Government For the People or Against the People?

It's a story we've seen over and over again. Two years agao, the FDA was forced to keep medical solutions off the market because they don't meet with the Bush administration's idea of "moral behavior." Earlier this year, NASA was forced to alter exhibits on astronomy to conform with fans of creationism. The FDA recently withheld the identity of corporate distributors of tainted food. Again and again the Bush administration has turned government agencies once charged with protecting the public's health, education and safety into tools of religious ideology and corporate greed.

Now the EPA faces what might be the most crucial test of its integrity.

Back in 2004, California adopted a requirement that would force automakers to reduce CO2 emissions from autos beginning in September 2008. Los Angeles faces some of the most alarming levels of smog and pollution in the country. Eleven states have adopted the California regulations, including New York, Maryland, Rhode Island and Vermont. In order to put those regulations into effect, a waiver is needed from the EPA. In the 40 years that the EPA has been granting such waivers to allow states to regulate various environmental dangers, it has never turned down a request. Although California first sought this new waiver in 2005, Bush's EPA has stalled until now-- and California is threatening to go to court.

Automaker executives claim that the proposed regulations would devastate their industry. Production costs would cause the price of new vehicles to soar, they say. Somehow, GM expects you to believe that producing lighter, higher mileage cars will make your vehicle much more expensive than producing bloated SUVs, despite the plain fact that sticker prices for Expeditions, Hummers and Suburbans are clearly higher than Corollas, Civics, or Sentras-- even high-tech hybrids.

The truth is, US automakers already sell many inexpensive, high mileage vehicles-- they just want to do it overseas, where they can't affect domestic sales of the higher-margin behemoths.

If the EPA refuses to allow California to regulate car emissions and denies their waiver, it will be the purest possible testimony that public good comes behind corporate cronyism.