34 Replies to “The ‘C’ Word”

  4. Anyone who is still trying to be productive at this late stage in the game, DESERVES the harassment and destruction of their lives.
    Wake up, and QUIT.

  5. It has far more to do with empire building than any concern for public safety. Every new regulation requires enforcement and oversight, providing job (?) security for the drones that regulate the pecking order for those beneath them. The top drones require middle management drones, requiring lower management drones, requiring foremen, requiring just enough working drones (yes, still drones as they serve no purpose) to keep the inverted pyramid from collapsing under its own weight. Look at any industry and find the burden of regulation compliance as a major factor in hindering growth of that industry. What started with good intentions and noble goals has turned into a dead weight that thrives on destroying economic initiative.
    “There has been political controversy[who?] over whether environmental regulations generally increase or decrease national employment.[47][48][49][50]
    The “LT2” Drinking Water Controversy[edit]
    A recent amendment to the Safe Drinking Water Act, known as “LT2”,[51] mandates costly treatment or burial for open reservoirs. This regulation has come under fire, with allegations that it is the unnecessary and wasteful[52] product of lobbying from corporate interests who stand benefit from ensuing public works contracts.[53]
    Fiscal Mismanagement[edit]
    EPA director Anne M. Gorsuch resigned under fire in 1983 during a scandal over mismanagement of a $1.6 billion program to clean up hazardous waste dumps. Gorsuch based her administration of the EPA on the New Federalism approach of downsizing federal agencies by delegating their functions and services to the individual states.[54] She believed that the EPA was over-regulating business and that the agency was too large and not cost-effective. During her 22 months as agency head, she cut the budget of the EPA by 22%, reduced the number of cases filed against polluters, relaxed Clean Air Act regulations, and facilitated the spraying of restricted-use pesticides. She cut the total number of agency employees, and hired staff from the industries they were supposed to be regulating.[55] Environmentalists contended that her policies were designed to placate polluters, and accused her of trying to dismantle the Agency.[56]
    In 1982 Congress charged that the EPA had mishandled the $1.6 billion toxic waste Superfund and demanded records from Gorsuch. Gorsuch refused and became the first agency director in U.S. history to be cited for contempt of Congress. The EPA turned the documents over to Congress several months later, after the White House abandoned its court claim that the documents could not be subpoened by Congress because they were covered by executive privilege. At that point, Gorsuch resigned her post, citing pressures caused by the media and the congressional investigation.[57] Critics charged that the EPA was in a shambles at that time.[58]
    Fuel economy[edit]
    In July 2005, an EPA report showing that auto companies were using loopholes to produce less fuel-efficient cars was delayed. The report was supposed to be released the day before a controversial energy bill was passed and would have provided backup for those opposed to it, but at the last minute the EPA delayed its release.[59]
    The state of California sued the EPA for its refusal to allow California and 16 other states to raise fuel economy standards for new cars.[60] EPA administrator Stephen L. Johnson claimed that the EPA was working on its own standards, but the move has been widely considered an attempt to shield the auto industry from environmental regulation by setting lower standards at the federal level, which would then preempt state laws.[61][62][63] California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, along with governors from 13 other states, stated that the EPA’s actions ignored federal law, and that existing California standards (adopted by many states in addition to California) were almost twice as effective as the proposed federal standards.[64] It was reported that Stephen Johnson ignored his own staff in making this decision.[65]
    After the federal government bailed out General Motors and Chrysler in the Automotive industry crisis of 2008–2010, the 2010 Chevrolet Equinox was released with EPA fuel economy rating abnormally higher than its competitors. Independent road tests[66][67][68][69] found that both vehicle did not out-perform its competitors, which had much lower fuel economy ratings. Later road tests[70][71] found better, but inconclusive, results. Palm-based biodiesel and renewable diesel failed to meet the minimum 20% greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions savings threshold requirement to qualify as renewable fuels under the US Renewable Fuel Standard 2.[72] Palm oil plantations threaten the habitats of the endangered orang-utan and dwarf elephant.[73]
