I don't agree with that. Legislation can't be as specific as regulation. For example, in the FDA case, someone must be “qualified by training and experience” to do something according to the legislation. As one who opposes 1200 page laws, you have to see that for Congress to specify the degrees and experience level needed for every job in a food, drug or cosmetic company would make the legislation absurdly complex. The same applies to nearly every law. It just isn't possible for every detail to be legislated up front by lawyers. You need the doctors at NIH, scientists at FDA, NOAA, communications experts at FCC etc. to flesh out the details.

That often becomes an effective illegitimate delegation, to the extent it becomes relied on and expected.

It and a related problem, judicial activism (not merely review, assuming such review is appropriate), has reached the point where the judiciary has wandered greatly from its proper role and this aids in the slipperiness of how things are done or conceived: decisions and actions can be rash and cynical at the same time (or crudely utilitarian), such as at a public meeting I observed several years ago: “Why should we wait to determine if we should do this, or have the authority to do this? We should proceed and write the law and implement it, and worry later if a court says it's okay or not.”

Yes, so that often Congress can tend to its normal agenda of getting re-elected, while being able to sit back and engage in “Congressional review” at will in order to ensure that things aren't out of hand.

Are you aware of the nature of the regulations (with force of law) as well as their extent? Nobody can honestly and accurately claim that all of this falls under, say, the “reasonable and proper” clause.

Note: This is separate from the issue of how questionable it is that the federal government (and actually all government) has become as large and prevalent in our lives as it has over several decades.

* * *

“How do you tame something that is already destroying the country at a very fast rate and is using the profits it makes off of a nations citizens to steal their money and direct their policies in their own best interests?”

Aside from (reasonable, rational) regulation?

I would ban lobbying, to start. (Note: to prevent conflicts of interest and self-enrichment, such as by book deals, and appearance and speaking fees, for example, Tugwell's solution — though also for other reasons — was to have Senators serve for life and put their wealth into a trust.)

It's not an easy solution because of the inherent paradox: The best people to solicit and depend on for regulating or otherwise directing or controlling any business or industry are those in the affected business or industry themselves, for they know their field better than anyone outside it.

Realistically, we have to tame it, to be vigilant against abuse and misuse of the power of regulation (or of legislation, which actually should be sought rather than regulation, which effectively transfers much legislative power to the Executive branch from the Congress where it belongs as well as consitutes a modern cop-out by Congress).

Really? Federal corporate charters and the related federal presence in addition to federal control of corporations fully fit with the integrated corporatist system that both Hitler and Mussolini as well as the New Dealers wanted. That's despite the more radical post-1960s objectives commonly sought by Ralph Nader and the Greens, the types who seek federal corporate charters (just look at the main Web page below of my source for a contemporary writeup about this — see below) as well as other “shareholder” and government activist goals: “social responsibility,” political objectives to which business should be directed, Israel divestiture by big government pension funds (another target of the activists in addition to corporations using federal charters), and so on.

http://www.corporatepolicy.org/

“In 1971, Nader founded the Corporate Accountability Research Group (CARG), directed by Green, to explore corporate power in its many aspects: antitrust enforcement, shareholders' rights, environmental pollution, corporate crime, and the need for federal chartering of corporations.”

http://www.nader.org/index.php?/archives/13-CHA…

http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=888&dat=1…

* * *

“Right nor left wants to actually end all of it and go back to a tiny federal gov and give all the power back to the states. So what exactly is the fix?”

Go back to a tiny federal gov and give all the power back to the states.

Naturally, New Dealer Tugwell objected: “They were easier to suborn.” (Plus — he, the urbanist — they were often penurious and controlled by rural interests. [See activist ruling Baker v. Carr in the 1960s, too.]) Many would oppose smallness and devolution (in fact, a return to constitutional federalism, hopefully not only in letter but also in spirit) simply as a matter of principle (as they did after the 1994 elections in earnest, for example). Others would revive the decry, “Race to the bottom” as well as “Divide and conquer by corporations? In unity there is strength! United we stand…”

I know you love to type yourt own words, but I suggest you link to accredited sites for an unbiased definition.
fas·cism

1 often capitalized : a political philosophy, movement, or regime (as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/fascism
a well known liberal mouthpiece.

monopoly

1 : exclusive ownership through legal privilege, command of supply, or concerted action
same source.

Explain again how a group of businesses working in concert to keep prices – profits- escalating is a good thing for peope needing health care?

