[JumpCrisscross]

> they're not "laws" just "rules" that the government will come after you if you break

If you break a rule you get fined. If you break a law you can go to jail. (Congress can delegate regulation around crimes to an agency, but the crime generally has to be substantially described by statute.)

[mothballed]

I'd like to see someone explain why a .50 BMG bolt action upper receiver (AR-15 type) is a firearm but a .556 bolt action upper receiver (AR-15 type) is not. It's literally the same damn thing but with a different sized cartridge. Nothing in the statute would allow this, yet executive 'delegation' mumbo-jumbo and magically one is basically unregulated and the other is felonies out the ass if you start commercially selling them without a host of licensing and checks.

The truth is the rulemaking and delegation stuff has strayed so far from the legal fiction as to be almost completely unrecognizable from the thin veil authorizing it.

[JumpCrisscross]

> I'd like to see someone explain why a .50 BMG bolt action upper receiver (AR-15 type) is a firearm but a .556 bolt action upper receiver (AR-15 type) is not

Have you petitioned to have the rule revisited? I’d imagine this is the right political climate in which to do it.

We have an overreaching regulatory state. I agree with you on that. But trying to ram everything through the Congress just means we get a President who is a king, because the complexity of administering a large, modern economy is simply not one that can be centrally deliberated in the way legislative bodies work.

[wahern]

The president has a large degree of control over the agencies and their output, so in practice agency delegation granted presidents immense power. This power went largely unexercised due to norms. But that has been slowly changing, and under Trump radically changing. And if SCOTUS adopts the Unitary Executive Theory, as they seem poised to do, then we'll have something very close to a king, difficult to distinguish from 18th century Great Britain.

I don't see how requiring Congressional ratification for rule changes would grant the president more power than he has now. Currently the primary checks are procedural limitations; but were Trump a better, more well organized leader these procedural checks wouldn't pose much of a hurdle at all.

If you want a more technocratic administrative state, the agencies would require more autonomy from the president than they have now, but things are moving in the opposite direction both as a practical matter and constitutionally.

[JumpCrisscross]

> don't see how requiring Congressional ratification for rule changes would grant the president more power than he has now

A modern economy has a million small emergencies every day. Given the choice between dysfunction and autocracy, humans routinely choose the latter. So every time an emergency emerges that Congress takes too long to act on, and where the President steps in, the window shifts power to the executive.

[cucumber3732842]

>If you break a rule you get fined. If you break a law you can go to jail

That's a distinction without a difference when talking about the kinds of ruinous fines government agencies levy and how equivalently ruinous lawyering up to fight them is.

Most people receiving these fines happily spend a month in prison for six figures because six figures is years of discretionary income to most people.

[JumpCrisscross]

> That's a distinction without a difference

Criminal versus civil is a distinction with massive difference.

> Most people receiving these fines happily spend a month in prison for six figures

Most civil monetary penalties are for reporting and filing violations to the FEC, HHS or FinCEN; submitting false information in a Medicare/Medicaid claim [1], grant, contract or bid; or violating consumer protection, employer, OSHA, environmental or patient care laws. The “you” is probably a corporation. And I’m not sure anyone would rationally escalate a fine for e.g. submitting a contract bid with outdated information into a criminal conviction.

[1] https://oig.hhs.gov/fraud/enforcement/types-of-civil-monetar...:

[cucumber3732842]

>Criminal versus civil is a distinction with massive difference.

And the sky is purple. See, we can both make baseless assertions. You can say it all day long. Doesn't make it true. At the end of the day the executive agencies are unilaterally costing people money that's on the same order as real deal criminal fines for comparable conduct. The word "civil" doesn't change that anymore than it changes the true nature of civil asset forfieture.

>Most civil monetary penalties are for....

They're for things where they generally could never hope to convince a jury the fines are reasonable for.

