Monday, January 30, 2012

Obama laughs over spilled milk but fines companies for not producing fictional fuel

By Adam Peshek

During his State of the Union address last week, President Obama joked about the absurdity of an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regulation that could have forced dairy farmers to pay $10,000 for spilled milk. Equally absurd is the same agency fining companies $6.8 million in 2011 for failing to use a fuel that does not exist. Even more absurd is raising the fine in 2012 — but that is exactly what the EPA is doing.

The spilled milk line refers to an EPA regulation that would have required dairy farmers to file emergency plans to show how they would deal with large amounts of spilled milk, including how they would train “first responders” and build “containment facilities” to store the milk. This was a terrible interpretation of a law that attempts to prevent oil spills. After being the brunt of Capitol Hill jokes, the EPA sensibly determined that milk should not be classified as oil.

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