Again, not having much time for blogging lately (although this makes for two nights in a row!), my “stack of stuff” is a few hundred tabs large at this point. This from DCE at Weekend Pundit reminded me of the topic:
This sounds like a good idea whose time has come. It’s time for an open source project to review “all the laws which have proven themselves unnecessary.”
My home state had something called a Sunset Commission that reviewed all existing laws and regulations and made a list of those which either no longer served a purpose or caused more problems than they solved. Quite often the legislature would repeal the redundant ones and repeal or modify the problematic ones. Unfortunately a Democrat governor convinced the state legislature in the late 70’s/early 80’s that it was no longer needed and it was itself “sunsetted”, a mistake we’ve been paying for ever since.
It’s time to bring it back to New Hampshire and to bring it to life at the federal level.
Trump will be known for two things:
- Turning the Judiciary from liberal to conservative
- Destroying the over-regulatory regime we Americans find ourselves in that has turned us from being the Land of the Free to “a Permission Society” in which we must seek permission from the Government for almost every area of our lives.
During this Wuhan Flu era, it has become clear that many of the rules that were put into place to “protect us” (mostly by unelected, unaccountable, and unassailable bureaucrats) weren’t. Oh, there MIGHT have been some reason that MIGHT have been of use, but in watching the antics of the CDC and the FDA, it is clear that when time is of the essence in solving issues of today, they’ve just made themselves into a long line of speedbumps. Risk-averse, they are; in this time of speeding infections, they actually slow things down.
Trump has put a kibosh on this and forced the bureaucrats to withdraw from the arena and ordered them, by any means necessary, to expedite approvals from drug treatments to ad hoc solutions for masks, respirators, and ventilators. New tests, seemingly being churned out every day, have lessened the time to test, the cost to test, and moving that equipment from centralized labs to decentralized doctor’s offices (and may I say parking lot test locations). In short, allow innovation to pull out of the station.
DCE is right – our government bureaucracy has become hidebound, slow, expensive, impediments instead of assists. Adversarial instead of coaches. That’s not a recipe for success and it is clear, during this epidemic, that some of these waived rules just need to go away forever with lots more to follow.
It will be interesting to see what the “After Action” reports and “Lessons Learned” white papers will say. Sadly, I’m doubting that any of those will ever surface…
UPDATE: Forgot this from Instapundit:
SUDDENLY, THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT IS MOVING VERY FAST. I WAS JUST BLOGGING ABOUT THIS THE OTHER DAY, AND NOW: Interagency Statement on Loan Modifications by Financial Institutions Working with Customers Affected by the Coronavirus. Including this on the exact item I was blogging about: “Will not criticize institutions for prudent loan modifications and will not direct supervised institutions to automatically categorize COVID-19-related loan modifications as troubled debt restructurings (TDRs).”
UPDATE: From the comments: “It’s pretty amazing how quickly these issues are being addressed. If the Executive can fix it, it gets fixed. If industry can help, the right person gets a call. If Congress is required…well, Nancy and Chuck are still weighing the optics of saving Americans vs cooperating with OrangeManBad.”
UPDATE II: and this, also from Instapundit (emphasis mine):
GOOD IDEA, FROM ALEX POURNELLE ON FACEBOOK: “Time for a new open source project: all the laws which have proven themselves unnecessary. We are going to need an actual stimulus, as compared to the one being considered. It should throw off the chains from entrepreneurs.”
Are you getting the gist of this all?
