Regulation articles from March 2002

Regulation archives from March 2002

Authors, ACCACA Agree (Mostly). (For the Reocord).(Advisory Council on Clean Air Compliance Analysis)
March 22, 2002... IN OUR ARTICLE "EPA PATS ITSELF on the Back" (Regulation, Vol. 23, Number 3, Fall 2000), we noted several material defects in the substance of the Environmental Protection Agency's reports to Congress on the costs and benefits of the Clean Air...

Pizza identity rule. (Mercatus Reports).(United States Department of Agriculture Food Safety Inspection Service )(Brief Article)
March 22, 2002... STATUS: USDA analyzing public comment. In 1970, the United States Department of Agriculture Food Safety Inspection Service (FSIS) instituted requirements for the composition of pizzas that contain some form of meat. According to the...

New source review. (Mercatus Reports).(air pollution emission regulations )(Brief Article)
March 22, 2002... STATUS: EPA conducting review as part of new "comprehensive strategy." In May of 2001, the National Energy Policy Development Group (NEPDG) recommended that federal officials conduct a careful review and analysis of New Source Review (NSR)...

Particulate matter. (Mercatus Reports).(air quality regulations)(Brief Article)
March 22, 2002... STATUS: EPA preparing for review. The Clean Air Act requires that national ambient air quality standards for particulate matter be reviewed every five years. In July of 1997, the EPA published a final rule revising the national ambient air...

Total Maximum Daily Load. (Mercatus Reports).(new regulation from Environmental Protection Agency)(Brief Article)
March 22, 2002... STATUS: EPA analyzing public comment. In July of 2000, EPA issued new Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL) regulations for pollutants discharged into waterways. Under the regulations, states must determine the maximum daily amounts of various...

Environmental electronic reporting. (Mercatus Reports).
March 22, 2002... STATUS: EPA analyzing public comment The Government Paperwork Elimination Act of 1998 required all agencies to offer options for electronic reporting and record keeping by October of 2003. To comply with that mandate, EPA released the Cross...

Drug re-importation's no-win solution. (Mercatus Reports: Commentary).
March 22, 2002... With midterm elections only a few months away, lawmakers once again are talking about implementing a prescription drug plan for seniors. But, with the economy stalled and increased military spending dominating the budget for the near future, it...

A prohibition on advertising? (Briefly Noted).
March 22, 2002... LAST DECEMBER, THE NATIONAL BROADcasting Company announced that it had signed a contract with the world's largest distributor of distilled spirits, Diageo PLC, to air liquor commercials for products from Diageo's Guinness UDV division. The...

Profile, but pay. (Briefly Noted).
March 22, 2002... WALIED SHATER, AN ARMED ARAB-American Secret Service agent who was bumped from an American Airlines flight last Christmas over security concerns, is suing the company for engaging in "racial profiling." Shater claims that he was denied access...

The benefits of MS-settlement. (Briefly Noted).
March 22, 2002... LIKE EVERY OTHER TURN IN THIS LONG CASE, the tentative settlement to United States v. Microsoft has generated controversy. Critics of the settlement, including many of Microsoft's competitors, argue that the proposed accord does not go far...

Rationalizing air pollution regulation. (Briefly Noted).
March 22, 2002... THE NATION'S SPUTTERING AIR POLLUTION policies may soon receive a major overhaul. On Valentine's Day, President Bush proposed that Congress mandate deep cuts in the levels of sulfur dioxides ([SO.sub.2]), nitrogen oxides ([NO.sub.x]), and...

Not calling the police (First): a market for response would lower the public cost of false alarms. (Law Enforcement).
March 22, 2002... COMMUNITIES ACROSS THE UNITED States created and operate 911 emergency communication systems to provide prompt response for medical, fire, and law enforcement emergencies. Many of those systems have carried heavy call loads for years, but they...

How have user fees affected the FDA? The 1992 FDA reform successfully reduced drug review times. (Health & Medicine).
March 22, 2002... DELAY IN THE APPROVAL OF NEW drugs has been a policy problem in the United States since the mid-1970s. Scholars have argued that the delay historically has resulted in part from excessive caution on the part of the Food and Drug Administration,...

Reform's Stunted Crop: Congress re-embraces agriculture subsidies. (Agriculture).
March 22, 2002... CONGRESS IS ON THE VERGE OF finalizing a new long-term farm bill to replace legislation passed in 1996. The earlier legislation, when it was enacted, received attention for its potential to end farm subsidies as they had been known. If Congress...

Testing the rhetoric: location-efficient mortgages may have more costs and risks than proponents claim. (Banking & Finance).
March 22, 2002... RECENT POLLS INDICATE THAT AMERicans are more concerned about urban sprawl than crime or unemployment. Among the many tools policymakers use to discourage sprawl, one of the most intriguing is the location-efficient mortgage (LEM). LEMs allow...

Financial Deja vu? The Farm Credit System's past woes could strike the Federal Home Loan Bank System. (Banking & Finance).
March 22, 2002... CONGRESS ESTABLISHED THE FEDERAL Home Loan Bank System (FHLBS) in 1932 to increase liquidity and the volume of lending for residential mortgages. In 1999, the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act significantly changed both the structure and mission of the...

The reversion tax's preverse result: did Congress's effort to stop pension fund terminations ultimately hurt workers? (Securities & Investment).
March 22, 2002... SINCE 1985, EMPLOYER FUNDING FOR defined benefit pension plans has plummeted. Unlike defined contribution plans that are akin to tax-preferred savings accounts, defined benefit plans represent an employer's promise to pay workers a pension at...

Readying for more reform: will Congress end the requirement that only SEC-registered securities be sold to the public? (Securities & Investment).
March 22, 2002... FEDERAL SECURITIES AND BANKING laws passed by Congress in the 1930s departed from previous law in one key respect: The earlier law treated securities transactions as simply one of the many different kinds of commercial deals in which the...

Much ado about order flow: how should regulators respond to "side" payments made by markets to brokers? (Securities & Investment).
March 22, 2002... IN THE LAST QUARTER OF A CENTURY, there has been a remarkable -- and much needed--shift in public policy towards deregulation in a host of areas. The wholesale revision and discarding of unnecessary regulations has occurred in industries...

Challenging the greens. (In Review).(The Skeptical Environmentalist: Measuring the Real State of the World)(Book Review)
March 22, 2002... THE SKEPTICAL ENVIRONMENTALIST: Measuring the Real State of the World By Bjorn Lomborg 515 pp., Cambridge, U.K., and New York, N.Y.: The Cambridge University Press, 2001. By stressing his conversion from a Greenpeace...

Regulation at Home and Abroad. (In Review).(Regulatory Encounters: Multinational Corporations and American Adversarial Legalism)(Book Review)
March 22, 2002... REGULATORY ENCOUNTERS: Multinational Corporations and American Adversarial Legalism Edited by Robert A. Kagan and Lee Axelrad 438 pp., Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 2000 What is distinctive about government...

Make the terrorists do the profiling. (The Final Word).
March 22, 2002... THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, A COUNtry built on the separation of church and state, is in the middle of a "God Bless America" holy war. So airports are screening (hassling) young-to-middle-aged men of Middle Eastern ancestry. We want to keep...