CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: FRIDAY, JULY 15, 2022 OR THEREAFTER
BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
“17 TRUMPIST
STATES TRY TO PENALIZE CALIFORNIANS"
While
president, Donald Trump tried to punish Californians whenever he could for
voting against him by the huge margins that meant he never won the legitimacy
of a popular vote victory.
There were delays in federal
grant money to cities and the state, there were slow responses to wildfires on
federal lands, there was his hamstringing the Census to assure California would
lose at least one seat in Congress.
But he imposed no more direct
and pernicious punishment on individual Californians than his single-handed
revocation of this state’s right – granted under the federal Clean Air Act of
1970 – to set tailpipe smog emission standards for cars and trucks sold here.
From the
start, opponents claimed this law would make cars more expensive, cut sales and
cost jobs. That did not happen, as a look at any urban California freeway will
make obvious.
Even when
population plateaued or declined slightly, traffic increased.
But air
pollution did not. The state has seen ever fewer smog alerts and warnings for
children and seniors to stay inside on hot summer days since Republican
President Richard Nixon signed the Clean Air Act. Rates of emphysema and lung
cancer have been down for decades in Southern California, the San Joaquin
Valley and the San Francisco Bay area, the state’s three smoggiest regions.
Trump
sought to reverse that via an executive order. And if he’d been reelected, it
would have happened, with the effects due to be felt starting about a year or
two from now.
But Trump
did not win in 2020, despite his plaintive and lying claims to the contrary. Instead,
Joe Biden became president and reinstated California’s tailpipe authority.
Now come
the attorneys general of 17 states, seeking to get California’s authority
revoked again, this time by a federal appeals court. The list includes
Missouri, Ohio, Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky,
Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, Texas, Utah and West Virginia, all
led by Republicans who supported Trump. Only one appealing state did not go for
Trump two years ago.
Their
claim is essentially the same as what critics of the Clean Air Act argued more
than 50 years ago: Giving California authority other states do not will make
cars more expensive everywhere and cost jobs.
Of course,
there are plenty of states that disagree. The 13-state Northeast Consortium,
composed of the New England and Atlantic Seaboard states north of Virginia,
opted years ago to adopt California standards automatically four years after
they take effect here.
The
California rules essentially forced auto makers to build hybrid and electric
cars, design catalytic converters and increase gasoline mileage greatly.
All that
probably validates one claim of the states seeking to end California’s
authority for good. As voiced by West Virginia Attorney General Patrick
Morrisey, it goes like this: Giving California the authority to set its own
standards essentially forces the rest of the country to live by this state’s
standards. That’s pretty much assured, because when you add up the car sales in
California and the states that use its rules, you account for well over half
the vehicle sales in America – and carmakers don’t want to make two types of
vehicles, so the California rules set the pattern.
“That
leaves California with a slice of sovereign authority that Congress withdraws
from every other state,” gripes Morrisey.
Is he
perhaps a tad envious?
In any
case, Democratic California Attorney General Rob Bonta had no trouble after the
anti-California case was filed in rounding up 20 states and three big cities to
oppose the suit by all those GOP-dominated states.
Said
Bonta, “The existing (policy) has been a massive success, driving down air
pollution and growing the electric vehicle market…we’ve defended our clean car
standards from these roadblocks before, and we can’t let this latest challenge
take us the wrong way on clean cars.”
Even if
that means cars cost more today than a few years ago, it also means they last
longer and kill fewer residents of areas once plagued by smog-related
illnesses. And it means that in trying to impose a Trump-inspired punishment on
California, the Republican attorneys general could be causing plenty of deaths
not only here but also in their own states.
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Email Thomas Elias at tdelias@aol.com. His book, "The Burzynski Breakthrough: The Most Promising Cancer Treatment and the Government’s Campaign to Squelch It," is now available in a soft cover fourth edition. For more Elias columns, visit www.californiafocus.net