Cheney Accused of Blocking Californian Bid to Cut Car Fumes
The US vice-president, Dick Cheney, was behind a controversial decision to block California’s attempt to impose tough emission limits on car manufacturers, according to insiders at the government Environmental Protection Agency.
Staff at the agency, which announced last week that California’s proposed limits were redundant, said the agency’s chief went against their expert advice after car executives met Cheney, and a Chrysler executive delivered a letter to the EPA saying why the state should not be allowed to regulate greenhouse gases.
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.”
In an editorial, the New York Times described the decision as, “an indefensible act of executive arrogance that can only be explained as the product of ideological blindness and as a political payoff to the automobile industry”.
Johnson said that because Bush signed an energy bill last week which raised fuel economy standards, there was no justification for separate state regulation. The president, the agency said, had provided a “clear national solution” and there was no need for a “confusing patchwork of state rules to reduce America’s climate footprint from vehicles”.
But 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”.
California had wanted to implement a 2002 law limiting greenhouse gas emissions from cars and lorries. Had it been successful, 16 other states had said they would follow suit, effectively creating a national standard that car makers would have been obliged to follow.
© 2007 The Guardian
What…another shocking revelation…dick cheney goes out of his way to put money in the pockets of his corporate whore friends.
Why is this man not behind bars? Oh right I forgot, he is the dictator behind the scenes. Duh.
The picture says a thousand words. You can almost hear dick sidling up to Junior and whispering in his ear either some threat or some promise in order to get Junior to say what dick wants him to say. The look of consternation on Junior’s face says it all.
Is it possible that a steep pollution sales tax could be placed on auto’s in California that do not meet it’s higher pollution standards? That little whip would crack on the backs of Auto makers and sting. Or is the Governator just another cosmic whimpout?
Alas, alas, Dick Cheney has turned into the American equivalent of Iranian President Ahmidinijad–an all purpose evil bogeyman on which all faults can be hung. Cheney is of course no such thing but rather a distracting totem of the Wall Street establiashment for whom war, death, destruction, authoritarian control, and the eroding of democracy are a good thing–because they enhance the accumulation of other people’s wealth on the part of such enterprises.
It’s time that institutions like Disney, GE, Viacom, General Dynamics, Boeing, Northrup-Grumman, Citibank, Morgan-Stanley, Lehman Bros, and especially the Federal Reserve Banking system are picketed and protested against with the ferocity that up to now has only been reserved for politicians, violent criminals, and racial, ethnic, and religious minorioties.
These corrupt businesses are the enablers of all the politicians and need to be called on their criminal practices.
Speaking of torture, how long are we going to be tortured by having to see pictures of these two evil criminals? I hope I don’t have nightmares of their faces tonight, on Christmas eve to boot.
It is not surprising that Cheney is behind this latest bit of executive arrogance, as he is a creature of the Oil industry. His becoming Vice President & making himself this nation’s version of Cardinal Richelieu has made him the most noxious “eminance grise” beyond the level of Aaron Burr & Edith Wilson to ever sully the White House. His blatant disregard for the health and well being of everybody and everything that does not personally profit his corporate friends, masters, and himself makes him a malign a figure in American history as Slobodan Milosevic is to Serbia. Just as the Serbians are now doomed to many years of repair from his mis-rule, so the USA is likewise doomed to many years of repair. We can only hope that Cheney ends his life the same way the “Butcher of the Balkans” did, in a jail cell at the International Tribunal in The Hague.
Blame for these dreadful policies , and resulting damage to our planet as well aas our republic,lies mainly on the apathetic moran voters who helped the five members of the Supreme Court illegally plant this administration in office–and our legislators for tolerating these unprecedented abuses of power.
It is clear. . .very clear that government lives off the pockets of multinational. It is time to put a stop to the executive branch, congress, and the courts. This is the club that makes certain the will of the people is abrogated.
There is just one way to alter this course and to dissolve the so called democratic ideals and the congress. All elections rules must be changed. Money for elections can come only from the government and given to those who have achieved the nomination criteria.
Corporate money must be barred from elections and donations controlled. Media must be provided free and equally amongst all candidates. The Wall street strangle hold on the direction of the USA must be stopped.
We know in this dictatorship of the wealthy it will no stop and the America that needs revision will not happen. The final arbiter of change will be the environment that will destroy all life on this planet and the end to human life. Power has destroyed the planet with money and greed.
