New EPA Regulations nearly 25,000 pages long. WTF

[sunzt]

Gov regulations docs typically have lots of intro material (purpose, scope, background, approach, etc) and even more appendix material that goes into details for studies and rationale.

EPA regs are along the lines of other regulating government agencies. These agencies tend to add a lot of supporting information in appendices.

It's also a pretty meaningless to compare a story telling bible / book to regulation documents where details are necessary.

 

[K1052]

But please tell me who can? @300 wpm it would take someone aprox 58days straight to read just this regulation. This is sear stupidity and a sign our government is getting to big, and bloated.

Why would you need to read regulation that doesn't apply to you? That's like reading the entire encyclopedia to find the entry for "xylophone" instead of using your brain and flipping to the appropriate section.

 

[MomentsofSanity]

Why would you need to read regulation that doesn't apply to you? That's like reading the entire encyclopedia to find the entry for "xylophone" instead of using your brain and flipping to the appropriate section.

You aren't asking him to think rationally and objectively are you? Much more fun to count words and rage on!

 

[mpo]

Using the Federal Register for doing a word count hugely inflates the number of words for any regulation. There is a ton of boilerplate for who, what, were, when, and why the executive branch is making the regulation.

Look at one of the regulations cited in the OP's article. A comment and response about a URL missing a tilde takes up 85 words.

Oh, and last year's CFR Title 40 clocks in at 592,027 words.

 

[bradley]

I call this gotcha government, which will only hurt small businesses. Each page of additional regulations ensures future legislators, regulators and other govt officials will have total artificial job security. So for all you big government fans, expect more of the same.

 

[K1052]

I call this gotcha government, which will only hurt small businesses. Each page of additional regulations ensures future legislators, regulators and other govt officials will have total artificial job security. So for all you big government fans, expect more of the same.

On average our commercial leases go up to about 100 pages on any single project, typically in the 40-50K word range. Financing docs will be multiples of that depending what is happening. Some of that is boilerplate language, exhibits, schedules, etc.

Welcome to working in the real world. It's hard and stuff.

 

[Darwin333]

The reason for the voluminous rules is exactly because the legions of lawyers for huge corporations will try to figure out ways around the rules if every possible contingency isn't spelled out and every loophole isn't closed.

That is nonsense. It isn't that difficult to write what people/corporations can and can not do. Most of the laws, rules and regulations that work well were straight and to the point.


Glass-Stegal was 37 pages long and would have prevented the housing bubble scam that the banksters perpetrated against us had it not been repealed.

Dodd-Frank bill is over 2,000 pages long. The best part is that it doesn't address the real issue nor would it have prevented the last bubble or the next.

The Social Security act, fairly complex right, comes in at 82 pages. How about the Civil Rights Act, a whopping 73 pages. Hell the Federal Reserve act was only 31 pages long. I wonder if we took all of the laws passed that regulate the banking industry and add them together if it would equal the length of Dodd-Frank? To make matters even worse we passed a 2,000+ page act that claimed to be for the protection of consumers, from assholes like the banksters, but we didn't enforce already existing black letter laws like "fraud is already illegal".

For the record I am not trying to pick on Dodd-Frank exclusively, its just the way our laws and regulations have been going. The healthcare bill was over 2,000 pages long too. Laws are now so long, convoluted and full of legalese that there is no possible way that most Americans to understand them yet they are expected to by force of law. When you combine that with the sheer numbers of laws on the books even a judge can't guarantee that he hasn't broken a law or twelve during the course of his day.

 

[Darwin333]

I propose the following law which would truly determine if bills need to be that long:

1. All bills must be written by hand.

2. All bills must be read on the house/senate floor in their entirety. Any member that is not present for the entirety of the reading will not be allowed to vote on said bill.

2a. Each chamber may make up their own rules for bathroom and lunch breaks.

The end.

Lets see how many 2,000 page bills are presented then. Anyone know how long it would take to read any of these uber long bills assuming average reading speed and 8 hours a day reading?

 

[Darwin333]

Why would you need to read regulation that doesn't apply to you? That's like reading the entire encyclopedia to find the entry for "xylophone" instead of using your brain and flipping to the appropriate section.

How about Congress and Senate that votes on bills that are equally as long? Should they have to read them before they vote them into law? What about people enforcing those regulations, shouldn't they have to not only read but firmly comprehend all of that?