    Global warming[edit]
    Wikinews has related news: EPA proposes using Clean Air Act to fight global warming
    In June 2005, a memo revealed that Philip Cooney, former chief of staff for the White House Council on Environmental Quality, and former lobbyist for the American Petroleum Institute, had personally edited documents, summarizing government research on climate change, before their release.[74] Cooney resigned two days after the memo was published in The New York Times. Cooney said he had been planning to resign for over two years, implying the timing of his resignation was just a coincidence. Specifically, he said he had planned to resign to “spend time with his family.”[75] One week after resigning he took a job at Exxon Mobil in their public affairs department.[76]
    In December 2007, EPA Administrator Stephen L. Johnson approved a draft of a document that declared that climate change imperiled the public welfare—a decision that would trigger the first national mandatory global-warming regulations. Associate Deputy Administrator Jason Burnett e-mailed the draft to the White House. White House aides—who had long resisted mandatory regulations as a way to address climate change—knew the gist of what Johnson’s finding would be, Burnett said. They also knew that once they opened the attachment, it would become a public record, making it controversial and difficult to rescind. So they did not open it; rather, they called Johnson and asked him to take back the draft. U.S. law clearly stated that the final decision was the EPA administrator’s, not President Bush’s. Johnson rescinded the draft; in July 2008, he issued a new version which did not state that global warming was danger to public welfare. Burnett resigned in protest.[77]
    Libraries[edit]
    In 2004, the Agency began a strategic planning exercise to develop plans for a more virtual approach to library services. The effort was curtailed in July 2005 when the Agency proposed a $2.5 million cut in its 2007 budget for libraries. Based on the proposed 2007 budget, the EPA posted a notice to the Federal Register, September 20, 2006 that EPA Headquarters Library would close its doors to walk-in patrons and visitors on October 1, 2006.[78] The EPA also closed some of its regional libraries and reduced hours in others,[79] using the same FY 2007 proposed budget numbers.
    On October 1, 2008, the Agency re-opened regional libraries in Chicago, Dallas and Kansas City and the library at its Headquarters in Washington, DC.[80]
    In June 2011, the EPA Library Network published a strategic plan[81] for fiscal years 2012-2014.
    Mercury emissions[edit]
    In March 2005, nine states (California, New York, New Jersey, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Maine, Connecticut, New Mexico and Vermont) sued the EPA. The EPA’s inspector general had determined that the EPA’s regulation of mercury emissions did not follow the Clean Air Act, and that the regulations were influenced by top political appointees.[82][83] The EPA had suppressed a study it commissioned by Harvard University which contradicted its position on mercury controls.[84] The suit alleges that the EPA’s rule allowing exemption from “maximum available control technology” was illegal, and additionally charged that the EPA’s system of pollution credit trading allows power plants to forego reducing mercury emissions.[85] Several states also began to enact their own mercury emission regulations. Illinois’s proposed rule would have reduced mercury emissions from power plants by an average of 90% by 2009.[86]
    9/11 air ratings[edit]
    Main article: EPA 9/11 pollution controversy
    An August 2003 report released by EPA’s Inspector General claimed that the White House put pressure on the EPA to delete cautionary information about the air quality in New York City around Ground Zero following the September 11, 2001 attacks.
    An Environmental Protection Agency employee checks one of the many air sampling locations set up around the World Trade Center site.
    Very fine airborne particulates[edit]
    Tiny particles, under 2.5 micrometres, are attributed to health and mortality concerns,[87] so some health advocates want the EPA to regulate it. The science may be in its infancy, although many conferences have discussed the trails of this airborne matter in the air. Foreign governments such as Australia[88] and most EU States have addressed this issue.
    The EPA first established standards in 1997, and strengthened them in 2006. As with other standards, regulation and enforcement of the PM2.5 standards is the responsibility of the state governments, through State Implementation Plans.[89]
    Political pressure and Scientific Integrity[edit]
