Free Republic

California Air Resources Board's cap-and-trade program auctions While the state of California is extracting billions of dollars from businesses and utilities through the California Air Resources Board’s cap-and-trade program auctions, the Legislature can’t decide how to spend the billions. Instead, lawmakers have been arguing over how to direct the monies into their own districts on some rather dubious projects, and predictably, on public transit and light rail trains. Gov. Jerry Brown has his own dubious project: He carved out more than $1 billion of cap-and-trade revenue for his unpopular high-speed-train-to-nowhere.

SACRAMENTO (AP) - Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger named the chair of the state's pioneering Air Resources Board as his new Environmental Protection Agency secretary Thursday, sticking with an environmentalist for the top pollution-control post. Alan C. Lloyd replaces Terry Tamminen, a former Santa Monica-based environmental activist who moved up last month to become the governor's Cabinet secretary. Lloyd, 62, has chaired the California Air Resources Board since 1999. The board has repeatedly pushed for the nation's toughest air standards, drawing challenges from the automobile industry and federal government that it is infringing on federal interstate regulations. The latest lawsuit was filed...