 

[Atomic Playboy]

Clearly we'd be better off if we replaced the EPA regulations with the Harry Potter books. Regulations don't seem to be helping much; let's try some eco-wizards. Avada kedavra pollution.

Everyone knows you don't judge a book by its cover; you judge it by the number of words it contains.

 

[bradley]

That is nonsense. It isn't that difficult to write what people/corporations can and can not do. Most of the laws, rules and regulations that work well were straight and to the point.


Glass-Stegal was 37 pages long and would have prevented the housing bubble scam that the banksters perpetrated against us had it not been repealed.

Dodd-Frank bill is over 2,000 pages long. The best part is that it doesn't address the real issue nor would it have prevented the last bubble or the next.

The Social Security act, fairly complex right, comes in at 82 pages. How about the Civil Rights Act, a whopping 73 pages. Hell the Federal Reserve act was only 31 pages long. I wonder if we took all of the laws passed that regulate the banking industry and add them together if it would equal the length of Dodd-Frank? To make matters even worse we passed a 2,000+ page act that claimed to be for the protection of consumers, from assholes like the banksters, but we didn't enforce already existing black letter laws like "fraud is already illegal".

For the record I am not trying to pick on Dodd-Frank exclusively, its just the way our laws and regulations have been going. The healthcare bill was over 2,000 pages long too. Laws are now so long, convoluted and full of legalese that there is no possible way that most Americans to understand them yet they are expected to by force of law. When you combine that with the sheer numbers of laws on the books even a judge can't guarantee that he hasn't broken a law or twelve during the course of his day.

Agreed 1000%. Finally some ultimate truth, logic and basic common sense on these forums. I'm just going to say thanks and leave it right there.

And please do pick on Dodd-Frank. It's like a long-winded solution (or Rube Goldberg contraption) looking for an already established simple problem and solution discovered ages ago by both Glass and Stegall -- which incidentally, just like peanut butter & jelly, you cannot have one without the other. The repeal of Glass-Stegall adversely affected every avenue of our economic lives.

Today's political climate in nothing more than bad word association; if it takes years to figure out a problem that should be otherwise instantaneous to a clear mind, I don't see any solution for us other than kicking information and other things down the road in the future. Why anyone would want to protect such a scenario is beyond me.

 

[realibrad]

That is nonsense. It isn't that difficult to write what people/corporations can and can not do. Most of the laws, rules and regulations that work well were straight and to the point.


Glass-Stegal was 37 pages long and would have prevented the housing bubble scam that the banksters perpetrated against us had it not been repealed.

Dodd-Frank bill is over 2,000 pages long. The best part is that it doesn't address the real issue nor would it have prevented the last bubble or the next.

The Social Security act, fairly complex right, comes in at 82 pages. How about the Civil Rights Act, a whopping 73 pages. Hell the Federal Reserve act was only 31 pages long. I wonder if we took all of the laws passed that regulate the banking industry and add them together if it would equal the length of Dodd-Frank? To make matters even worse we passed a 2,000+ page act that claimed to be for the protection of consumers, from assholes like the banksters, but we didn't enforce already existing black letter laws like "fraud is already illegal".

For the record I am not trying to pick on Dodd-Frank exclusively, its just the way our laws and regulations have been going. The healthcare bill was over 2,000 pages long too. Laws are now so long, convoluted and full of legalese that there is no possible way that most Americans to understand them yet they are expected to by force of law. When you combine that with the sheer numbers of laws on the books even a judge can't guarantee that he hasn't broken a law or twelve during the course of his day.

You are actually wrong about glass stegall stopping the 2008 crisis. If it would or could have done that, it would have worked during the savings and loan crisis. When finance activity is implicitly backed by the government and the confirmed to be backed when the government bailed out the banks during the savings and loan crisis, it was only logical the banks would do it again. Glass Steagall did not stop that activity the first time, and I really doubt it would have stopped it a 2nd go around.

 

[MooseNSquirrel]

We discuss these things as if there is an ideal length for a document.

Silly really, point out what's not needed in there; don't complain about the length.

Oh the point about the Constitution...pure nonsense...implementations are always longer than the frameworks they are based on.

 

[Victorian Gray]

I propose the following law which would truly determine if bills need to be that long:

1. All bills must be written by hand.

2. All bills must be read on the house/senate floor in their entirety. Any member that is not present for the entirety of the reading will not be allowed to vote on said bill.

2a. Each chamber may make up their own rules for bathroom and lunch breaks.

The end.

