The Future of the EPA

[Wingnut]

WASHINGTON (Gray DC) - Twelve days into the Donald Trump presidency and only a handful of his cabinet nominees are confirmed. Scott Pruitt, Trump's nominee for Environmental Protection Agency Administrator, is still waiting for a vote. Once Pruitt is confirmed, the agency is likely to see big changes.

During the 2016 campaign, Trump spoke about changing many of the EPA's functions. Environmental experts are concerned with Pruitt's nomination, citing the 14 times he sued the agency while working on behalf of oil companies in Oklahoma.

"How can he come into that office and stand up for the laws for the EPA is defending?" asks Matt Lee-Ashley of the Center for American Progress.

Trump transition official Steve Milloy is hoping Pruitt does not defend many of the regulations he deems unnecessary.

" I have been astonished that the regulatory overreach by the EPA and the use of bad science to justify regulations," he added. Milloy believes Pruitt will help protect the environment, but in a way that's friendly to the economy. He hopes Pruitt will transform the agency into one that is unrecognizable from the current one.

Milloy, in his book Scare Pollution, proposes rolling EPA tasks back to states, defunding scientists who he calls "activists," and leveling the field on judicial rules.

Lee-Ashley says "pollution doesn't respect state borders...you can't have piecemeal standards across the country" and therefore most EPA issues cannot be regulated state to state.

Though Pruitt is not yet in place, President Trump has already given controversial oil and gas pipelines the green light, promised to get out of the Paris Agreement, and has frozen and reestablished grants within the agency.


http://www.kcrg.com/content/news/412339583.html

[Hondo69]

Good old KCRG in Cedar Rapids picked up a story from its news feed subscription.  I grew up listening to their radio station, that and WLS out of Chicago when we could get it.  Both would run the farm report about lunch time.  Hogs are up 2 cents, corn is down a nickel.

One would think that the heart of farm country would be very in tune to the abuses of the EPA, well documented over the past few decades.  Yet that is not the case at all.  Unless you get out in the country and talk to the farmers themselves little to no information gets out about the perils of big government and onerous regulations.  It's a near total media blackout.

Even in the small Iowa farm communities, which make up the largest portion of the overall state population, there is a tug of war of ideology.  Although they've witnessed first hand decimated Main Streets and small family farms get gobbled up by corporations many never are quite able to connect the dots back to the root causes.  The majority of radio stations and all the larger newspapers are fully in the tank for big government.

To be fair, you can pick up a radio station or two driving around Iowa that runs nothing but conservative talk radio.  Although few and far between in number residents tell me they have very good ratings numbers.  Much like Fox News on TV they are lone voices in the wilderness, good ratings or not.

It pains me a great deal to go back and visit my home state.  Good, hard-working, family-oriented, salt of the earth people take on a mindset that is totally foreign to me.  And it all ties back to the one-sided media deluge they are peppered with 24 hours a day.  If you want to receive a bunch of blank stares in Iowa bring up the evils of ethanol subsidies in conversation.  You might as well be speaking French because they've never heard those argument before in their lives.

What the eyes see and the ears hear, the mind believes.  Harry Houdini

[verga]

I think Trump's policy of add one /cut two will do a lot to get the government off our backs.

[InHeavenThereIsNoBeer]

Even in the small Iowa farm communities, which make up the largest portion of the overall state population, there is a tug of war of ideology.  Although they've witnessed first hand decimated Main Streets and small family farms get gobbled up by corporations many never are quite able to connect the dots back to the root causes.  The majority of radio stations and all the larger newspapers are fully in the tank for big government.

I had to disagree with your first statement, so I looked it up:

"Iowa's population is more urban than rural, with 61 percent living in urban areas in 2000, a trend that began in the early 20th century.  Urban counties in Iowa grew 8.5% from 2000 to 2008, while rural counties declined by 4.2%. The shift from rural to urban has caused population increases in more urbanized counties such as Dallas, Johnson, Linn, Polk, and Scott, at the expense of more rural counties."

[Yeah, it's wikipedia, but I trust them on this kind of stuff]

It makes sense the papers and radio (FM, at least) are in the bag for big gov't, they're located in the liberal cities and so are most of their customers.

[Hondo69]

I had to disagree with your first statement, so I looked it up:

It makes sense the papers and radio (FM, at least) are in the bag for big gov't, they're located in the liberal cities and so are most of their customers.

Well, well, well, I stand corrected.  Thanks for setting me straight on that.  I was a little surprised by the Wiki numbers so I did some checking on a few other sites, such as:

http://www.iowadatacenter.org/quickfacts

They say pretty much the same thing.  But as you mentioned it does explain a quite a bit when it comes to big government.  I guess it's true - Can't keep them down on the farm.

[InHeavenThereIsNoBeer]

Well, well, well, I stand corrected.  Thanks for setting me straight on that.  I was a little surprised by the Wiki numbers so I did some checking on a few other sites, such as:

http://www.iowadatacenter.org/quickfacts

They say pretty much the same thing.  But as you mentioned it does explain a quite a bit when it comes to big government.  I guess it's true - Can't keep them down on the farm.

Yep.  My grandparents were the last to farm the family farm.  None of us kids/gk's wanted to take it over, ever though it did rather well.  But I am very thankful I got at least a taste of that way of life.

[IsailedawayfromFR]

When I opened thread I expected to see this

[Suppressed]

They say pretty much the same thing.  But as you mentioned it does explain a quite a bit when it comes to big government.  I guess it's true - Can't keep them down on the farm.

Yeah, @Hondo69, I had business in Iowa 5-10 years ago, and I was struck by how liberal people were, loving that big-government help.

[Wingnut]

Talked briefly with a little snowflake from Iowa City/Johnson Co the other day. When I found out she worked at Iowa State I made mention of the hero Fed Ex driver slapping down that bunch of basement dwelling latte swilling low-t beta males burning the American Flags last week...... Her back bowed up like a Halloween cat about to pounce when some other people near-by chimed in agreeing with my take on the situation.  She made a couple of harumphs and walked away. 

[Hondo69]

 

First off, I apologize as I feel I've hijacked this thread which was never my intention.  I guess my point was to make a "can't see the forest for the trees" connection between the EPA and those very people who are among the most damaged big government heavy handed policies.  They should know better.

Growing up on a farm you experience reality big time.  For one thing, you get a big dose of life and death.  City kids never reached inside a cow to straighten out the legs of her unborn calf.  It ain't pretty and it ain't fun, but you do whatever you have to do when it gets right down to the nut cutting.  And speaking of nut cutting, it ain't pretty and it ain't fun either.  But it is reality and something most people don't think about as they walk along the meat section at the grocery store.

The Greeks called it the Tragic View, a name I never really like but nobody asked me.  If Homer were around today and writing about life down on the farm he'd explain how a 10 minute hail storm can wipe out a year's worth of hard work.  And he'd also do a damned good job of laying out the pro's and con's of things like EPA regulations, government subsidies and farm programs setup by Herbert Hoover (born in Iowa).  The Tragic View gives you the good, the bad and the ugly, something farmers can tell you all about too.

Which brings me back to where I started a few posts ago.  Rural life resides much closer to reality than urban life.  Any farmer knows the difference between a cow pattie and a politician's line of B.S.  And you don't see a lot of farmers lining up on the interstate blocking traffic to protest the EPA's new dust regulations.  But it would do my heart a lot of good to see a line of Farmall's and John Deere's blocking four lanes of traffic.

[bigheadfred]

End the war on coal. End stupid regulations that put some damn bug first.

[Fishrrman]

"The Future of the EPA..."

...Somewhat diminished.

We can hope.