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Leashes Come Off Wall Street, Gun Sellers, Polluters and More
WASHINGTON — Giants in telecommunications, like Verizon and AT&T, will not have to take "reasonable measures" to ensure that their customers' Social Security numbers, web browsing history and other personal information are not stolen or accidentally released.
Wall Street banks like Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase will not be punished, at least for now, for not collecting extra money from customers to cover potential losses from certain kinds of high-risk trades that helped unleash the 2008 financial crisis.
And Social Security Administration data will no longer be used to try to block individuals with disabling mental health issues from buying handguns, nor will hunters be banned from using lead-based bullets, which can accidentally poison wildlife, on 150 million acres of federal lands.
These are just a few of the more than 90 regulations that federal agencies and the Republican-controlled Congress have delayed, suspended or reversed in the month and a half since President Trump took office, according to a tally by The New York Times.
The emerging effort — dozens more rules could be eliminated in the coming weeks — is one of the most significant shifts in regulatory policy in recent decades. It is the leading edge of what Stephen K. Bannon, Mr. Trump's chief strategist, described late last month as "the deconstruction of the administrative state."
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/05/us/politics/trump-deregulation-guns-wall-st-climate.html
In the submitter's opinion - some of these rollbacks are mistakes. Others, though, should never have been passed. For instance, the Social Security Administration being drafted into notifying law enforcement agencies of HIPAA protected information. The MPG requirements on American auto makers? The fuel efficient cars are available, but no one wants them. Left and right alike, buyers demand the gas guzzlers. Banking regulations, though, should stay in place. Trump should know that the bankers won't regulate themselves. FFS, he saw the same meltdown that we all saw in 2008!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 11 2017, @05:38PM (4 children)
> that exponent may be smaller than you think.
Actually, based on experiments, the exponent is in the range of 5 (five) for the actual load on each tire. Thus nearly all road damage is done by heavy trucks. And a truck that is 10% over the legal weight does approximately 1.1 x 10^5 more damage than a truck at the legal weight.
If you need a thought experiment, consider a road bicycle that runs at 120 psi (lbs/in-sq) or 8 bar. The contact pressure with these very thin flexible tires is nearly the same as the air pressure. But bicycles don't do *any* appreciable damage to a road that is designed for cars & trucks. One simple mechanism is that the road surface is thick and has some bending (beaming) strength--it takes a high load to bend the road enough to exceed its elastic limit and start a crack.
There are plenty of other arguments against using light trucks and SUVs instead of passenger cars, but not road damage.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Runaway1956 on Saturday March 11 2017, @07:14PM
OK - the range of 5 - I could argue that some, but it's close enough to reasonable.
Now - where do the taxes come from that pays for the roads? You've surely noticed that diesel fuel is higher priced than gasoline - despite the fact that diesel is a "waste product" in the refining of gasoline.
Each and every truck also pays highway use taxes. Licensing fees are at least five times higher than for private vehicles. On a single cross country run, one 18-wheeler will pay more taxes than your personally owned vehicle will pay all year.
Enough on the issue whether trucks pay their "fair share". Those costs are passed on to the consumer anyway. But, now, let's imagine that there were no trucks. You go to WalMart, and there is no coffee. Ooops - I've already screwed that up. No trucks - so there was no car at the auto dealer for you to buy. There was no gas at the gas station for you to fuel the car you don't have anyway. Hmmmm - no trucks. It just wouldn't be the world we know without trucks.
Now, if you point to trains - well - we would still be in a world of hurt. Trucks are so ubiquitous because rail transport is so unreliable in this country. Rail had it in the bag, they ruled heavy transport, until they screwed up so badly, so many times.
Send a railcar to the Mexican border to pick up a load of lettuce, and it MIGHT make it to the east coast and to market sometime this month. Send a truck to Yuma for a load of lettuce, and that lettuce will be at the market in two or three days, depending on whether it has team drivers or not.
Despite the fact that I drove trucks, I really like the idea of using rails to move freight. It's to bad they are so badly mismanaged. If all heavy freight moved by rail, the infrastructure would be a lot easier and cheaper to maintain.
