Tough to swallow

Last month EPA administrator Stephen Johnson rejected California’s request for a federal law waiver so the state could implement its own landmark regulations to slash greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles. At the time, I thought it was not only a gross overuse of his powers, but something that went against what the rest of the agency’s people believed.

What do you know, I was right…

Environment and Public Works Committee chairwoman Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) released some very interesting documents earlier this week that showed how Johnson overruled his own staff, who apparently recommended that California receive the waiver, because the staff believed that legally, the agency could not deny California’s request.

Moreover, the staff argued back in October that California needed the waiver in order to mitigate the effects of climate change as California continues to have compelling and extraordinary conditions in general such as the state’s geographic, climatic, and human factors… all of which have been confirmed by several recent EPA decisions by the way…

After the ruling, California did not go quietly, as they, along with 15 other states, sued the EPA over the refusal, and if you consider that California has regularly been allowed to set its own standards under the 1970 Clean Air Act, the decision to not allow it is even more staggeringly dumb…

But this IS the Bush(whacked) Administration we’re talking about, so it’s not entirely surprising… neither is the fact that a Bush crony political appointee has put politics over, well, everything that doesn’t fit into the Bush agenda…

Senator Boxer isn’t done with this yet, so stay tuned…