Lets see how many 2,000 page bills are presented then. Anyone know how long it would take to read any of these uber long bills assuming average reading speed and 8 hours a day reading?

You might want to add this to the final mix: Absolutely no lobbyists allowed to be involved in the drafting of bills. As it stands that's who writes an awful lot of what's brought forward in both houses. And, I suspect the involvement of lobbyists in the process is far more of an issue than number of pages.

 

[Babbles]

I don't think it is a big deal. These are not going to be regulations targeted to every entity in every situation. Also, the reads are most likely going to be scientists or engineers. Sometimes complex language is needed to address complex topics.

Also, as an analytical scientist in 'the biz' I tend to read various EPA regulatory documents on a nearly daily basis. The scope of each is so narrow there is little reason for people outside of the scope to get concerned with the bazillion other pages.

But, I'm sure that doesn't fit well with the narrative that knee-jerkers want to convey.

 

[trenchfoot]

Just imagine a nation without any regulatory controls ensuring the safety of our food supply, the air we breathe, the cars and trucks we drive, the firearms we entrust our lives with, the insurance policies we buy, the investments we make, the quality of medical care and pharmaceuticals we receive, the aircraft we fly in and on and on and on.

Yeah, I'm sure all of those items mentioned above would stand the test of time without anyone getting ripped off, maimed or killed in the name of greed and profit above all else. Things are already bad enough what with Corporations cutting corners right down to the teenie tiniest penny saving loophole their expensive self-justifying lawyers can find.

If anyone can be blamed for why we need definitive jargon peppered into our regulations, I'd lay all of it squarely at the feet of those gov't and corporate barristers attempting to outsmart each other.

Of course, I'd side with those lawyers protecting me, the consumer over those guns-for-hire attorneys attempting to prove their worth to their corporate bosses by corruptively injecting vague easily side-tepped language into our laws for higher and ever higher profit margins.

Things are bad enough as they are. I can't imagine how bad things could get without gov't oversight protecting the consumer from fraud and endangerment.

Self-regulation works when there is no profit motive to corrupt the process, and we already know how all too often that motive overcomes the desire to self-regulate properly.

In the meantime, I'm going to enjoy whatever clean air and marginally safe food we have left before I have to grow, hunt and fish for my food, walk to work in-between all of those endless automotive recalls and hope I don't ever get sick so I can keep watch over the stack of cash I have hiding in my mattress.

 

[Darwin333]

You are actually wrong about glass stegall stopping the 2008 crisis. If it would or could have done that, it would have worked during the savings and loan crisis. When finance activity is implicitly backed by the government and the confirmed to be backed when the government bailed out the banks during the savings and loan crisis, it was only logical the banks would do it again. Glass Steagall did not stop that activity the first time, and I really doubt it would have stopped it a 2nd go around.

That is just not true. The two debacles are quite different in cause and scope.

I'm didn't mean to imply that the banksters couldn't do fraudulent shit before Glass-Stegal was repealed, I'm stating a fact that if it had not been repealed the banksters wouldn't have had the gun to hold to our governments head and say "pay us or Armageddon". The investment banks would have failed, people put in jail, money lost but the world would have kept on going.

In my opinion none of this would have happened if GS wasn't repealed. Regardless of my opinion, the outcome would have been far less drastic for the taxpayers had the banksters decided to do it anyway. The repeal of G-S was akin to handing them a loaded gun so they could point it at our heads.


BTW, how many indictments came out of the savings and loan crisis versus the housing bubble? One would assume that this latest fiasco would have netted many fold more indictments and convictions, right?

 

[Darwin333]

You might want to add this to the final mix: Absolutely no lobbyists allowed to be involved in the drafting of bills. As it stands that's who writes an awful lot of what's brought forward in both houses. And, I suspect the involvement of lobbyists in the process is far more of an issue than number of pages.

Good point, lets ammend it. How about "All bills must be written by hand by a serving member of Congress"?

 

[Darwin333]

We discuss these things as if there is an ideal length for a document.

I guess thats a fair point but we have to start somewhere.

How about a document is to long if the assholes passing it couldn't possibly comprehend even a portion of it in the time they have to read it and vote it into law? Would you consider that to long or does comprehension of laws they are passing irrelevant in your eyes?

 

[bradley]

That is just not true. The two debacles are quite different in cause and scope.

