Carol Browner Making a Power Grab

Carol Browner, the so-called 'climate czar', used to be the head of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) under Bill Clinton. I covered here how she destroyed files in defiance of a judicial order.

Long before the Supreme Court ruled in a highly questionable 2007 case, Massachusetts v. EPA, that the EPA has the legal authority to justify its proposed 18,000 pages of greenhouse gas regulation under the Clean Air Act, Browner (then EPA director under President Bill Clinton) had her general counsel, Jonathan Cannon, prepare a now-infamous memorandum arguing—for the first time—that the EPA possessed such a power. At the time it was dismissed as a wild-eyed overreach that Congress would never allow. Now it’s happening, and Browner is right at the center of it (1).

Mary Nichols, the head of the California Air Resources Board, and Browner were key in crafting a plan to impose the first-ever national carbon limits on cars and trucks. The emissions standards, announced yesterday by the president in the Rose Garden, would bring federal requirements in line with levels sought by California over much of the last decade (2).

"We put nothing in writing, ever," Nichols said. "That was one of the ways we made sure that everyone's ability to talk freely was protected."

Browner was made a czar so that her powers could be more sweeping than they would be in any single official appointment—witness her cross-agency role in the secret automobile emissions regulations—and to avoid the scrutiny of Senate confirmation, which would have been difficult for Browner. Since leaving the Clinton administration she has moved further left, even becoming one of the 14 members of the “Socialist International Commission for a Sustainable World Society” on whose Web site she was listed as a member as recently as January 5, the day she was named White House Climate Czar (3).

Here we have a czar appointed by Obama, but not accountable to the American people, trying to make laws. This is a perfect reason for abolishing the policy of keeping czars.


========================
1. Kerpen, Phil (2009, September 23). "A Secret White House Power Grab Is In Full Swing". Fox News.
Retrieved September 24, 2009, from Fox News

2. Sullivan, Colin (2009, May 20). "Vow of silence key to White House-Calif. fuel economy talks". The New York Times.
Retrieved September 24, 2009, from The New York Times

3. Kerpen, Phil (2009, September 23). "A Secret White House Power Grab Is In Full Swing". Fox News.
Retrieved September 24, 2009, from Fox News