    In April 2008, the Union of Concerned Scientists said that more than half of the nearly 1,600 EPA staff scientists who responded online to a detailed questionnaire reported they had experienced incidents of political interference in their work. The survey included chemists, toxicologists, engineers, geologists and experts in other fields of science. About 40% of the scientists reported that the interference had been more prevalent in the last five years than in previous years. The highest number of complaints came from scientists who were involved in determining the risks of cancer by chemicals used in food and other aspects of everyday life.[90]
    EPA research has also been suppressed by career managers.[91] Supervisors at EPA’s National Center for Environmental Assessment required several paragraphs to be deleted from a peer-reviewed journal article about EPA’s integrated risk information system, which led two co-authors to have their names removed from the publication, and the corresponding author, Ching-Hung Hsu, to leave EPA “because of the draconian restrictions placed on publishing”.[92] EPA subjects employees who author scientific papers to prior restraint, even if those papers are written on personal time.[93] A $3 million mapping study on sea level rise was suppressed by EPA management during both the Bush and Obama Administrations, and managers changed a key interagency report to reflect the removal of the maps.[94] EPA employees have reported difficulty in conducting and reporting the results of studies on hydraulic fracturing due to industry[95][96][97] and governmental pressure, and are concerned about the censorship of environmental reports.[95][98][99]
    Environmental justice[edit]
    The EPA has been criticized for its lack of progress towards environmental justice. Administrator Christine Todd Whitman was criticized for her changes to President Bill Clinton’s Executive Order 12898 during 2001, removing the requirements for government agencies to take the poor and minority populations into special consideration when making changes to environmental legislation, and therefore defeating the spirit of the Executive Order.[100] In a March 2004 report, the inspector general of the agency concluded that the EPA “has not developed a clear vision or a comprehensive strategic plan, and has not established values, goals, expectations, and performance measurements” for environmental justice in its daily operations. Another report in September 2006 found the agency still had failed to review the success of its programs, policies and activities towards environmental justice.[101] Studies have also found that poor and minority populations were underserved by the EPA’s Superfund program, and that this situation was worsening.[100]
    Barriers to enforcing environmental justice[edit]
    Localization Many issues of environmental justice are localized, and are therefore hard to be addressed by federal agencies such as the EPA. Without significant media attention, political interest, or ‘crisis’ status, local issues are less likely to be addressed on local or federal level. With a still developing sector of environmental justice under the EPA, small, local incidents are unlikely to be solved compared to larger, well publicized incidents.
    Conflicting political powers The White House maintains direct control over the EPA, and its enforcements are subject to the political agenda of who is in power. Republicans and Democrats differ in their approaches to, and perceived concerns of, environmental justice. While President Bill Clinton signed the executive order 12898, the Bush administration did not develop a clear plan or establish goals for integrating environmental justice into everyday practices, which in turn affected the motivation for environmental enforcement.[102]
    Responsibilities of the EPA The EPA is responsible for preventing and detecting environmental crimes, informing the public of environmental enforcement, and setting and monitoring standards of air pollution, water pollution, hazardous wastes and chemicals. While the EPA aids in preventing and identifying hazardous situations, it is hard to construct a specific mission statement given its wide range of responsibilities.[103] It is impossible to address every environmental crime adequately or efficiently if there is no specific mission statement to refer to. The EPA answers to various groups, competes for resources, and confronts a wide array of harms to the environment. All of these present challenges, including a lack of resources, its self-policing policy, and a broadly defined legislation that creates too much discretion for EPA officers.[104]
    Authority of the EPA Under different circumstances, the EPA faces many limitations to enforcing environmental justice. It does not have the authority or resources to address injustices without an increase in federal mandates requiring private industries to consider the environmental ramifications of their activities.[105]”.
    Wiki…still good for some things. EPA now has over 17000 employees and a undisclosed number of contractors. All from the government, and they’re “here to help”.

