Ahhhhh....just smell that clean Iowa country air

Iowa's biggest hog confinement operators are given carte blanche by the Bush "Environmental" "Protection" Agency to pollute the air.

Pay the government $200 and [hog confinement owners are] protected from much bigger fines for possible violations of federal air-pollution laws.

In exchange for the liability protection, farms agreed to pay $200 to $100,000 in what are classified as civil penalties. The size of the penalties varied according to the size of the operation.The Sunday Des Moines Register.com

I won't dignify calling the owners of such hog confinement "farmers," because they're not. They are, however, businessmen, many of whom are in the habit of hiring undocumented workers at bargain basement wages to tend their operations. So now big hog confinement operations will legally pollute, since, as the story relates, the majority of hog producers ignored EPA regulations until being sued by neighbors. In federal courts the neighbors and environmental groups tended to win.

So to keep good Republican hog confinement operators in the GOP fold the Bush EPA, an inside joke, has come up with this remedy to "frivolous" lawsuits by neighbors and environmentalists.