Regulation articles from December 2001

Regulation archives from December 2001

California factor. (For the Record).(Brief Article)
December 22, 2001... YOUR RECENT TRILOGY OF ARTICLES on the California energy crisis (Regulation, Fall 2001) failed to address one possible flaw of deregulation. Deregulation could have sounded a death knell to the public-owned utilities (POUs) in Democratic Party...

Rebutting thierer. (For the Record).(Brief Article)
December 22, 2001... ADAM THIERER IS MORE THAN WEL-come to disagree with my new book, Republic.com (Regulation, Fall 2001), but I wish he had given an accurate description of what I have written. He argues that the book "waxes nostalgic" for the pre-Internet...

Ozone air quality standards. (Mercatus Reports).(Brief Article)
December 22, 2001... STATUS: Comment period pending. On May 14, 1999, the U.S. Court of Appeals, D.C. Circuit, remanded to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) its national ambient air quality standards for ozone. The court found that, in preparing the...

Tanker vessel monitoring devices. (Mercatus Reports).(Brief Article)
December 22, 2001... STATUS: Analyzing public comment. In response to a December 2000 decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals, D.C. Circuit, the U.S. Coast Guard has proposed a rule requiring oil tankers to install tank-level or pressure monitoring devices to...

Non-Road vehicle emissions. (Mercatus Reports).(Brief Article)
December 22, 2001... STATUS: Analyzing public comment. EPA has proposed a new rule regulating the emissions of several types of non-road vehicle engines, including spark-ignition engines with power over 19kW, recreational marine compression ignition engines,...

Trans-fatty acids labeling. (Mercatus Reports).(Brief Article)
December 22, 2001... STATUS: OIRA prompt for action. In November of 1999, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) proposed requiring the inclusion of trans-fatty acid content on food labels. The FDA based that decision on a series of studies showing that the...

Automated External Defibrillators. (Mercatus Reports).(Brief Article)
December 22, 2001... STATUS: OIRA prompt for action. Last May, the Department of Health and Human Services and the General Services Administration developed guidelines for public access to Automated External Defibrillators (AEDs) in public buildings, pursuant...

Bush's rejuvenated OIRA. (Mercatus Reports: In Depth).(Brief Article)
December 22, 2001... Beginning with the Nixon administration, every U.S. president has maintained, in one form or another, a centralized mechanism for executive branch oversight of regulations issued by federal agencies. Under Ronald Reagan, the Office of...

Measuring hidden taxes. (Mercatus Reports: Commentary).(Brief Article)
December 22, 2001... THE U.S. SMALL BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION recently released a study estimating that federal regulations cost Americans $843 billion a year. The study, authored by George Mason University economist Mark Cram and Rochester Institute of Technology...

Questioning the SEC's crusades. (Briefly Noted).
December 22, 2001... THE UNITED STATES SECURITIES AND Exchange Commission (SEC) enjoys a good reputation for honesty and competence, and is regularly hailed for preventing fraud, manipulation, and unfairness in American stock trading. And no area of SEC regulation...

The blessed monopolies: Does pediatric exclusivity drug legislation benefit children? What about their parents? (Health & Medicine).
December 22, 2001... PEDIATRICIANS AND THEIR PATIENTS are pleading with Congress to reauthorize a provision of the Food and Drug Administration Modernization Act (FDAMA) intended to encourage study of the effects of drugs on children. Under the provision, known as...

Closing the FDA's Orange Book: Current drug regulations invite abuse of patent laws. (Health & Medicine).
December 22, 2001... THE MISSION OF THE U.S. FOOD AND Drug Administration (FDA) is "to promote and protect the public health by helping safe and effective products reach the market in a timely way." Unfortunately, that mission has been subverted by a loophole in...

The push for auditor independence: The SEC sought to restructure the accounting profession with its new auditor independence rule. (Securities & Exchange).
December 22, 2001... IN NOVEMBER OF 2000, THE SECURITIES and Exchange Commission (SEC) adopted a new rule that prohibits accounting firms from providing certain non-audit "consulting" services to their audit clients. The rule also requires public companies to...