  7. Well, peterj, that was certainly a waste of Kate’s bandwidth, wasn’t it? I’m sure you could have just given us the link/links on all that verbiage.

  9. Thanks DD, unfortunately some of us are hardwired that way.maybe I could apply for medicinal marijuana, so I can be satisfied doing a real indifferent and crappy job.
    I think its time for tar and feathering a few committees, then releasing them into the wild.
    I’m thinking honey and duck feathers here, then dump em at the bear pit.
    Open carry by all productive people, total disarmament of those who live off of the work of others.
    Law stating no regulation introduced, without repeal of 3 existing regs.
    But these “Cartmans” have as much authority as you give them, we have ignored them until they have become intolerable, action is unavoidable..

  10. Every new regulation requires enforcement and oversight, providing job (?) security for the drones that regulate the pecking order for those beneath them. The top drones require middle management drones, requiring lower management drones, requiring foremen, requiring just enough working drones (yes, still drones as they serve no purpose) to keep the inverted pyramid from collapsing under its own weight.

    Managerial Apex
    We knew all this back in 1966 as this calendar page illustrates. (view at full screen)

  11. Great interview, really hard to disagree with anything he says — plain common sense.
    The business about compliance really reinforces the old adage that, “Wanting to save the world is really an excuse for wanting to control it.”

  12. After reading W.Lawrence Zilmans “Understanding Agenda21 ” also the first 15 chapters of the UN’s Agenda21 it has become clear to me that it is being increasingly implemented. Compliance of regulations that become ever more onerous is being done purposely to discourage entrepreneurs. The idea being we will just give up and let the bureaucracy run everything in our lives.
    The constant attacks on our rights to posses and use firearms, simply put is to take away a citizens ability to defend against governments when they come for your property.
    Education is being dumbed down and our children indoctrinated to accept menial government chosen jobs.
    Talk of urban sprawl and the rush to convince us to live in 5-600 square foot dwellings. Bike lanes in winter cities, ever increasing regulations and laws against the automobile and our “privilege” to own or drive one.
    There are many more chapters defining how we will be “living” in the not so distant future.

  13. I am a regulator, part of the problem is creeping fear of liability and lack of risk taking within governments and large businesses. Take your average city bylaw inspector , they are a “creature of statute” which means they must stay within the limits of the regulations they enforce, even if it does not really fit the circumstance. If they find a solution that falls outside the regs and something goes wrong they are personally liable for the result. That happened to one inspector that tried to bend the regs written for a large international commercial operators to smaller local ones. when something went wrong and people died, that inspector was hung out to dry by their department. So when you ask an inspector to do something different, understand you are asking them to take a risk with no benefit to themselves.
    Another problem is that the newer generation coming in is very process driven as opposed to results. Plus they have no knowledge or interest in the historical reasons why a regulation exist. So they can not understand why they are being asked to require X or Y, they just want you to do it. A good regulator knows the history behind what they do, a certain knowledge of the industry they regulate and imagination to meet the purpose of the regulation rather than just the letter of the law.

  15. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Environmental_Protection_Agency#Controversies
    Notice the above link takes one right to where your ‘wall of text’ started? With Wiki, you go to that blue section called Contents right under the title preamble.
    Next click on the section you want to link to, #Controversies in your case and it will take you straight to that section in the wiki entry and edit the http link in the ‘go window’ at the top of your browser.
    Try it, you’ll like it.

  16. Idd nailed it. And this will not change until there is a total reset, which will come, as history proves.

  18. You missed one very important lack.
    Work experience, in the field they are trying to regulate.
    I agree fear is a major part of the bureaucratic overreach, not fear of legal liability, fear of being recognized for the incompetents they be.

  19. I work in the airline industry and there is so much paperwork and compliance issues that it astonishes me that planes even get off the ground.

  20. …fear of being recognized for the incompetents they be.
    That’s a given, if they were competent they would be out doing something constructive.

