First, I’m sorry about my extended absence from blogging, both to my co-bloggers and audience. My schedule has been very full, and I’ve been battling mysterious fatigue and abdominal pain which makes it hard to concentrate on anything. I’ve been seeing multiple doctors and am heading to a specialist here at the end of the month. They have ruled out Chron’s, celiac sprue, acute intermittent porphyria, and irritable bowel syndrome…along with the more common stomach problems. I know that is not a real excuse, and I should battle through it for the good of you readers. For that, I’m sorry.

In any case, the story that caught my eye today is that Obama has issued an order to government to trim rules that are not “cost-effective and cost justified, transparent, coordinated/simplified, flexible, science-driven, or necessary and up-to-date.”

And then there were flying pigs. The NYT identifies a few rules that are simply dumb:

There is a federal regulation that dictates that place names on new highway signs must be spelled with just one capital letter — like This, not THIS.

Federal rules say that beef from a state-regulated slaughterhouse cannot be sold in other states, but bison from the same slaughterhouse can.

And as President Obama told the nation on Tuesday, one federal agency until recently listed saccharin, a common coffee sweetener, as a form of toxic waste.

Of the stupid rules listed above, only the second has any real material consequence. The NYT Economix blog also has a discussion of further stupid rules.

And then there was pie in the sky. I don’t have much faith that this is of much consequence. As noted above, we may be able to get rid of some quirky rules that are left over because no one notices that they are there…but most dumb rules exist because they benefit somebody, somewhere. Perfect competition is a very cruel mistress. If there is a rule that is of material (economic) consequence, it is likely that it exists because some interest agitated that it be so. Thus, trimming the government of rules that aren’t cost-effective, or aren’t coordinated or flexible is a political battle.

However, I can think of something that is of extreme consequence, that is not cost effective or cost justified, flexible, coordinated/simple, science-driven. It’s also of dubious necessity and certainly not up-to-date. I wonder if it’s on the chopping block?

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