Trump's EPA choice mulls rescinding CA waiver that allows it to set its own standards

[Anti Federalist]

Could very well spell the end for the "special" status California enjoys to set it's own, more stringent emission regulations through CARB, a non elected, non representative, non democratic board of "regulators" that enjoy the special privileges to set its own limits and issue endless fatwas that in many ways affect the rest of us, as manufacturers scramble to comply and we end up getting stuck with it.

It was CARB fatwas that led to a division of my company closing up shop, firing it's employees and getting out of CA three years ago, due to the high costs and endless red tape of compliance.

Telling that both CARB and EPA were created by GOP gov. (Reagan) and GOP pres. (Nixon).

The environmental ayatollahs are the single most dangerous regulatory bodies out there right now, and if Trump's appointee is serious about slapping these $#@!ers down, then he has my support.

MAGA!


Pruitt, Trump’s EPA Pick, Could Undermine California’s CARB

http://www.breitbart.com/california/...nias-epa-carb/

by Assemblyman Tim Donnelly24 Jan 201711

California Democrats are talking smack again. This time, their target is Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt, President Trump’s pick for EPA.

According to a Los Angeles Times story, Pruitt said at a contentious confirmation hearing last Wednesday that he cannot commit to keeping in place the current version of a decades-old federal waiver that allows California to set emissions standards stricter than elsewhere in the United States.

And California Democrat politicians have threatened to step up their resistance.

In the same story, California Senate President Kevin de León vowed that if Pruitt dares exercise his legitimate authority and rescind the waiver, “He will be met with full resistance up and down the state.”

What exactly did Pruitt say to set them off?

“The ability to measure with precision the extent of [human] impact and what to do about it are subject to continued debate and dialogue,” is all Pruitt reportedly said, according to the Times.

In spite of the measured response by the president’s EPA pick, Democrats are still deeply concerned over possibly losing control over the air that we breathe.

Pressed by newly-minted Sen. Kamala D. Harris (D-CA) about whether Pruitt intends to leave California’s authority in place, he was cagey. “I don’t know without going through the process to determine that. One would not want to presume the outcome,” he said, according to the Times.

Ironically, at the very moment the waiver was being discussed in Pruitt’s Senate confirmation hearing, California’s chief regulator of air quality and greenhouse gas emissions, Mary Nichols, was testifying in Sacramento about the importance of the waiver to her agency, the California Air Resources Board (CARB), according to the Times.

Started under Governor Ronald Reagan, CARB is a department within the California EPA that has primary authority over vehicle emissions.

California is the only state in the union with a waiver to set its own stricter emission standards.

Without that waiver, CARB would be defanged — powerless.

In the state that just passed a law to regulate cow flatulence, CARB’s arrogance is giving way to fear — fear of losing control.

Pruitt’s willingness to take on California’s most hated agency will likely resonate with the beleaguered transportation industry in California, where severe and ever-changing regulations have wiped out many of the smaller, independent truckers, making competition an endangered species at best.

California’s policies are far tougher than the Federal Clean Air Act requires, in part because California had a terrible smog problem for decades. Topography created the perfect environment for dangerous “inversions,” where toxic plumes of highly concentrated smog were trapped in the Los Angeles basin in Southern California. “Smog Alerts” were a daily occurrence.

Naturally, the left will raise the specter of “dirty air” claiming that the Trump administration wants to drag us back to “smog days” so bad that school children will be forced to stay indoors at recess.

More likely, having a “global warming skeptic” like Pruitt as EPA chief will strike a much-needed balance that’s been lacking for decades.

As a member of the California State Assembly, I witnessed the extreme abuses of CARB, an unelected agency with unlimited powers run by aging environmental activists. I ran a bill to end this unnecessary agency altogether. After all, California is subject to the Federal EPA and also a California EPA.

Another taxpayer-subsidized environmental activist group in search of a mission is the last thing Californians need. CARB is notorious for changing the rules without warning, and crafting policy based on junk science or no science at all. Mission creep led CARB to decimate the once-thriving small, independent trucking industry by arbitrarily making legal, compliant trucks obsolete years before their time. Farmers and small contractors are next on CARB’s hit list.

