N90 Controller was notified of a past separation event identified through an audit; the reporter gives a lengthy opinion of the current FAA operational and compliance policies.

Narrative

This incident was identified through an audit. Wake turbulence separation was lost between two air carrier aircraft. The FAA; at least as it applies to the day to day operations at N90; consists of 2 entities pulling in opposite directions; like never before. On one hand; you have a TMU over capacitated the system day in and day out; keeping pressure on the runways; therefore doing their jobs; like they were trained to do. This little bag of sunshine is then handed to the controllers; who are expected to do what they were trained to do. Make it work. Make it work with the flawed arrival procedures like the VOR DME A into TEB; with its built in deals. Make it work with the departures off of Runway 04 at EWR; where we were taught to turn and climb those departures. 'Turn and climb' was the battle cry from the trainers and management decade after decade. It's what had to be done in order to make it work. And if you couldn't make it work; you were washed out. But wait. There's a small problem. Just about every time you climbed one of those departures; you would deviate into LGA's airspace; and virtually every time you turned there would be a slight loss of separation with the TEB arrival coming up the Runway 06 LOC. But we did it; just 2 examples of many of how we made it work. And we all know that if we ran this operation 'by the book'; the operation would come to a standstill and be considered a slow down. But in comes the other hand. The SMQA and AOV; who are simply doing the jobs they were tasked with; which is to make sure that things are done 'by the book'. So they grab a cup of coffee; sit down at a desk and scrutinize the operation using sophisticated software to measure distances between aircraft down to a tenth of a mile. A tenth of a mile! Remarkable. But this brings to light another small problem. The controllers are expected to eyeball the distances between aircraft that are in a perpetual state of minimum separation. However; we're not afforded the luxury of sophisticated tools; nor would we have time to use them. It's an unfair disparity that shouldn't exist. After many years of doing this; I still can't tell the difference between 2.98 miles and 3.01. But yet we're judged using these variances; leaving our only option to use excessive space on final; which we can't do. My recommendation would be to figure out what is it you want from us. Would you like us to make it work or run it 'by the book'?