Coalition of Energy Users Petition to Abolish CARB

WHEREAS: CARB is an unelected and unaccountable bureaucracy whose actions have killed jobs and harmed our economy.

WHEREAS: CARB has committed serious ethical lapses with its failure to terminate an employee with falsified credentials, failure to withdraw costly regulations based on this employee’s faulty research and failure to account for millions in funds designated for AB32 implementation.

WHEREAS: CARB has abused its power by levying millions of dollars in disproportionate fines on business owners who have not violated existing laws or who have committed only minor technical oversights.

WHEREAS: CARB has proposed or implemented policies that infringe on our right to make our own decisions and run our own lives. Examples include proposed taxeson vehicles CARB does not approve of, mandatory programmable thermostats, imprisonment for not inflating our tires and penalties for dissent.

WHEREAS: CARB continues to move forward with plans to mandate increased ethanol usage despite overwhelming evidence that ethanol will significantly raise fuel costs without improving the environment.

WHEREAS: CARB has promised its actions will lead to a prosperous new green economy that has failed to materialize but that have instead turned California into a national leader in high unemployment.

BE IT RESOLVED: CARB should be abolished! We need jobs and a healthy economy, not punitive and unfair regulations!

OPINION

This site is dedicated to a grassroots effort with the sole purpose of convincing California law makers to disband The California Air Resources Board. Why are we doing this? Because the California Air Resources Board (CARB) is a rogue agency that is causing harm to the environment and to the working people of this state.

8500 California Teachers Fired to Fund Rogue State Agency--Truckers Next!

We need to get started now. The first step is making contact with your Representatives and asking them to support this effort. If they agree, they will be praised here. If they do not they will be exposed. We are asking that you write a letter, send an e-mail or fax to your representative in the State Assembly and State Senate, then send us both your letter and the reply that you get. Those will be posted here. You will remain anonymous if you state that is what you want. To get started, click on the link to the lists of Members of the State Assembly and Members of the State Senate. Next, find your representatives and make contact. It is important that you act now!

Your tax dollars fund CARB. In fiscal year 2007-08 they got $722 million for 1172 employees. In fiscal year 2008-09 they got $650 million for 1272 employees, and in fiscal year 2009-10, your state legislators and the governor fired over 8500 teachers in the state in order to give $857 million to this outrageously corrupt state agency and its 1280 employees. Why? Easy. Follow the money. The CARB payroll is loaded with political friends of the legislators. Hundreds of these worthless so-called public servants collect hundred thousand dollar salaries and pension benefits that working families can never expect. CARB is also in bed with organizations that steer many millions to the campaign coffers of the legislators. Why otherwise would the legislature keep CARB alive and growing --- and rob the youth of California of the education they deserve? When the state is bankrupt, teachers are losing their jobs, millions are out of work, and the legislature gives CARB billions of dollars to waste on its fraudulent campaigns and regulate the working people as if they are criminals spoiling the environment. Of course, CARB must manufacture a new "health crisis" every year to justify its existence.

CARB is demanding that perfectly good diesel engines in the state be replaced with less efficient engines that will actually add to the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. They are doing this based on a flawed report by a fraudulent CARB employee. They claim a $70 billion savings in health care by destroying these engines. Their own summary document shows that there is no proven link between diesel particulate mater and cancer. This action is based on "indications" and "suggestions"! As if that is not enough, the 20 billion dollar price tag will place a financial burden on an estimated 30 thousand business owners and will put many of them out of business--it is estimated that 150,000 jobs could be lost if these companies pull up stakes and move from California. Comments from noted scientists and the public sent to CARB regarding Hien Tran's report are contained in a supplement to the report and were for the most part ignored by the board.