(This is precisely what happened to my company, they regulate commercial vessels in state waters as well, and they changed in mid stream, what was required for compliance, after we had spent a couple million retrofitting vessels to be compliant with existing rules. - AF)

But now, CARB could be on the ropes for a change.

If President Trump’s pick for EPA chief picks a serious fight with CARB, this could be the first ray of hope for the long-suffering Americans living behind enemy lines in the Socialist Republic of California.

[goldenequity]

Glad to hear it.
I had my own experiences with CARB as well... fatwas is exactly right.

==========

[dean.engelhardt]

Mixed feeling on this one. Not a fan of oppressive state EPA regulations, but on the other hand I don't see on what authority the federal government has to regulate state actions on the environment. I didn't know that states had to get federal waivers to do something that is note expressed constitutionally as a federal power.

[Zippyjuan]

So Trump is opposed to state's rights.

[Anti Federalist]

So Trump is opposed to state's rights.

Eliminate the EPA and let each state decide.

[donnay]

So Trump is opposed to state's rights.

The ones that implemented the EPA were.

It's often harder to eliminate the agency, outright, so downsizing and making them impotent is the way to go.

[Zippyjuan]

Eliminate the EPA and let each state decide.

Seems California has decided on what they want.

[donnay]

Seems California has decided on what they want.

LOL! Yeah and you voted for it?

[Zippyjuan]

LOL! Yeah and you voted for it?

Citizens didn't get to vote on it.

[donnay]

Citizens didn't get to vote on it.

Exactly. Are the citizens not part of the state?

AMENDMENT X to the Constitution of the United States:

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

[donnay]

Report: Trump tells EPA to stop awarding grants and contracts

Environmental Protection Agency officials have reportedly been instructed by the Trump administration not to issue any new contracts or grants.

Administration officials have also told EPA employees not to provide updates about the agency to reporters or on social media, the Associated Press reported Tuesday.

A former EPA employee who asked to remain unnamed wasn't surprised by the edict handed down by the Trump team.

"That doesn't surprise me they will not let EPA employees talk to reporters or update any social media," the ex-employee said. "During the transition period, the incoming team was obsessed with who had access to the levers to the outside world within the agency, especially who had access to which social media accounts."

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/re...stom_click=rss

[Anti Federalist]

Seems California has decided on what they want.

Right.

So what gives them special status to regulate on their own?

I have a foot and half high pile of paperwork and manuals I have to comply with, that are the direct result of CA fatwas on a vessel that has never been to CA and probably never will make port call in CA.

If CA can do that, why can't every other state?

And even if they did, they would prohibited from enacting fatwas that are LESS restrictive.

The simple solution is to leave.

CalExit!

[Anti Federalist]

Citizens didn't get to vote on it.

How very progressive and "democratic".

[Ender]

Mixed feeling on this one. Not a fan of oppressive state EPA regulations, but on the other hand I don't see on what authority the federal government has to regulate state actions on the environment. I didn't know that states had to get federal waivers to do something that is note expressed constitutionally as a federal power.

Agree- mixed feelings, as well.

[Chomp]

We got to many unconstitutional agencies, besides this bureaucrat ass named EPA. How about these as FDA, FCC, FAA, and others.

[Anti Federalist]

We got to many unconstitutional agencies, besides this bureaucrat ass named EPA. How about these as FDA, FCC, FAA, and others.

Yes, many many.

But let me be clear: EPA is the most dangerous.

It alone has the ability to issue fatwas concerning CO2 emissions.

Meaning it has the right to regulate YOU.

[Anti Federalist]

By what right does CARB, a regulatory ayatollah agency unaccountable to California citizens, get the right to issue fatwas that affect all of us nationwide?

The EPA has adopted the California emissions standards as a national standard by the 2016 model year[4] and is collaborating with California regulators on stricter national emissions standards for model years 2017–2025

https://www.epa.gov/vehicles-and-engines

[Origanalist]

It seems every time California implements one of it's edicts it's not long before the rest of the country is made to follow suite. So as a stop gap measure I have no problem with this.

