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twomp
12-06-2011, 10:06 PM
So I have a friend at work who seems open minded towards Ron Paul but he's a pretty hardcore environmentalist. Ending the EPA is pretty much a deal breaker to him. So is there anything I can say in reply to this? Does Dr. Paul just feel like its okay for companies to dump their crap in our rivers? How about air emissions? Does he not care about the environmental effects of polluted cities like LA? Any feedback would be appreciated. Thanks!

Oddone
12-06-2011, 10:10 PM
The EPA doesn't care, it's all lobbyist and money changing hands to prop up huge polluting companies. Companies get off with small fines, and get to use Carbon credits allowing them to pump X amount of gases into the air, which leads into Emission trading. They get off scotch free as long as they only pump X millions of gallons into the oceans and rivers, if they do more they get a small fine.

Edit: Your property rights go out the window because of the EPA.

Feeding the Abscess
12-06-2011, 10:11 PM
I'll see if I have links around with interviews on this subject. Ron feels that polluting private property is wrong and should not be sanctioned by government.

Your hardcore environmentalist friend may be surprised to learn that polluting was at one time illegal in our country. Ask him if he prefers pollution to be legal and regulated in a fashion that both increases pollution and the bottom line of the companies producing the pollutants, or if pollution of private property should be strictly illegal.

seapilot
12-06-2011, 10:12 PM
Point him to Gibson Guitar factory and how wonderful the EPA of today is. Show him how it is nothing but a big bureaucracy that has outlived its purpose.

http://weeklyworldnews.com/headlines/37612/feds-to-seize-all-acoustic-guitars/

LibertyEsq
12-06-2011, 10:12 PM
I thought Paul was keeping the EPA?

he's cutting Education, HUD, Energy, Commerce, Interior

Oddone
12-06-2011, 10:14 PM
I thought Paul was keeping the EPA?

he's cutting Education, HUD, Energy, Commerce, Interior

Yes, but he has spoke of the EPA before. He may or may not take aim at it later.

Feeding the Abscess
12-06-2011, 10:16 PM
Here's a link:

http://www.grist.org/article/paul1

sailingaway
12-06-2011, 10:20 PM
The fact is the EPA ALLOWS pollution, even of groundwater people would drink if not polluted. They have a sliding scale about it. But if states want to regulate pollution they can do it as the northeastern states did by banding together into an 'air zone'. They don't need the federal government. We have a Uniform Commercial Code and many similar multistate arrangements, but they have to be good enough to have buy in by each state. Unlike the MTBE requirements forced at the federal level which created massive derogation of groundwater in California (hit with them first) which was much worse than normal groundwater pollution from underground storage tanks. JUMPING to national standards before states are convinced it is a good idea forces unvetted bad ideas on everyone.

Student Of Paulism
12-06-2011, 10:29 PM
Point him to Gibson Guitar factory and how wonderful the EPA of today is. Show him how it is nothing but a big bureaucracy that has outlived its purpose.

http://weeklyworldnews.com/headlines/37612/feds-to-seize-all-acoustic-guitars/

I remember Rand Paul speaking about that actually. He said it had something to do with a law in India (a labor law) where the wood needed to be constructed over there first, and not sent out over here to be made, and so it was violating their law, and Gibson got the blame for it. But that law had only really applied to India and that Gibson couldn't really be held accountable for it, yet they got raided by feds.

JoshS
12-06-2011, 10:53 PM
how about air pollution, doesn't air cross state lines? You can't prove the origin of pollutants in a given cubic foot of air.

ForLiberty2012
12-06-2011, 11:50 PM
Some good answers... something I would like to add is that with any FEDERAL government program, it's going to be inefficient at the local levels. And with any FEDERAL government program, EPA selects winners and losers, under the guise of "protecting the environment." And with any FEDERAL government, you have BIG CORPORATIONS lobbying for the laws, so they can benefit from it and get subsidized from it. Ask this guy if he knows exactly what the EPA does? You don't know exactly cause they are a big bureaucracy. Here's Ron Paul's voting history on the matter of the environment:

- Cosponsor of the Buildings for the 21st Century Act, which would increase the allowable tax deduction for energy-efficient commercial building costs and extend the deduction through 2013.
- Cosponsor of legislation to make bicycle commuters eligible for the transportation fringe-benefit tax credit.
- Cosponsor of legislation that would provide a tax deduction for the costs of using public transit.
- Cosponsor of numerous bills giving or extending tax credits to various forms of renewable energy

He supports giving tax breaks to people and companies that "go green" but he doesn't support big bureaucracies subsidizing companies and picking winners and losers in the energy business. The EPA is just lobbied by big corporations and it harms small businesses that are legitimately trying to be energy conscious, but they can't afford to jump through the hoops like the big corporations can. EPA kills small businesses in the same manner that TARP kills small banks. Small businesses can't survive in this type of regulatory climate.

twomp
12-07-2011, 12:03 AM
Thank you all for your answers. Very insightful! Definitely a highly intelligent crowd around here. I have one more question, this time for me. What is the meaning of life?

