“I’m Jack’s medulla oblongata. Without me, Jack could not regulate his heart rate, blood pressure, or breathing.” – Fight Club
Don’t worry! I’ve been told by 51 intelligence operatives that the Deep State isn’t real.
I know that the event of last week in the media was the debate. I’ll agree, it was pretty significant, significant enough that I stayed up even later to chat about it with The Mrs., who gets up really early. How early?
JW: Tonight’s debate was thermonuclear.
The Mrs.: You mean yesterday’s debate. Oh, wait, you haven’t slept, so for you it’s still yesterday.
Whatever timeframe you’re using, a really, really big thing happened on Friday. Let me explain, I’m a trained professional.
Let’s go back in time a bit.
Back in 1938, the Congress passed a law establishing a thing called the “Code of Federal Regulations” act. That act required all federal regulations to be put in a single source, which is now called the CFR. Note that I didn’t say a single book, since the CFR pages totaled 188,343 in 2021.
That’s not a typographical error. There are nearly 200,000 pages of federal regulations. They say that ignorance of the law is no excuse, but I’m pretty sure that there is no sane human that could read and retain that insane level of regulation, except for Alex Trebek, and he is, alas, no more.
That meant that people like these were responsible for making the regulations you had to live by, with no restraint. It’s like allowing random members of a Pride march to decide on your healthcare. Oh, wait.
Now, there are several groups that really love that level of regulation:
- Lawyers, who build careers on understanding them,
- Big Business, to keep out small-fry competition that can’t afford lawyers to interpret the rules to keep them out of trouble,
- the Antifa® fascists, who are the people who really get bent out of shape if your lawn is 0.05” higher than the regulations say, and
- They exist to write regulations, so they just want to write more.
This is an unholy combination.
Regulations are based on law. The Congress of the United States passes a bill, and the President of the United States signs it, and, a law is created. I learned that on Schoolhouse Rock™ when that damn bill just wanted to be a law.
If we emailed the Constitution to each other, would the NSA give it to the Deep State so they’d finally read it?
Laws, however, almost always constrain human activities. In some cases, like murder, a law can be a net social benefit, at least when the courts actually enforce the law equally and without favor.
But murder is simple when compared to some of the federal laws on the books. I could get into the details, but it’s a federal crime:
- to wash your fish at a faucet if it’s not a fish-washing faucet,
- to let your pet make a noise that scares wildlife in a national park,
- to sell onion rings that resemble onion rings, but made with diced onion,
- to skydive drunk, and,
- sell wine with a brand name including the word “zombie”.
Yes. This was made the force of law, that unelected regulators could make up whatever they wanted and put you in jail if you didn’t do what they made up last week. This was based on the “Chevron Deference” – a court decision that effectively let the Executive Branch make regulations, enforce them, and courts had to bow to their interpretation. It’s been the rule for 40 years.
Here is a partial list of the people who will actually have to have a law to rely on to take away your rights in the future.
But the most pernicious part of this is that it feeds into the same mindset that the GloboLeftElite has relied on for years. They want to take an existing law and pound and beat it to meet whatever they believe this Tuesday. For example, there was a requirement that industries stop pollutants from going into the air.
That makes sense. I could argue that it doesn’t need to occur at a national level and that states could regulate it and that might make it un-Constitutional, but, whatever. The law is there. It’s been there forever. The regulations meant to enforce the law when it came out made sense – spewing methyl-ethyl-death across the elementary playground might not be a great idea.
On the other hand, maybe it would have made our children strong enough to work in the mines.
But that same law, written decades ago, was interpreted to mean that sweet, sweet carbon dioxide, you know, plant food, is now a pollutant. Why? Because the GloboLeftElite knows that gives them more control, and because it now fits with the Narrative of the Moment despite the original law being signed into law in 1963 and last amended in 1990.
I just found this X account, and I like the cut of their jib.
Since CO2 wasn’t on the list of evil things in 1963 or in 1990, having the EPA to suddenly decide it was evil is just regulators making things up. The Supreme Court said, “No, you can’t do this. You have to pass a law. And no, the President can’t just say so.” The Chevron™ Deferral effectively allowed the Executive branch of government be also the Legislative and Judicial. This is extremely dangerous.
92% plus of people in Washington D.C. voted Biden. If regulations can be made willie-nillie without congress even having to pass a law, well, it will be members of the GloboLeftistElite that will write them. And, remember, these folks live to do one thing: write regulations.
One of the worst regulators at fault is the ATF®, who can’t even decide what a gun is. They’re in trouble on the rules they made up on “ghost guns” and pistol braces, and even the definition of who can sell guns without needing an ATF license.
Make no mistake, this is a shattering blow for the Deep State, who wants to make regulations with the force of federal law, without there even having to be a federal law change in the first place.
Why does the GloboLeftElite and the GloboLeft hate this? Because all of their termites that have burrowed into the Fed.Gov are now less useful, and they actually have to follow the rules to make their changes.
If a priest becomes a lawyer, does that make him a father-in-law?
And that’s the sand the GloboLeftElite will have in their panties. They have to pass a law. They can’t make their regulatory changes in the dark of the night by unelected bureaucrats who reliably only vote for more government.
And, no, I won’t be waiting up for The Mrs. to get up so we can discuss this post. I’ll probably just sneak into bed while she gently snores beside me.
Hey, wait, is there a federal regulation about snoring? I’ll bet there is . . .
