Regulatory Power-Grab by Bush

[Doug]

Bush Directive Increases Sway on Regulation
The New York Times
January 30, 2007


WASHINGTON, Jan. 29 — President Bush has signed a directive that gives the White House much greater control over the rules and policy statements that the government develops to protect public health, safety, the environment, civil rights and privacy.

In an executive order published last week in the Federal Register, Mr. Bush said that each agency must have a regulatory policy office run by a political appointee, to supervise the development of rules and documents providing guidance to regulated industries. The White House will thus have a gatekeeper in each agency to analyze the costs and the benefits of new rules and to make sure the agencies carry out the president’s priorities.

This strengthens the hand of the White House in shaping rules that have, in the past, often been generated by civil servants and scientific experts. It suggests that the administration still has ways to exert its power after the takeover of Congress by the Democrats.

...Business groups welcomed the executive order, saying it had the potential to reduce what they saw as the burden of federal regulations. This burden is of great concern to many groups, including small businesses, that have given strong political and financial backing to Mr. Bush.

Consumer, labor and environmental groups denounced the executive order, saying it gave too much control to the White House and would hinder agencies’ efforts to protect the public.

...Besides placing political appointees in charge of rule making, Mr. Bush said agencies must give the White House an opportunity to review “any significant guidance documents” before they are issued.

Peter L. Strauss, a professor at Columbia Law School, said the executive order “achieves a major increase in White House control over domestic government.”

“Having lost control of Congress,” Mr. Strauss said, “the president is doing what he can to increase his control of the executive branch.”

Representative Henry A. Waxman, Democrat of California and chairman of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, said: “The executive order allows the political staff at the White House to dictate decisions on health and safety issues, even if the government’s own impartial experts disagree. This is a terrible way to govern, but great news for special interests.”

Business groups hailed the initiative.

...Wesley P. Warren, program director at the Natural Resources Defense Council, who worked at the White House for seven years under President Bill Clinton, said, “The executive order is a backdoor attempt to prevent E.P.A. from being able to enforce environmental safeguards that keep cancer-causing chemicals and other pollutants out of the air and water.”

Read the rest here.

[Barbara Fitzpatrick]

Meanwhile, a group called DownsizeDC is pushing a "write the laws" bill that would require congress to write all those regulations currently written by civil servants. (Does anybody remember the Civil Service was created to do away with the political appointee system of governance?)

[Hogeye]

Some of us would like to see a reduction of regulation. Thus, it is sad to see such quibbling over which political and special interests groups should control people through regulation. (That old 'false choice' trick again. Frame it as who gets the power rather than whether such concentrated power is good or not.) Better would be to reduce regulation to such a degree that we don't care who's trying to manipulate it since they are so powerless.

[Barbara Fitzpatrick]

Regulation, properly used, levels the playing field among businesses and keeps them competitive. No regulation, or regulation improperly used, creates monopolies. Regulation can harness the market to be the motive force of economy. No regulation (or regulation by the regulated) allows the market to run over the economy and kill it. Political appointees regulating the regulators undoes the work of a century to get politics out of the regulating mechanism.

[Dardedar]

Regulation, properly used, levels the playing field among businesses and keeps them competitive.... Regulation can harness the market to be the motive force of economy.

DAR
An example comes to mind. I am pretty sure Japan had high definition TV in the 80's. Certainly the technology and limited if not widespread use. We probably still wouldn't have it if congress hadn't stepped in. We (industry and the "free" market) were stuck in a regressive loop. Broadcasters and cable weren't putting out high definition signals because nobody had the TV's, nobody was making or selling the TV's for the US market because there was nothing to watch in Hi-def. Congress stepped in and mandated a deadline for when the TV industry must be transmitting/sending high-definition signal. The industry ("free market" --snort--) loved this regulation situation because they can make billions selling the new TV's. "We the people" love it and benefit because we have really clear TV's and have caught up with where the Japanese were 20 years ago.

Now if there was only something besides the Daily Show worth watching....

D.

[Hogeye]

Regulation, or regulation improperly used, creates monopolies.

Reading Marxist economic "theory" again, Barbara? In fact, (persistent*) monopolies are created by government privilege. Regulation helps create monopolies and oligopolies, and entrenches existing firms with political clout.

*New techologies generally have a monopolistic phase which dissipates as the industry matures. E.g. Oil, xerography, computing...


Darrel, if you assume that HDTV for consumers is better an all other alternative uses of money, research, marketing, and so on, then you might have a case (that regulation "helped".) But in fact that which is not seen may be much more important. Perhaps the effort would have gone into nano-technology, or medical research increasing longivity, or better transortation technologies if the rulers hadn't diverted it to HDTV. The fact that governments have an interest in keeping people watching the boob tube, dumbed down with statist propaganda, does not inspire confidence that the forced direction into HDTV promotion is the best of all possible alternatives. I would prefer that people decide distributively than rulers decide for them.

