Kadoka High School

Kadoka, South Dakota

Teacher:  Teresa Shuck

Government As Regulator

By:  Seth Thomsen

11^th grade

The government regulation of today has both its upsides and its downsides.  In some ways it pleases the U.S. citizens, and in some ways people are greatly opposed to it.  It56 has its benefits to the environment and the ecosystem, as well as the well being of people.  In some cases it is insubordinate to the needs of certain people.  People often are upset at the regulation that is forced upon them.

            One form of government regulation is the age at which it is legal to consume alcohol.  The legal drinking age now is 21 years old.  In every other country in this world it is 18 years old or younger.  And America is still one of the leaders for alcoholism per capita.  In this country you are considered an adult at 18 years of age.  You are to pay taxes, have a job, smoke cigarettes, live on your own and even die for your country, but you can’t go down and drink a beer with you friends.

            Seat belts are a government regulation law that requires people to wear seatbelts at all times when they are driving their vehicle.  This is like saying that it is against the law to leave your cloths dryer unattended in case of a fire.  They are trying to regulate something that isn’t harming anybody but your self and if you want to make that decision then you should be able to and not get punished for it.  A car is your own property and you should be able to do whatever you want in your own car.  What’s next, not being able to drink a pop in your car or not be able to listen to your radio while you are driving?

Today’s airline security systems were a time bomb ready to happen, horribly the inevitable came and the shocking events of September 11 played out.  Terrorists were able to easily sneak knives of some type through security and onto the planes.  After in flight they managed to gain access to the cockpit and control not 1, not 2, not 3, but 4 jet airliners!  The strengthening of the cockpit is the only way to prevent this atrocity from ever happening again, or at least the best way. 

            Thrill seekers such as bungee jumpers and roller-bladers are being denied their access to various areas in which to jump and skate in.  It is now illegal to play common games in streets, alleys and sidewalks.  They are outlawing cliff jumping and bungee jumping areas so that they cannot be used.  With stiff fines and punishments, thrill seekers will no longer have areas to participate in.  They should be able to do whatever they want.  It is their lives they are messing with.

The second amendment of the constitution is one of the most argued over topics of the United States.  “The right to keep and bear arms,” is one of the oldest rights our forefathers gave us great citizens of America to protect ourselves with.  There are activists that argue guns kill people.  You can’t go blame some inanimate object for killing someone.  The government requires background checks on anyone who buys a firearm.  This is a decent way of keeping guns out of the hands of convicted felons.  But if somebody really wanted to get a firearm they could very easily.

            The EPA is an organization that keeps the amount of pollution that is released into the atmosphere in check.  They check your vehicles emissions to see if they are giving out too many pollutants into the air.  They have laws that keep it illegal to dump pesticides and other harmful materials into rivers or water systems.  And they have laws that can put stiff fines on people who litter.  This type of regulation is very beneficial to the country’s ecosystem.  It is a good plan that is essential to the future of our planet.

            Government regulation costs huge amounts of money to enforce.  They need to pay law enforcement agencies and government officials to keep these regulations working.  They have to pay EPA stations for smog checking on vehicles along with police stations for law-breakers and park rangers for littering and other violations.  There are various tools and supplies needed by these people to regulate these problems.  All of this costs the country millions of dollars each year.

Government is needed in this country to keep it in order and check.  But in some ways the government goes a little too far by trying to over regulate its citizens and their rights.  Government regulations keep criminals and scams down at bay, by setting rules that make it illegal to do certain things.  They also make this country a safer place in which to live in.  Some regulations benefit Americans and are totally necessary to keep America in order.

Q1.    What is the only way to prevent hijackers from gaining control of an airplane according to the unknown author?

Answer:  The only way to prevent hijackers from gaining control of an airplane according to the unknown author in section one is to make the cockpit harder and more indestructible.

Q2.      What are the arguments given by lobbyists for the Bells in favor of HR 1542 (Tauzin-Dingell Bill) and arguments given by their opponents against this legislation?
CQ May 5 p 1012

Answer:  The arguments given by lobbyists for the Bells in favor of HR 1542 and the arguments given by their opponents against the legislation are:  The lobbyists in favor of the of the HR 1542 argue that the members need regulatory relief to compete with cable television companies and any other high speed Internet providers.  The opponents against the Hr 1542 argue that the Tauzin and Dingell’s proposal will give the Bills the kind of breaks that Tauzin and Dingell are proposing would chill investment in their smaller competitors, which have struggled to compete. 

