Naked Capitalism Link of the Day

Today's link : Spilled Milk Regulations a Myth, EPA Says, at the NYT.  It is amazing when I talk to farmers how powerful they believe the EPA is.  Having worked with the EPA in the public and private sector, I realize how limited their funding and staffing is.  They can barely get done half of the work they are assigned to do, and almost all of that does not deal with the hundreds of farmers working in each county.  Yet when I talk to farmers, they are convinced that EPA is going to make them collect dust from combines and field work, and collect cow farts. 

Prior to working as a civil engineer, I worked for the local fertilizer plant for a summer.  On my second day on the job, I turned too short into a driveway, and the trailer, which carried a 1200 gallon tank of fertilizer and two shuttles of herbicide, flipped over, spilling all the fertilizer and probably 50 gallons of herbicide.  The plant called EPA and asked how it should be handled.  None of the liquid had left the site, and it soaked into the ground.  They were told to dig at the spill site and spread the dirt on the field with a manure spreader, until they couldn't smell the fertilizer in the soil.  After that, they brought clean dirt into the resulting hole.  It was costly, but insurance covered it.  I don't believe EPA even made a site visit.  I'm almost positive they didn't take any tests.  Anyway milk isn't a big threat:

To Representative Morgan Griffith, a freshman Republican from Virginia, nothing illustrates the Environmental Protection Agency’s overreach more clearly than a new rule applying the same regulations that govern spilled oil to milk spilled on dairy farms.
“It appears spilt milk is just as threatening as an oil spill,” Mr. Griffith wrote in a recent newsletter to his constituents.
Such rules would force dairy farmers to build containment facilities in case of a spill and develop emergency plans, he continued, “jacking up the cost of milk and butter.”
Spilled milk also surfaced at a March 3 hearing, when Representative Jeff Flake of Arizona grilled Lisa P. Jackson, the E.P.A. chief, over the alleged regulation. “How can the E.P.A. promulgate new rules like this?” Mr. Flake demanded. “What’s next — sippy cups in the House cafeteria?”
In the midst of a heated debate over the E.P.A.’s authority to regulate heat-trapping emissions like carbon dioxide, the charge makes for great political theater. But according to the agency, it is pure fiction.

In testimony before Congress on Thursday, Ms. Jackson declared that the new rule cited by Republicans would, in fact, exempt dairy containers from the regulations that govern oil facilities — rules that have been on the books for nearly 40 years.

Why don't Republicans just read the damn draft regulations?  I'll go with lazy and stupid.  Once in Congressman Boehner's first term, I was given the opportunity, thanks to my American Government teacher, to go to DC and follow the Congressman and his staff around for a few days.  After about two days of being in his office and hearing the voting bell ring every 15 minutes or so, we asked with that many votes, how does he know what he's voting on.  His answer was that he didn't know, he just found one of the party leaders, who told him how to vote.  Thanks for representing us, Congressman.  It is pretty clear that Republicans are either poorly informed, or are intentionally misinforming their constituents.  I would guess that in the majority of the cases, underestimating the representative's intelligence is not likely.