Flailings of a Flat Earth Presidency
Bush is at it again - taking aim at everything and everyone except his own party’s flawed thinking when it comes to the environment. You may or may not have heard but for the last several years, California lawmakers and Attorney General Jerry Brown have been trying to push for higher environmental protections. They’ve made smaller changes (such as banning ammunition containing lead in condor zones) and bigger changes (a schedule for massive upgrades in fuel economy for automakers). California’s simple goal: require automakers to make more efficient, less C02-belching cars, such as to cut 1/3rd of emissions over the next 8 years.
Needless to say, the bigger changes have ruffled a few feathers. And I don’t think they’re condor feathers. But folks in Detroit might be eating a few fewer condor egg omelettes with what the California standards might do their bottom line. So they’ve done what any good special interest does: gotten Congress to give them a Federal law to hide behind.
Now as you may recall from 7th grade civics, thanks to Art. VI of the U.S. Constitution, Federal law is “supreme” - in a conflict between a valid Federal law and a state law, the Federal law trumps. So getting a Federal law to hide behind is a pretty good way for a special interest to protect itself. However, when a Federal law proposes one standard, and a state law proposes a higher standard, they are not automatically deemed to conflict, and the state law is not, by default, cancelled out. A higher state standard is only in conflict with the federal law if the federal law “expressly preempts” the state law.
In the case of environmental law, there’s something of a hybrid. Essentially, more exacting state laws are preempted — unless a Federal agency, the EPA, grants a “waiver” to the state. But the EPA is not supposed to have unfettered discretion to deny those waivers. Currently, California authorities are preparing to challenge the irresponsible denial in court. Given the state of the Federal judiciary, I have no idea what will actually happen. Yes, it is dominated by GOP-appointed judges, but most of them are educated and independant minded enough to see through blatant B.S.
Realizing though that the odds aren’t completely in their favor, automakers have taken another shot at it. “buried deep in [a] 417-page document,” the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has now claimed that “it has consistenly taken the position that state regulations regulating… emissions are expressly and impliedly pre-empted” by its authority. The document would, in direct contrast to California’s new law, rolls back fuel efficiency standards. (”Bush Takes Swipe at State Emissions Law,” Los Angeles Daily Journal, 4/29/08, p. 1).
The Bush administration’s justifications for its two-front war on state environmental initiatives are absolutely laughable. George W. Bush has emphasized “the importance of a national standard.” Automakers have lauded him for asserting that “the federal government is best suited” to protect the environment. This is like the perfect footnote to his speech yesterday where he told us that Democrats are to blame for high oil prices because they won’t let his friends drill in the ANWR, and that we should stop associating it with environmentalism, and instead with our pocket books.
Like much of what Bush’s utters, the first impressions tell no lies, and the only first impression that gibberish like this deserves is that it’s a crock of crap. How is the environment better protected by a national standard that protects the environment less? Is there something special about it being national that makes it better?
Is it not slightly ironic that suddenly, Bush supports a robust view of the federal government’s regulatory power. There’s hardly a mention of the all-important issue of ”states rights” in these speeches on environmental “reform.” States rights apparently only protect the right of states to act barbarously towards ethnic minorities - not the right to actually protect their own citizens from the imminent self-inflicted greenhouse gas apocalypse. I mean, this is the guy who once appointed to head the EPA a woman who said that it was her belief that the federal government had no business regulating the environment.
It’s obvious that when it comes to regulating the environment, a higher national standard would be superior, but if the national standard is a sham, and a shield from automakers making any improvements or reforms, there is nothing inherently superior about it being national. No, what is really going on here is the Federal government circling the wagons for Bush cronies yet again - protecting the bottom lines of automaking executives, at the expense of everyone who has to breathe the air (or buy an inferior car) in this country.
The automakers will argue they need the protection because their revenue pays workers paychecks and keeps people employed. Malarkey. Automakers are actually avoiding a chance to make more jobs in research and clean car manufacturing to avoid paying the startup costs or capital investments needed to alter their production. They’re not preserving any jobs. They’re preserving a faulty status quo with which they’re happy, because their executive compensation is nice right where it is. They have no impetus to change, but they’d happily cut all the jobs if they could fully-automate.
So, anyway, I don’t expect Republicans to be honest or consistent. I should enjoy the intivation to revel in my righteous rage on remarking at their repugnant recalcitrance. I should enjoy the opportunity to observe their odious obfuscation, and so on and so forth. But really, having lost several family members to lung cancer, and observing the climate change, I’m just scared for my health and the future of the human race. It’s not a laughing matter - unless you’re George W. Bush. Some Air America radio folk believe that Bush is on a mission to prove his faith to the nonbelievers by creating an apocalypse, giving him his, “I told you so” moment. It would explain a lot, but it seems like something of a reach. Personally, I think it’s all just a game to him, and his cronies - another chance to stteal from the poor and give to the rich for America’s anti Robin Hood.
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