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Bloomberg News Serves up an Echo-Chamber-Ready Take on Regulation

Last week, Bloomberg News ran a curious story conflating a range of issues under the banner of regulatory rollbacks. The piece keys off of the ongoing GOP push to deregulate America. That effort has been going on for decades, of course, but in the wake of the recession (made possible, not coincidentally, by deregulation in the economic sector), GOP leaders and their business allies and funders have rebranded it, and now argue that that "burdensome" economic, health, safety and environmental regulations are in fact the cause of economic distress.

Most of the GOP rhetoric has been aimed at federal regulation. But the Bloomberg piece breaks some new ground, sweeping together a hodgepodge of state regulations and laws, overlaying it with an uncritical reference to some shoddy right-wing research, and presenting the resulting brew as the state and local expression of the GOP's anti-regulatory campaign.

In the first three paragraphs of the story, the reader is given purported evidence that regulations are bad for the economy, and treated to a quote from a blogger for the right-wing Americans for Tax Reform (ATR) alerting us to a "national focus on reducing regulation…some of which is about jobs and revenue and some of which is about less government."

The supposed evidence of regulatory burden is an unattributed study (the article eventually explains it was "issued" by then-Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, but never names the source) concluding that "regulation cut gross state output in California by $493 billion a year." A little Googling reveals that the study was conducted by two researchers at California State University, Sacramento, apparently under contract from the Governor's Office of Small Business Advocate. Much as a similar report from the U.S. Small Business Administration's Office of Advocacy has been discredited by a number of sources for its ridiculous methodology, the California version uses similar methods and got similar reviews. California's nonpartisan Legislative Analyst's Office dismembers its methodology and conclusions, making clear that it piles bad estimates on top of bad methodology, charitably describing its flaws with words like "deficient," "problems," "special difficulties, "inappropriate," and "overstated." Bloomberg, on the other hand, presents it as if its calculation were the revealed truth.

The ATR quote serves as something of a hinge for the story: What begins as a tale about the economic impact of regulation devolves quickly into a list of rules and laws that annoy various right-wing constituencies. As flabby as the $493 billion figure is, it's at least focused on regulations, and purports to have something to do with economic activity. But Bloomberg stuffs its story with such data points as:

Not only are the examples a bit far afield from the current debate, most aren't even regulations! They're state laws, or in the case of the Idaho tanning bed proposal and the West Virginia pro-smoking legislator, twinkles in a legislator's eye.

One actual regulation that gets a little airtime in the article is a Michigan rule about barber shop trash cans. The story says,

Among the more intrusive rules identified in Michigan were those that…specified the size of barbers’ wastebaskets and when to empty them and stipulated replacements of warning labels on ladders,

The story makes it sound as if the requirement lays out specific dimensions for trash cans, and sets forth a schedule for emptying them. In fact, the regulation (see page 38 of this PDF) requires that trash cans be big enough to hold a day's worth of trash, and that they be emptied daily. That makes a certain sense when you consider that barber shops are breeding grounds for all kinds of bacterial nastiness. (In case you've ever wondered why haircutters leave combs left soaking in that curious blue liquid, that's why.) But Bloomberg goes instead for the cheap suggestion that regulators are measuring trash cans with tape measures, and running transgressors off to the pokey.

In the end, the story amounts to little more than a list of libertarian bugaboos. And perhaps that's the ground on which the GOP wants to fight. But Bloomberg wraps it all up into a package about supposedly costly government regulations, without bothering to explain why any of the regulations or laws cited would have any economic impact whatsoever. The reader can be forgiven for wondering exactly which business interest is burdened by a motorcycle helmet requirement, other than hospitals and emergency room doctors.

With a little bit of journalistic skepticism about conspicuously fishy statistics and a dose of common sense, Bloomberg could have given its readers a useful review of under-reported laws that GOP legislators and governors are adopting under the banner of liberty. Instead, the story is just more fodder for the right-wing echo chamber.

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Matthew Freeman | April 30, 2012

Bloomberg News Serves up an Echo-Chamber-Ready Take on Regulation

Last week, Bloomberg News ran a curious story conflating a range of issues under the banner of regulatory rollbacks. The piece keys off of the ongoing GOP push to deregulate America. That effort has been going on for decades, of course, but in the wake of the recession (made possible, not coincidentally, by deregulation in the […]

Ben Somberg | April 30, 2012

Administrative Conference of the United States Teams Up with Chamber of Commerce on Regulations

In its own words, the Administrative Conference of the United States (ACUS) is “an independent federal agency dedicated to improving the administrative process through consensus-driven applied research, providing nonpartisan expert advice and recommendations for improvement of federal agency procedures.” On Tuesday afternoon, ACUS and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce are jointly sponsoring an event at […]

Rena Steinzor | April 27, 2012

The Pander Games: Obama Administration Sells Out Kids Doing Dangerous Agricultural Work, Breaks Pledge to Ensure Welfare of Youngest Workers

Yesterday evening, when press coverage had ebbed for the day, the Department of Labor issued a short, four-paragraph press release announcing it was withdrawing a rule on child labor on farms. The withdrawal came after energetic attacks by the American Farm Bureau, Republicans in Congress, Sarah Palin, and—shockingly—Al Franken (D-MN). Last year, Secretary of Labor […]

Robert L. Glicksman | April 27, 2012

A Bill to Steamroll the NEPA Process

The irony is palpable, though clearly intentional.  More than forty years ago, Congress kicked off the “environmental decade” by adopting the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA).  NEPA’s goals are to ensure that federal agencies whose developmental missions often incline them to ignore or place a low priority on environmental protection to consider the possible adverse […]

Rena Steinzor | April 26, 2012

BP Spill: Perp Walk for Underling Shouldn’t Satisfy Anyone

With considerable media flourish, the Department of Justice (DOJ) announced Tuesday the first and so far only criminal charges related to the BP Deepwater Horizon catastrophe that killed 11 workers, and did profound violence to the Gulf of Mexico and the local economies dependent up on it. One Kurt Mix, 50, an engineer involved in […]

Alice Kaswan | April 24, 2012

Applying the Clean Air Act to Greenhouse Gases: What Does It Mean for Traditional Pollutants?

EPA’s March 27 release of a proposed rule to control greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from new fossil-fuel power plants has reignited the long-standing debate over whether the Clean Air Act is an appropriate mechanism for controlling industrial sources. Congressional bills to repeal EPA’s CAA authority have been repeatedly (though unsuccessfully) introduced. Many environmentalists, while welcoming […]

Robert Verchick | April 23, 2012

The Good and the Bad in the BP Settlement, and the Main Course Still Ahead

I spent last Friday – the second anniversary of the BP Blowout – in the vast basement of the Orleans Parish Criminal District Court building, shifting in my metal chair, ignoring the talk-show chatter from the flat screens, and keeping an eye on the red digit counter to know when my number was up. I’d […]

Catherine O'Neill | April 20, 2012

What Progress Looks Like: Washington State’s Climate Change Preparedness Strategy

Earlier this month Washington State’s Department of Ecology released its integrated climate response strategy, Preparing for a Changing Climate.  The strategy again demonstrates that the state is a leader when it comes to preparing for climate change impacts (see also NRDC’s recent report examining climate preparedness in all 50 states). What makes Washington a leader?  […]

Thomas McGarity | April 19, 2012

Why OSHA Can’t Regulate

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a report today detailing the challenges that the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) faces in writing regulations to protect America’s workers from unsafe and unhealthful workplaces.  The report was released at a hearing of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, chaired by Senator Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), […]