[Dardedar]

DAR
It is completely beside the point to postulate humorous hypothetical "cooda beens" about how RCA might have spent the money increasing human longevity (!) rather than make better TV's. The technology already existed and would improve anyway. I was just providing one example, of many, of where the market and the populace benefit from the regulatory framework provided by government. It was a freemarket catch 22. The state solved it.

Oh, I also wish the government had stepped in and decreed that the DVD/entertainment industry must go with either High Definition DVD or the High Definition Blueray. Once again the free market is going to give us a ridiculous and wasteful war (ala VHS v Beta) as copies and players are made for each format because the greedy big industry ego's couldn't agree on the format in time.

[Hogeye]

It is completely beside the point to postulate humorous hypothetical "cooda beens" about how RCA might have spent the money increasing human longevity (!) rather than make better TV's.

You misunderstood. The US State (and other States) have, by their legislation, diverted resources that could have been used in other ways to production of HDTV and related infrastructure.

Opportunity cost (what you call "coulda' beens") is a valid and useful concept for analyzing alternatives. If you use resources in one way, you cannot generally use them another way. It's a quite rudimentary economic concept. May I recommend What Is Seen and What Is Not Seen by Frederick Bastiat? It's the classic and extremely readable essay on the subject, which introduces the famous "broken window fallacy."

Oh, I also wish the government had stepped in and decreed that the DVD/entertainment industry must go with either High Definition DVD or the High Definition Blueray.

Once again we see the statist naivete at play - you assume that the rulers will make the wisest decision (and stick to it only so long as it is wise.) As for me, I trust decisions made by free individuals in a pluralist society. Neither the rulers nor free individuals are always right. When the rulers are wrong, it forces everyone into error. When individuals are wrong, they can easily change. States tend to stay mired in the wrong indefinitely, as constituents and special interests who benefit are reluctant to change.

There is a similar discussion in the Roe v. Wade thread. One can put all one's eggs in the State's winner-take-all basket, or diversify by using decentralized decision-making. Statists tend to believe that "their guys" will always be in control and make the right decisions. We freethinkers try to avoid such faith-based beliefs in Gods and States.

I'll take temporary non-violent "wars" between Betamax and VHS over violent statist wars like Vietnam or Iraq any day. How long before your wise and wonderful State will correct it's error in Iraq? Aren't you glad the government didn't standardize on MSDOS? I sure am. We'd probably all still be using command line interfaces if they had.

[Dardedar]

It is completely beside the point to postulate humorous hypothetical "cooda beens" about how RCA might have spent the money increasing human longevity (!) rather than make better TV's.

HOG
You misunderstood. The US State (and other States) have, by their legislation, diverted resources that could have been used in other ways to production of HDTV and related infrastructure.

DAR
Nonsense. It would have happened at some point it just would have taken longer and been more inefficient wasteful and messy. If you want to toss around silly cooda beens, consider how much longer we will be living now that RCA is making so much money on their HD TV's. I am sure they are going to be spending that money on longevity research.

D.

[Hogeye]

No, perhaps people would have been satisfied with existing TV until some other future technology was discovered. Perhaps the Jap or European or other competing HDTV technologies would have been preferred by people, and even better technically, than the one promoted by certain US corporations with government suck. It takes some imagination and practice to determine opportunity cost - that which is not seen. Many people are so stuck on the concrete what actually happened that they cannot envision what might have happened.

I see you still don't understand that I'm talking about coercive diversion of resources. I.e. by States. You still apparently think I'm saying that RCA would have funded longevity research! Of course, I said nothing of the kind.

[Dardedar]

You still apparently think I'm saying that RCA would have funded longevity research! Of course, I said nothing of the kind.

"Perhaps the effort [of RCA et al] would have gone into nano-technology, or medical research increasing longivity, or better transortation technologies if the rulers hadn't diverted it to HDTV." --Hogeye, above

[Hogeye]

Tsk, tsk. Of course, the parenthetical "of RCA et al" is something you inserted just then. The message the quote is from doesn't even mention RCA. It's about economic effort, the efforts of society as a whole, being coercively directed by State power. I guess I chould have made that clearer. Here is the whole quote:

Darrel, if you assume that HDTV for consumers is better than all other alternative uses of money, research, marketing, and so on, then you might have a case (that regulation "helped".) But in fact that which is not seen may be much more important. Perhaps the effort would have gone into nano-technology, or medical research increasing longivity, or better transortation technologies if the rulers hadn't diverted it to HDTV. The fact that governments have an interest in keeping people watching the boob tube, dumbed down with statist propaganda, does not inspire confidence that the forced direction into HDTV promotion is the best of all possible alternatives. I would prefer that people decide distributively than rulers decide for them.