MJU1983
12-07-2011, 12:16 AM
Sure...the EPA is "good" :rolleyes:

Political positions of Ron Paul - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_positions_of_Ron_Paul#Environment)


Environment

Free-market environmentalism
As a free-market environmentalist, Paul sees polluters as aggressors who should not be granted immunity or otherwise insulated from accountability. Paul argues that enforcing private property rights through tort law would hold people and corporations accountable, and would increase the cost of polluting activities—thus decreasing pollution. He claims that environmental protection has failed due to lack of respect for private property:

The environment is better protected under private property rights ... We as property owners can't violate our neighbors' property. We can't pollute their air or their water. We can't dump our garbage on their property ... Too often, conservatives and liberals fall short on defending environmental concerns, and they resort to saying, "Well, let's turn it over to the EPA. The EPA will take care of us ... We can divvy up the permits that allow you to pollute." So I don't particularly like that method.

He believes that environmental legislation, such as emissions standards, should be handled between the states or regions concerned. "The people of Texas do not need federal regulators determining our air standards."

Ron Paul's environmental record | MNN - Mother Nature Network (http://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/politics/blogs/ron-pauls-environmental-record)

Don't assume that just because the EPA - or any other Federal Bureaucracy goes away that nothing will get done.

Reminds me of:

“Socialism, like the ancient ideas from which it springs, confuses the distinction between government and society. As a result of this, every time we object to a thing being done by government, the socialists conclude that we object to its being done at all. We disapprove of state education. Then the socialists say that we are opposed to any education. We object to a state religion. Then the socialists say that we want no religion at all. We object to a state-enforced equality. Then they say that we are against equality. And so on, and so on. It is as if the socialists were to accuse us of not wanting persons to eat because we do not want the state to raise grain.”
― Frédéric Bastiat, The Law

Remember, the Bill of Rights reads:


Ninth Amendment – Protection of rights not specifically enumerated in the Constitution.

The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

Tenth Amendment – Powers of States and people.

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

In reality, there is no Constitutional Authority for the EPA, and pretty much every agency at the Federal Level. Very few things are needed and more importantly allowed at the Federal Level.

Who knew? I bet your EPA loving friend doesn't know... ;)

The Pentagon Is America's Biggest Polluter | Personal Health | AlterNet (http://www.alternet.org/health/85186?page=entire)


The nation's biggest polluter isn't a corporation. It's the Pentagon. Every year the Department of Defense churns out more than 750,000 tons of hazardous waste -- more than the top three chemical companies combined.

Yet the military remains largely exempt from compliance with most federal and state environmental laws, and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Pentagon's partner in crime, is working hard to keep it that way.

For the past five decades the federal government, defense contractors and the chemical industry have joined forces to block public health protections against perchlorate, a component of rocket fuel that has been shown to effect children's growth and mental progress by disrupting the function of the thyroid gland which regulates brain development.
...
Continued (http://www.alternet.org/health/85186?page=entire)

Sovereign immunity in the United States - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sovereign_immunity_in_the_United_States)


Sovereign immunity in the United States is the legal privilege by which the American federal, state, and tribal governments cannot be sued. Local governments in most jurisdictions enjoy immunity from some forms of suit, particularly in tort. Foreign governments enjoy immunity from suit, as provided in the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act.

Icymudpuppy
12-07-2011, 10:23 AM
Tell him that the EPA has imposed regulations making it illegal to run used cooking oil in a diesel vehicle. Ask him if he thinks their job is to protect the environment, or to protect the oil companies' profits.

Emerick
12-07-2011, 10:39 AM
Tell him to study this great article by Murray N. Rothbard, who is one of the intellectual heroes of Ron Paul: http://mises.org/resources/289/Law-Property-Rights-and-Air-Pollution

Tell him that he may find it weird to talk about free markets solving the problem, because the statist propaganda made people believe that pollution is a result of the free market. But, quite to the contrary, pollution is agression of other people's property. In a real unhampered market economy, property rights are enforced. Therefore, there would be LESS polution. Polution is a result of property rights not being rightly enforced.

He can look also into the "Tragedy of commons" is neoclassical economic theory. The idea is this: once you don't have private property rights in "common goods", everybody has an incentive to use the common good for the greatest extent, because they privately profit, making everybody else bear the costs.