It is the duty of the Executive Branch to implement the laws passed by the Legislative Branch under the scrutiny of the Judicial Branch.
Consequently, the role of WHAT the Executive Branch can do is limited while the HOW of what it does has a great deal more flexibility.
There are about 210 million people in the United States between the ages of 18-and-65. Half of them do not have even a part-time job. Those people are denied the esteem and status of being productive. That is a tragedy. Inflation is an issue because Americans are not at their jobs providing services and creating and manufacturing products.
It is the position of the Garden Party (Executive Branch) that the regulatory climate will be much more favorable for the creation of infrastructure and production if:
It is not the Federal Government job to foreordain winners and losers
It is not the Government's job to pick winners and losers. It is not the Government's job to advantage one while disadvantaging another.
The Garden Party's position is to stop pretending it has a crystal ball and to stop pushing some technologies while penalizing others.
It shifts to Default "Yes"
Currently, getting approval is a game of "Mother May I".
The petitioner must satisfy all of the regulatory agencies documented and undocumented or implied requirements before approval is granted.
Any uncertainty results in approvals being denied and sometimes in punitive fines. "If in doubt, the answer is NO!" That is "Default "No".
Much of that uncertainty involves interpretation of the regulating agency's policies within the agency. There is no downside for the regulating agency for ambiguous requirements.
The Garden Party will mandate "Default Yes". If there is ambiguity, the ruling will be in favor of the entity building the refinery, pipeline or other capital equity.
Buckets
Regulatory requirements will be frozen into two-year buckets.
Right now, if a utility wanted to open a new nuclear power-plant, the regulations would be a moving target. Newly thought-of requirements would be mandated and they would have to be shoe-horned into the existing design. No two nuclear plants would be the same. There are no economies of scale.
As an example, in this case the Garden Party would direct the EPA and Energy Department to define in unambiguous language the current-best-practices. All projects that conformed to that Mark-CBP that applied for approval in the next two-years MUST be approved. And that approval must be grandfathered as long as the project is 20% complete in two years, 40% complete in four years and so on.
Revolving door
Civil Servants who work for regulatory agencies will not be allowed to work as lobbyist, in academia or for industries related to their regulation for a period of four years.
Too often a game is played where progress is stymied until they hire recently retired Federal Employees. That results in a moral-hazard in the ranks of the regulatory agency. Really, is that much different than the Mafia threat, "Nice business you got here. Shame if something happened to it..."
The Garden Party vows to slow the revolving door and to dilute the moral-hazard.
A milk plant inspection found that a long period (years) of slightly too high temp in cooling was occuring. "You will be delisted & inspected, in two weeks, on Thursday". Thursday the inspection occurred, passing score, delisting lifted.
ReplyDeleteDo you think I said this plant was shut down for two weeks? It was not. There's the BS of the system. If it was that bad, it should have been shut down that day, FIX IT! If it wasn't that bad, they should have just been given a notice to fix it as quick as possible.
It also means they missed it in the previous couple years inspections.
This is the same inspector who could not site what the State quality standards are but quoted OUR company standards. It took him 5 hours to find the State standards when he reported back to me later.
But if you can talk about horses or motorcycles, your chances of a passing score are substantially higher!
Jerry
ERJ - A very long time ago (legitimately "before the turn of the century") as part of my graduate program, we did a study on the economic miracle of Post-war Japan. Post war Japan was known, among other things, for pushing specific industries. Turns out that they were no better than the market at picking who would win and lose - in fact, they were a bit worse.
ReplyDeleteIt is not the Federal Government job to foreordain winners and losers.
ReplyDeleteThe military will be disappointed to hear that.
Sir: That is an awesome comment! Thanks for reading.
DeleteThe revolving door with industry is mostly Senior Executive Service (SES) positions and political appointments.
ReplyDeleteInterestingly, these same high level positions have looser ethics and outside income reporting requirements than ordinary workers.
In my mind, due to their higher levels of influence, their reporting standards should be tighter and MORE extensive than ordinary employees.
J
My last month paycheck was for 11000 dollars… 3-4 hours/day /95 bucks every hour…..> https://www.pay.salary49.com
ReplyDelete