Posted on 01/26/2011 4:26:52 PM PST by Extremely Extreme Extremist
DES MOINES, Iowa – Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich called Tuesday for the elimination of the Environmental Protection Agency, which he wants to replace with a new organization that would work more closely with businesses and be more aggressive in using science and technology.
In an interview with The Associated Press, Gingrich said the EPA was rarely innovative and focused only on issuing regulations and litigation.
"What you have is a very expensive bureaucracy that across the board makes it harder to solve problems, slows down the development of new innovations," Gingrich said.
Gingrich, who has acknowledged that he's mulling a run for the Republican presidential nomination, was in Iowa to talk to the Iowa Renewable Fuels Association. He also met privately with Republican legislators, often a sign in Iowa that people are laying the groundwork for a campaign. The state has the nation's first presidential caucuses.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
More proof that Gingrich and most Republicans would just continue the same-old same-old.
Ping.....
Replace it with a tombstone saying EPA...RIP
Newtie is a greenie.
Newt loves government just another democrat lite, another home land security.
ERASE not replace
More proof that Gingrich and most Republicans would just continue the same-old same-old.
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Hard to say how many Repubs and Yellow-Dogs want big, monolithic government....but it is a fact that they cherish their jobs, in many cases, more than American freedoms and our core values. The people deserve the government they get...don’t blame the crooks. Blame those that keep putting them back in office.
I think there is room for the establishment of some reasonable standards that would be administered by an agency - I’m old enough to remember when raw sewage ran in the Hudson, there was no living plant on the banks of the Ohio, and the Cuyahoga caught fire. Reasonable standards are not a bad thing, and somebody has to be responsible for overseeing them.
The problem is that all of these agencies seem to be able to take off on their own and are not accountable to the legislative branch or anyone else. Agencies have to exist and they can do good things; but we have to think up a way of controlling them.
In addition, the method of appointing their heads makes them essentially an arm of the Executive Branch, and when you have a nutcase in the White House, as we do now, this can be a problem.
Or then you have the situation of Bush, who obviously wanted to rationalize things but wasn’t strong enough to buck the lower level of civil servants who occupy these posts, combined with the fact that the press attacked him every time he appointed someone to a leadership office and made him afraid to do anything after the first year or so.
The idea of an environmental agency isn’t bad and in fact is necessary, but there has got to be more control over what it’s doing and who is creating the policy. All agencies seem to be off on their own now, carrying out missions that they were never designed to do and implementing policy that has never been publicly discussed or agreed upon anywhere.
Gingrich is grade B dog meat, not fit for human or dog consumption.
I like ABOLISHING (not replacing) EPA agency. The government can help any worker seriously injured due to toxic substances, unsafe safety practices etc by the employer.
Those instances are few and will not require a large agency like EPA to restrain every single business out there with regulations and paper work. My guess is they would need 1/100th the number of current EPA staff and 1/50th budget.
And I speak as someone whose cousin had his lungs severely damaged by inhaling ammonia from a leaking container.
So Chrissy Matthews....er....Newt Gingrich...wants his own Global Warming Hoax agency?
FR needs to “Giuliani” Gingrich now......
Ah, a ray of light shines through. Thank you sir.
How about eliminate the EPA, and don’t replace it, at all!
I think he and McCain are seeing the same shrink.
“I think there is room for the establishment of some reasonable standards that would be administered by an agency - I’m old enough to remember...”
THAT NEVER HAPPENED. LOL. Just kidding. While I understand the anger at EPS, the people that think businesses would use scrubbers, cars would use catalytic converters, and water would be sanitized prior to discharge without laws in place are NUTS. The first company that takes catalytic converters off its cars gets a competitive advantage, and it’s game-over. In fact, if all of the pollution controls were removed from cars, their price would drop by thousands. Sounds good, until you’ve had the experience of driving through air so dirty (in an underground parking garage) that your engine couldn’t even keep running (much less you breathing normally).
Will states step up? Maybe. But same thing, if one state, like Texas says no regulations...then business goes there and other states are forced to cut way back on their regs - and we’re back to pre-EPA.
So, I like Newt’s approach. Rip out the old EPA and start over from scratch, with new people and a clear mission to HELP BUSINESS, while still having reasonable laws to keep the air, water, and ground clean.
So then we can have the APE (Agency for Protection of the Environment) - progress!
Starting over from scratch with ALL agencies would probably be a good idea. They have become too ideological (suchas the EPA with its greenie global-warming carbon-overload lunacy) and too non-responsive and too far beyond either oversight or control.
It is very true that there are no market forces that would make a company stop dumping its chemical waste into the nearest river if it could get away with it. In fact, one of the reasons that China is so “competitive” is that it has absolutely no environmental standards and the rivers and land throughout most of China have become toxic dumps. So somebody somewhere has to make sure that there are some standards and some enforcement power...but as you say, the goal has got to be to permit business, permit production, but protect people from the harmful effects of unrestricted activities.
The problem now is that the EPA is not only anti-business, it’s anti-people, and is aiming for the ultimate greenie paradise of no human beings or forcing human beings back to the cave.
Agencies need public oversight, public policy setting, and should not become either enforcement arms of weirdness from the Executive Branch or independent operators taken over by ideologues.
Well stated and great point on China. It is interesting that the FAA was chartered to promote aviation, as well as promote aviation safety. Overall, they’ve done a great job at both (certainly relative to other countries), and would have done better without the lawyers chasing down every accident.
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