This Week in Ridiculous Laws: Watermelon Taxes and Crash-Test Dummies

CEI’s home distillery lawsuit had a good week. President Biden had a bad week. Agencies issued new rules, from rotorcraft to desert air.

Let’s get to the data:

The agencies issued 49 final regulations last week, following 49 issued the week before.
This means that new regulations are introduced every three hours and 26 minutes.
In 2024, 1,654 final regulations have already been issued, and the agencies plan to issue 3,086 this year.
By comparison, 3,018 new final regulations were issued in 2023, 3,168 in 2022, and 3,257 in 2021.
The agencies published 24 proposed regulations in the Federal Register last week, up from 23 the week before.
With 927 proposed regulations in 2024, the agencies are on track to issue 1,729 proposed regulations this year.
By comparison, 2,102 proposals for regulations will be submitted in 2023, 2,044 in 2022, and 2,094 in 2021.
Agencies published 472 ads last week, after 349 ads the previous week.
In 2024, the agencies have already issued 12,497 notices and this year they expect to issue 23,315 notices.
For comparison, in 2023 the number of notifications was 22,902, in 2022 22,505 and in 2021 20,018.
Last week, 1,553 new pages were added to the Federal Register, up from 1,455 pages the previous week.
The average number of pages in a Federal Register issue in 2024 was 428 pages.
The Federal Register for 2024 has 57,338 pages and is estimated to have 106,974 pages.
For comparison, the 2023 Federal Register has 90,402 pages, the 2022 Federal Register has 80,756 pages, and the 2021 Federal Register has 74,352 pages. The total number of corrected pages (not including skips, jumps, and blank pages) is 96,994, established in 2016.
Provisions with an economic impact of $200 million or more over at least one year qualify as major under Section 3(f)(1). This replaces the previous “economically significant” label for provisions valued at more than $100 million. There are 13 such provisions in effect so far in 2024, and none as of last week.
This is moving closer to the introduction of the 2024 3(f)(1) regulations.
For comparison, there were 28 3(f)(1) regulations and/or economic significance provisions in effect in 2023, 43 economic significance provisions in effect in 2022, and 26 economic significance provisions in effect in 2021. Note that these are not one-to-one comparisons because 3(f)(1) regulations and economic significance provisions have different thresholds.
The estimated total costs of the 2024 major 3(f)(1) regulations range from $17.82 billion in net savings to $22.87 billion in net savings, according to data from the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs of the Office of Management and Budget.
By comparison, the costs of the 2023 major and economically significant 3(f)(1) regulations range from $62.60 billion to $90.48 billion. Cost estimates for the 2022 economically significant regulations range from $45.28 billion to $78.05 billion. In 2021, net costs ranged from $13.54 billion to $1,992 billion. The exact figures depend on discount rates and other assumptions.
Two new final rules meeting the broader definition of “significant” regulations were introduced last week, following eight the week before.
This year, 195 new regulations have been introduced that meet the broader definition of “significant,” on track with a forecast of 364 in 2024.
For comparison, in 2023 there were 290 such regulations, in 2022 – 255, and in 2021 – 387.
So far in 2024, 397 new regulations affecting small businesses have been introduced, and that number will rise to 741. Forty-two of those are significant, and that number will rise to 78.
By comparison, in 2023, there were 789 small business regulations in effect, of which 79 were material. In 2022, there were 912 small business regulations in effect, of which 70 were material. In 2021, there were 912 small business regulations in effect, of which 101 were material.

Highlights from the latest new final regulations:

Here are last week’s recipe suggestions:

For more data, see The Ten Thousand Commandments and follow @10k And @Back to the day on Twitter.