red tape and regulation. Across all industries – manufacturers, energy firms, financial services, agriculture interests – federal rules were seen as mindless, inefficient, costly and incomprehensible.........The excuse from Congress is that there are so many rules and regulations that the House and Senate can’t possibly approve every one of them. Well, it’s true that there are tens of thousand of these edicts. But isn’t that the crux of the problem?

A bigger problem is that agencies have become arrogant with power and desensitized to the impact of their litany of “thou shalls” and “thou shall nots.” Martha Kent of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration once put the attitude of these bureaucrats succinctly: “As long as I’m regulating, I’m happy.” She said she “absolutely loves” putting out “a reg” and that she was “born to regulate.” This sounds like someone who is clueless about private industry. .......Read more