Here are some other CARB highlights:

Reformulated Diesel Fuel: Do you remember when CARB mandated that Diesel Fuel be reformulated without adequate testing in the 1990's? The new fuel damaged thousands of diesel engines in the state and over ten million dollars of state funds were used to replace many of the damaged engines. You the taxpayers and working people paid for this. Bet your legislators never told you about this. But they fired 20,000 teachers in the state recently because they wasted your tax dollars on fraud agencies like CARB where they have placed their friends and political cronies on the payroll until the next election.
MTBE: Over $30 million paid out by working families over ten years for extra 20 to 30 cents a gallon. Estimated $20 billion dollars more to clean up ground water around the state that is contaminated with MTBE. CARB has an army of professional liar "public information officers" who spread the CARB propaganda to keep the CARB agency budget growing every year. They spent ten years lying to both the legislature and the public about the "benefits" of MTBE in your gasoline. Finally, the legislature had to ban MTBE in your gas when scientists proved that it was a poison to our environment and you. The average working family was forced to pay out over eight thousand dollars over ten years for the MTBE poison in their gasoline in California. (They would have over $12,000 in the bank today for their childrens' education if that money had been saved and invested).
Electric Car mandate: CARB set the American automotive industry back by ten years in developing hybrid cars because CARB would not allow them as zero emission or low emission cars while CARB insisted on demanding that 5% of cars in California had to be electric cars. Only after they were forced to admit that the electric cars were a fraud, did they allow hybrid cars. By that time the Japanese manufacturers were way ahead of America. That has cost the American workers in the auto industry over 200.000 jobs and crushed the industry.
Hien Tran Fraud: Hien Tran lied about having a PHD from U.C. Davis but really purchased his degree at a diploma mill. Tran was the project coordinator and lead author of a report entitled “Methodology for Estimating Premature Deaths Associated with Long-term Exposure to Fine Airborne Particulate Matter in California.” This report was the main support document of a draconian regulation proposed by the CARB that would cost California diesel users billions of dollars, a cost that eventually the consumer would pay for in higher food, construction and transportation costs. These costs would be incurred in the retrofitting of almost all diesel engines for on- or off-road, even relatively new ones, with new pollution controls for the sole purpose of limiting particulate matter as small as 2.5 microns (PM2.5). Although there have been some epidemiological studies in the past that claim there is a health risk, those studies were highly speculative and done with poor data. In fact, there is a significant study that says that PM2.5 is not a health risk in California.
Tran's problems started with the completion of the first draft report when Dr. S. Stanley Young, the assistant director of Bioinformatics at the National Institute of Statistical Sciences, came to his attention. Dr. Young fired off a letter to Gov. Schwarzenegger, writing in part, “I note that none of the authors are professional statisticians. Some are trained in epidemiology. It is useful to know that the track record of epidemiologists in the use of statistics to make claims that are reproducible is very poor. Their claims fail to replicate 80-90 percent of the time (Ioannidis, JAMA, 2005). Their recommendations, most likely wrong, are projected to be very costly.

As punishment for his lie, Tran was suspended for 60 days and took a pay cut. He still works at CARB.
CARB's "Forbidden Speech" regulation: Sounding like something from George Orwell, CARB was poised to adopt a regulation that literally “forbids” and “penalizes” opposing views. The resolution, which CARB dubs, “prohibition on false statements,” is frightening in that it would actually sanction communications to the agency during hearings or in the presentation of studies that CARB disagrees with. Apparently, CARB’s legal staff missed that whole bit on the First Amendment. The first hearing on CARB’s proposed regulation was scheduled for December 1st, 2010. According to CARB’s website, the hearing has now been postponed until next year. Moreover, the proposed regulation providing for “penalties” for false information has been removed from CARB’s website.
CARB's 340% Overestimation: The California Air Resources Board went above and beyond in screwing up their diesel regulations based upon “grossly miscalculated pollution levels” of 340% over reality. Yes, you read right, 340%. Was this stupidity? Gross negligence? Gross incompetence? Outright fraud? All of the aforementioned? Read and decide for yourself.

Coalition of Energy Users Petition to Abolish CARB

8500 California Teachers Fired to Fund Rogue State Agency--Truckers Next!

Here are some other CARB highlights:

A Speech by Tom McClintock

Links to more information about CARB: