Regulation Freakout

The FMCSA is the people who make sure that the 18-wheeler riding your bumper is not massively overweight, running with bad brakes or driven by a crackhead.

To repugs, of course, that means THEY ARE COMING TO TAKE YER FREEDUMBS!

Kevin Drum:

I got sucked into a regulatory vortex today. It's way down in some weeds that most of you don't care about, but let me tell you about it anyway. It's instructive.

I don't remember now where I first saw this, but apparently the conservative community is in an uproar over proposed new rules that would classify farm equipment as commercial vehicles, thus requiring farmers to get commercial drivers licenses, keep detailed logs, submit to periodic drug testing, etc. etc. It would be expensive and annoying and farmers don't like it. Just another example of the overbearing Obama administration regulating us to death.

So I got curious. What was this all about? First I went to the website of the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration and looked at their Request for Comment on this issue. And I got perplexed. FMCSA didn't really seem to be proposing anything at all. First, they're asking for comment on their longstanding policy about what counts as interstate commerce vs. intrastrate commerce. Second, they're asking for comment on their longstanding policy about whether a tenant farmer who pays rent in the form of a share of the crop should count as a commercial operator since he's hauling someone else's stuff when he delivers the landlord's share of the harvest. Third, they're asking for comment on what should count as an "implement of husbandry."

But here's what's weird: the first two items don't propose any new rules at all. They're solely asking for comment. The third item is a proposed new rule, but the wording suggests that FMCSA is trying to loosen regulations, not tighten them. And yet, a Google search came up with lots of people opposed to the "new rules" and precisely no one who seemed to be in favor. So what's up?

Finally I figured it out. After reading through a blog post about all this, followed by lots of outraged comments ("What else can you possibily find to TAX!!!" etc. etc.), I found an actual substantive explanation of what's going on from Adam Nielsen of the Illinois Farm Bureau.

SNIP

So here's what seems to have happened. The FMCSA has long had rules that defined most grain haulage as interstate commerce and designated farmers hauling shared crops as commercial operators. This was never a big deal because they had never enforced those rules and neither had anyone else. But then Illinois decided to start enforcing the letter of the law and Illinois farmers were unhappy. So now FMCSA is asking whether these regulations ever made sense in the first place. Ditto for implements of husbandry, where they say that "a narrowly literal reading would mean applying the rules in circumstances where they would be impractical and produce no discernible safety benefits." So they want to make sure that the rules are more practical.

I might still be missing something here. Figuring out what's really going on just by reading rulemaking bureaucratese isn't easy. But it looks like the outrage over this is yet another example of Obama Derangement Syndrome in action. Far from trying to implement a barrage of regulations on our nation's farmers, FMCSA is apparently trying to stop state officials from implementing a barrage of regulations on our nation's farmers. But something tells me this doesn't matter. ODS is strong, and I imagine this is all going to be part of conservative lore for years. After all, everyone knows that liberals just love writing reams of pointless new regulations on hardworking small business owners. Right?

It's a conditioned response for the conservatards: whatever dems/liberals, the federal government or Obama does, they condemn it and demand the opposite.

If you find yourself stuck listening to one, amuse yourself by playing this game: Say: "As a liberal, I agree with President Obama that the sun rises in the east and sets in the west. What do you think?"

With any luck, the moron's head will explode.