Here's some more important news, which makes it seem as though the EPA my just be stunted by the government for their efforts to keep people healthy.
thehill.com...
The House on Thursday approved legislation Republicans said was aimed at ensuring the EPA cannot regulate so-called "farm dust."
I'm sure farm dust contains a whole lot of nasty pesticides that easily breathed into the body and not easily expelled. Just wonderful! Nice to see
the government doesn't give a crap.
Looks like they won't be able to touch this issue for a entire year -- when we have a new president. Hopefully, whomever it is, will understand the
importance of this issue. Maybe if pesticide use was severaly restricted, farm dust wouldn't be such an issue.
"Despite Administrator Jackson's statement, there is nothing currently on the books preventing the EPA from adopting a stricter regulation,"
Rep. Daniel Webster (R-Fla.) said. "This legislation provides iron-clad certainty to farmers, ranchers, small business owners that farm dust would
stay off the EPA's to-do list for at least another year."
So, if your concerned about your health and those who are working on farms, you're mad.
"This session of Congress has felt to many of us like a trip into Alice's Wonderland," Rep. Diana DeGette (D-Colo.) said during closing debate.
"While our nation struggles with a devastating economy, we do nothing about jobs or getting Americans back to work. Instead, we repeatedly fall down
the rabbit hole of extreme legislation, and now with this [bill] … it seems that we're even having tea with the Cheshire cat.
"To paraphrase our friend the Cheshire Cat, 'We're all mad here. I'm mad. You're mad. You must be mad, or you wouldn't have come here.' …
[The bill] is a mad solution to an imaginary problem," she added.
The article goes on to explain:
Democrats also charged that the bill could be used to help industries other than farming avoid federal pollution regulations.
"It is not really about farms at all," House Energy and Commerce Committee ranking member Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) said. "It's real effect is to
exempt industrial mining operations and other large industries from regulation under the Clean Air Act, and it threatens to overturn the particulate
pollution standards that protect families in both rural and urban communities."
Waxman said the bill would ban regulations related to nuisance dust, but defines "nuisance dust" in a way that could exempt not just farmers, but
coal mining operations and cement plants from new particulate-matter rules. He also said Republicans rejected amendments aimed at ensuring that the
bill only blocks potential new rules on dust related to farms.
Then, lastly.
House passage sends the bill to a Senate that is unlikely to take it up at all. The Obama administration has already said it would veto the
bill.
Lots of arguments over this, so we'll just have to wait and see what goes down.
