Sometimes, it easy to forget just how much the Federal government might affect you ... personally. You think all politics is local. And most of it is. But this is an example of the many, many ways a federal election can affect your daily life.

I used to live in the San Joaquin Valley of California. Quite simply, this basin in the middle of California is the richest agricultural land in the world.

And it has the dirtiest air.

"The Valley" as we call it, has the highest level of particulate matter in the nation, and the sixth highest level of ozone. On most days, the Sierra Nevada mountains, the highest mountains on the continental United States, are not visible from Visalia, which is a scant 30 miles away. The resulting asthma, respiratory illnesses and allergies are terrible and at epidemic levels, and often cited as a reason for difficulty with economic development (no one wants to live there). It's one of the main reasons I moved, and I still live with damage done to my sinuses from years of exposure. For those less able to move, they are stuck breathing a toxic soup day in, and day out.

Anyway, I ran across this story in a local Valley newspaper:

SACRAMENTO — A new federal plan to exempt rural areas and the agricultural industry from proposed new air pollution rules for dust was attacked Wednesday as unfair to small communities and impractical to enforce.

State and regional air agency officials told a Senate hearing that the proposed rules don't reflect scientific data and will leave rural residents in danger of increased heart and respiratory health problems.

In the eight-county San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District, which includes Tulare County, the new rules would protect 57 percent of the district's 3.5 million residents and leave 43 percent unprotected, one official said.
The rules generally would apply just to urban areas of 100,000 population, adjusted somewhat for density and other factors.

"There arises [the] practical difficulty about how you go about implementing control strategies and rule-making that would provide different levels of air quality in different parts of the same basin," said Dave Crow, the San Joaquin district executive director. "I am not aware of how we would be able to do that."

There are several problems here. First, the EPA, which is supposed to be an environmental advocate is loosening air quality standards rather than enforcing the greatly needed stricter standards. The fact they are loosening standards is simply the effect of a Republican adminstration that doesn't give a rip about people.

Next, how in the world is it to be enforced? Visalia, a town of over 100,000 residents, is surrounded by ag land. So what do they do, put up a dome? Exactly how are city officials, subject to stricter standards, supposed to stop rural county farmers from throwing whatever dust, pesticides, herbicides and ozone they want into the air? This is an example of a Republican administration that, not only doesn't give a rip about people, but is incompetent.

Have you ever watched a walnut tree being harvested? The dust is so thick, it stops traffic on streets nearby. Or how about cotton "defoliation", whereby planes and/or tractors spray herbicides, in the open air, on literally hundreds of thousands of acres of cotton to cause the leafs to drop for "cleaner" (read, more profitable) cotton harvests? And then there's my personal favorite, the numerous 10,000 cow dairy's (Tulare County is the largest dairy producing county in the nation) and all that methane (not to mention the ground water pollution from the urine). Mmmm good.

The large agricultural companies are staunchly Republican and have been pulling this kind of crap for years. The company officials don't live in the valley, they simply fly in and out. They've certainly given millions if not billions to Bush and Republicans, and this is part of the payoff. Your Bush administration in action! And remember, the very powerful Bill Thomas, the biggest asshole in the House of Representatives, is from a district in Bakersfield, which is at the base of "the valley".

If you visit California. Be sure and stay on the coast or bring a gas mask, cause you're gonna need it elsewhere in the state. And pity the poor farm workers and other valley residents who will daily suffer from people "shitting in their own nest."