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EPA staff members told the Los Angeles Times that the agency’s head, the Bush appointee Stephen Johnson, ignored their conclusions and shut himself off from consultation in the month before the announcement. He then informed them of his decision and instructed them to provide the legal rationale for it, they said.
“California met every criteria … on the merits,” an anonymous member of the EPA staff told the Times. “The same criteria we have used for the last 40 years … We told him that. All the briefings we have given him laid out the facts.”…
Johnson’s staff gave him the opposite advice, warning him that should he block California, the state would probably sue him in the courts and would probably win. The state’s governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, immediately announced that he would challenge the EPA’s ruling in the courts, describing it as “legally indefensible”.
Government by royal edict certainly is stimulating, isn’t it?
Hummer owners unite!
As nearly as I can tell, California was going to prevent a company making something that was sold elsewhere from selling anything at all in California.
That’s sort of like New York City saying all the Subway Sandwich shops in NYC have to close up because the Subway Sandwich shops in Georgia sell sandwiches that do not meet some sort of transfat law passed in NYC, isn’t it?
I’m completely shocked by this. I never would have expected such behavior from Cheney. Yawn.
#2 – Phillep,
Except that in the previous 40 occurrences of this type of request, all were granted. It’s more like New Jersey saying that they’d stop accepting all the toxic waste from the entire region.
(What would we do if that happened? But, luckily they’ve stood by their choice to accept all of the toxic waste. New York has stood by its choice to accept all the lawyers in exchange.)
Seriously though, California, and a bunch of other states, are just trying to do the job that the EPA has flatly refused to do, despite a supreme court ruling that they must.
BTW, in this image, it appears that there is simply not enough oil for the intended purpose.
The picture of Cheney looks more more like he’s a turd being excreted from an intestine than he’s looking out of an oil barrel.
I thought the conservative’s mantra was “STATES RIGHTS”. What a bunch of hypocrites.
#6 – Smartalix,
Great observation!! I hope one of the state’s rights advocates on the site will have the metaphorical balls to answer that.
We have reached the epitome of ridiculous with the so called government of our.
Whatever happened to ‘states rights’?
In this case we have a state that wants to have more-rigorous pollution standards than that required by the Federal government, and it is not allowed to do so. Ridiculous. Read it again… the federal government will not allow states to have stricter pollution standards for it’s population than the federal standard allows.
The problem that Californians have with the Federal standard is that it sucks by Californian’s standards… we want better, yet we are not allowed to set the higher standard.
Phillep.
Your argument is one of the dumbest, most inane thoughts posted on this blog in a long time. Vehicle manufacturers would not be prohibited from selling vehicles, they would be prohibited from selling vehicles that don’t meet a certain higher standard. It applies to all manufacturers across the board. And it meets the highest spirit of capitalism… if you want to compete, you have to provide a better product.
But this is all irrelevant in the long run. There is a year remaining in this criminal treasonous anti-American government of ours. In the next election, the Presidency will transfer to a Democrat, and at least 50% of the seats that are up for grabs will transfer to Democrats. Then we can start bringing the Bush Administration cronies, and their corrupt criminal supporters to justice, starting with that traitor called Alberto Gonzales.
@Awake
You have more faith in our government than I do. I expect to get the shaft no matter who is in charge.
Was California going to close it’s borders (which is a good idea bytheway) to the unwashed and unclean vehicles? I wonder what the price of soy bean sqeezzins will be in San Francisco if the Governator gets his way?
Its nice and warm and sunny out right now, I think I’ll go out and try my electric hi-bred roller skates that I got for winer festival!!!
#1-
I’d love to unite with a hummer…
Sorry to say but, I have little faith in any of the current candidates doing something as radical as understanding corporations aren’t healthy for anyone or thing other than the ceo’s who run them.
Now, was there a hummer in here ??
#10
California buys more cars than any other state, more cars than any country outside the usa (even including china) California has immense pollution problems. (did you know that los angeles is surrounded by spectacular mountains? you just can’t see them for the smog)
Cheney steps in and stops progress to favor his buddies. typical.
I was asking because it was unclear. California banning cars that pollute too much to suit California, fine.
Is California trying to ban companies because of what those companies do OUTSIDE California’s jurisdiction?
Given that it’s greenhouse gases they are supposedly fighting, they should tell California to go to hell. The whole cost benefit ratio for fighting global warming is way out of whack, but the environmentalists don’t care about that. For them, it is all about power to control people’s lives.
“Theoretically, assuming unbiased climate research, every new finding should have an equal probability of indicating that things are going to be more or less warm, or worse-than-we-thought vs. not-so-bad.
But, when someone finds that there’s only half as much warming as we thought, and the story is completely ignored, what does this say about the nature of the coverage itself? Somehow, you’d think that would have been newsworthy.”
A month ago, there was a paper published that showed that half of the IPCC’s observed warming was due to urban heat islands.
#15 said:
“equal probability”
Why would you think that? The probability would be equal only if there were no changes to be observed.
“would have been newsworthy”
Possibly. When there are lots of papers published, not everything can get attention. There are heaps of other results that never reach the public eye – and there are lots of reasons why things don’t get widely circulated. It doesn’t have to be a conspiracy. Listen, there are lots of reasons why we should try to reduce the rate at which we burn fossil fuels, including reducing pollution, reducing international conflicts, and ensuring long term survival of civilization. Regardless of whether or not global warming is real and due to our consumption of oil, it’s time to reduce our use of it.
If Dick is a big enough man, I’d like to meet him.
#17,
Have you met Angel Wong?