Answering Ayres: Requiring campaign donors to remain anonymous would not resolve corruption concerns. (Campaign Finance).
December 22, 2001... IN A RECENT REGULATION ARTICLE, YALE LAW School professor Ian Ayres offered a radical solution to the perpetual controversy over campaign finance reform ("Should Campaign Donors Be Identified?" Summer 2000). Recapitulating a proposal that he...

Another approach to anonymity: A voluntary system offers advantages over mandatory donor anonymity. (Campaign Finance).
December 22, 2001... IN LAST SUMMER'S ISSUE OF REGULATION, Yale Law School professor Ian Ayres suggested that campaign finance laws be reformed to require that contributions pass through blind trusts ("Should Campaign Donors Be Identified?"). That way, a candidate...

Congress's dairy dilemma: Are compacts the best way to save family farms? (Agriculture).
December 22, 2001... LAST FALL, CONGRESSIONAL AUTHORITY expired for the Northeast Interstate Dairy Compact (better known as the New England compact), a landmark agreement that empowered a special regional commission to regulate wholesale milk prices for six New...

After 9.11. (Special Report).(Brief Article)
December 22, 2001... IN THE HOURS AND DAYS FOLLOWING THE September 11 attacks, most Americans found it difficult to fathom that we now face an ongoing threat of unexpected, mass violence. But Americans have faced such threats before, whether from Indian raids on...

The defense industry's new cycle. (Defense).
December 22, 2001... THE AMERICAN DEFENSE INDUSTRY IS ready for the new war. In fact, it has been ready since the late 1980s when the Cold War petered out. The 40-year-long Cold War convinced industry leaders that war (or, at least, the preparation for war) was a...

The vulnerability of networks. (Telecommunications).
December 22, 2001... THE ATROCITIES OF SEPTEMBER 11 NOT only revealed the vulnerability of people living and working within America's borders, but also the vulnerability of our high-technology information society. Collapsing with the twin towers was a veritable...

A crisis of security and economics. (Transportation).
December 22, 2001... THE ATROCITIES COMMITTED ON SEPTEMBER 11 imposed substantial short-term and long-term costs on the U.S. economy. While all sectors were adversely affected by the attacks, many transportation firms experienced especially serious harm. As a...

The transformation of public health. (Health & Medicine).
December 22, 2001... LEST WE FORGET, NOT ALL OF THE TERRORIST attacks launched against the United States last fall came on September 11. In the weeks following the airliner-turned-missile strikes on New York and Washington, a number of Americans became infected,...

The defensive front line. (Law Enforcement).
December 22, 2001... SEPTEMBER 11 WAS NOT THE FIRST TIME that terrorists struck targets within the United States. Only eight years before, a band of Islamic extremists led by Ramzi Yousef successfully detonated a minibus filled with 1,100 lbs. of explosives in the...

Dissecting deregulation. (In Review).
December 22, 2001... DEREGULATION OF NETWORK INDUSTRIES: What's Next? Edited by Sam Peltzman and Clifford Winston 199 pp., Washingon, D.C.: AEI-Brookings Joint Center for Regulatory Studies, 2000 WHO PAYS FOR UNIVERSAL SERVICE? When Telephone Subsidies...

The costs of natural gas regulation. (In Review).
December 22, 2001... THE NATURAL GAS MARKET: Sixty Years of Regulation and Deregulation By Paul W. MacAvoy 176 pp., New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2001 In this brief book, Yale management professor Paul MacAvoy evaluates the history of...

The coming Investor revolution. (In Review).
December 22, 2001... INVESTOR POLITICS: The New Force That Will Transform American Business, Government, and Politics in the Twenty First Century By John Hood 308 pp., Philadelphia, Pa.: Templeton Foundation Press, 2000 The non-stop expansion of...

Straight talk on Social Security. (In Review).
December 22, 2001... SAVING SOCIAL SECURITY (FROM CONGRESS) By Bert McLachlan 257 pp., Leawood, Kansas: Leathers Publishing, 2001 The combination of a pay-as-you-go financial structure and the expected rapid growth in the number of retirees...

Wartime and family time. (The Final Word).(Brief Article)
December 22, 2001... TERRORISM IS A FREE MARKET IN COERCION. Although libertarians admire markets, this one should be razed, its stalls and pushcarts burned, its customers scattered, and its merchants hanged. A democratically elected, constitutionally limited...