Q3.      Why do small-business groups like HR 1831? From the small amount of information presented in your required reading, do you think the legislation is a good idea? Why?
CQ May 19 p. 1161

Answer:  Small-business groups like HR 1831 because it would protect businesses that discard less than 110 gallons of liquid waste or less than 200 pounds of solid, non-hazardous waste at a superfund site.  The measure is aimed at protecting businesses that have not significantly harmed the environment from being sued by large polluters that want to recover some of their government-mandated cleanup costs.  I think that the legislation is a good idea because it protects the small businesses by giving them a superfund site to dump the wastes.  More businesses will eventually follow this legislation and pretty soon all the businesses will have a safe place for dumping the wastes.  This will save the land and limit the pollution.

Q4.      Give an argument in favor of government regulating activities such as roller blading and bungee jumping.
Governing, March 1993 p 23

Answer:  The government should regulate activities such as roller-blading and bungee-jumping simply because the roller-bladers are tearing through public facilities scratching up sidewalks and benches.  Not to mention, disrupting the public people from a peaceful walk in parks and down streets.  The bungee-jumpers are just people that are looking for death.  They go to places like bridges causing traffic jams and other hold ups.  These people disrupt the society and endanger many other people beside themselves.  For these reasons, the government should regulate activities such as roller-blading and bungee jumping.  These people that participate in these activities are damaging public grounds and endangering many innocent people in the public.

Q5.      Define a “burden hour.”
CQ ‘April 28 p. 896

Answer:  “Burden hour” is supposed to measure the time it takes to collect data and fill out federal forms, surveys, and reports.   The GAO remark made to a House Government Reform subcommittee on April 24, that the burden hour’s relationship to the real burden, is unclear.  The definition of burden is something that prevents something from happening or slows the development of.  So burden hour is the time that something is getting developed or changed.  This is very true according to the remark made by the GAO.  The burden hour is the time that the government is collecting and filling out federal forms, surveys, reports, etc.  This is the true definition of the burden hour pertaining to the government and what they are doing in this time.  

Q6.      Why was Connecticut Senator, Joseph Lieberman, concerned enough to vote against the nomination of Professor John Graham as administrator of the office of Information and Regulatory Affairs in the current Bush administration?
CQ May 26 p 1229

Answer:  The Connecticut Senator, Joseph Lieberman, was concerned enough to vote against the nomination of Professor John Graham as administrator of the office of Information and Regulatory Affairs in the current Bush administration because, the chairman of the panel will nonetheless provide a high-profile platform for 2000 Democratic vice presidential candidate Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut to criticize the Bush administration and further his presumed 2004 presidential aspirations.  He was concerned enough to run because he was expected to raise frequent questions about White House decisions to roll back environmental and workplace safety regulations.  Also because he was likely to ask whether the administration consulted with industry representatives about regulations under development, in violation of a 1993 executive order issued by President Bill Clinton.  He was concerned enough to vote against the nomination of Professor John Graham simply because Lieberman cited Graham’s past criticisms of clean-air and clean-water statutes and questioned whether he would weaken federal health, environmental and safety standards.

Q6a.    Graham is a proponent of “risk analysis.”  How is risk analysis defined on page 992 of the May 5, 2001 issue of Congressional Quarterly Weekly?

Answer:  Graham argues that risk analysis is a valuable tool in setting budget and policy priorities, and that it makes sense to use systematic methods to figure out whether a perceived threat or hazard is real.

Q6b.    Who was the first president to order federal agencies to weigh potential costs and benefits when writing a rule?
CQ May5 2001 p 993

Answer:  Every president since Jimmy Carter has ordered federal agencies to weigh potential costs and benefits when writing a rule.

Q6.      How much would compliance with OSHA’s regulations to limit injuries or disabilities from performing repetitive tasks cost according to an estimate by business groups as reported in the 2000 CQ Almanac?   What was the response of OSHA and Labor Department officials? 
CQ Almanac p 2-111

Answer:  Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has been at work on regulations to limit injuries or disabilities from performing repetitive tasks.  Business groups say the pending rules' breadth and vagueness would drive up their cost of compliance.  Their estimates range from $14 billion to $80 billion a year and would wrongly cut into business productivity and profitability.  OSHA and Labor Department officials, meanwhile, say the rule is intended to be flexible and would not require most companies to act.  While costing employers $4.2 billion annually, they say the rule would also save them $9 billion a year in lost productivity.  This is the argument embraced by labor as well.

