Jon Gabriel
  • Home
  • Words
  • Media
  • Design
  • Contact

In a Pickle Over Regulations

1/31/2013

0 Comments

 
FREEDOMWORKS
Sizes of whole pickles are based on the diameter and the relationship of diameter to the count per gallon. Size designations, applicable counts, and diameters are outlined in Table II of this subpart. The diameter of a whole cucumber is the shortest diameter at the greatest circumference measured at right angles to the longitudinal axis of the cucumber…
We often complain of “Big Government” in the abstract—a tangled assemblage of bureaus, departments and offices in and around Washington, D.C. But sometimes it helps to zoom in on the details. Pickles, for instance.

Recently I showed how big government turned two words of a hastily passed law in to 850 pages of regulations. All of those pages are stored in the massive Code of Federal Regulations. The CFR is a compendium of every rule and reg ever concocted by the federal government, from soup (9 CFR 319.720) to nuts (21 CFR 164.110). And despite being incredibly important to businesses big and small, it doesn't make for very enjoyable reading.
Reasonably good color in cured type means the typical skin color of the pickles ranges from light green to dark green and is reasonably free from bleached areas. Not more than 25 percent, by weight, of the pickles may vary markedly from such typical color. In mixed pickles, chow chow pickles, and pickle relish, all of the ingredients possess a reasonably uniform color typical for the respective ingredient. The pickles and other vegetable ingredients shall be free of off-colors…
As of 2011, the CFR was a whopping 169,301 pages. That’s about 150 times the length of the Bible. If the CFR were compiled into one volume, the book would be 55 feet thick.

The first three years of the Obama Administration added 11,327 pages to the CFR – a 7.4 percent increase. Now that President Obama has started his second term, he’s widely expected to create many more new regulations covering everything we eat, drink, touch and feel.
(m)  Misshapen pickles mean whole pickles that are crooked or otherwise deformed (such as nubbins). Also see the definition for crooked pickles.

(n)  Nubbin is a misshapen pickle that is not cylindrical in form, is short and stubby, or is not well developed.
What do these regulations look like? I pulled one at random: 7 CFR 52.1681-1692, or the “United States Standards for Grades of Pickles” written by the Processed Products Branch of the Fruit and Vegetable Division of the Agricultural Marketing Service of the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

You are actually paying a team of bureaucrats to mandate that a "small gherkin" must be less than 2.4 cm in diameter, whereas a "large gherkin" can have a diameter of up to 2.7 cm. They also wrote all the technocratic gibberish sprinkled throughout this post (I left out the diagrams illustrating excessive pickle curvature).

Every government program has its defenders. I’m sure that the lowly USDA workers think they’re protecting innocent citizens from the rapacious schemes of Big Gherkin. But remember the humble pickle when politicians insist that there is nothing left to cut out of Washington’s gargantuan budget.

For every one of your tax dollars funding something essential, there’s a barrel full of bills funding a bloated, wasteful beast. A beast that smells suspiciously like misshapen pickle nubbins.
0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    Archives

    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    August 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    March 2016
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013
    December 2012

    Categories

    All
    Arizona
    Arizona Republic
    Art
    Business
    Buzzfeed
    Communication
    Culture
    Daily Caller
    Design
    Drugs
    Economy
    Education
    Energy
    Environment
    Family
    Food & Drink
    Freedomworks
    Free Speech
    Gender
    Guns
    Health Care
    Heartland Institute
    Humor
    Immigration
    International
    Journalism
    Military
    Music
    Neatorama
    NY Post
    Outrage
    Philosophy
    Photoshop
    Politics
    Red Tape
    Religion
    Ricochet
    Social Media
    Technology
    Unions
    USA Today
    Wall Street Journal

    RSS Feed

© 2017  Jon Gabriel. All rights reserved.
  • Home
  • Words
  • Media
  • Design
  • Contact