Where Do I Find Regulations?

After Congress passes a bill into law, the next step is for federal agencies to write regulations which essentially put the new law into action and make it real. Since the United States federal government consists of many agencies, it was once impossible to keep track of all the regulations being written.

But now citizens can keep track of all the regulations from nearly 300 federal agencies! They are now posted on one website, regulations.gov.

In the spirit of the internet, this site allows visitors to make comments; and, in the spirit of participatory government, many regulations are re-written based on your feedback.

Having trouble understanding a regulation? Regulations.gov has a glossary.

The next time I need information about a federal regulation, I'm going to Regulations.gov!

What do the Brits Think of Our New Bank Regulations?

Most people I've spoken to - whether they were Democrats, Republicans, or Independents - were against the huge bailout that we taxpayers recently gave to the financial industry. The bailout is now, of course "water over the dam." The best we can hope for at this point is to have learned something from it and move forward as a nation. Unfortunately, however, according to our British friends and their weekly newspaper, the Telegraph, our leaders didn't learn much and we've essentially wasted another crisis.



Last week, President Obama signed the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform bill into law. While it was hailed by some as the most sweeping overhaul of US financial regulation since the 1930s, many people were unimpressed. The title of the article I will quote from is "Obama signs a bill that lets banks have US over a barrel once more."

[T]he sad reality is that Dodd-Frank fails to address the fundamental problems that resulted in the sub-prime fiasco and the related damage to not just America, but also the entire global economy.

Here's what essentially happened as the Telegraph sees it:

Big Wall Street institutions...caused a global economic crisis...forced the U.S. government to pay for a massive bail-out, but then used a slice of that bail-out cash to bribe politicians with campaign donations in order to block rule changes that might prevent a repeat performance.

Maybe you feel that that is "just business as usual" for our leaders in Washington, but I expected better.

A Promise Made by the Last Eight Presidents

Jon Stewart, America's favorite bogus news anchor, recently reviewed a promise that the last eight American presidents have made and not delivered on. That promise, updated last week by our current chief executive, Barack Obama, is to resolve our ongoing energy crisis which has led to inflation, wars, environmental catastrophe, and dependence on foreign nations.

Unfortunately, President Obama's vague statement about "unleashing America's innovation" will not be enough to resolve our worsening crisis (far from it). Instead, every American will have to make a serious effort to consume less energy and less of the things that are made with energy. If that was easy, we would have resolved the issue by now.

Click here to watch Stewart's rant (originally seen on Comedy Central's The Daily Show).

The Annenberg Center's Fact Check

Over the weekend I talked to somebody who (gasp) thought that our modern politicians are dishonest. I look at it this way: our nation's leaders have had to sell themselves to voters to get elected, so they are often good at exaggerating their accomplishments. Furthermore, since they aren't rewarded for telling the whole truth, they don't feel obliged to tell it.

Anyway, As an American citizen, you have the right and the duty to question our leaders. But should we just dismiss them as a bunch of compulsive liars? No. Our duty as citizens is to check the facts.

Fortunately, the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg Policy Center has created FactCheck.org, a website that does what it says: It checks the accuracy of statements made by elected and appointed governmental officials. FactCheck.org also checks the accuracy of the claims of newsmedia celebrities that we'd like to be able to count on. If you want the facts, check FactCheck.org!

JibJab's Obama

JibJab is a business that creates e-cards and that kind of thing. Every so often they come out with free humorous animated sketches that you can download. The most recent one was released recently (June 19th). It is called "He's Barak Obama."

Website of the Day

What do John McCain, George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and Barak Obama have in common?

No, this is not a joke; they are all left-handed. And although Ronald Reagan wrote with his right hand, it is believed he would have been a true lefty if scrict schoolteachers had not forced him to write with his right hand. Anyway, read more about that here if you'd like, but today's website is about something slightly different.

The Website of the Day for January 29th, 2009 is a blog, not just any blog, but....

The Official Blog of President Obama's White House: http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/