OK, here’s a joke about a regulatory agency, as told by the corporate manager of a big polluting factory.
He says…So, I’m in my office one day and the Man from EPA comes in and slams down a huge stack of papers, saying — You’ve got 22,221 violations, and you better do something about them by next Friday.
So I says, Oh yeah, and what if I don’t do anything about them by next Friday?
Well, says the Man from EPA, then you’ll have twenty-two thousand, two hundred and twenty-TWO violations.
Hah, hah.
Not exactly hilarious, but that was my first time. I had to make it up myself because I’ve never heard a regulatory agency joke. Which struck me as strange, because in the US we have priest-minister-rabbi jokes, screw-in-a-light-bulb jokes, race jokes, blind guy jokes, physicist-mathematician-engineer jokes, and lots of lawyer jokes. (Like the one about the lawyer and the pope who died at exactly the same moment…I guess that’s a lawyer joke and a religion joke at the same time. Hmm, and Purgatory is sort of like a regulatory agency.)
The more I thought about it the odder it seemed. We have lifeboat jokes, viola jokes, man-walks-into-a-bar jokes, parachute jokes, toilet jokes — but no regulatory agency jokes. I’m not talking here about good jokes, or jokes in good taste, or politically correct jokes, or even funny jokes — just jokes.
I was looking for a fresh way to criticize regulatory agencies. Or, maybe to understand why so many people can’t imagine a world without them.
Folklorists and sociologists are always analyzing recipes, urban myths, jump-rope rhymes, and jokes for clues about a society. It follows that not having jokes about a certain topic might also tell us something. I’ve never heard a joke with the punchline, “And so the doctor says: You’ve got breast cancer!” and everybody laughs.
I’m not sure what it means if there aren’t jokes about regulatory agencies or cancer. This could be a red herring, but you can’t be sure till the fat lady sings.
Regulatory agencies have long public records of being colossal failures.That’s rich material to mine. Some of the reasons for failures:
1. Regulatory agencies are political, so sometimes the FDA chief is going to be a former pharmaceuticals company executive, or the DNR alpha is going to be a realtor. (Joke material?)
2. They’re way underfunded, so enforcement is a joke (did I say that?); leap years come more often than inspections; and the backlog of unevaluated chemicals numbers…let’s just say, much more than your annual income in dollars.
3. Historically, Reg Ags are always “captured” by the industries they are supposed to be regulating.
All that is well documented over more than a century in the US. But I won’t go into it here because I don’t have any jokes about it. Speaking of which…World’s shortest Regulatory Agency joke: Kid goes into the school guidance counselor’s office. Says, “I want to be a hearing examiner.”
OK, back to the list. Saving the worst for the last, two more reasons why Reg Ags are such failures.
4. By combining legislative, executive, and judicial functions in one place, they frustrate democracy. (Key: as they were meant to do). They regulate citizens, not corporations.
5. Reg Ags were actually invented by corporations as a way to avoid state legislatures and local laws. You don’t believe it, do you? It has a high truthiness index: go here for the facts.
After all that preaching you get one more joke.
A lobbyist, a hearing examiner, and an Earth First!er are in an elevator. The lobbyist is wearing Savile Row, the hearing examiner is wearing Thrift Shop retro, and the Earth First!er is dressed up as a Karner Blue butterfly. They’re at EPA headquarters, heading for a hearing on the top floor, way, way up there. Suddenly, there’s a thump and they get a sinking feeling in the pits of their stomachs.
The Earth First!er yells: The cable’s broken, we’re falling! Help me find the emergency button to stop this thing!
The hearing examiner says: Thank-you for taking the time to come here today to share your views on this matter with us.
The Earth First!er yells again: You just don’t get it, do you? Help me stop this elevator NOW or we’ll all die!
The hearing examiner says: Well, it’s not quite as easy as you think. First of all, there are people who have spent their whole lives studying elevators and running elevator companies, and it would be imprudent to do anything without hearing their testimony.
Second, there are constitutional issues here. We have to hear the elevator company’s views because the Supreme Court has ruled that corporations are constitutional persons with First Amendment speech rights, plus rights to due process and equal protection before the law.
Then, the lobbyist butts in: The elevator company’s experts have already submitted persuasive testimony to the effect that we’re not falling at all, you are an alarmist, and if we even try to stop the elevator now, we would damage it, thereby harming the elevator corporation’s constitutionally protected private property and becoming liable for damages.
I hate to leave that so up in the air, but I got sort of bogged down on that joke, if you know what I mean. The lobbyist and the hearing examiner became compost, and a blue butterfly was seen fluttering away from the scene.
What the butterfly knew that many citizens groups still don’t, is that there is life and activism outside of regulatory agencies. It’s called local government, ordinances, legislation, referendums—and much of it goes under the name “community rights.” Here is an introduction.
Fat lady’s song: To answer the implied title question, Why aren’t there any jokes about regulatory agencies? Um, because they ARE a Joke?
Actually, there are Reg Ag jokes. But the ruse that there aren’t got you to the end of this blog post, didn’t it? Thanks.
Until next time. jam