  21. “part of the problem is creeping fear of liability and lack of risk taking within governments and large businesses.”
    We have a prime example here in Nanaimo. Being a west coast watershed with an abundance of rain, forest and mountains, our water by nature is very, very good.
    Provincial health authorities have determined standards of compliance appropriate for regions such as the Okanagan which has real water issues due to extensive agriculture and ranching runoff and applied them everywhere.
    Since our water is only 99.9% perfect, local taxpayers are footing the bill for a new $67 million treatment plant – despite our only real issue having been two ‘turbidity’ advisories which were due to extreme winter runoff.
    Cost/benefit has never been a criteria on which decision making is based.

  22. Compliance – another burden for business.
    Lifted out of a website of a provider of compliance services.
    “We can provide 100% completion for ISNetworld®, PEC/Premier, PICS, CanQual, and CanadaHSE so that you can do work for over 170 Owner/Clients.”
    The list contains the important compliance companies. Notice the reference to Owner/Clients; they are offloading compliance costs onto subcontractors and service companies.

  23. Actually we have some highly qualified and experienced people, our problem now is replacing them as government is only paying 1/2 the going wage rate and the 2 things we had to offer are going away or under threat, pension and stability. So you may get your wish…..
    Don’t let your hate blind you, government is made up of people and suffers the same issues as any group. I know someone that is working on contract for a large corporation and found then far more bureaucratic than doing contracts for us. Now that is scary!
    I spend more time on process and internal stuff than I ever did. By the way the CPC message control thing is out of control and we spend a huge fortune getting things approved at very high levels (Assistant Deputy Minister) which previously would never had gone past the local senior manager. this all feeds the fear of doing something different or saying the wrong thing in public.
    As much as you hate regulations, you get in your car and drive over a bridge without worrying about it, because a whole whack of people did worry about and followed regulations and guidelines to make it safe. When people forget why the regulation is there or there is no way to appeal it, then you have a problem.

  24. Sorry if you perceive fair comment as hate there Colin.
    If you have been paying attention to the infrastructure in Quebec, bridges may not be the best example.
    I know government, I did some time in the bureaus.
    Internal process and groupthink is the norm, you and your colleges may believe the taxpayer needs your help, in fact your sanity and self worth require this belief.
    However you do not take on any real liability for any constructs, that responsibility is born by the contractors and their engineers.
    And in far too many areas of regulation,the regulators are specifically exempted of any fiscal responsibility.
    The end result is Canada as we know it, regulated to a standstill, by people with no interest in producing anything of value at all.
    What difference this bureaucratic control from kleptocracy?
    You are stealing the return on my labour for my good?
    Highly qualified and experienced, thats good, however you may notice this is the minority position if you got out of your office more.
    Sim City comes closer to the level of competence in regulators in my area.

  25. I had the misfortune to work for the feds under Trudeau (may he burn in hell forever) and Mulroney (ditto).
    I had to show initiative/originality in routine regulation, you’ve no idea the level of bureaucratic constipation that prevails dedicated to obstruction, obfuscation, and preventing anything being done, without written instructions by cover-their-ass supervisors and managers (may they burn in hell forever). Provincial governments are worse, but not as bad as universities.

  26. Here’s the problem with regulations.
    In 2001, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled in Cooper v. Hobart that regulators cannot be held responsible if they don’t do their jobs properly, whether through laziness, incompetence or malfeasance.
    In 2008, it ruled in St. Lawrence Cement that a company can be held responsible for its actions even if it conforms to regulations.
    The combined effect of these judgments is that regulations are unnecessary and worthless. Which means we might as well fire a whole lot of regulators.
    Given this, if I drive over a bridge without worrying about it, it sure ain’t because people were intimidated into following regulations, it’s because engineers were trained to build it properly and they had enough pride in their abilities and their work to do it right.
    It is worth pointing out that with a lower regulatory burden some things will be decided by judges rather than by legislators, which some conservatives are not happy with. But that’s the reality.

