: Sniff : Aahhh!

This just in, as the cliche goes:

Los Angeles (AP, September 24) - California air regulators Friday unanimously approved the world's most stringent rules to reduce auto emissions that are believed to contribute to global warming.

The regulations are expected to cut exhaust from cars and light trucks by 25 percent and in larger trucks and sport utility vehicles by 18 percent.

The move by the California Air Resources Board came despite vigorous opposition from auto industry officials, who argued that the board did not have the authority to adopt such sweeping regulations and that they could not be met by current technology.

The auto industry has threatened to challenge the regulations in court.

Well, of course they will. Ain't no maybe about it. And you can bet your fanny that the White House will be right there behind them, either with friend of the court briefs or by filing its own challenge or both. One of the bases will be "federal preemption," another concept that has been twisted over the years - and no, dammit, not just by Republicans, much less not just by the current crew of corporate butt-kissing fruitcakes - into the service of the powerful.

It used to mean something simple: States could not enact laws that conflicted with appropriate federal legislation. ("Appropriate" here meaning a proper exercise of federal authority that didn't trample on areas traditionally or Constitutionally reserved to individual states.) For a long time, in practice that was taken to mean that federal laws would set minimum standards that had to be met everywhere.

Over the past few decades, however, and particularly on environmental, corporate regulation, and trade issues, it's been changed to also mean the federal law sets a maximum standard. The important difference is that before states could enact stricter standards than the federal law set - under the new regime, they can't.

Based on a quick Google search, that argument has been used to argue successfully, among other things

- that Massachusetts could not put greater restrictions on tobacco advertising than set in federal law, nor can it impose regulations greater than federal ones on hearing aids sold in the state.

- that Washington state can't set higher safety standards for oil tankers visiting its ports than federal law does, not can any state regulate nuclear power plants within their borders more strictly than the feds.

- that California can't assist holocaust survivors living there obtain settlements from German insurance companies and Massachusetts can't refuse to do business with certain companies because they do business with the dictatorial regime in Burma, in both cases because they "stand in the way of [the President's] diplomatic objectives," as the Court ruled in the California case.

- that federal regulations prevent states from enforcing regulations against branches of national banks within their borders if they are stricter than federal ones.

- that federally-approved warning labels preempt tort claims under state law and federally-approved drugs can't be questioned under state common-law design defect claims.

(One area where, interestingly enough, it apparently hasn't had a lot of success is in regulating guns.)

Years ago, the rightists fought their battles on the state level, knowing that state governments were less able to overcome the heavy-duty PR campaigns that corporations could mount. Federal regulation was anathema because it "violated states' rights." But as the federal government and the associated bureaucracy has become more conservative, those same forces shifted gears because fighting one easily-won battle was better and cheaper than fighting 50. The rubric smoothly shifted to "federal preemption."

Or course such an utter reversal is extremely hypocritical, but since moral and political consistency requires a minimal level of decency, that's no problem for this lot.