Gingrich, Dust and the Typical EPA Employee

On the presidential campaign trail, Newt Gingrich made it clear this week that he's convinced of a couple of things:

• That the Environmental Protection Agency is in the process of issuing restrictions on farmers' ability to plow their fields in an effort to miminize dust.
• That pampered EPA employees base their regulatory recommendations on personal whim rather than scientific data.

At a town hall meeting in Davenport, Iowa, Monday, Gingrich lobbed the accusation that EPA is seeking to regulate farm dust. But the Des Moines Register reports that EPA says it just isn't true. Agency administrator Lisa Jackson testified to Congress earlier this year that the agency has no plans to expand regulations on particulate matter to farm dust.

Still, at the meeting, Gingrich laid out a vivid image of who he thought would issue such rules. In his mind, the EPA regulator "leaves an air-conditioned condominium to get on the metro subway to ride to an air-conditioned federal office building to sit in an office with no windows where they sit back and they imagine dust and then they decide, 'You know, dust is bad.' "

(Hat tip: TPM)

(Photo: Agricultural Research Service)