  27. Colin, brave of you to visit a site that isn’t particularly friendly to statist regulation. I agree with you that if someone has a knowledge of the intent of a regulation then they are much more able to determine whether a particular action is appropriate than someone who simply knows what a particular regulation is.
    Unfortunately, those who know the intent of regulations are a small minority of those who apply the regulations. The net effect of unchecked regulation, as I’ve stated before, is isomorphic to the buildup of plaque in human arteries. This, over time, ends up killing the organism.
    A great example of over-regulation currently exists in the “drug shortages” that exist in Canada at present. Due to the overly onerous regulator environment, a single drug company now produces all intravenous drugs currently in use in Canada. The regulations that a pharmaceutical company must follow to produce an approved intravenous drug solution are extreme.
    The intent of such regulation is to assure the purchaser of an intravenous drug solution that the product they purchase contains the specified concentration of the drug, is pyrogen free, is sterile and safe for human injection. The burden of compliance with the current regulations means that hospital pharmacies no longer produce their own injectable drugs and thus physicians are simply told to not use a particular injectable drug.
    Curiously, opiate addicts have absolutely no difficulty in taking a tablet of hydromorphone and creating an injectable form of a drug which is currently in critically short supply. Also, individuals in Vancouver are currently allowed to create IV solutions of various drugs and self-inject them in a “safe injection site” when none of the iv solutions they produce meet minimal standards of purity, sterility, foreign matter limits and pyrogen absence. In a logical regulatory environment one would have the option of telling a hospital patient that they could either get an injection of IV morphine which they don’t like because it makes them very drowsy, or a solution of hydromorphone prepared in the hospital pharmacy which doesn’t meet the regulatory requirements but is far safer than if they just crushed up a hydromorphone tablet themselves and injected it as is allowed in a “safe injection site”.
    This regulatory paralysis of society is a very bad thing and the only option I have at this point is to simply point out the regulatory absurdities that individuals are utilizing. Being a physician, and practicing in an area that is very short of physicians, I have much more latitude to deliberately ignore what I consider to be asinine regulations. It would be far more appropriate to hold people responsible for their actions rather than excusing poor outcomes because the individuals involved slavishly followed all of the appropriate regulations, even if this was the wrong thing to do. People who are much more easily replaceable as I am are terrified of doing the right thing and instead do what is absolutely stupid to do in a particular situation but it is the “right” thing to do according to statist regulations.

  28. Now that’s really bizarre, a comment I made on the asinine nature of regulation gets caught in the spam filter.

  29. …our problem now is replacing them as government is only paying 1/2 the going wage rate…
    Excellent, starve the parasites out. Let’s see how ‘qualified’ they are to do a real job. That’s the real measure of being qualified.

  30. Except that the regulations will continue to exist and you will have a few overworked Inspectors and serious backlogs. Since the inspections are international requirements, the cost to the operators for delays waiting for a an inspector become significant.
    Yes you can get rid of regulations, but you will be surprised at how many holy cows there are out there and I bet you have several without realizing it. Everyone wants the regs removed for themselves, but by darn you better regulate that guy down the street is the common attitude. In fact I get calls from people upset about a reg applying to them, they launch into a standard tirade against to many regs and then finish it off by demanding we do something about X group because the complainer don’t like what they are doing. Throw in politicians who have to be seen to be doing something to get elected every 5 or so years and you have the perfect storm.

