asking Al Gore to run in 2008!
Bush EPA Coverup
Posted June 23rd, 2008 by Wayne in WA State
When you think Bush and Cheney cannot go any lower, the go lower
Bush denies info request in EPA case
Setting up a constitutional showdown, the White House on Friday asserted executive privilege in denying a congressional request for thousands...
By Rob Hotakainen
McClatchy Newspapers
WASHINGTON — Setting up a constitutional showdown, the White House on Friday asserted executive privilege in denying a congressional request for thousands of pages of documents related to the federal government's rejection of California's efforts to regulate greenhouse-gas emissions.
Congress is attempting to determine whether President Bush played a role in the Environmental Protection Agency's decision to deny California's request for permission to impose tougher air-quality regulations than federal law called for.
California had been granted such waivers numerous times over the years, but the Bush administration delayed and then rejected its request for authority to regulate carbon-dioxide emissions.
"I don't think we've had a situation like this since Richard Nixon was president," said Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., the chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, which is conducting the investigation.
An EPA official, Jason Burnett, has told committee investigators that EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson had favored granting the waiver but denied it after meeting with White House officials. In testimony last month, Johnson refused to say whether he'd discussed the waiver request with Bush.
Waxman canceled a contempt vote that had been scheduled for Friday morning against Johnson and White House official Susan Dudley after the White House informed him of its last-minute decision. Waxman said the two had refused to cooperate with his panel.
Jeffrey Rosen, general counsel to the president, said the White House already had turned over 7,558 pages of documents to the committee. He urged Waxman not to proceed with a contempt resolution.
Executive privilege, while not explicitly mentioned in the Constitution, is grounded in the doctrine of separation of powers and is sometimes invoked to keep executive branch deliberations private.
President Bush has also asserted executive privilege to keep his chief of staff, Josh Bolten, and former White House counsel Harriet Miers from having to provide information to Congress about firing a group of U.S. attorneys in what Democrats consider a political purge.
Waxman was critical of the White House's decision. "There are thousands of internal White House documents that would show whether the president and his staff acted lawfully," Waxman said. "But the president has said they must be kept from Congress and the public." Waxman said the committee would investigate the matter further before deciding how to proceed.
For months, Waxman's committee has been investigating the EPA's decision to block California from regulating greenhouse-gas emissions for cars and trucks. The waiver had become a battleground over the administration's hesitation to enact policies aimed at slowing global warming.
Information from The Associated Press is included in this report.
Copyright © 2008 The Seattle Times Company
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/poli...rivilege21.html
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Head in the sand (or somewhere)
EPA experts detail global warming's health risks
By DINA CAPPIELLO
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER
WASHINGTON -- Government scientists detailed a rising death toll from heat waves, wildfires, disease and smog caused by global warming in an analysis the White House buried so it could avoid regulating greenhouse gases.
In a 149-page document released Monday, the experts laid out for the first time the scientific case for the grave risks that global warming poses to people, and to the food, energy and water on which society depends.
"Risk (to human health, society and the environment) increases with increases in both the rate and magnitude of climate change," scientists at the Environmental Protection Agency said. Global warming, they wrote, is "unequivocal" and humans are to blame.
The document suggests that extreme weather events and diseases carried by ticks and other organisms could kill more people as temperatures rise.
Allergies could worsen because climate change could produce more pollen. Smog, a leading cause of respiratory illness and lung disease, could become more severe in many parts of the country. At the same time, global warming could mean fewer illnesses and deaths due to cold.
"This document inescapably, unmistakably shows that global warming pollution not only threatens human health and welfare, but it is adversely impacting human health and welfare today," said Vickie Patton, deputy general counsel for the Environmental Defense Fund. "What this document demonstrates is that the imperative for action is now."
While the science pointed to a link between public health and climate change, the Bush administration has worked to discourage such a connection. To acknowledge one would compel the government to regulate greenhouse gases.
The administration on Friday dismissed the scientists' findings when it made clear that the Clean Air Act was the wrong tool to control global warming pollution. Instead, the administration asked for public comment on a range of ways to reduce greenhouse gases from cars, airplanes, trains and smokestacks under the 1970 law.
A better solution, the EPA said, would have Congress writing a law aimed just at global warming.
Jonathan Shradar, a spokesman for EPA chief Stephen Johnson, said that while the administrator knows that "the science is clear and that climate change is a significant issue", Johnson did not want to make a "rash decision under the wrong law."
"Once there is an endangerment finding, then the Clean Air Act is activated and regulation may begin," Shradar said.
In December, the White House refused to open an e-mail from the EPA that included the finding that climate change endangered public welfare. The determination was based on an earlier, and similar version of the document released Monday. At the time, the White House insisted on removing all references to the science, according to Jason K. Burnett, a former adviser to Johnson on climate issues.
Burnett, a Democrat, has charged that Vice President Dick Cheney's office deleted portions of congressional testimony last October prepared by the head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that made similar assertions on the health effects of global warming. The White House contends the testimony was changed because of doubts about the science.
After the release of the EPA analysis, industry representatives suggested the link between climate change and health was weak.
