I understand that James Garcia doesn’t like George W. Bush because he is a (shudder!) Republican, and (worse!) conservative, but please: George Bush is evil because he did what Mr. Garcia wanted him to do, but without sufficient sincerity?
Oh the delicious irony of modern politics. In 2001, after deciding that it’s previous attempt to comply with an EPA dictate for cleaning the air by oxygenating gasoline had resulted mainly in dirtier water, the state of California banned the oxygenating compound MBTE and requested a waiver from the EPA regulation to avoid a mandated switch to ethanol. The state’s argument that there were other ways to achieve the objective may or may not have merit – it’s not clear how much of the dispute over that is science and how much is politics. But when, in the past, has that argument even mattered to Democrats – and the California government is pretty much entirely composed of Democrats – when an environmental regulation was at stake?