Q7.      What was the makeup of the “iron triangle” during the Reagan years and what do environmentalists and consumer activists foresee as its composition in the current Bush administration?
CQ May 5 p 990

Answer:  The makeup of the "iron triangle" during the Raegan years was an unbreakable alliance among Democratic committee chairmen, agency officials and interest groups that worked in concert to achieve common goals, whether it was funding for special projects or protecting specific constituencies.  Environmentalists and consumer activists say they fear the formation of a new triad-composed of industry officials, the White House and GOP committee chairmen that leaves them out of the equation.  Many regulatory experts predict that the new dynamic will control the rule-making process in more than 50 federal agencies.  But there's a new level of belief that agency regulations are likely to be more helpful than harmful.

Q8.      Name 5 actions of the Bush administration that have drawn criticism from Environmentalists.
CQ May 5, 2001 p. 994 and 995

Answer:  One action that drew criticism from environmentalists was the signing of legislation (PL 107-5) to kill a Clinton ergonomics rule opposed by many major business groups, who argued that it would cost too much to implement.  The second action was his intention to reverse or revise Clinton regulations, including one to toughen cleanup standards for hard rock mining operations.  The third action was reneging on a campaign pledge to regulate carbon dioxide and by rejecting the Kyoto Protocol on global warming.  The fourth action was reversing a Clinton rule to reduce the levels of arsenic in drinking water.  The fifth action was the upholding of Clinton regulations involving complex medical privacy rules and tougher emission standards for diesel engines.

Q9.      What did the executive order issued by Ronald Reagan in 1981 and still in effect today, requires agencies to prove before new regulations were enacted? How did the Democratic House counter in 1986?
CQ May 5, 2001 p. 995

Answer:  Reagan beefed up the agency's oversight power by issuing an executive order in 1981 that required agencies to prove that a regulation's benefits would "outweigh" its costs.  Later, Reagan banned agencies from issuing any regulatory policies that were not approved by OMB at the start of each year.  Democratic chairmen in the House were outraged by Reagan’s actions.  In 1986, the Democratic-controlled House forced a showdown by deleting funds for OMB's regulatory division from the fiscal 1987 budget.  Lawmakers restored the money after OMB director Miller and Wendy Lee Gramm, head of the regulatory affairs office, agreed to make the rule-making process more transparent by disclosing White House documents related to regulatory decisions.

Q10.    On the average, how long does it take to build an airport?  A highway?
CQ May 19, 2001 p 1163

Answer:  Having committed billions of dollars to fund new highway and airport projects across the country, members of Congress are now loking for ways to expedite their construction.  According to the House Transportation and Infrastructure Chairman Don Young, R-Alaska, the average time for a highway construction is 12 years.  He also said that the average time for an airport construction is 15 years, and that's just unacceptable he thought.

Q11.    Discuss the pros and cons of licensing requirements.
Wall Street Journal June 18, 1993

Answer:  Many people are in favor of certain licensing requirements, but on the other side people are against certain licensing requirements.  The people in favor think that it is right to license young businesses to keep them from unreasonable barriers and from starting.  This would let the small business know what it's like to be licensed for starting a business.  It also gives all the other businesses a fair chance.  The people against the licensing requirements think that it's wrong to tax a young business.  It is only keeping it from starting and developing.  The license is just getting them scared so they are likely to quit.  This will eliminate all the small businesses and allow the big businesses to do all the work and business.  This will keep less confusion and business simpler with only having to deal with a few businesses instead of a whole bunch of them.  These are some of the pros and cons of licensing requirements.

Q12.    Discuss the pros and cons of master plans and planning departments.
Taking A Stand On Regulation pp 80-82

Answer:  Many people have different opinions about master plans and planning departments.  Some people for it say that it allows for the development of newer and better facilities.  It upgrades our buildings to cope with the everyday world around us instead of an old-outdated building that isn't good enough for people to get complete success out of.  By making plans the planning departments can make money and we can get better facilities out of the deal.  It's a win-win situation they think.  However, those people against the master plans and planning departments say that it makes a mess with old buildings and the construction of the new buildings.  This is an inconvenience for all people that are around the area.  The process of building pollutes the world and disturbs the public with all the noise.  These people don't like the tearing up of the ground just to replace a building with a newer, bigger, better one.  These are some of the pros and cons of master plans and planning departments

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