If it weren't already clear that subsidizing corn farmers to produce biofuels instead of food is problematic, it should be not: President Bush has come out for it. "As you know, I'm an ethanol person," he said, presumably referring to his drunken misbehavior before the age of 40.
A National Near-Death Experience
We're getting closer to the light — the one at the end of the George Bush tunnel.
Patt Morrison, LA Times.
January 24, 2008
One year from this very moment, someone other than George Bush will be sliding behind that antique desk in the Oval Office. In embassies and outposts that fly the Stars and Stripes, photographs of a face other than Bush's will be going up on the walls.
At long, long last. It is seven years since Bush plopped down behind that desk, seven years when hope and honor and good faith and goodwill died a little for me, for many other heartsick Americans who love this country, and for millions around the world who looked up to this country.
I say "died," and I mean that. The psychiatrist Elisabeth Kubler-Ross laid out the basic stages of grief and coming to terms with loss. And Kubler-Ross' five stages track almost perfectly the arc of how we've grappled and grieved over the sickening power crusade of the Bush administration against the nation for these last seven years.
Denial: It can't be happening. Who could expect that the man who had to win election in court, not at the polls, would instantly, arrogantly go on the attack — wiping out environmental protections unmatched since Teddy Roosevelt, throwing out scores of health and safety and accountability and privacy rules and protections that made life better for typical Americans, and making "caveat emptor" the only motto of U.S. business? There must be some mistake, doctor.
Anger: It's not fair. How dare they? How can they practice retrograde isolationism abroad and rapacious cronyism at home? How can they dishonor 9/11 by exploiting the nation's fears to justify upending the Constitution and creating a metastasized secret government? Threatening librarians with prosecution? Arresting people wearing anti-Bush T-shirts, thus conflating protest with sedition? Sneaking and peeking on us without warrants — at the same time they're wrapping the White House in impenetrable secrecy in the name of national security? I went to bed at night raging against the outrages — Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, Katrina, Blackwater, Terri Schiavo — and woke to fresh ones with the morning's news.
Bargaining: If they stop now, I'll make my peace. OK, they have the Supreme Court, and the war they lied to get — maybe that's enough. Maybe it's enough that the war will bankrupt our children, just please don't let it bankrupt our grandchildren too. He went to war with terrorism, so if he goes to war against global warming and failing levees the way he did against terrorism, I live with a "Clear Skies" initiative that pollutes the air and a "Healthy Forests" initiative that whacks more trees. Promise me it won't happen again, and I'll let it go.
Depression: I can't even lift my head to pay attention. Saddam Hussein had WMD? Sure, fine, yeah. Dick Cheney doesn't want to submit to a mandatory archive inspection, so he claims he's not part of the executive branch? Naturally. The administration decides what it wants to do, then makes up its own facts to justify it. Reality, like history, is written by the victors. Take the science out of NASA and the Interior Department, and the Earth is suddenly in great shape; species are no longer endangered. Declare "mission accomplished" with 150 dead American soldiers, and five years later, when the numbers are more than 20 times that, observe offhandedly that the U.S. could "easily" be in Iraq another 10 years. Whatever. I've pulled the shades.
Acceptance: Ready for whatever comes. Game over, peace out. I thought I was at the acceptance stage, but not yet.
I can't forget that, in the nation's name, these men have abused power to defeat the constitutional remedies for abuse of power. They've turned every government agency into a hit squad for Bush-Cheney Inc. They've despoiled this exquisite, singular planet just to stuff a few more millions into billionaires' pockets.
Can I hold out for one more year? Can the nation? Will another election save us? Are we suckers to believe, still, in the ultimate curative power of that brilliantly conceived human instrument, the Constitution? What other choice do we have? I'm ready for a last-minute miracle cure.
Bring it on.
California and 16 other states are trying to boost fuel efficiency standards to combat global warming. To do this, they needed a waiver from the Environmental Protection Agency. Such waivers are routine. But, headed by the Bush appointee Stephen Johnson, the EPA refused to even hear their case, saying that carbon dioxide was not a pollutant. The states took it to court, all the way up to the Supreme Court — and the Supreme Court ruled that the EPA had to consider the states' case.
Johnson promised to do that, and on December 19th he gave his decision:
Two days later, the slimy details are leaking out. Turns out Johnson acted against the recommendations of all his staff — and possibly influenced by vice-president Cheney, who met with executives of Ford and Chrysler last month:
EPA Chief is Said to Have Ignored Staff
Janet Wilson, Los Angeles Times
December 21, 2007The head of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency ignored his staff's written findings in denying California's request for a waiver to implement its landmark law to slash greenhouse gases from vehicles, sources inside and outside the agency told The Times on Thursday.
"California met every criteria . . . on the merits. The same criteria we have used for the last 40 years on all the other waivers," said an EPA staffer. "We told him that. All the briefings we have given him laid out the facts."
EPA administrator Stephen L. Johnson announced Wednesday that because President Bush had signed an energy bill raising average fuel economy that there was no need or justification for separate state regulation. He also said that California's request did not meet the legal standard set out in the Clean Air Act.