[Anti Federalist]

Sorry, repeating myself...

It seems every time California implements one of it's edicts it's not long before the rest of the country is made to follow suite. So as a stop gap measure I have no problem with this.

It's done as a matter of law.

Of regulatory fatwa.

EPA is now colluding with CARB to implement CA style emission fatwas over the rest of the nation.

The EPA has adopted the California emissions standards as a national standard by the 2016 model year[4] and is collaborating with California regulators on stricter national emissions standards for model years 2017–2025.[5]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United...ds#cite_note-5

[nobody's_hero]

Kind of feel as though it could be beneficial to let California go on setting an example to the rest of the nation as to what NOT to do. Unfortunately, that s*^# spreads like cancer. While the rest of the nation looks at Cali and laughs, California liberals run off to the Federal Government to make sure the laughter stops, by force.

I'm reminded of the old joke about the warning labels:

"This product contains chemicals known to the state of California to cause cancer." To which one replies: "well, it's a good thing I don't live in California."

[presence]

neither fedgov, stategov, or localgov have legitimate authority to set standards for any exercised right of mine

if I commit violence or theft upon my neighbor, then that neighbor should take the claim before a local court of opinion to discuss the matter before peers

else state needs to gtfo with this notion of jurisdiction to permit and regulate the liberty of free men

I won't cheer for either fedgov or stategov's perceived authority to be my master

the whole $#@!ing thing needs to burn to the ground

I am a free man not a slave

[AZJoe]

So Trump is opposed to state's rights.

Eliminate the EPA and let each state decide.

Seems California has decided on what they want.

Except California, and every other state, is NOT permitted to decide they don't want the EPA regs. Even California is forced to follow at a minimum the EPA rules. California was only "permitted" to decide for more onerous rules, not lesser.

The waiver bestowing to California the EPA's "permission" for it to make its own stricter rules in no way, shape or form recognizes "states' rights" (or more correctly state sovereignty). To the contrary, the mere fact that California was forced to obtain a "waiver" at all in fact negate's state's rights.

To support state's rights you would need to completely eliminate the EPA in its entirety.

[Anti Federalist]

Oh I agree.

It's just that, as is usually the case, the waters get muddied by those trying to continue the status quo.

I'll take a victory when I can get it.

There is no damn reason why CA should enjoy special status to issue fatwas that affect every last one of us when no other state can.

Let them choke on their own smarmy self righteousness for a while while they get force fed fatwas from the rest of the country.

From there, either every state can decide to set it's own limits, more or less than what the fedgov mandates say, or eliminate the whole damn thing.

In the meantime, use this to sell CalExit.

neither fedgov, stategov, or localgov have legitimate authority to set standards for any exercised right of mine

if I commit violence or theft upon my neighbor, then that neighbor should take the claim before a local court of opinion to discuss the matter before peers

else state needs to gtfo with this notion of jurisdiction to permit and regulate the liberty of free men

I won't cheer for either fedgov or stategov's perceived authority to be my master

the whole $#@!ing thing needs to burn to the ground

I am a free man not a slave

[oyarde]

So Trump is opposed to state's rights.

I agree , eliminate the EPA .

[Chomp]

Yes, many many.

But let me be clear: EPA is the most dangerous.

It alone has the ability to issue fatwas concerning CO2 emissions.

Meaning it has the right to regulate YOU.

Especially with Gov Jerry Brown who wants to ban cows in California, because they stink.

[Dr.3D]

Those darned CARB compliant fuel cans have been driving me nuts. I hope they allow the old style cans pretty soon.

[Swordsmyth]

Neither Fed Gov nor the PRCalifonia, should be regulating this stuff, unless you can prove harm to others. (NOT guess maybe it might harm someone. I mean "NO manner of doubt, no probable possible shadow of doubt, no possible doubt whatever" [bonus points if you know the quote source])

So if Fed Gov enforces the CONstitution and stops PRCalifonia, then it is a good first step.