Trump administration’s drive to block California “clean car” rules moves forward
#Counter-Resistance speeding along a road called Regulatory Rollback.
In April, we reported that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) had taken steps to challenge California’s decades-old right to set its own air pollution rules, setting up a showdown between the federal government and the West Coast headquarters of the #Resistance.
Since then, the administration has prepared its plan to revoke California’s authority to regulate automobile greenhouse gas emissions, included its mandate for electric-car sales, and is gearing up for its release.
The proposal, expected to be released this week, amounts to a frontal assault on one of former President Barack Obama’s signature regulatory programs to curb emissions that contribute to climate change. It also sets up a high-stakes battle over California’s unique ability to combat air pollution and, if finalized, is sure to set off a protracted courtroom battle.
The proposed revamp would also put the brakes on federal rules to boost fuel efficiency into the next decade, said the people, who asked to not be identified discussing the proposals before they are public. Instead it would cap federal fuel economy requirements at the 2020 level, which under federal law must be at least a 35-mile-per-gallon fleet average, rather than letting them rise to roughly 50 mpg by 2025 as envisioned in the Obama plan, according to the people.
As part of the effort, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency will propose revoking the Clean Air Act waiver granted to California that has allowed the state to regulate carbon emissions from vehicle tailpipes and force carmakers to sell a minimum number of electric vehicles in the state, the people said.
The National Highway Transportation Safety Administration (NHTSA) joins the EPA in this action, as the rationale for the revocation is enhanced safety.
The EPA and NHTSA revealed in a regulatory notice Friday that its upcoming proposal to reduce vehicle efficiency and emissions standards will be dubbed the “Safer and Affordable Fuel Efficient Vehicles Rule,” indicating that administration officials will likely argue that stricter standards would compromise safety.
Then-EPA head Scott Pruitt formally declared in April that the Obama plan to make emissions and efficiency standards stricter through 2026 is not appropriate. It was the first step toward potentially rolling the standards back.
The agencies are expected in the coming days to float a proposal with a handful of ideas, including various levels of looser rules through 2026 and freezing the standards in 2020 with no additional ramping up.
The response from green justice activists is fascinating, especially their newfound love of federalism.
The “state’s rights party” is dead. And so are future generations who plan to breathe, thanks to Trump EPA https://t.co/3VLBasSW83
— James Morrison (@JamesPMorrison) July 23, 2018
So much for Republicans and State’s rights! This is BS????????
Trump EPA Plans To Revoke California’s Smog-Fighting Power: Report#EPA https://t.co/yAf9oagPWY
— Christopher???????? (@cwebbonline) July 23, 2018
So good to know @GOP that now that @realDonaldTrump is in office corporate rights are more important than State’s rights. Or why else would the @EPA try to revoke #CA emission laws?? #smallGovt #statesRights #FAIL https://t.co/qodZ3l6kI1
— Fight For 46 ???? ???? (@fightfor46) July 23, 2018
At this point, the green justice warriors may be regretting their decision to target Scott Pruitt so viciously. The new acting head of the EPA seems to have taken the driver’s seat and is speeding along a road called Regulatory Rollback.
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Comments
Whatever happened to cost/benefit analysis? The automobile pollution controls that California put in place in the 60s and 70s made for an enormous improvement in air quality, but CARB does now has almost no benefits and is extremely expensive. Not to mention that most of what CARB wants is only related to the scientific fraud of “man-caused global warming,” aka carbon dioxide emissions.
CARB outlived its usefulness decades ago and is now just a tool for the global warming cultists.
Oh, CARB simply fabricates their cost/benefit analysis. As the saying goes, I s**t you not.
http://www.capoliticalreview.com/capoliticalnewsandviews/phonyfraud-is-hallmark-of-california-air-resources-board-acts-as-scam/
“Phony/Fraud is Hallmark of California Air Resources Board—Acts as Scam
July 4, 2016 By Stephen Frank 2 Comments
The decisions and “scientific” reports of the California Air Resources Board are based on fraud, corruption and mismanagement. Most of the decisions under AB 32 to kill jobs are based on a study by “Ph.D” that received his “diploma” from a diploma mill in New York—he is as qualified to do scientific reports as your beer drinking cousin.
“Hien Tran, manager of the Health and Ecosystems Assessment Section in CARB’s Research Division, authored the 2010 report “Methodology for Estimating Premature Deaths Associated with Long-term Exposure to Fine Airborne Particulate Matter in California.” Dr. S. Stanley Young of the National Institute of Statistical Sciences found the report too flawed to be done by a capable statistician, but according to CARB Tran had recently earned a PhD in statistics from the University of California at Davis. In reality, Tran’s PhD came from Thornhill University, a diploma mill located in a New York City UPS office.
The falsifying of academic credentials is a serious matter and can easily end a career. CARB, however, did not fire Tran, opting instead for a suspension and demotion. And CARB used Tran’s flawed study in heavy-handed diesel regulations, a costly state policy.
This fraud was not fired? The report was not thrown in the trash can? Any wonder the public distrusts government? Oh, UCLA Dr. James Engstrom, the professor that exposed the corruption, HE was fired—for exposing academic and government corruption. Sick world. Trust government?”
There are many ways to commit environmental fraud. Hiring fake PhDs to head your research departments is just one way. Note the title of the paper that the fraud Hien Tran authored includes the term “premature deaths.” Who knows how many deaths are premature?