"The question is not a scientific one. It is a legal and political question, of how much impact justifies the extraordinary use of the Clean Air Act," said Scott Segal, director of the Electric Reliability Coordinating Council, a coalition of power companies.
While no one doubts that more people die in a heat wave, the question is whether that death is "related to manmade greenhouse gas emissions," he said.
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That's Our Bush
THAT'S OUR BUSH!
At his last G-8 meeting in Japan this week, President Bush did us proud yet again. No, he didn't try to rub Angela Merckel's shoulders, he didn't' mistake OPEC for APEC and he didn't confuse Austria for Australia (while he was actually visiting the latter, no less). But boy did he leave the summit with a bang when he departed with the following words: "Goodbye from the world's biggest polluter." Sit with that for a moment before you continue reading, because there's more.
OK, so the London Telegraph reports that Bush then "punched the air while grinning widely, as the rest of those present including (British Prime Minister) Gordon Brown and (French President) Nicolas Sarkozy looked on in shock." Nice one, Cowboy George. I'd say I'm shocked, but frankly, I've come to expect nothing more from this horrifically unsophisticated guy. His "joke" -- and it's unclear what the hell he was thinking, if anything at all, when he said it -- wouldn't even be funny if he'd taken the lead in cutting carbon emissions, either at the summit, or, you know, ever.
Except he didn't and he hasn't. His track record has been nothing short of appalling on the subject, and now, in his final not-quite-lame-duck-enough months in office, it's become clear that he's done with even paying lip service to curbing greenhouse gasses. Oh, January can't come soon enough ....
-- D. Parvaz
That's Our Bush
Order without Liberty, and Liberty without Order are equally destructive.-Theodore Roosevelt
Bush43 reminds me an awful lot of a close relative of mine-he too, was alcoholic. In my relative's case, he drank for all of his adult life, yet died from cancer. I read a study a couple of years ago that stated: after years of alcohol abuse, they have no ability to comprehend abstract thought or concepts; they disregard empirical data and rely on their own; and they bully others into doing what they desire. They have no thought but for themselves. They have other addictions as well. All of which emphasize self before everything else.
After reading that study, that's when I realized that Dubya was the same way as the study described. Kinda sad, that nobody knew but a few people that Dubya really was incompetent, until he got into office and started running things into the ground.
I can't see you
http://michaelcorey.ntirety.com/Portals/1101/images/ostrich-head.jpg
EPA report derailed
GREENHOUSE-GAS E-MAIL UNOPENED
By Felicity Barringer
New York Times
Article Launched: 06/25/2008 01:31:15 AM PDT
The White House in December refused to accept the Environmental Protection Agency's conclusion that greenhouse gases are pollutants that must be controlled, telling agency officials that an e-mail message containing the document would not be opened, senior EPA officials said last week.
The document, which ended up in e-mail limbo, without official status, was the EPA's answer to a 2007 Supreme Court ruling that required it to determine whether greenhouse gases represent a danger to health or the environment, the officials said.
This week, more than six months later, the EPA is set to respond to that order by releasing a watered-down version of the original proposal that offers no conclusion. Instead, the document reviews the legal and economic issues presented by declaring greenhouse gases a pollutant.
Over the past five days, said the officials, the White House successfully put pressure on the EPA to eliminate sections of the original analysis that supported regulation, including a finding that tough regulation of motor-vehicle emissions could produce $500 billion to $2 trillion in economic benefits over the next 32 years. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter.
Both documents, as prepared by the EPA "showed that the Clean Air Act can work for certain sectors of the economy, to reduce greenhouse gases," one of the senior EPA officials said. "That's not what the
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administration wants to show. They want to show that the Clean Air Act can't work."
The Bush administration's climate-change policies have been evolving over the past two years. It now accepts the work of government scientists studying global warming, such as last week's review forecasting more drenching rains, parching droughts and intense hurricanes as global temperatures warm (www.climatescience.gov).
But no administration decisions have supported the regulation of greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act or other environmental laws.
Tony Fratto, a White House spokesman, refused to comment on discussions between the White House and the Environmental Protection Agency. Asked about changes in the original report, Fratto said, "It's the EPA that determines what analysis it wants to make available" in its documents.
The document, a road map laying out the issues involved in regulation, is to be signed by Stephen Johnson, the agency's administrator, and published as early as today.
The derailment of the original EPA report was first made known in March by Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Los Angeles, who chairs the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. The refusal to acknowledge receipt of the e-mail has not been made public.
In December, the EPA's draft finding that greenhouse gases endanger the environment used Energy Department data from 2007 to conclude it would be cost effective to require the nation's motor vehicle fleet to average 37.7 mpg in 2018, according to government officials familiar with the document.
About 10 days after the finding was left unopened by officials at the Office of Management and Budget, Congress passed and President Bush signed a new energy bill mandating an increase in average fuel-economy standards to 35 mpg by 2020. The day the law was signed, EPA's administrator rejected the unanimous recommendation of his staff and denied California a waiver needed to regulate vehicle emissions of greenhouse gases in the state, saying the new law's approach was preferable and climate change required global, not regional, solutions.