Last updated on 2011.09.19
Agri-Pulse Communications posts this interview with South Dakota Congresswoman Kristi Noem:
Noem's comments on why she ran for Congress contain the familiar implicit denigration of many fellow South Dakotans, as she says South Dakotans want people in Congress who are "living real lives." I challenge the Congresswoman and you, cherished readers, to explain what constitutes "living fake lives."
Noem also demonstrates her continued inability to talk specifics. Asked what South Dakotans sent her to Washington to do, Noem talks generalities—give kids the same opportunities we had, get rid of regulations, balance the books—but she smilingly avoids telling us exactly how to achieve those goals. Asked about progress the House has made, she cites no specific votes or legislation passed and turns instead to talking points aout that darned Senate and White House that won't roll over and let the House Republicans drive the country into anarchy. Asked what she hopes to accomplish with her new seat on the House Agriculture Committee, an issue she ought to be able to knock out of the park with all of her "real life" experience on the farm, Noem offers not one specific policy she plans to push for.
Specifics come from the interviewer, who asks about Noem's anti-EPA-dust-rules legislation. Noem also accuses the EPA of not acting in accordance with science and data. This from a woman who, as a state legislator in 2010, voted for a resolution that declared global warming a result of astrological forces.
Noem also trots out the standard GOP bogeyman lines about the EPA's harm to business:
The one agency out here that is doing the most harm to our country is the EPA. It's the most anti-business, anti-farmer EPA that I believe our country has ever seen. And we need somebody to zero in on them and rein them in for the damage that they're doing to our economy.
Sure, EPA regulations can increase the cost of doing business. But they also can create jobs in the short term and have no clear effect on jobs in the long term. EPA rules also result in fewer asthma attacks, fewer premature deaths from heart and lung failure, and other health benefits that in 2010 outweighed the costs of clean air regulation almost 26 to 1.
What's that you said about science, data, and cost-benefit analyses, Rep. Noem?
it has begun; earth haters beware: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-0TSa-jpAmU
The EPA is a favorite boogie man of conservatives. I'd like Congresswoman Noem to give specific examples of how EPA regulation has cost me, a typical SD farmer, money. Then I'll be more able to determine if the cost is worth the benefit.
This probably isn't the best place to post this, but you linked to the "astrological" cause of global warming and it reminded me of a series of videos called, "The Cloud Mystery" on youtube. I'm not a big believer in astrology causing anything, but that aside, there may be factors about global warming that we are yet to understand. The global warming debate is so polarizing that it may be keeping us from really understanding it as both "sides" get fully entrenched in their positions. I would vote for getting good science fully engaged to figure it out.
I'll need to leave it to you to embed these if you choose.
Is this website the material to which you refer, David?
I'm an English teacher, not a climatologist. But I'm willing to bet that astrological forces have no more to do with climate change than they do with the things my horoscope says will happen to me today.
Noem has never balanced a budget without Federal money Farming or legislatively (I get sick of her saying that everytime she opens her mouth. Also her other businesses that were such a success were around for like 2 years. (Restaurant and hunting lodge) No one knows how successful they were...
I also read David Montgomery's piece about Noem giving three specifics and those specifics are the most vague specifics I have ever read.
3 specifics on the debt ceiling...
I have never visited the site http://www.thecloudmystery.com that you found. I just saw the video on youtube. I presume this is the "mother" site for the documentary posted on youtube. It's an interesting premise. Be forewarned, it is about an hour long as I recall.
Again, it's the eye candy and the Noem math where two plus two equals five.
She's all hair and no head.
She has no specifics, because this is all just masturbatory talking points fed to her by some handler who got it from some focus testing public relations firm who was hired by some think tank who gets money from the Koch Brothers.
If EPA was doing damage to the economy, it must have been doing it under President Bush, because that's when the economy tanked due to financial industry shenanigans. The fact that EPA has no power over the financial industry probably has not found it's way through that mess of hair.
By the way, South Dakota's DENR has primacy to enforce EPA regulatory programs, and receives money to do so from the federal government. As a legislator, Noem happily took federal money to fund all the programs she criticized, and as a Representative she has not put in a bill to strip that money from South Dakota. We see that her concern about EPA goes about as deep as that pile of hair.
Rachel Maddow just ran a good piece on the House's recent vote on HB 2018 to take clean water control out of the hands of the EPA and turn it back to the states. Noem voted for this.
GOP Goes to War Against clean Water