I’ll have to find the article, but one of the people who exposed the perfidy of Britain’s National Health Service was head of the neurology department at the University of Kent. In other words he was no crackpot, and in fact was a consultant to the NHS. He personally rescued several people. One was a man who the NHS had condemned to death via the “Liverpool Care Pathway.” The benign name the NHS gave to executing patients by starving them and denying them water. The NHS doctors, who had financial incentives to rid the hospitals of “useless mouths” so they beds would be available for those who still had utility to the state.
In the case I’m thinking of some doctor on the weekend shift decided that a particular gentleman had less than 72 hours to live and condemned him to the LCP. On one of his routine tours of the hospital the Professor from Kent saw this and called bulls**t. He took the man under his personal care, a man who did have significant health problems (therefore a cost the NHS didn’t want to bear, so it was cheaper to kill him) and he was discharged after 4 months into the loving care of his wife and devoted daughter. He died 14 months after he was discharged from the hospital, but that’s still over a year that the NHS would have denied him.
But back to the topic at hand. As the doctor from Kent noted, no one can say how long anyone has to live. A doctor can’t say a man only has 72 hours to live when he still has a year left. It’s a sword that cuts both ways. A fraudulent PhD can’t tell you how many deaths were premature. But the frauds at the criminal conspiracies such as the EPA and CARB claim they can. This article hints at the key to the scam:
https://www.dailysignal.com/2018/06/08/pruitt-is-overhauling-epa-cost-benefit-analysis-that-obama-used-to-justify-costly-regs/
“…One such example is the Clean Power Plan, enacted under Obama to cut carbon emissions from power plants. When calculating the impact of the regulation, the EPA under Obama found the social cost of carbon to average $36 per ton.
Economists criticized that measurement and others, alleging the EPA used metrics crafted to reach a certain outcome…”
Despite the excerpt I chose, I’m going to focus on how government agencies calculate the social benefits of their regulatory schemes. They will simply assume, based on no evidence whatsoever, that their proposed regulations will provide certain benefits such as preventing chronic diseases. Also the big one, preventing “premature deaths.” Then they will survey people and ask them “How much would you pay to live ten years longer?” Then they total up all the amounts the people they survey would pay to live ten years longer, combine it with how much people would pay to avoid cancer or chronic lung disease, and report that the social benefits of their program outweigh the (woefully underestimated) cost of their new power grab.
You can get any F’n number you want from the way gub’mint regulators do “cost/benefit” analyses.
When the Kali gub’mint ran out of money due to their own overspending fault a few years back they sent their private sector contractors IOUs for bills they refused to pay. Then they turned around and demanded business taxes from the same contractors on their non-existent income. In real money.
Always remember that as far as the government is concerned you are a cash cow to be milked for all you are worth but never fed or watered.
Found the article. Most of the basic facts I got right. I didn’t deliver the full force from memory.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/health/news/11779213/New-death-guidelines-worse-than-Liverpool-Care-Pathway.html
The emission and performance standard rollback is much needed. Beyond a certain point, it is simply not possible to achieve the enumerated goals without engineering a less safe and efficient vehicle.
The revocation of California’s waiver, is simply the current administration sticking its finger into eye of the california political elite.
@ Arminius
Did you mean a Barrett .50-caliber rifle?
Yes. Sometimes my thoughts get ahead of my typing. What I wanted to mention is that after Kali instituted its .50 BMG ban, police were exempt. So Barrett sent an open letter saying it would no longer sell to or service any Kali police agency’s rifles.
If only more manufacturers had that kind of integrity Kali couldn’t keep pursuing its insane policies.
Of course, we can’t expect that amount of spine in most manufacturers. So I propose that we call our state legislature reps and Senators and ask them to pass laws stating that Kali-compliant products can not be sold in our states. I thought of this when Kali passed a law saying that handgun manufacturers must use technology that does not exist to microstamp cartridges in order to sell handguns in that state. Which is of course ridiculous. So I contacted my reps and proposed they pass a bill that any handgun manufacturer who continues to bid on police contracts in Kali after they can no longer sell to ordinary Kali citizens (the Barrett stance; the Kali Villista party is not as crazy as they seem, they are just evil authoritarians and they want their forces to be armed as they disarm the peasants) be barred from bidding on any state, county, or municipal contracts in Texas.
This makes me think that I should think bigger. Any Kali-compliant product; handgun, vehicle, whatever, can’t even be sold in Texas at all. Only products that met the relevant federal standards can be sold here. If this caught on in more states manufacturers would have a real dilemma on their hands. And while a dozen or more states have adopted Kali emissions standards, I believe if manufacturers had to do the cost-benefit analysis they’d be forced to leave the Kali market.
Which should make the Villistas running that state happy. Hey, no new cars can be sold in Kali! That makes Kali even more like Cuba.
Maybe we can get the Crazy Cali’s to back the abolishment of the federal EPA.
The special California existed so that California could combat smog in the unique Los Angeles basin. New cars are now clean enough to do that based on federal regulations; every new car is vastly cleaner than the California certified cars of the 70s 80s 90s etc. Federal standards are now clean enough to effectively combat smog in the LA basin, and California test each individual vehicle so that you some dippy’s poorly maintained polluter has to get fixed.
There’s nothing radical or dirty about this move, it is simply adjusting to today’s reality. We probably should develop electric cars, they are coming in the future, and if we are far behind we’ll end up buying them from China instead of meat here. No they are not ready to replace gasoline powered cars, not yet. But the California mandate, dreamed up by California bureaucrats, is not the way to go.
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