Even savvy members of the Bush administration don’t really have a clue about the breadth of the government they tend to belittle and now seek to tame.
“It really is remarkable,” says a just-arrived official at the Office of Management and Budget. “Stem-cell research, rules for anesthesiologists, nuclear plants, it’s all over the place.”
And if any of the Bushies had any doubt, they need just check the generally impenetrable Federal Register, a softbound, small-print booklet published five days a week by the National Archives and Records Administration (and now online at www.gpo.gov).
It is both painfully boring and very important because it’s where all those government agencies the Bushies mostly claim to detest stick their new rules and other announcements. It is a weirdly compelling reminder of how the big, bad bureaucracy affects our lives each and every day.
For example:
– Get ready for this: In accordance with the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995, the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service at the Agriculture Department is asking the Office of Management and Budget to allow it to spend three years collecting comments on whether it should continue to collect sanitation and health data related to the import of tomatoes from Spain, Chile, France, Morocco and Western Sahara.
In part it seeks to “evaluate whether the information collection is necessary for the proper performance of our agency’s functions” and “evaluate the accuracy of our estimate of the burden of the information collection.” It indicates that the “reporting burden” for respondents, who apparently are mostly foreign plant health protection agencies, “averages 0.5 hours per response.”
– The Coast Guard proposes to change the drawbridge operation rules for the West Bay Bridge, at mile 1.2, across West Bay in Osterville, Mass. “This proposed rule would allow the bridge owner to increase the advance notice requirement for April and extend the evening operating hours at the bridge during the boating season.” Boaters, you have until July 9 to comment.
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– The Employment and Training Administration at the Labor Department has agreed to reconsider a previous rejection of a request for financial help by workers let go at Eastern Fine Paper in Brewer, Maine, who contend that they fell victim to foreign imports and are eligible for so-called worker adjustment assistance.
– The Bureau of Land Management in the Interior Department issues rules on camping restrictions to reduce resource damage and fire danger in the “riparian area, dunes, and other undeveloped lands” at the King Range National Conservation Area in California. It has removed the proposed overnight parking fees for the Black Sands Beach Recreation Sites and has established new camping fees at Honeydew Creek and Mattole Campgrounds. But don’t worry about going broke. The fee will be $5 per campsite at Honeydew and Mattole.
– The Department of Veterans Affairs has issued a final rule on U.S. flags used at burials of certain members of the Selective Reserve, as part of the Strom Thurmond National Defense Authorization Act of Fiscal Year 1999. The VA will provide a burial flag “upon the death of any deceased member or former member of the Selected Reserve who is not otherwise eligible for a flag under section 10143 of title 10.”
This seems humane to me.
– The Federal Aviation Administration is changing the rules that govern parachuting (and taking just 30 pages to do it). Yes, parachuting. It is changing the rules for parachute packing, tandem parachute operations and foreign parachutists, in particular whether foreign parachutists can make jumps in this country using their own equipment.
Among other matters, the FAA exhibits flexibility by not sticking with an initial plan to require a parachutist flying through the air between sunset and sunrise to display a light visible for 3 statute miles in all directions. Several groups had objected, including the Southwest Airlines Pilots Association, saying the need to display a light that’s visible “in all directions” would require a parachutist to be equipped with more than one light. “The FAA has revisited this proposal and agrees with the commenters. The FAA is rescinding the proposal and has deleted the phrase `in all directions’ in the final rule.”
– The FAA issues a so-called airworthiness directive for certain Boeing Model 767-200, -300 and -300F series jets. It will require “inspections for fatigue cracking of the horizontal stabilizer pivot bulkhead, and repetitive inspections or other follow-on actions. This also provides a permanent repair, which is optional for airplanes with no cracks, and, if accomplished, ends the repetitive inspections. This action is necessary to find and fix fatigue cracking of the horizontal stabilizer pivot bulkhead and adjacent stabilizer pivot bulkhead and adjacent structure, which could result in loss of the horizontal stabilizer.”
And if that happens, watch out for your luggage in the overhead bin.
– The Federal Railroad Administration announces, in case you somehow didn’t know, the availability of loans, lines of credit and loan guarantees under the Transportation Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act. But it’s best to be involved in a highway, passenger rail, transit or “intermodal” project, including an “intelligent transportation system.”
– The Department of Interior’s Fish and Wildlife Service is changing the list of species contained in the appendices to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora. This comes more than a year after the wild fauna and flora gang met in Gigiri, Kenya.
This notice includes word that the U.S. is considering, “at least for the spotted turtle and timber rattlesnake . . . listing as an alternative conservation strategy for these native species subject to international trade,” whatever that means, and that state wildlife agencies will be fully consulted.
In a somewhat untypical aside, this notice brings word that many secret ballots were cast during this world gathering in Kenya, including all proposals involving whales, hawksbill sea turtles, great white sharks and basking sharks. “The United States considers this proliferation of secret ballots to be unfortunate,” this says, and then goes public with the U.S. votes, including voting for all the proposals on the basking sharks and great white sharks. But, alas, our own proposals on the spotted turtle, whale shark and Eastern Hemisphere tarantulas were rejected.
– The Department of Health and Human Services announces delay of a previously announced rule involving the “protection of human research subjects.”
It is doing so to consider a) “whether paternal consent (when the father is readily available) should be obtained for participation in federally funded research that is directed solely at a fetus”; b) “whether the definition of `fetus’ should be modified so that it describes only the stage prior to delivery”; and c) “whether the rule should be modified to make clear that fetuses of uncertain viability may be subjected to added risk only if the research is intended to enhance the probability of survival of the particular fetus to the point of viability.”
– The International Trade Administration in the Department of Commerce announces anti-dumping orders, including its determination that “stainless steel angle from Japan, Korea and Spain is being, or is likely to be, sold in the United States at less than fair value.”
There you have it.
Just think, every day there’s more, much more. It will certainly give the Bush administration much to ponder.
Life at the top is not easy. There’s China, Russia, Libya, Iraq and, it turns out, the dilemmas presented by those suspicious foreign parachutists.