A great ad by Herman Cain!

The Viking wrote: Yes the EPA is destroying this nation! I can't believe they are going after the people who feed this nation for the dust they create! THAT is why we need a Republican in the White House.

"Destroying this nation?" What a nice parrot of common Republican talking points that have no basis in reality or fact whatsoever. And this ad is totally full of crap. "Government over-regulation is destroying the American farmer?" rofllol They sure don't complain about the billions of dollars in subsidies that they receive every year, whether they actually grow the crop they are being paid for or not, now do they? http://www.downsizinggovernment.org/agr ... /subsidies and http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/co ... 00962.html for starters.

Do you have any idea what good the EPA has done for the people of this nation and how it hasn't killed jobs? I'm not going to argue that it couldn't be made more efficient, but "destroying" - that's absolutely ridiculous.

Too bad it's not really about farm dust at all, but has a more sinister goal...

From the OP:

ANALYSIS: Any claims that that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is going to regulate emissions from cows is inaccurate, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson said during testimony before the U.S. House Committee on Agriculture on March 3.

“This myth was started in 2008 by a lobbyist and quickly de-bunked,” Jackson said.

Jackson said another mischaracterization is the claim that the EPA is attempting to expand regulation of dust from farms. “We have no plans to do so,” she said.

http://www.grist.org/list/2011-10-25-re ... ake-proble
Rep. Markey blasts GOP for making real laws to solve fake problems
by Jess Zimmerman
26 Oct 2011

Like the email tax hoax, there is no plan to regulate farm dust. Let me say that again: EPA has made it very clear that the so-called “plan” to regulate farm dust is a myth.

“But that isn’t stopping Republicans from moving forward with this legislation. And, just like the email tax bill, this bill goes well beyond its stated intent –because it also blocks EPA from setting standards for the dirty soot that gets spewed out of coal-fired power plants, incinerators, refineries and chemical plants.

“This bill should be relegated to the ‘dust-bin’ of similar urban legends, along with Congressman Schnell’s imaginary email tax bill.”

[youtube:23wlg0yq]![/youtube:23wlg0yq]
http://markey.house.gov/index.php?optio ... Itemid=125

Here's the real issue:
http://www.ombwatch.org/node/11885
Farm Dust Frenzy: A Misleading and Distracting Regulatory Myth
Posted on October 26, 2011

John Walke's testimony - a long read, but good detail and breakdown.
http://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/jwalk ... efore.html
Bill Targeting EPA "Farm Dust" Myth Kills Clean Air Act Safeguards Against Industrial Soot Pollution
John Walke
Posted October 27, 2011

This week I testified before the House Energy & Power Subcommittee in opposition to H.R. 1633, the Farm Dust Regulation Prevention Act of 2011. In this post, I set forth my oral statement to the subcommittee, supplemented by some additional passages for context. My full written testimony is available here [pdf].

The Farm Dust Regulation Prevention Act of 2011, H.R. 1633, is premised on a problem that does not exist – nonexistent EPA limits on farm dust. The devilish details of this poorly crafted bill, however, actually create more real problems than the imaginary problem the bill purports to solve. The bill is sweepingly overbroad, creating numerous damaging consequences that appear to be unintended but that would cause real harms to Americans.

The result would be increases in harmful soot pollution – not just coarse particulate matter (PM10) but deadly fine particulate matter (PM2.5) – across the country. And not just in rural America but urban and metropolitan areas too.

The legislation inexplicably eliminates, weakens or blocks federal Clean Air Act authority over overwhelmingly industrial soot pollution from power plants, manufacturing facilities, mines, other industrial facilities and even the nation's fleet of motor vehicles – all as a result of very overbroad and poor drafting.

Finally, I urge your attention to a careful reading of the written testimony of most of the majority witnesses as well Representative Kristi Noem’s statements [pdf] on the opening panel: each time any of that testimony complained of existing regulation of farm dust, they were complaining about state regulation, e.g., in Arizona or Illinois, not federal EPA regulation. Isn’t it paradoxical then that this bill, H.R. 1633, does not eliminate state regulation or monitoring of farm dust? I make this point not to suggest that Congress should trample on state decisions about how best to protect their citizens by reducing pollution; rather this point reveals the fundamental internal inconsistency and hypocrisy underlying H.R. 1633.

On October 14, 2011, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson announced that she plans to maintain current coarse particle standards (set in 1987) without any change – meaning that current standards would stay the same for at least five years. To my knowledge, no one falsely accused the Reagan administration of regulating "farm dust" for setting PM10 standards at the exact same level that the Obama administration EPA has said it will maintain those standards.

In its 41-year history, federal control measures adopted by EPA have never covered farm dust. To be clear: there are no EPA farm dust regulations; there are no such proposed regulations; there are no EPA intentions for such regulations; EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson has specifically disavowed such intentions in Congressional testimony when asked directly by Congress; and the Administrator just last week announced that she would propose no change to the PM10 standards pursuant to the mandatory statutory review that had prompted the baseless hysteria over so-called “farm dust.”

If Congress truly wanted to address farm dust, all it would take is a simple sentence that says “EPA shall not impose limits on farm dust if states are doing so already.” Some members would like to suggest that this is all H.R. 1633 does, but that is plainly and profoundly wrong. The bill does far more and far worse than that.

Here’s what the legislation actually does: see link for more