Tea Party Defends Polluters Rights to Give Women and Children Cancer
An attempt by a Kentucky water district to raise rates in order to meet clean water regulations has become political, with a local Tea Party organization stepping in and arguing that the county should simply ignore federal rules.The teatards continue the conservative tradition of ignorant elitism. It does not matter what the science says - rational empirical methods to arrive at the truth - what matters is what the teatards believe. I guess if teatard right-wing conservative stop beleiving in gravity we'll all float away. Except for those who in the mean time have been given a death sentence by the science haters.
The Northern Kentucky Water District is seeking a 25 percent rate increase by January 2012, and according to The Kentucky Enquirer, a major reason for the raise is to comply with U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) regulations that are meant to prevent bladder cancer by "requiring that water utilities nationwide improve their treatment of drinking water to eliminate byproducts left over after chemical disinfection."
"The standard that we have to meet as to whether our water is safe or not is based upon the regulations that are set under the Safe Drinking Water Act and that are administered through the (Kentucky) Division of Water," said Northern Kentucky Water President and CEO Ron Lovan during a hearing last month. "Is our water safe? Yes, we feel it's safe based upon the current regulations. ... That's the standard that we've got to meet."
The EPA, however, is the arch-nemesis of many conservatives, who believe that it overreaches and imposes unnecessary regulations on states, localities and businesses.
But according to Lovan, if the local water district refuses to comply, it could face up to $25,000 per day in fines, the leadership could go to prison and the state Division of Water could possibly step in and take over. He added that the EPA regulations have been in the works since the 1990s and had significant public input.
"It's been years in the making, it was a very public process that they (EPA officials) took a lot of input from a lot of interest groups all around the country," said Lovan. "Whether the Tea Party folks believe that or not, it was a very open, public process before we got to the point where we are today."
During a hearing on the issue last month, Duane Skavdahl, an attorney representing the Tea Party group, lamented that "nobody will take on the EPA."
A Campbell County fiscal court judge recently told the Tea Party that if it was really concerned about the agency, it needed to take it up on the federal level. "What you're going to have to realize is that a federal mandate is the reason that we're involved in this conversation, and you're going to have to be talking to the federal people, and hopefully in a little bit different tone of voice and with different expectations than the way you're laying it out to us," said Judge Steve Pendery.
The Northern Kentucky Water District estimates that 80 percent of the $88 million increase is attributable to the new Safe Drinking Water Act regulations, but Northern Kentucky Tea Party member Garth Kuhnhein, who is a mining engineer, suspects that federal regulators were off on their cost projections.
According to the EPA, the regulations are intended to reduce not only bladder cancer, but also colon cancer, rectal cancer, and health risks to pregnant women and their fetuses. The Northern Kentucky Tea Party did not return a request for comment.
Glenn Beck deals in crazy delusions, not facts - The king of conspiracy shamelessly attacks George Soros -- and finally nabs the award he was born to win
Shocking but true: Glenn Beck has not yet been the subject of "This Week in Crazy," the feature that was essentially created to honor 2009's Craziest Man. This week, though, as if he knew that his usual conspiracy-mongering, fake tears and suffocating paranoia just weren't cutting it anymore, Beck aired a series of shameless attacks on George Soros that seemed ripped from the pages of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
The message? Financier and philanthropist George Soros is a "puppet master" secretly at the center of a vast conspiracy that aims to destroy our economy and take over the nation through deceit. The proof? A lot of selectively edited quotes, wild innuendo and the fact that Soros "collapsed regimes" in "four other countries."
Beck knows full well that Soros dedicated his life to promoting democracy in Communist nations, which an avowed anti-socialist like Beck should theoretically be championing him for. But Soros is a progressive, and in the Beck world, progressives are socialists are Maoists are Communists are totalitarians, so any enemy of Soros is a friend of Glenn Beck's. Insanity makes strange bedfellows. Look who Beck quotes to support his argument that Soros is one of the secret rulers of the world:
He's known as the man who broke the bank of England. The Prime Minister of Malaysia called Soros an unscrupulous profiteer. In Thailand, he was branded the "economic war criminal." They also said that he "sucks the blood from people."
The prime minister of Malaysia went on to say: "We do not want to say that this is a plot by the Jews, but in reality it is a Jew who triggered the currency plunge, and coincidentally Soros is a Jew." (The other quote, about how Soros is a bloodsucking something-or-other, speaks for itself.)
I don't think people who read secondhand accounts of the specials -- or even those who read the transcripts -- can grasp how weird and shameless the entire spectacle was. There were puppets strewn about the set. The camera always watches Beck watching whatever we're supposed to be watching. Beck blatantly flirted with classic anti-Semitic tropes, knowing he'd be called on it but confident his friends would have his back. His taunting response to criticism: If he's a lying anti-Semite, why would Rupert Murdoch allow him on the air?
But the craziest bit of the entire thing came when Glenn Beck accused Soros -- a 14-year-old Jew in Budapest attempting, during the war, to survive the Holocaust -- of collaborating with the Nazis and "helping send the Jews to the death camps." Yes, that happened. Repeatedly.
