Bar-Owning GOP Montana State Representative Says Stricter DUI Laws Are ?Destroying A Way Of Life?
Posted in Main Blog (All Posts) on April 2nd, 2011 4:36 am by HL
Bar-Owning GOP Montana State Representative Says Stricter DUI Laws Are ?Destroying A Way Of Life?
The Montana state legislature is currently debating a series of bills related to Driving Under the Influence (DUI) laws. The bills would increase the penalties for adults who facilitate minors’ access to alcohol, count older DUI offenses against a defendant in sentencing, and require new training for vendors who sell alcohol.
Earlier this week, Republican Rep. Alan Hale took to the floor of the Montana legislature to slam these bills. The legislator — who actually runs a bar in Basin, Montana — declared that the new DUI laws are harming small businesses and destroying a way of life:
HALE: These DUI laws are not doing our small businesses in our state any good at all. They are destroying them. They are destroying a way of life that has been in Montana for years and years.
Watch it:
“As we’re approaching April Fools Day, I would certainly hope that’s what he’s proposing because that would be completely out of line otherwise,” said Hardin, Montana, teacher Dohn Ratliff. “I’ve witnessed too many of my own students that have been killed by drunk drivers, and I think more needs to be done, not less.”
Anti-EPA House Votes To Let Agribusiness Dump Pesticides In Our Water
The Tea Party Congress doesn’t just hate EPA rules that protect against industry destroying our country with greenhouse pollution, mercury, coal ash, and mountaintop removal. By a veto-proof margin, the U.S. House of Representatives voted yesterday to prohibit Clean Water Act limits on pesticide pollution of lakes, streams, and rivers.
Lobbyists for industrial agriculture polluters cheered the 292-130 vote for H.R. 872, which “will amend the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA) and the Clean Water Act to clarify Congressional intent and eliminate the requirement for National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System permits for applications of pesticides approved for use under FIFRA.” The California agribusiness lobby Western Farmers Association praised the “practical, bipartisan example of eliminating government regulations that needlessly increase farm business costs“:
The measure would bar the Environmental Protection Agency from requiring farmers or companies to comply with the Clean Water Act when using pesticides on or near water sources. The bill’s supporters said pesticides are adequately regulated by other laws. The bill passed 292 to 130 on Thursday. The 130 negative votes came from Democrats. Fifty-seven Democrats joined 235 Republicans in supporting the bill, which has yet to see Senate action.
Clean Water rules against pesticide pollution are hardly “needless.” The waters that are home to fish and that feed our drinking water supply are being poisoned. Agribusiness uses hundreds of millions of pounds of FIFRA-approved pesticides like atrazine, metolachlor, cyanazine, alachlor, acetochlor, metribuzin, bentazon, and trifluralin a year. These pesticides, linked to cancer, birth defects and neurological disorders, are found in nearly every single stream in the United States.
Following a 2006 USGS report on the nearly ubiquitous pesticide contamination of our streams, rivers, and the fish that live in them, the EPA under Bush tried to establish a loophole-ridden rule that was thrown out by the courts. The EPA was given until April 9, 2011 to establish new rules, but was granted a delay until October 31 on Tuesday.
Cross-posted on The Wonk Room.