In other words, had people not been forced to invest in HDTV stuff, they may have invested in nanotechnology and cured cancer, or whatever. There has of course been similar opportunity cost for military expenditures, the NASA rathole, and other government projects and schemes. Money funnelled into mass-murdering foreign brown people cannot be spent on curing Alzeimer's or perfecting cellulosic ethanol production. Opportunity cost.

[Dardedar]

DAR
Now that RCA, Sony and Panasonic have made many billions off of the HD TV boom, successfully assisted by the regulations of our wise State leaders, we can NOW look to them spending this this money on their real driving interest: human longevity. Thank you congress!

D.

[Hogeye]

That sentence doesn't parse. The pronoun "them" is an ambiguous reference. It appears you are still misinterpreting the investors as either RCA/Sony/Panasonic or State rulers, rather than society. You still don't "get" the concept of opportunity cost, do you?

[Dardedar]

DAR
I thought of another cooda been. Now that the TV's are much clearer, perchance a doctor looking for the cure for cancer, will be able to see it in case the cure is televised some day.

Oh but wait. Maybe I would have been the one to discover the cure for cancer but instead I was too busy playing a new Playstation game because it was in glorious 1080i HD. There are just so many possibilities. So many cooda beens.

Too bad some are so stuck in the religion of freemarket worship that they can't, for strict reasons of dogma, bring themselves to admit, on a single occasion, that just maybe, the government made a regulation that was beneficial. The above is just one example of a great many that can be put forward.

Oh, I was reading more about this and learned: 'The FCC has not mandated HDTV signals be broadcast; it only requires digital TV broadcasts." One will lead to the other, obviously. Praise is due to our glorious leaders in congress for hastening this along!

All the countries are doing this, analog shut off will happen soon (2009 by Federal decree in the US) and the US is on track with many other countries. Best to have the State make for a smooth government guided transition. Lots more details about this exciting update here.

D.

[Hogeye]

I'm see you have confidence in the politicians that brought you worldwide military occupations and the highest incarceration rate in the world. That makes them electronics experts, eh? You think they made the right decision by endorsing the ATSC standard, which just happened to be the standard their campaign contributors want!

FYI, here are some alternatives (from Wikipedia ATSC):

Other Systems

Taiwan (Republic of China) has rejected 8-VSB (a method adopted for terrestrial broadcasting under the ATSC digital television standard in the United States and Canada) and has chosen DVB-T COFDM as its official modulation. This was a direct result of broadcaster dissatisfaction with the 8-VSB. [1]

ATSC coexists with the DVB-T standard, and with ISDB-T being implemented in Japan . (ISDB modulation also serves as a basis of the SBTVD-T standard in Brazil .) A similar standard called ADTB was developed for use as part of China 's new DMB-T/H dual standard. While China has officially chosen a dual standard, there is no requirement that a receiver work with both standards and there is no support for the ADTB modulation from broadcasters or equipment and receiver manufacturers.

Because of potential use outside of existing NTSC areas, the ATSC system includes the capability to carry PAL - and SECAM -format video (576 displayable lines, 50 fields or 25 frames per second) along with NTSC (480 displayable lines, 60 fields or 30 frames per second) and film (24 frames per second).

Comparison

While the ATSC system has been criticized as being complicated and expensive to implement and use, both broadcasting and receiving equipment are now comparable in cost with that of DVB.

The ATSC signal cannot be adapted to changes in radio propagation conditions, unlike DVB-T and ISDB-T . If ATSC were able to dynamically change its error correction modes, code rates, interleaver mode, and randomizer, the signal could be more robust even if the modulation itself did not change. It also lacks true hierarchical modulation , which allows the SDTV part of an HDTV signal to be received even in fringe areas where signal strength is low. For this reason, an additional modulation mode, enhanced-VSB ( E-VSB ) has been introduced, allowing for a similar benefit.

In spite of ATSC's fixed transmission mode, it is still a robust signal under various conditions. 8VSB was chosen over COFDM in part because many areas of North America are rural and have a much lower population density , thereby requiring larger transmitters and resulting in large fringe areas. In these areas, 8VSB was shown to perform better than other systems.

COFDM is used in both DVB-T and ISDB-T, and for ISDB-H , as well as DVB-H and HD Radio in the United States. In metropolitan areas , where the great and increasing majority of North Americans live, COFDM is said to be better at handling multipath . While ATSC is also incapable of true single-frequency-network ( SFN ) operation, the distributed transmission mode, using on-channel repeaters, has been shown to improve reception under similar conditions. Thus, it may not require more spectrum allocation than DVB-T using SFNs.