But his staff, which had worked for months on the waiver decision, concluded just the opposite, the sources said Thursday. The sources spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk with the media or because they feared reprisals.
California Air Resources Board Chairwoman Mary Nichols said she was also told by EPA staff that they were overruled by Johnson.
She said Johnson's decision showed "that this administration ignores the science and ignores the law to reach the politically convenient conclusion."
Nichols, who served as assistant EPA administrator overseeing air regulations under President Clinton, said she had helped write waiver decisions there, and "I know California met all the criteria on this one."
California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has vowed to fight in court to overturn the decision.
Technical and legal staff also concluded that if the waiver were denied, EPA would very likely lose in court to the state, the sources said.
But if Johnson granted California the waiver and the auto industry sued, "EPA is almost certain to win," said two sources quoting the briefing document. They advised him to either grant the waiver outright or give California a temporary one for three years.
Instead, three sources said, Johnson cut off any consultation with his technical staff for the last month and made his decision before having them write the formal, legal justification for it.
"It's very highly unusual," said one source with close ties to the agency.
Normally the technical staff would be part of the final decision-making process, including briefing the administrator and writing the formal legal document before his decision. In this case, the briefings were done, but the formal finding has yet to be drafted.
[...]
Some staff members believe Johnson made his decision after auto executives met with Vice President Dick Cheney and after a Chrysler executive delivered a letter to the White House outlining why neither California nor the EPA should be allowed to regulate greenhouse gases, among other reasons. The Detroit News reported Wednesday that chief executives of Ford and Chrysler met with Cheney last month.
"Clearly the White House said, 'We're going to get EPA out of the way and get California out of the way. If you give us this energy bill, then we're done, the deal is done,' " said one staffer.
Chrysler spokesman Colin McBean said that records show that Chrysler submitted position papers on the mileage issue with the Bush administration's Office of Management and Budget about five weeks ago. Neither McBean nor a Ford spokeswoman would comment on whether company executives met with Cheney.
I'm sure you've heard of the memo signed by Alberto Gonzales, now Attorney General of the United States, which claimed that the "new paradigm" of the war against terrorism "renders obsolete Geneva's strict limitations on questioning of enemy prisoners". And I'm sure you know what followed: torture at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere, a worldwide network of secret prisons, kidnappings at airports, and more.
You've probably also heard how the Bush administration began a massive program of secret wiretapping of US citizens, in direct contradiction to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
And, more recently, you've probably heard how Dick Cheney claimed the office of the vice presidency was "not an entity within the executive branch" of the US government — and clearly not part of the legislative or judicial, either, hence exempt from regulations governing any branch of government!
I could list many more examples of how the Bush administration has flouted the Constitution, federal laws, and international treaties.
Ever wonder about just how this tide of lawlessness started, and who is behind it?
To a surprisingly large extent there's one man behind it: Dick Cheney. For the full story — or the little we know so far — read this:
Here's a taste of his methods:
Stealth is among Cheney's most effective tools. Man-size Mosler safes, used elsewhere in government for classified secrets, store the workaday business of the office of the vice president. Even talking points for reporters are sometimes stamped "Treated As: Top Secret/SCI." Experts in and out of government said Cheney's office appears to have invented that designation, which alludes to "sensitive compartmented information," the most closely guarded category of government secrets. By adding the words "treated as," they said, Cheney seeks to protect unclassified work as though its disclosure would cause "exceptionally grave damage to national security."And, the truly scary thing is how he never gives up, even when he seems to be defeated:
A document from the Office of the Vice President is stamped "Treated as Secret/SCI"Across the board, the vice president's office goes to unusual lengths to avoid transparency. Cheney declines to disclose the names or even the size of his staff, generally releases no public calendar and ordered the Secret Service to destroy his visitor logs. His general counsel has asserted that "the vice presidency is a unique office that is neither a part of the executive branch nor a part of the legislative branch," and is therefore exempt from rules governing either. Cheney is refusing to observe an executive order on the handling of national security secrets, and he proposed to abolish a federal office that insisted on auditing his compliance.
Cheney and his allies, according to more than two dozen current and former officials, pioneered a novel distinction between forbidden "torture" and permitted use of "cruel, inhuman or degrading" methods of questioning. They did not originate every idea to rewrite or reinterpret the law, but fresh accounts from participants show that they translated muscular theories, from Yoo and others, into the operational language of government.A backlash beginning in 2004, after reports of abuse leaked out of Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison and Guantanamo Bay, brought what appeared to be sharp reversals in courts and Congress — for Cheney's claims of executive supremacy and for his unyielding defense of what he called "robust interrogation."
But a more careful look at the results suggests that Cheney won far more than he lost. Many of the harsh measures he championed, and some of the broadest principles undergirding them, have survived intact but out of public view.
The vice president's unseen victories attest to traits that are often ascribed to him but are hard to demonstrate from the public record: thoroughgoing secrecy, persistence of focus, tactical flexibility in service of fixed aims and close knowledge of the power map of government. On critical decisions for more than six years, Cheney has often controlled the pivot points — tipping the outcome when he could, engineering stalemate when he could not and reopening debates that rivals thought were resolved.
© 2006 John Baez
baez@math.removethis.ucr.andthis.edu