You list broad categories because when people dig into the nitty gritty of it they find it unconscionable. Municipalities threatening landowners hundreds of dollars per day multiplied by years for not having the proper permit to clear vegetation on their own land. OSHA fining businesses thousands because unsupervised line employees were doing dumb shit they were told not to that only endangers themselves. And then these people have to lawyer up and defend themselves for more thousands because the fines are always way higher if you don't. All at the literal whim of an enforcement official.

All of this civil enforcement stuff is basically BS end runs around the rights that people (even legal fictions of people) are supposed to have. The government, federal or otherwise, is not supposed to be able to meaningfully punish people (even corporate people) without the consent of the people (i.e. a jury). The way civil process cuts the judiciary out entirely is worse still.

Just declaring "well it's civil" because the accused's name isn't going on a naughty list and jail isn't a potential penalty doesn't change the fact pattern of serious fines being issued without the accused party having any real rights of due process beyond hiring someone who knows their shit to argue in front of the arbitrary kangaroo process owned by the same agency that issued the fine (of course you can sue if you want but the enforcement agencies avoid creating situations where that's practical).

[JumpCrisscross]

> They're for things where they generally could never hope to convince a jury the fines are reasonable for

Juries don't determine sentencing, either. The Seventh Amendment has broadly been interpreted to preserve jury trials for most civil liability, including from the federal government.

> Municipalities...

Not federal!

> All of this civil enforcement stuff is basically BS end runs around the rights that people (even legal fictions of people) are supposed to have Not a federal issue!

...do you know the difference between a civil and a criminal case?

> doesn't change the fact pattern of serious fines being issued

Straw man. Nobody argued civil penalties aren't serious.

> without the accused party having any real rights of due process beyond hiring someone who knows their shit

...how do you think criminal proceedings work?

This is a wild conversation. I've gone from being somewhat sympathetic to your argument to now wondering if that entire platform is baseless. (I'm increasingly convinced we need a principles of law course mandated in high school. It doesn't even need to be a full year. But our republic suffers when folks don't understand the basics.)

[cucumber3732842]

>Juries don't determine sentencing, either.

They do in some states but that's beside the point. Juries are people from outside the legal system who will balk if things get too unreasonable. That is one of their primary value adds to the system.

>...do you know the difference between a civil and a criminal case?

That's entirely my point, the government is imposing the same penalties (fines) on people they do for criminal matters but without any of the protections. You can drive drunk, get caught and be out substantially less money (and enjoy your rights along the way) than if you sink sonotubes for a shed too close to a stream and get caught. Heck, there's not even a statute of limitations for many civil enforcement things.

Just because government and those like you who simp for it wave around the word "civil" (or it's relative "administrative") like a magic want doesn't actually change the fact that people are being punished in the same manner they would in criminal law situations but without any of the protections.

I'm not arguing that the laws and jurisprudence haven't been twisted to enable this. I'm arguing that it's no less of an affront to everyone's rights than the civil asset forfeiture people do when they take stuff and then say "well we're actually charging the money and therefore..."

>Not federal!

The municipalities states and feds behave the exact same way and leverage most of the same legal precedents. The feds also deputize states who deputize municipalities to do their enforcing for them in many cases. Like the EPA isn't gonna shoot you're dog or whatever. Your local DEP or whatever will shoot your dog or whatever on their behalf.

>Straw man. Nobody argued civil penalties aren't serious.

I meant serious as compared to something "unserious" like a $20 parking ticket.

>...how do you think criminal proceedings work?

Do you? You can tell the police to fuck off and come back with a warrant. You can not talk to them and the burden of proof is on them. Try that with the SEC or the EPA or the FCC and see where it gets you.

Once you get into an actual court things are much, much more comparable. But criminal matters more or less go straight to court. Administrative matters you're usually forced to go rounds (and your lawyer is billing you the whole time) with some internal kangaroo pretend oversight system (much has been written about ICE's for example) before you get to say a word in front of a real judge who doesn't get his pay stub on their letterhead.