  31. First Merry Christmas all, Colin, I applaud your courage.
    We are awash in laws and regulations that exist but are not enforced as it suits the political agenda of the day.
    Currently rule of law is nearly extinct in Canada.
    Selective enforcement is selective theft.
    The grasping for personal advantage, you describe to Stradivarious, is human nature, remove the phoney authority, that ends the appeals to it.
    What Loki describes is the ongoing assault on reason and production , by use of endless rules.
    When every citizen who works, is seen first as a criminal,code violater, by the minions of our government, the system crashes.
    Our current mess, can be summed up as the difference between a guide and a dictator.
    What is regulated as a guide to safe and secure installations, morphs into absolute rules, as written.
    Bureaus always tend to the dictatorial.
    What the rules read,trumps what are we trying to do.?
    Are taxpayers better off?
    After all the theatre of govt rules and regulation, what is the result?
    Buyer Beware still rules.
    After all the interference from officialdom, the home owner is left with the costs to make right work imposed/approved by bureaucrats.
    Remember those wonderful Condo- roofs in BC?
    Absolute power, no responsibility. Unless you step on a person with “status”.(Political friends)

  32. Except that the regulations will continue to exist and you will have a few overworked Inspectors and serious backlogs.
    Privatize. Many businesses are already certified to do their own inspections in many areas.

  33. You state:
    you will be surprised at how many holy cows there are out there
    Not for Libertarians. Far better to have contractual obligations between individuals than create one size fits all regulations whenever someone complains about an adverse event. One example is a BC law which now requires an individual to pay first before putting gasoline in their vehicle. This law was a knee jerk reaction to a thief in a stolen vehicle dragging the garage attendant to death who ran out to try to prevent a vehicle theft. Instead of doing the logical thing of dragging the criminal behind a vehicle on a gravel road until there was just a chain left dangling, the BC government imposed a collective punishment on all individuals in BC. Instead of just filling up my gas tank and going in to pay, I now have to estimate how much gasoline my jeep requires, wait in line to pay and, if I over-estimate how much gasoline was required I have to go into the service station again, wait in line again and get a refund for the unpumped gasoline and a new receipt. When one multiplies the 1-2 minutes this takes out of individuals lives every time that one fills up ones gas tank, the theft of time by this regulation if enormous. What regulations assume is that the value of an individuals time is zero.
    It’s time to have a major barbacue of sacred cows. Not only will this reduce the ever increasing burden on individuals who are completely unaware that they are afoul of new regulations until they are charged with a regulatory crime, but it would reduce the workload of regulators. Given the stupidity of regulations, it appears that the average individual is viewed as a high grade moron who, unless restrained by regulation, would normally eat rare earth magnets, operate his toaster in the bathtub and perform every possible stupid action conceivable. It’s time to re-introduce the concept of personal responsibility into society. When an individual does something stupid, they’re at fault, not the manufacturer of an item. If a person does something spectacularly stupid they should be given a Darwin award, not have a new regulation passed to deal with an extremely rare event.
    Regulations are completely unscientific in that they are passed without doing a controlled experiment first. Normally one would have a placebo control group which operates without the regulation in place and a treatment group. If there is a statistically significant difference between outcomes in the treatment group compared to the placebo group, then one has evidence for the regulation. What generally happens is that the individual supporting a particular regulation is extremely myopic and almost never considers unintended consequences. For example, BC hospitals are now mandated to use “safety” syringes which, in my hands, lead to a far higher potential risk of a needle stick injury. I’m used to a nice, unencumbered syringe without a useless piece of plastic attached (normally I break this off immediately) and I’ve recapped about 20,000 needles in sequence without a single needle stick injury. Also, one can no longer take a needle for a syringe and easily rotate it to penetrate a nail when one is treating a sub-ungal hematoma. The idea is to have control of the sharp point so one just drills through the nail and not into the nailbed. Much harder to do smoothly with the new “safety” syringes.
    The above is just a very tiny fraction of the fallout from regulations which have been passed without detailed consideration of global consequences. As I’ve stated before, what is needed is another branch of government whose only purpose is to repeal laws and regulations. Every functional biologic system tears down structures as much as it builds them; the only biologic structure not working under this paradigm is a cancerous growth — the best example of unchecked regulation in a society.

  34. Great comment Loki, merry Christmas, I think you just found a use for the Senate.
    Law, regulation repeal.
    There is a reform of the senate I could support, as long as the current inmates are released into the wild.
    Appointment from the jury pool? No govt employees allowed.

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