No Downside
The great thing about regulatory failure is that bureaucrats can blame everyone else. Bureaucracy is not accountable.
The Case for a Congressional Regulation Office
The authors argue that Congress is too passive when it comes to regulation and too willing to evade responsibility by blaming those awful bureaucrats. Now, the civil service exceeds the ability of Congress to oversee it. Setting up a “Congressional Regulation Office” would permit Congress to identify and focus on criticisms of the administrative state that are valid.
“Unfortunately, this has become Congress's standard operating procedure for regulatory policy in recent years: Drop a daring and attractive-sounding mandate that may or may not be achievable or well-defined, charge the executive branch with making something sensible of it, hope the courts clean up any messes, and then rail against "out-of-control bureaucrats." For any given regulatory issue, there are plenty of reasons why iterated, incremental legislating can be difficult: inertia and distraction, tricky interest-group conflicts, or a sense that opening up a policy to change might leave it worse off than before.”
FDA and Failure to Reduce Harm
Bureaucracy delayed is benefit denied.
“Here’s where the FDA comes in. The Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act of 2009 created the FDA Center for Tobacco Products and charged them with tobacco harm reduction. Fantastic. In order for those products to get to market, the FDA must approve them. Except the FDA isn’t reviewing and authorizing new products. Since 2009, more than 26 million premarket tobacco product applications (PMTAs) have been submitted for FDA review. How many have been approved? Fewer than 50. There is a separate path for tobacco products designated as a modified risk tobacco product (MRTP). You know, harm reduction. The number of approvals here is just as poor; there are only four, with a few accessories approved for each.
“So, by law, what should take 180 days or less is taking more than three years on average to allow smokers to make less harmful choices. The FDA needs to review these applications within 180 days, as required by law, and enable consumers to have less harmful options to engage in less risky behavior and reduce the number of preventable deaths. Otherwise, consumers may continue to smoke cigarettes, as it is notoriously difficult to quit, or engage in using other risky products that the FDA has not approved.”
NYC executive branch puts up a gate for the legislative branch when they want to talk to civil servants or attend events. You know, to streamline things.
“City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams on Wednesday emailed her members instructing them to ignore a new form Mayor Eric Adams’ administration is requesting elected officials complete in order to get meetings with city officials.
“In the speaker’s late Wednesday afternoon email, reviewed by amNewYork Metro, she blasted the two-page online “Elected Officials Agency Engagement Request” form as a hindrance to quick and effective governance. In addition to meetings with commissioners and executive staff, the mayor’s office is requiring council members — as well as other elected officials in the state legislature or Congress — to complete the form if they are seeking district tours, to attend an event, taskforce meetings and several other kinds of engagements.”
If the Bayer CEO’s experiment works, then it will be a signal to every large corporation globally. Of course, there may be cultural reasons why it works or fails that are specific to Bayer. But it reminds me of this great speech.
“The idea involves slashing the corporate bureaucracy, giving employees more control, and, hopefully, as a result, allowing the company to innovate efficiently.
“Bayer CEO Bill Anderson, who has been the chief executive since June 2023, even has a fancy corporate name for his un-corporate plan: "Dynamic shared ownership."”
Ernst to Biden’s Bureaucrats: You’re Busted!
Jodi Ernst comes out against federal civil servants who don’t want to go back to the office and what she claims are growing delays in performance.
She claims that the Social Security Agency uses only 7% of its office space, currently.
In Rebuilding Baltimore’s Key Bridge, Cruz Calls for Congress to Act to Stop Bureaucratic Dithering
Ted Cruz’s opening remarks at Senate hearings for the renomination of the Chair of the NTSB included this tidbit.
““But it’s entirely reasonable to act now to fund it, but we must also minimize the bureaucratic dithering and delays that are all too prevalent with construction projects under this administration.
““Whether it’s a new semiconductor plant funded by the CHIPS Act, a cross-border bridge, or a deepwater port approval, this administration seems to only allow construction or economic activity after extreme environmentalists have given them a hall pass. There’s no reason for there to be lengthy environmental permitting reviews over whether to build a new bridge at the exact same location of the previous bridge. The bridge’s re-construction shouldn’t be delayed another day or subjected to policy riders that raise costs to satisfy favored Democrat constituencies.”