Also – this is what winning looks like. Enjoy this one.
The DS will find a way around it…Lawfare 24/7/365.
They will. And they’ll get a lot back, but they’ll also have to bring it in the light of day, not in some back room.
Huge win for freedoms/liberties in my opinion. Biggest one in my lifetime, other that the overturning of the abortion crap. BobT
But they’re still killing babies…
Amen. Enjoy your bump stock!
I read somewhere or someone told me a long time ago that people who work in government that are unelected but yet produce laws (think any CA state job) are called “Quangocrats”. Maybe I learned it on this blog, but not sure. Its not easy getting old as I lose memory.
I think that might be a Britishism. They’re always going on about the Quasi-Non-Governmental Organizations (QuaNGOs), so the people who run them must be QuaNGOcrats. But what’s “quasi-” NGO? Are the Non-Governmental, or Governmental? Do their decisions have the force of government behind them, or are they just suggestions? Who benefits from the ambiguity? Not those who are encouraged to obey!
Lathechuck
I have heard the term, but I’m pretty sure I never blogged it. Yup, getting old is a thing. As we saw on TV.
Might actually be important to pay attention to the unconstitutional garbage they will be hiding in future legislation.
Yup.
I spent a big chunk of my “office career” managing retirement plans (aka 401k/403b plans). The actual laws regarding these plans is pretty slender so most of the rules were dreamed up by the Dept of Labor and IRS, and that itself is an issue when you have two different agencies making the rules. Most of the rules are still so vague and arcane that there is argument as to what they really mean.
The statutes being “pretty slender” is a plus for Congress-critters because they don’t have to actually make tough or controversial decisions–they just write a vague law and blame the bureaucracy for how it is applied.
And now it won’t be the Deep State making all the calls.
Actual quote from a fairly high ranking federal law enforcement officer: “We enforce the law, we don’t obey it.”
Remember, because of “qualified immunity”, there is no penalty whatsoever for regulators to violate the law, much less their own regulations, as long as they claim they’re just doing their jobs.
And no, a taxpayer funded agency having to pay out more taxpayer money in a lawsuit doesn’t hurt any individual in the agency even one tiny bit. And they have lawyers on staff, so lawsuits are essentially free for the government, unless and until they have to pay a penalty. And then that just comes out of your tax dollars.
Start making it hurt the individual regulator, and we’ll see a change . . .
D.C. will continue to do whatever they want, to whomever they want (paging Steve Bannon). Blah blah from the Supreme Court will be enforced by nobody.
Qualified Immunity is another thing I’d like to get rid of. In fact, if a cop does it and it’s illegal? Double penalty.
The Bill of Rights is the most-senior law, never to be ignored. Yet, the most important purpose of the first amendment, criticism of government, was crushed by the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798.
I don’t know where you get this ‘now legislators will be in control’ conclusion from, because it has never been so. The Constitution is about as true a description of political reality as a Microsoft sales kit is about Windows.
Oh, we’ve had some wins, and this is a big pathway to removing Big Regulation.
Who is gonna make D.C. abide by this? Who will enforce it throughout the Deep State?
Yeah.
Yeah, the 9th Circuit is going to be horrible (they always are) but you’ll see lots of other come in line, quickly.
I would like to see him in the woods in November.
Chevron?
Isn’t the real outcome of this that all the decisions based on Chevron have to be re-litigated?
That makes this a “full employment act” for lawyers.
That’s the problem when the everything is tied up by laws and regulations: the lawyers decide everything. The process becomes the punishment. If you’re involved in one of these suits, the Feds have an infinite checkbook for staff of thousands of lawyers. They just deficit spend. You can’t. They can bankrupt you before it ever gets decided.
There is going to be a LOT of litigation, but now the ball has shifted, because previously they could fall back on the “because we said so” argument. Now it becomes, “where in the law does it say you can do this?”
Laws, and regulations, have a tendency to disappear, when those most affected gather, beat the officials, and make the official’s new life goal to not be recognized by the general public.
That, X2, when you simply leave their severed heads on poles in front of federal offices “pour encourager les autres“.
Which response also offers a tempting 0% recidivism rate of tyranny.
That’s why we need to move the regulatory agencies to places like Omaha or Toledo or Frankfort.
Fakehontas Warren bragged about writing vague and obtuse laws just so she would be hired to provide expert commentary as to its meaning. Doubtless, the meaning shifted with whomever was hiring her at the moment (private vs GOV).
Very true, the guy who wrote most of the federal solid waste regs apparently bragged that only he understood them, and then became a very highly paid consultant.
Oh good, Congress now has more power. We are saved.
This is the factions squabbling over who gets to parasitize us more than the rest. It’s not a win for us, but it’s a win for someone. Someone that doesn’t give a shit about us except as tax cows and drone fodder.
Yes, but on the bright side we now have a horde of zombie lawyers going after these organizations which is always fun to watch. If those orgs are busy defending themselves, it makes it harder for them to do some of the stupid things….,
Yes, they’re all part of GloboElite, but now they can’t hide.
….spewing methyl-ethyl-death across the elementary playground might not be a great idea.
You obviously haven’t been to the playground the day after Taco Tuesday. Those kids don’t need any help from Chevron as they are already polluting the air and it can be quite toxic.
That’s why I started my children on cigars early, to toughen them up.
The more government gridlock created the better.
Amen.