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THERE are signs that the federal government in Washington is getting increasingly out of touch with the thinking of the 50 states that make up the republic. However indifferent state governors and legislatures are about the ocean rising to overwhelm Vanuatu, or what is happening to the monsoon in South Asia, they all agree that the air over “their” skies should be clean.

With each state acting in its own interests, that should lead to the general good across the nation as a whole, according to the prevailing Republican view of how a free world works. But somehow it isn’t…

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