A Hopefully Realistic Take on the Future of Democracy
There are good bureaucrats. People who want to help the public navigate the rules to improve outcomes. Here’s hoping that you can end up dealing with one of these Gandalfs.
“My stories were gathered over three decades and draw on over 2,000 interviews with local bureaucrats, nonprofit directors, and other community leaders. I use their highly particular accounts of daily hassles to tell a larger story about democratic governance—what it requires, why it is so routinely difficult, but also why it often works better than we might expect. In this story, the bureaucrats we have been taught are narrow-minded rule followers often turn out to be the creative agents rescuing policy from implementation roadblocks. They don’t always succeed, but their efforts are worthy of our attention.”
MGM Grand Casino: Hacked by Criminals, Probed by the FTC
FTC investigating MGM Grand Casino for being cyber-attacked and for complying with federal government guidelines not to pay ransomware. The FTC is using the event as an opportunity to redefine casinos as financial-services companies, in contradiction to Nevada state law.
“The FTC’s 14-page Civil Investigative Demand seeks “all Documents related to the [data security] incident” and requests a detailed description of the event and all steps the company has taken over a period of years to protect the security of its electronic data. The company is expected to carry this burden even as it assists the FBI and other law-enforcement agencies in their investigation. The FTC also used the occasion for a bit of jurisdictional pioneering, seeking an unprecedented extension to casinos of the elaborate rules that apply to financial-services companies. This is being done on the theory that the resort makes loans to certain gamblers when it honors “markers.” But Nevada law treats these instruments as the equivalent of personal checks.”
Minneapolis Council Delays Uber, Lyft Driver Pay Hike as Rideshare Apps Prepare to Abandon City
Four small rideshare companies have applied to do business in the city. They need more time to complete the licensing process. Uber and Lyft provided 400,000 rides per month in the city. Let’s see if the upstarts are up to snuff and if they can survive with the city-mandated driver pay rates.
“Facing the prospect of Uber and Lyft abandoning their city in a few weeks, Minneapolis’s city council voted unanimously on Thursday to push back the implementation of a new rideshare pay policy by two months.
“But the far-left council rejected a proposal to rescind the controversial ordinance that has led to concerns among many residents who rely on the rideshare giants to get to their jobs and medical appointments. And the council refused to lower mandated driver pay rates to a level that a state study found would ensure drivers earn at least minimum wage.”
If Trump wins, he plans to free Wall Street from 'burdensome regulations'
Could the pendulum swing back after the explosion of financial services regulation since the Global Financial Crisis?
“In the wake of the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, Congress dramatically expanded the U.S. government's oversight of the financial industry to prevent a repeat of the 2008 global banking meltdown.
“Donald Trump would likely renew his efforts to scale back those reforms, if elected, as well as pare protections for small-scale investors and borrowers, and allow companies to raise money with less scrutiny, according to the interviews and proposals from groups positioned to influence a new conservative administration. Reuters spoke with, among others, about a dozen people who have provided advice or been consulted by Trump or his allies.”
Bureaucracy favors the large. And that means cracking down on small, independent businesses.
“The Labor Department just imposed 300 pages of new regulations to reclassify many individual contractors as payroll employees.
“CNBC claims this could help freelancers “recover lost wages.”
“That’s just nonsense.
“The new rules will make it harder for some freelancers to support a family. My new video shows how it will also make it harder for them to do what they want to do.
“I know this because I saw what happened in California.”
More US regulators join Morgan Stanley wealth management probe
There are two interesting things at play here. First, it’s a regulatory pile-on with three agencies. Second, where were the regulators when Morgan Stanley was ramping up its business to $5 trillion in assets-under-management? Didn’t they periodically audit the business? What changed?
“Three more US regulators have opened investigations into how Morgan Stanley’s wealth management division handles potentially risky clients, according to a person familiar with the matter.
“The business, which has been central to the bank’s growth in recent years, was already in the sights of the Federal Reserve over money laundering controls. Now the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and the Treasury are also involved, the person said.
“Regulators are looking into the level of thoroughness of the investigations Morgan Stanley conducted around the source of clients’ wealth and their financial activity. “”