The essential fact is the USA’s lawlessness, shown to the world by the criminal in the Whitehouse who represents the American people has espoused a level of disregard for law that should have him be impeached, at the very least. The world now understands that the USA has e evolved from the evolution of imperialism from the UK where it was honed to perfection than transported to the new world, the USA, and exacerbated through the Robber Baron economic trading stripping the native people of their homes. The USA , widened the idea into global colonialism and now the Wall Street form of global marauding called globalization.
This brings attention to the point that when a nation becomes rogue and lawless it has to be expunged from the rest of the global community. The behavior of the USA and Canada its little puppy, at Bali was the lowest level of human exclusion from a cooperative effort required to advance concern for the future generations of this globe and the health and well being of the Earth’s inhabitants. But as always Money was the only thought that America and Canada brought to the table.
I hope this movement of the Lakota Nations is successful. I hope that the USA does not create another Wounded Knee, using its CIA, and Marshals office to move the entire Lakota nation to CUBA. I have worked with the indigenous cultures in the Northwest Territories, The Cree Nation and I have worked with those nations of Labrador, the Naskapi and the Montegne’ tribes, people whose life and culture were drained from them until they were shells of their former selves. The USA through economic means uses the same methods to homogenize global cultures and strip them as well with their ideal of democracy. Yes the Indain nations point out that democracy is gone from America
These become the remains of peoples, left like the model they have become McDonalds’s meat and fries. Their soul, life, and aspirations stripped and they become empty shells. The suicide rate among the indigenous peoples I knew were astronomical as compared to other nations and people. This is what the USA has bred along with a technological disregard for the environment the antithesis of what the indigenous people believed. This model has led to the final count down of ten years before we move into irrevocable global warming and the end of humanity.
This is the legacy of the USA for the world a model of lawlessness and the legacy of George Bush for all people. He has given the world a display of global terrorism, for all to see what terrorism is really like. A model exhibited from one of the world’s most extreme of all terrorists, the presently sitting American president! The election process and rebuilding it will require too much time since the congress is controlled by money and the people in America are too Naive.
IKE
Viva Cheney, our next president!
What a creep.
How many American citizens will be murdered and maimed by our government’s Blocking California’s (and many other states) Bid to Cut Car Fumes? Talk about deleberately gassing your own people!
I agree with Mr. Settgast. Voters are apathetic and allowed this to happen. And Congress, who are paid to know better, also allowed (and continue to allow) it to happen. It is Congress who deserve our blame and our contempt for their failure to act against egregious and unprecedented abuses of power by the administration.
I agree with Mr. Settgast. Voters are apathetic and allowed this to happen. And Congress, who are paid to know better, also allowed (and continue to allow) it to happen. It is Congress who deserve our blame and our contempt for their failure to act against egregious and unprecedented abuses of power by the administration.
Boycott gas, cars, trucks, planes, ships!?
California’s geography forces us into stricter standards. Besides having
cities built around freeways and more cars per capita, southern California
sits in a topographical basin, topped by an atmospheric lid of high pressure
that blocks or delays upward ventilation of polluted air from below.
Our latitude, our position next to a cold ocean current, and domination by
atmospheric high pressure give us this dry climate, lacking adequate
year-round rainfall to cleanse the air. This leaves us with dry, often cloudless
skies that permit much more UV radiation to the reach the surface, which
converts our culturally higher levels of VOCs to ozone.
Oh Cheney, you incarnate violation of the eighth amendment and
world’s only living heart donor.
Cheney is a vampire, and has bitten Bush and the rest of the fools to make them his puppets. Or maybe it’s the Re-return of the Body Snatchers, only this time it’s the Mind Snatcher. This has got to be fiction! No nation would put up with this. Support the Impeach Cheney movement.
God damn the 35+% who think the Bush and Cheney are just fine.
The christian right wouldn’t recognize Jesus if he were sitting on their nose.
When the inevitable massive die-off of people hits, it will be the predators not the faithful who fare the best.
One could argue that democratic politicians are corrupt, but republicans are criminal.
Merry whatever to you, too,
Put Cheney in a cage and set the cage in the middle of a ten-lane highway somewhere in California. Let him have a first-hand experience of the fumes he refuses to cut.
Throw the sonavabitch in the Potomac.
Hope (not pray) that something comes from left field in the next twelve months and twenty eight days, something so final, lurid and poetic. Yes, poetic justice. And we would all dance in the streets and the din would never be forgot. Would they dare have a cortege if thousands danced in the street?
now I wonder ” Who killed the electric car ? ‘
“…a Chrysler executive delivered a letter to the EPA saying why the state should not be allowed to regulate greenhouse gases.”
Great! The auto industry is setting EPA policy. By the way, has anyone ever heard of a corporation called National City Lines from the 30’s, 40’s and 50’s?
