Soon to be reclassified as "freedom smoke"
Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain was asked how to increase domestic oil production. His answer? There are just too many environmental regulations on energy companies, and we need to eliminate some. That'll take care of the problem.
So which EPA rules should we eliminate? Why, he'll appoint people from the energy companies to tell him.
I wish I were kidding, but no such luck...
The EPA is the biggest barrier to more permits, more drilling, more shale oil production. So I’m going to have a regulatory reduction commission that I’m going to appoint that’s going to go in and determine how we make things move faster. Some regulations we need. I’m not anti-regulation. I’m just anti-too much regulation. And the people on this commission are going to be people who know something about coal, oil, shale oil, natural gas, and they will be people whose businesses or individuals who have been abused by the EPA. If you’ve been abused by the EPA like Shell Oil, I’m going to ask the CEO of Shell Oil would he like to be on this commission, and give me some recommendations. The people closest to the problem are the ones who can solve the problem.
Now, I'm willing to bet that pretty much energy company CEO you can name will tell you their company doesn't need to be held hostage to many of these pesky environmental regulations. After all, oil drilling is perfectly safe – why, we haven't had another oil catastrophe on the Gulf coast since, well, the last oil catastrophe on the Gulf coast. I imagine there's a whole slew of anti-pollution measures that the coal, oil, and fracking industries would rather not be bound to – those toxins in your drinking water build character. And yet...
Sigh. You know what? It's difficult to even call this "extreme" on his part, because let's face it: this ain't that different from how our government (both state and federal) works right now. We've already got companies writing the laws they're supposed to be bound by. So kudos to Herman Cain for his proposal to further streamline D.C. corruption by just having the oil companies tell us directly what regulations they feel like obeying.