And I'm sorry, but I really, really, don't think it's possible to NOT treat commercial speech as 'free speech.' I think the only way to counter 'bad speech' is with more free speech- rebut it, loudly, and frequently.

Consistent with my other opinions about corporate oligopoly though, I do think that media conglomerates are too big and powerful and should be broken up and regulated. And if the policies that I think are correct for general corporate oversight were to be implemented, I think eventually it would lead to fewer deep pockets that can fund massive propaganda efforts.

CS: “I believe the only realistic way to get to the goals of those kinds of policies is to educate voters- then we can decide”

yes, but

CS: “Voters hear what they want to hear “

Oops. You provided your own rebuttal. CS, treating commercial speech as “free speech” allows those with the biggest megaphone to use “the big lie” method to thwart any effort at educating voters. Repeat the lie often enough and people who are so inclined will believe it (e.g. birthers – 28% of Republicans believe them, “death panels” etc.)

Even nationalization here in the USA often is clumsily concealed by a euphemistic formal but also superficial device: the quasi-public or quasi-private corporation created and even chartered by the federal government rather than being a formally, openly public (government) company, if not simply kept nominally private. (At least keeping them formally private means they can still be sued, as well as have costs shifted onto them, as is done with Medicare versus private insurers currently.)

Related to this: far lefties, who have “red” leanings, often act in other ways: Ralph Nader is one at the forefront of what is actually openly fascistic (no matter what specific political objectives are demanded of companies that would fall prey to this, if achieved), the federal corporate charter (implying, as we have seen already with the Obama administration, more direct federal control of businesses).

This idea goes all the way back to the start of the shift of modern liberalism from libertarianiam to the authoritarian and interventionist version we have now, during the Progressive Era, when there was a good deal of sentiment in favor of public control of the private sector when not frequently replacing it with a public alternative. (Public control if not ownership of railroads, telephone, telegraph, etc.)

http://www.corporatepolicy.org/pdf/charters.pdf

With the start of it in particular, it was fascistic, which is a form of socialism. The exact definition of “fascism” is fluid or fuzzy, as there have been variants throughout the world. There is no question here; it was a Kinder, Gentler form than what we had in Europe (the same is true for our leadership versus theirs). Our society or culture is different from Europe's — less collectivist and less cultural and economic “stasis” (with a rigid hierarchy and an elite in government that runs a more coherent and collectivist society) as exists in Europe. (The words “statist” or “statism” often apply clumsily to us here in the USA, though they can easily be technically correct, because of this different culture and the different kind or degree of meaning it conveys about Europe rather than here in the USA.)

Integrating the private sector (with inherent bigness or fewness of businesses in a number of cases and its relative monopolistic power that is taken and applied) is part of what fascism is about, in addition to the authoritarian nature of it and the unifying nature of government and society (the true meaning of “corporatist,” as in “corpus” or body, meaning everything is one, albeit complex, organism). (Tugwell in the 1970s, what he began seeking in the 1930s: “There will emerge an organic whole, controlled by advanced arts of administration” in addition to modern industrial and labor codes)

We've already had a preference for fascistic applications of socialism rather than the more “purist” form resembling Communism in the UK, for example, that featured nationalization and public ownership and provision of as much as possible, though here the two things blend (nationalized oil companies, power companies, public national airlines and railroads, and so on). What we often see is the “managed cartel” with varying degrees of presence and incidence of government control.

The reason is that the mainstream normally doesn't want the fully-public model and this is why such a thing is avoided, or tried partially and incrementally rather than completely at once.

Besides, as I have said before, what matters in the end really isn't so much the formality of ownership (and the headaches of small details and day-to-day operations). What actually matters is control. And controlling and directing or merely overseeing things frees the controllers to tend to larger issues.

This is what we're seeing with health care now, and the “public option” current entry point for displacing private control with increasing substitution public control of health care. This is also why taking the existing system and controlling it by Washington was also what was sought with the early 1990s openly fascistic HMO “alliance” based federal takeover attempt. “Medicare for All ASAP” causes the mainstream, nearly all the public, to recoil, so a more tortoise-like approach is sought.

Of course I think that governments should install and own infrastructure like power/communication lines and then let anyone pay provider fees that wants access. That means more fair and a better delineation of roles compared to the current state of selecting an individual company to give massive subsidies to and then handing them a monopoly (either directly or indirectly through implicit guarantees).