Cheney is sick in mind, soul, and body……and that’s why he has absolutely no concern for other people’s health.
CRUX_CNTRL — I believe that you’re wrong about “The auto industry is setting EPA policy”
and everyone wonders what bush’s dick is up to now!
How long can this arrogant fool get away with his campaign to enrich his oil cronies and use the US Government for his own crooked plans? Impeach, impeach, impeach!
EZ Flyer wonders:
Boycott gas, cars, trucks, planes, ships!?
**********************
No, no, no–tax and tariff them so that most of that money goes to the government for redistribution to the working stiffs whose value was stolen by these predatory organizations to begin with.
We don’t have a federal government representing the majority of the citizenry of this nation. Instead, what we have is a clearing-house for the redistribution of the federal fiscal income to the wealthiest portion of its inhabitants, which, as we all know, makes up a tiny proportion of the citizenry. In other words, what we have is socialism for the super-rich.
Patriotism, I suppose, is only about war and militarism, not about respect for the land on which we live, the air we breathe, the water we drink, the animals and plants that share the world with us, our fellow human beings, and all the other things on which a relatively healthy and peaceful life depends.
How can anyone despute the Bush/Chaney leadership and policies. They are guided by devine power, and understand that that this eclipses the conclusions of international scientific community, despite their decades of research.
That is why they have had to brand those who challange their policies as unpatriotic.
Its hard to convert the CO2/mile reductions to actual gas mileage, and what the 2002 value was for both, but its safe to say if this waiver is granted there won’t be many new cars or light trucks for sale in California (or the 17 other states)in 2009.
Maybe the Ford Focus and Escape Hybrid, some GM models like the G-6 and Cobalt, and domestic built Corollas and Civics. Everything else will be small, imported and probably hybrid. Is a hot shot big money guy really gonna trade the big BMW in for a Corolla?
Maybe I have my guesstimate wrong, but California consumers will have the chance to show the rest of us they can make some sacrifices for CO2 reduction. If anyone has a better handle on this, please post it.
Regarding Mr. Cheney, his arrogance is astounding.
The power and responsibility are the people’s always.
There is a long line of wannabe criminals waiting to take the place of the two sociopaths in the photo above. Thanks to Common Dreams for forcing us to puke on ourselves with their regular posting of such hideous photos.
The criminals’ ideas are irrelevant. They are simply the ugly results of the people’s failure to watch their step. What’s relevant are the people’s ideas. The people need a lot of encouragement to climb out of the trap and get back on the path.
Wasn’t thinking. Toyota can rebadge the Camry Hybrid to a Lexus for the more money than brains segment.
ROBERT SETTGAST — We’re firing on very similar cylinders, on different threads:
Did I go too far, or not enough?
Cheney/Satan 2008
bbr-001:
“Its hard to convert the CO2/mile reductions to actual gas mileage, and what the 2002 value was for both, but its safe to say if this waiver is granted there won’t be many new cars or light trucks for sale in California (or the 17 other states)in 2009.”
Disagree with you, bbr. Because Californians buy so many cars, American auto makers will be forced to manufacture cars that meet the state’s new standards to stay in business. Foreign auto makers will surely fill the void created by their American counterparts who refuse to catch up.
Detroit’s union members, whose jobs are at stake, should be outraged by Cheney’s interference with CAFE reform.
So much for states’ rights and the conservative cause. Die, Cheney. Die soon.
“Vice Zero, soon just plain zero”
Boycott! NO NEW CARS IN 2008! That will screw with the car companies so bad that they will have to conform, regardless of Federal Regulations. The power is ultimately in the consumers hands. We just have to work together.
There is a lot of pessimism here, but I do have hope! Everyday I see their empire crashing down, …albeit in slow motion, but never-the-less crashing. I think if we implement instant runoff voting, we will be well on our way!
BTW, also vote for Kucinich! I think that will help speed things up.
[Gasp] Shocked I tell you.
I think I’ll see if the Lakota Nation is accepting politcal refugees from the US this week.
Yeah, but have you ever lived in the Dakotas during the winter months? Besides, what if another Custer shows up? Oh, never mind, Custer had his last stand. ___ A bit like Vietnam and Iraq.
edit?
Only one word belongs here: IMPEACH!
I’ll tell you all that these people are already dead. Cheney and Bush are zombies who sell out the world to relish in carnal pleasures–they are so dead they can’t even enjoy their ill-gotten gain. The question for humanity is whether we can overcome the power of the zombies. Are we going to let them destroy the rest of us?
It’s wrong to compare these men to zombies; zombies are cool, these men are not cool.