Despite having made a commitment to return power to the states, the Bush administration and the GOP- controlled Congress are using legislation and the legal system to quash state efforts to regulate industry, a trend state officials say is weakening hard-fought efforts to protect the health and safety of their constituents.
New and proposed federal rules or laws would overturn California’s ban on a vaccine preservative some think contributes to autism, and would block any state’s efforts to control small-engine emissions. New England would be thwarted in its efforts to control pollution wafting over from other states, while Massachusetts and California would not be able to keep unwanted liquefied natural gas terminals from their shores. A recent banking rule change severely limits the impact of state laws intended to protect consumers from shady banking practices.
Policy makers in the administration and Congress say they are merely making rules uniform and easier to follow. With so many companies doing business across the country, they say, it is unfair and impractical to expect industries to keep track of 50 different sets of regulations. ”The president, as a former governor, strongly believes in states’ rights,” Bush spokesman Trent Duffy said. But ”there are certain powers reserved for the federal government” that it must keep, he said, especially in areas involving interstate commerce, energy, regulating medicine, and homeland security.
Don’t forget education, drug policy and so on and so forth. Limited government and states rights are dead.
Stormy70
The Federal Government should only be in the business of National Defense. I know, I can dream, right?
JG
I’m a republican and I believe in states rights but I also believe the ‘union’ comes first. This the United States of America not the Independant States of America. But none of these things mentioned would hinder the union so why take them away from the states?
John Cole
JG- Because they don’t believe in states rights- they believe in their own power.
Limited government is dead.
Randolph Fritz
States rights was always more “let the states do this really indefensible thing and the federal gov. will look away” than, “let’s be a loose federation of states that approach governance in different ways.” Which this whatever-he-is thinks is a shame.
anomdebus
Randolph,
That sounds like a variety of sampling bias. You(generic) remember the bad stuff, but a gradualist approach could be ignored.
Would you remember a situation in which a law is passed in a couple states, works well, and then is tried in other states?
John Cole
Almost all innovation that in government occurs the way anomdebus described. After numerous states have caught on, it usually attracts the attention of the feds.
If you want specific examples, I would give you Tommy Thompson and Welfare reform as a prime example.
TJJackson
Well we can always vote Democrat for an alternative right?
KC
I lived in Santa Barbara for a couple years and can’t wait to see what happens when some of the wealthy Bush donors there are faced with drilling along the beaches. If there’s anything those people protect, it’s the property value of and views from their estates.
Al Maviva
Okay, to defend some of this stuff on the merits:
overturn California’s ban on a vaccine preservative some think contributes to autism
Trial lawyers in California (note that I’m not saying plaintiff’s attorneys, it takes two to tango) want to butt rape the pharmaceutical industry. Let angry parents in CA wheel a few autistic kids in front of a sympathetic jury, and we’ll have a tobacco-style verdict and settlement (7 of 8 major vaccine makers would be nailed, last time I read up on this) that drives the pharmaceutical industries out of business. Remember the flu vaccine shortage? That’s because nobody in the U.S. wants to manufacture it. The margin is too low, relative to the products liability lawsuits.
and would block any state’s efforts to control small-engine emissions.
It’s called preemption, and it occurs where federal law essentially takes over an area. Ever heard of the Clean Air Act, and heard complaints about how oppressive it is? A couple states are agitating to impose heightened rules. Now, ever heard of CARB, the California Air Resources Board? The are an “experiment in the laboratory of the states” where Cali was allowed to impose more stringent air pollution standards on vehicles and gas sold in that state. Ever heard of the fuel additive MBTE, which CARB mandated be placed in gasoline sold in California in order to reduce pollution, based on some environmentalists’ theories? Well, MBTE in California has now seeped into the water table, and the environmentalists have launched a major lawsuit against the bastard petroleum companies for selling fuel laced with a dangerous carcinogen, MBTE…
New England would be thwarted in its efforts to control pollution wafting over from other states,
Again, ever heard of the Clean Air Act? And read that again – New England wants to control what power plants in Ohio are doing. Sure, fine, as long as I can dictate what people in New England are doing. It would also derail the rather carefully thought out market in pollution credits, whereby a power producer has an incentive to produce cleaner power, in order to sell its alloted “pollution permit” to a power producer with older and dirtier plants – a practice which has worked to greatly reduce air pollution. It would be sheer insanity to let a few states claim regulatory power over other states, and to overturn a fairly successful, market-based approach to a widely acknowledged pollution problem. But go for it, if that’s what’s conservative, John.
while Massachusetts and California would not be able to keep unwanted liquefied natural gas terminals from their shores.
It’s called the national energy strategy. You know, the bill to reduce our dependence on Saudi oil, that the Republicans haven’t been able to move forward? Where should we site the terminals – in the scenic states of Iowa and Nevada? Or should we just concentrate the terminals in the handful of places that now have them, like Galveston and Baltimore, and hope the terrorists decide not to notice these chokepoints in our critical infrastructure?
A recent banking rule change severely limits the impact of state laws intended to protect consumers from shady banking practices.
It has something to do with NY State Attorney General Elliot Spitzer’s efforts to use an ill-defined New York statute to extort billions out of brokerage houses, insurance companies and banks, which now operate under rules prescribed by the Department of the Treasury and the Securities Exchange Commission. You ought to take a look at how Spitzer extorted billions out of AIG, and drove the stock prices into the ground using a well-thought out public smear campaign, before you criticize this particular move.
Jeebus John, I know you’re on a tear against the Republicans right now and drinkin’ the Atrios-flavored Kool-Aid, but could you at least do a bit of freakin’ background reading? Honest to God.