I'm didn't mean to imply that the banksters couldn't do fraudulent shit before Glass-Stegal was repealed, I'm stating a fact that if it had not been repealed the banksters wouldn't have had the gun to hold to our governments head and say "pay us or Armageddon". The investment banks would have failed, people put in jail, money lost but the world would have kept on going.

In my opinion none of this would have happened if GS wasn't repealed. Regardless of my opinion, the outcome would have been far less drastic for the taxpayers had the banksters decided to do it anyway. The repeal of G-S was akin to handing them a loaded gun so they could point it at our heads.


BTW, how many indictments came out of the savings and loan crisis versus the housing bubble? One would assume that this latest fiasco would have netted many fold more indictments and convictions, right?

I honestly don't think the quoted dude knows much about Glass-Steagall. Who would even argue for the firewall between investment and commercial bank to be completely removed, except for corrupt politicians and bankers?

Glass-Steagall's repeal allowed capitalism to run amok and for banks to take *huge* risks with borrowed money (almost commanded them to do so) and experience very little downside.

I just asked a few friends tonight (one Ivy League educated) if they ever heard of Glass-Steagall to a chorus of crickets chirping, but everyone knows the Kardashians. I'm actually embarrassed for anyone who doesn't know that Glass-Steagall's repeal (and replacement with a 2000+ page Dodd-Frank) was a huge turning point for our American lives.

In fact, with only Dodd-Frank in place expect even greater economic tragedies in the future.

Repeal of Glass-Steagall Caused the Financial Crisis
http://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs...of-glass-steagall-caused-the-financial-crisis

 

[realibrad]

That is just not true. The two debacles are quite different in cause and scope.

I'm didn't mean to imply that the banksters couldn't do fraudulent shit before Glass-Stegal was repealed, I'm stating a fact that if it had not been repealed the banksters wouldn't have had the gun to hold to our governments head and say "pay us or Armageddon". The investment banks would have failed, people put in jail, money lost but the world would have kept on going.

In my opinion none of this would have happened if GS wasn't repealed. Regardless of my opinion, the outcome would have been far less drastic for the taxpayers had the banksters decided to do it anyway. The repeal of G-S was akin to handing them a loaded gun so they could point it at our heads.


BTW, how many indictments came out of the savings and loan crisis versus the housing bubble? One would assume that this latest fiasco would have netted many fold more indictments and convictions, right?

The issue was that the banks and other financial institutions knew they would be bailed out if they took on too much and got hurt. They "knew" this because it had happened before with the savings and loan crisis. The government bailed out those institutions that had failed before, because they were too big to fail. I'm not saying glass steagall did not stop other things from happening, but for the most recent crisis, it did nothing for too big to fail. The institutions would have engaged in the same activity. The reason we had these crisis is because the institutions are so large and powerful, that they live in a bubble. They believed that they could make huge sums of money and that would benefit everyone, and if it all fell apart, the government would step in. The problem is that they were wrong, and never took the steps to protect themselves.

Glass Steagall did nothing to stop this activity in terms of too big to fail. It did make the route they took harder if it were there, but it would not have stopped it. There is an underlying issue where the finance industry believes they have found ways to take out risk. Whats worse is that they still think this. Talk to anyone who works in the finance industry that was involved, and they still think their models have eliminated risk.

 

[realibrad]

I honestly don't think the quoted dude knows much about Glass-Steagall. Who would even argue for the firewall between investment and commercial bank to be completely removed, except for corrupt politicians and bankers?

Glass-Steagall's repeal allowed capitalism to run amok and for banks to take *huge* risks with borrowed money (almost commanded them to do so) and experience very little downside.

I just asked a few friends tonight (one Ivy League educated) if they ever heard of Glass-Steagall to a chorus of crickets chirping, but everyone knows the Kardashians. I'm actually embarrassed for anyone who doesn't know that Glass-Steagall's repeal (and replacement with a 2000+ page Dodd-Frank) was a huge turning point for our American lives.

In fact, with only Dodd-Frank in place expect even greater economic tragedies in the future.

Repeal of Glass-Steagall Caused the Financial Crisis
http://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs...of-glass-steagall-caused-the-financial-crisis

Ill bite. What do you know about the S&L Crisis and the Sub prime crisis that I dont?

The US banks would have not be able to loan money, but foreign banks would have filled the void, as they were doing it during the crisis. You are talking about a small amount of money being held back relative to the money that went into the failed system. The activity that went on would still have caused the collapse and we still would have bailed out institutions, much like we did during the S&L crisis.