Posted on 12/09/2010 9:35:33 AM PST by NormsRevenge
`Caesar's wife must be above suspicion." - Julius Caesar, 62 B.C.
Julius Caesar, the Roman ruler, made that statement while divorcing his wife Pompeia when she was accused of having an affair with his colleague, Clodius Pulcher, a charge that was never proved.
If there's one California agency that needs to be as pure as Caesar's wife, it is the Air Resources Board, whose huge powers have made its 11 mostly anonymous members among the most nationally influential of California officials.
Until very recently, there's been no reason to doubt the purity of the ARB. Its actions have reduced smog levels and smog alerts around the state by well over one-third since 1960, even as California gained about 15 million residents.
ARB policies caused the creation of automotive catalytic converters and industrial smokestack scrubbers, two innovations now in use almost everywhere in the world. This is one board that has been steadfast in its purpose for 50 years, no matter whether the governor has been a Republican or a Democrat.
A fundament of the ARB's highly respected national stature has been that it's almost never wrong on the facts. When it said various smog control devices could be installed on vehicles, its estimates of both auto prices and how much pollution would be cut proved correct despite the fact that carmakers and other industries always claimed they were inaccurate.
That's what makes the air board's problems of this fall so serious. For if it is to enjoy public support, the ARB must be seen as clean and utterly reliable.
But questions arise when some of its pollution estimates are off by as much as 300 percent, as with its recent estimates of how much diesel fuel is burned in California and how much pollution it produces. Those flawed estimates were used to force operators of diesel-powered trucks, off-road vehicles, seaport and airport machinery and others to retrofit engines or replace them with newer models.
The errors were discovered and the board's rules placed in abeyance only because an outside researcher found information that was also readily available to the ARB's staff - but apparently either went unseen or was misconstrued.
Then there's the charge that the ARB was behind a UCLA decision to deny distinguished epidemiologist James Enstrom reappointment as a researcher in its School of Public Health after 34 years there. Enstrom authored a report finding that no evidence exists to support the idea that particulates from diesel exhaust kill anyone, contrary to an ARB finding of 18,000 premature deaths.
Enstrom's layoff notice claimed his work suddenly "did not align" with the mission of his department, but said nothing about his diesel finding.
These things have cast a cloud over the ARB, with many - especially climate change skeptics - claiming the agency has a predetermined, facts-be-damned agenda.
All this really revolves only around a small part of the ARB's functions, but it's being used to tar the board's entire body of work. That means it may be time to get some new board members for the ARB. Chances are Gov.-elect Jerry Brown will not depose current chairwoman Mary Nichols, a UCLA professor who also served on the board the last time Brown was governor in the late 1970s and early '80s. Their ties are too long-standing. But that does not apply to other board members.
Nichols and her colleagues have done little to dispel the current doubts hanging over the ARB. Since its work is so vital to the health of Californians, that means the time may be right for some of them to go - for the sake of keeping this board the world's leading smog control agency.
Better yet, get rid of this and hundreds of other baordsa and commissions piddle dicking this state into a peasants village rubbish heap..
boards
Whole lotta CO2 footprint emanating from the unnecessary officials of the ARB. What a waste of taxpayer $$.
You see the results of many environmental activist groups fulfilling the wishes list these idiots are slowly implementing..
From the Sierra Club to the NRDC and GreenpEace and many more.. the strings are clear.
FReedoms are stripped away, new restrictions imposed, no one votes to re-elect them, they are mini-czars and you are there as the hapless pawn paying them to achieve their global controlled growth clean climate initiatives.
Horse manure, the entire CARB should be dissolved and all the employees fired for cause. No unemployment and no pensions.
If Idiots Ruled the World
Film at 11
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It’s bad, ask truckers working the ports in SoCal..
ARB is an anti-American organization,a business punisher, it essentially acts as a foreign entity, a rubber stamp for UN action and more.
All such boards and agencies regulatory actions need to be submitted to the legislators as advisories, and advisories only, requiring legislative committees’ review, public meetings of those committees, committee votes and legislative approval to become “law”.
Wouldn’t TREASON be the more appropriate charge?? The way I see it CARB declared WAR on We the People using Fraudulent Science and Blatant Lies, They willfully conspired with FOREIGN AGENCIES to ENSLAVE the People of California using Fraud and TYRANNY. They are an UNELECTED and UNACCOUNTABLE body of Tyrants. TREASON is Appropriate.