But, please, remember that the trucks pay their way, and more than pay their way. The tax system has been made a lot simpler in the past 25 years or so, but it's still very expensive. The more they simplify the taxes, the more they increase the taxes.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Runaway1956 on Saturday March 11 2017, @07:23PM (2 children)
I hope you're not getting your figures from the same place as these people - https://streets.mn/2016/07/07/chart-of-the-day-vehicle-weight-vs-road-damage-levels/ [streets.mn]
My first question was, "WTF is a 9 ton big-rig?" A ten ton truck is a local delivery truck, and it DOES NOT do that much damage, comparatively speaking.
Same numbers being used here - http://pedalfortcollins.com/greatest-demand-on-tax-dollars/ [pedalfortcollins.com]
Seriously, someone is cooking numbers here.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 11 2017, @10:59PM (1 child)
Sorry, bad memory, not 5, more like 4th power of the load. Here's one reference (Google's html rendering of a pdf):
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:hia5vrAGNBgJ:www.nvfnorden.org/lisalib/getfile.aspx%3Fitemid%3D1586+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us [googleusercontent.com]
Or, the pdf if you prefer nice formatting http://www.nvfnorden.org/lisalib/getfile.aspx?itemid=1586 [nvfnorden.org]
Google search string I used:
pavement damage vs load cebon
(David Cebon has published some of the basic references on this topic)
3.2 Relative effects of different axle loads
For pavement design, but also to determine the pavement wear effect of different tyres, the pavement wear effects of different axle loads have to be determined. Generally this is described by a Load Equivalency Factor (LEF), where an axle load is said to be equivalent (producing equal pavement wear) to a number of applications of a reference (standard) axle load. The most well-known of such a LEF is the so called “fourth power law” which is expressed mathematically as follows
Nref .| Wx . | 4
. = | . . | {my best attempt at ascii math, the dots try to control the whitespace}
Nx . | Wref |
here Wx and Wref are axle loads and Nx and Nref are the corresponding number of load applications. The exponent 4 in the fourth power law was found in the AASHO Road Test, carried out in USA between 1958-1960.. However, it was not strictly constant in that test but varied from about 3.6 to 4.6. Later experimental and theoretical research has indicated greater variability in the exponent, but has not been conclusive. As an example, it was found in the OECD FORCE project that the exponent depends also on the extent of distress, the exponent being smaller in earlier phases than in later phases of failure. It must be understood that the fourth power law includes all distress modes. The most important at the AASHO road test were rutting (caused by subgrade deformation) and roughness (unevenness) of the road. Cracking had a minor effect and deformation of bituminous mixtures was not important.
When individual distress modes are considered, different exponent values are found. E.g. COST 334 reports that cracking of bituminous layers has a value of 4 − 7, permanent deformation of the subgrade has an exponent of perhaps 3 − 4 and permanent deformation of bituminous layers a value of 1 − 2. As these values depend on many factors (a.o. material variations) and are not fully known, the stated values should be regarded as “best estimates” [3]
Years ago I had reason to study some of the literature, very interesting. The pavement testing machine set up at a government test lab included some very clever (and large) machines that repeatedly rolled loaded tires/axles over pavement samples. Over years of testing they varied the load and also the pavement (including base materials, etc). Good, well funded, big government science.
Roads are a big deal (big $$$ spent to build them), there is a lot of on-going research. Here is one page that links to hundreds of research papers:
https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/pavement/pub_listing.cfm [dot.gov]
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Sunday March 12 2017, @05:20AM
Somewhat like you, I've "studied" this stuff in the past. That line from the Matrix, "I'll show you how deep the rabbit hole goes." It applies here. I just don't have the time and energy to dive deep into that hole again.
"As an example, it was found in the OECD FORCE project that the exponent depends also on the extent of distress,"
That bit is the reason why it is so criminal of our politicians to allow the infrastructure to deteriorate due to politics. On a well maintained road, trucks do "X" amount of damage. But ona poorly maintained road, that damage increases tremendously, so that it might be 3X, 5X, or even 10X. Better to take up the road surface, and replace it with a gravel road in some cases!
One thing I can tell you with certainty, is that the politicians never give the trucks a break on taxes. The taxes are collected, day in, and day out, 365 days per year. Billions of dollars flow in to the state coffers, in every state, every year, but the money doesn't flow back out into the infrastructure.
When all the analysis is done, any honest researcher will see that the trucks pay for the infrastructure, continuously, but the politicians find reasons and excuses to use the money elsewhere.