Blackmoor Vituperative

Here a major thing that’s wrong with Congress, and to a lesser extent, what’s wrong with legislation at every level: a simple prohibition (note: every law is a prohibition — laws do not permit: they forbid, and anyone who believes otherwise is profoundly confused) … a simple prohibition becomes an absurd mountain of legalese so complex that virtually no one who votes for it has even read it, much less the rest of us having any chance of reading and understanding it.

When Paul Volcker called for new rules in 2009 to curb risk-taking by banks, and thus avoid making taxpayers liable in the future for the kind of reckless speculation that caused the financial crisis and resulting bailout, he outlined his proposal in a three-page letter to the president.

Last year, when the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act went to Congress, the Volcker Rule that it contained took up 10 pages.

Last week, when the proposed regulations for the Volcker Rule finally emerged for public comment, the text had swelled to 298 pages and was accompanied by more than 1,300 questions about 400 topics.

(Volcker Rule, Once Simple, Now Boggles, The New York Times)