A Small Victory:
The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) said it will not seek to issue a final framework for the rule “at this time” after receiving more than 80,000 comments on the proposal, the “vast majority” of which were negative.
A Huge Loss:
Regulators won a big victory at the Supreme Court on Monday as the justices endorsed expansive powers for changing the interpretation of federal rules. The Supreme Court ruled 9-0 that federal agencies do not have to follow procedures for notifying the public and collecting comment when changing the interpretations of rules, effectively removing steps from the process that can take months and sometimes years to complete.
So the next time there won't be 80,000 negative comments on a proposed rule change. There will just be a rule change. If you're lucky, you'll find out after the fact. If not, you'll find yourself in violation of a law that "changed." Like magic.
The essential problem with turning millions of citizens into criminals by arcane rules,is that eventually the citizens will oblige, and ACT like criminals. That is a foggy walk.
ReplyDeleteThat's the quickest way to get everybody to ignore "the rules". Yeah. Truth.
ReplyDeleteI'm dealing with that right now with reporting to the IRS on the ACA on the business side. I keep asking "What if we just don't do it? "Oh we can't do that." Why not? Or, and I think this is what is going to happen, is that something will be sent, but it will never get looked at.