John Cole
AL- Eeveryone of those may be noble endeavors that are right on the merits, but that does not mean anything. The fact is that in the past, Republicans would have called any such action by the feds as big government interfering with State policy. This has nothing to do with kool-aid, and everything to do with the shift in principle since becoming the ruling party.
At the very least, maybe we should reconcile that perhaps we never were in favor of limited goverment and states rights, but rather, we were against the type of government involvement. For example, if each one of these actions were reversed, and instead, the feds mandated that NH could sue Ohio, etc., how much do you want to bet people on our side of the aisle would be screaming states rights?
And btw, I carry no torch for Elliot Spitzer. I thought what he did to the former Chairmen of the Stock Exchange, slandering him publicly, was outrageous. On the other hand, he did manage to get a 400 million fine for the swine at citigroup who were bilking people left and right.
Just for the record- I hate it when people assume that because they differ with me on some issues that I don’t know anything about them. Particularly when they are all issues discussed in the article I JUST FUCKING LINKED TO AND EXCERPTED.
KC
Wow, John. Someone’s picking their balls up off the floor right now.
JKC
Al-
As someone who lives in the Northeast and has seen the effects of acid rain first hand, your argument about “letting the Midwest do what it wants” is about as rational as my 4 year old’s arguments about why she shouldn’t eat her broccoli.
Ohio has no more right to send its air pollution to New England via prevailing winds than I do to have the contents of my septic tank pumped into the front seat of your car.
If Ohio and the other big midwestern states want power generation plants with 60’s vintage pollution controls, let them drop the stack height on the plants to 100 feet and breathe the stench themselves.
JG
‘States rights was always more “let the states do this really indefensible thing and the federal gov. will look away” than,’
Sounds like the policy that led to the Civil War, which IMO is right about the time the Founding Fathers dreams for this nation collapsed on itself.
Kimmitt
I was under the impression that the Founding Fathers’ dream for this nation was for slavery to pass unlamented into the night somewhere around 1820, so that’s kind of that.
Rick
KC,
Oh, Santa Barbara is big, big Boosh country, fer sure.
This is zip code 93111 searched; maybe you can counter with the coast-huggers correct zip. But I doubt that’ll show much more Bushismo.
Here’s greater LA’s red/blue split:
http://www.fundrace.org/citymap.php?city=la
Cordially…
Rick
Missing 93111 url cited above:
http://www.fundrace.org/neighbors.php?type=loc&addr=&zip=93111&search=Search+by+Location
Cordially…
Al Maviva
John, could you please tell me when it was a matter of conservative or Republican principle, that the state legislature of Massachusetts should set policy for Ohio; when the conservatives or Republicans were in favor of state attorneys general who mount populist crusades to extort money from out-of-state corporations under threat of destruction of stock prices (something Rand called “looting”) or when the conservatives were in favor of letting individual states legislate, loot and litigate critical industries – like the vaccine industry – out of existence? I must have missed those planks in the party platform.
Yes, something has changed. The Republicans are in charge, and have to either dismantle the Federal government, or make the damn thing work right. Would I prefer that it shitcan four or five Departments, and focus on Defense, not mucking up the economy, and making life tough on France? Sure. But you go to Washington with the government you have, not the one you wish you had.
In four of the five cases mentioned above, federal interference is necessary to keep the states mentioned, from screwing over other states. I’d submit that such actions preserve the federalist system, by preventing overreach by any given state.
I agree, some things are indefensible. That prescription drug benefit program is a monstrosity, and an insane fiscal choice. The suit Ashcroft initiated against Oregon regarding assisted suicide is another dumbass idea. No Child Left Behind… jury’s still out on that one. But they aren’t on your list.
On the other hand, the stuff you are pointing out as examples of the Republicans suddenly going insane, are things the Federal Government pretty much has to do. Either that, or foreswear things like the Clean Air Act (one of the few environmental laws endorsed by Bjorn Lomborg, BTW) and the national energy policy (a defense issue, given where most of the energy resides) and sit back while the plaintiff’s attorneys, and states’ attorneys, and local activists use our standardless courts and greedy local legislatures to pillage the nation’s businesses. It’s always okay for the federal government to protect one state from the predation of another. That’s one of its few legit purposes.
Maybe it’s the change in mood that bothers you most. It was always easy for the Republicans to say that something was stopping them from doing the right thing – a Dem president, a Dem house of Congress. All they had to do was lob bombs, and being the permanent opposition party, they could pick their issues. Now they have the reigns, and feel they have to do something. Unfortunately, they don’t have a program. Maybe you should lead a charge to get them to write one up.
On the other hand, perhaps if they thought they had the votes for dismantling 5 Departments, they’d do it. The problem here isn’t that they are ignoring the people, the problem is they are too responsive, especially to the marginal “undecided” voters who don’t know much but who are easily swayed, and who, would piss their pants, for instance, if Ed was dissolved and the loans, grants and testing programs were merged into HHS. “Draconian Cuts! Oooh, we’re voting Democrat ‘cuz they would never pass cuts!”
And face it, it’s not entirely their fault. We vote them in, so they listen to us, and the real problem here is that we’re a nation of fat greedy hedonistic fucks who are perfectly happy to vote ourselves a raise out of our neighbor’s bank account.
I’m not so much angry at the Republicans; I actually pity them for having to serve as footmen to the likes of us.
Rick
Bravo, Al. Many wise words, and profoundly perceptive.
Cordially…
Kimmitt
I’m not so much angry at the Republicans; I actually pity them for having to serve as footmen to the likes of us.
There’s a difference between reluctant pandering and gleefully fanning the flames.