Now, all state agency rules that cost over $1 million over a five year period must be approved by both houses of the legislature.
The enviros are howling.
Certainly should add the Coastal Commission to the list. They’re just land thieves operating under color of authority, and they have their “buddies” in the Army Corps of Engineers.
“Now, all state agency rules that cost over $1 million over a five year period must be approved by both houses of the legislature.”
Now we need the U.S. House to impose the same type of rules on:
EPA
FCC
IRS
SEC
DOT
FAA
etc
etc
etc
We need to end the permanent, unelected “regulatory state”.
The creation of the regulatory agencies and the granting to them of law-making powers is in fact a transfer, to unelected bodies, the law making powers that are supposed to reside in, supposed to be the obligatory responsibilities of, the legislature.
Are you baiting me or something Norm? What a load of hooey.
Since the MTBE fiasco, there's been EVERY reason to doubt the purity of the ARB. There was proof of the danger of the substance AND that the oil companies knew it.
That was almost twenty-five years ago. Despite that information, the Natural Resources Defense Council secretly gained its approval from GHWB's EPA, and then got CARB to mandate a 15% MTBE gasoline formula for the entire state, when what EPA had mandated was a 5% formula in only two "critical air basins." Mary Nichols was a key player in every step.
CARB is certainly guilty of fraud, gross pollution using a carcinogenic poisonous substance and conspiracy in the MTBE additive scandal, as CARB knew MTBE was a carcinogenic poison, was entirely man made from a formula created by Cal EPA and CARB against official warnings by the chemical and oil companies that CARB/Cal EPA ORDERED and REQUIRED to make and use it.
Additionally CARB/Cal EPA outlawed the non polluting ethanol additive supplied by Archer Daniels Midland that was then being used as the oxygenate additive required in CA gasoline, deliberately shifting billions of dollars in sales from ADM to CARB's rich MTBE making chemical company friends who priced MTBE much higher as all other additives were prohibited by (CARB) law.
A lot of money found it's way back from chemical companies to CARB execs and "scientists" (research, you know) and the politicians that appointed the CARB staff.
I don't know if this fits treason or even sedition, but it certainly fits RICO criminal behavior, big time.
Then, again, DemoRats can commit no crimes in CA ya know, it's just not possible.
LOL.. baiting, nyaaaa.. lol
and then there is this from the Murky NooSe
Opinion: California board shouldn’t retreat on diesel pollution reductions
http://www.mercurynews.com/opinion/ci_16809656
California has succeeded in environmental protection where few other states dared go by clamping down on pollution while building a mighty economy over the past 50 years.
In choreographed synchronicity, air quality improved, jobs multiplied and technology flourished. California not only allowed people to breathe better, but it also enabled innovations such as hybrid cars, low-emitting power plants, and clean paints and solvents. The brilliance of California’s environmental leadership is that regulation has created new markets, which in turn created jobs and saved lives.
So it is profoundly disappointing that the state Air Resources Board is poised to retreat from this formula and roll back health-protective pollution controls that target the most conspicuous pollutant — sooty emissions from big diesel-powered trucks, buses, bulldozers, backhoes and other equipment.
On Dec. 17, the air board will consider repealing its own rules, forgoing diesel pollution reductions that would benefit the breathing public. Specifically, the board proposes to eliminate all requirements for existing diesel-powered construction fleets to reduce their particulate matter footprint; delay compliance so most vehicle fleets do nothing until 2017; and push back deep cuts in smog-forming nitrogen oxide emissions five years until 2022.
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and then there is the case of the chap that miscalculated the diesel numbers..
Some record, an agency basing its agenda on junk science.. wow, shades of the UN
In 2010 we began the work of thinning the rino and rat herd from Congress. The real heavy lifting lies ahead; getting rid of the tyrannical administrative state and statist federal judges.
No, current CARB needs to be DISINTEGRATED, not reformed.
CARB single-handedly drove the water poisoning of California with MTBE by LYING about the benefits and hazards.
CARB are evil. Nothing less. They should be smashed to smithereens. Instead, the CA voters make them the cornerstone of state government. When you have a CA electorate so unfathomably moronic as to take all of the worst, most socialist SF bay area politicians and elect them to state wide office, then your state is flat doomed.
We are absolutely completeley utterly screwed up the dark side. Utterly and completely.
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