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6/26/06, In "Massachusetts v EPA, "Massachusetts
Attorney General Tom Reilly is leading the group." Romney AG used "
rising sea levels" on Mass. coast as reason to give standing to one state v every other state in the US. The case was first
brought in 2003 by the State of Mass. ...4/6/07, "
Wall Street understood this. When the EPA decision came down,
Entergy stock jumped to an all-time high of $107.52 per share."
6/26/2006, "
U.S. Supreme Court to Consider Greenhouse Gas Rules," Bloomberg, Stohr
"
The U.S. Supreme Court agreed to consider a bid by environmentalists and 12 states to force the Environmental Protection Agency to regulate car and truck emissions that may contribute to global warming.
The justices today said they will review a lower court decision that said the EPA had discretion under the Clean Air Act to refuse to regulate tailpipe emissions on the grounds that more scientific and technical studies were needed. The Bush administration had urged the court not to consider the case.
High court involvement raises the prospect of new regulations on automakers including General Motors Corp. and Ford Motor Co., companies already facing sales slides. Depending on how broadly the court rules, the case
might also affect utilities, which have fought efforts to cut emissions of carbon dioxide and other so-called greenhouse gases from power plants.
``This case goes to the heart of EPA's statutory responsibilities to deal with
the most pressing environmental problem of our time,'' the states and environmental groups argued in their appeal.
Massachusetts Attorney General Tom Reilly is leading the group."...
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The Supreme Court 5-4 decision came out a few months after Romney left office, but Mass. brought the suit v the EPA 4 years earlier (in 2003). Romney may smile and say he didn't personally litigate the case. It is also true it was litigated with taxpayer paid state employees during the entire 4 years he was in office, lead by his AG, an employee of Mass. for the purpose of criminalizing every taxpayer in the United States. As chief executive of Mass. Romney could and should have withheld public employees from using taxpayer time on a matter intended to criminalize the entire US.
4/3/2007, "Justices Say E.P.A. Has Power to Act on Harmful Gases," NY Times, Greenhouse
"Writing for the majority, Justice John Paul Stevens said the only way the agency could “avoid taking further action” now was “if it determines that greenhouse gases do not contribute to climate change” or provides a good explanation why it cannot or will not find out whether they do.....
Court cases around the country had been held up to await the decision in this case. Among them is a challenge to the environmental agency’s refusal to regulate carbon dioxide emissions from power plants, now pending in the federal appeals court here. Individual states, led by California, are also moving aggressively into what they have seen as a regulatory vacuum....
Even in the nine months since the Supreme Court agreed to hear the first case, Massachusetts v. Environmental Protection Agency, No. 05-1120, and accelerating since the elections in November, there has been a growing interest among industry groups in working with environmental organizations on proposals for emissions limits....
If the decision sowed widespread claims of victory, it left behind a prominent loser: Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., who argued vigorously in a dissenting opinion that the court never should have reached the merits of the case or addressed the question of the agency’s legal obligations.
His dissent, which Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr. also signed, focused solely on the issue of legal standing to sue: whether the broad coalition of states, cities and environmental groups that brought the lawsuit against the environmental agency four years ago should have been accepted as plaintiffs in the first place....
Chief Justice Roberts said the court should not have found that Massachusetts or any of the other plaintiffs had standing....
Massachusetts, one of the 12 state plaintiffs, met the test, Justice Stevens said, because it had made a case that global warming was raising the sea level along its coast, presenting the state with a “risk of catastrophic harm” that “would be reduced to some extent” if the government undertook the regulation the state sought.
In addition, Justice Stevens said, Massachusetts was due special deference in its claim to standing because of its status as a sovereign state. This new twist on the court’s standing doctrine may have been an essential tactic in winning the vote of Justice Kennedy, a leader in the court’s federalism revolution of recent years. Justice Stevens, a dissenter from the court’s states’ rights rulings and a master of court strategy, in effect managed to use federalism as a sword rather than a shield....
The decision overturned a 2005 ruling by the federal appeals court here."
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Romney as Chief Executive of Mass. was the power behind the criminal lawsuit against the EPA:
"The Case Profile of Massachusetts v. EPA
The following is a case profile of the legal trial eponymously titled ‘Massachusetts v. EPA’:
Date of the Trial: November 29th, 2006
Legal Classification: Administrative Law; this legal field associated with events and circumstances in which the Federal Government of the United States engages its citizens, including the administration of government programs, the creation of agencies, and the establishment of a legal, regulatory federal standard.
Accused Criminal Activity: The following criminal activity and charges were cited by citizen petitioners – via the State of Massachusetts against the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) within the appeal brought forth subsequent to the initial ruling:
The State of Massachusetts mandated that the EPA was in direct violation of the precepts latent within Environmental Law, which is comprised of statues expressing the regulatory procedures with regard to the mitigation of pollution and the organization of federal measures undertaken in order to protect the collective human health within the United States upon the denial to regulate Greenhouse gasses."
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"This year, Americans spent almost 8.5 percent of their incomes on gas, about $4,155, the highest share since 1981." US Supreme Court Justice Breyer totally on board with it. "Raise the price of oil through the roof," Breyer said.
1/12/12, "Consumer head (Bryson) wants consumers to pay more for energy," Washington Examiner opinion, Murray and Bier
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4/6/07, "
Editorial: Ruling on EPA favors Big Energy," Washington Examiner, T. Carney
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Ed. note: Romney was Gov. of Mass., its Chief Executive, from Jan 2003 to Jan. 2007. Romney made Massachusetts the first state to regulate CO2 in Jan. 1, 2006. Under him the state of Massachusetts sued the US government to force regulation of CO2. His current campaign adviser writes this month in the NY Times that we need to raise gas taxes to help global warming. And Romney protested outside a coal plant in 2003 saying the plant "killed people."
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