J.D. Vance is taking heat for comments on “childless cat ladies,” according to the candidate, a reference to anti-family values. Those disturbed by Vance’s comments might check out some “useless fat ladies,” with the understanding that useless doesn’t mean harmless. Consider, for example, attorney Mary Nichols, a veteran of the California Air Resources Board (CARB) and EPA administrator in the Clinton administration.
In that role, Nichols sought to phase out the chemical fumigant methyl bromide, useful in agriculture but suspected of causing damage to the ozone layer. In testimony to Congress, Nichols claimed benefits of 32 trillion dollars. As the late Fred Singer, professor of environmental science at the University of Virginia, recalled:
No one questioned how she arrived at this wild number. A more reasonable value, I argued in my opposing testimony, would be zero benefits: There was no evidence of MeBr, with an atmospheric lifetime of only a few months, reaching the stratosphere; no evidence of a bromine-caused ozone depletion; and no evidence from ground-level monitoring stations of any increase in cancer-causing solar UV.
In 2008, Nichols proclaimed:
We know that the economic crisis we will face from unmitigated climate change could dwarf [sic] anything we have ever seen. That alone is a compelling enough reason to take swift action. But there’s another reason also, which is that developing a new clean energy economy that drives and rewards investment and innovation, creates jobs and serves as the engine for sustainable economic growth is exactly what we need at a time like this.
As so on, but there’s more to this plump prophetess of climate change. At a conference in 1990, Steve heard Nichols proclaim that $5 a gallon for gasoline would be a good thing. Back at CARB under Gov. Jerry Brown, Nichols never saw a gas price hike she didn’t like.
“Gasoline is cheap relative to other things you can buy and relative to overall inflation in the economy,” Nichols explained in 2014, with one of her deputies explaining, “the carbon allowance has to get passed through. That’s the whole point. The consumer feels the impact.” Workers who commute to their jobs might wonder where non-scientist Nichols gets her information.
CARB’s Hien Tran was the lead author on “Methodology for Estimating Premature Deaths Associated with Long-term Exposures to Fine Airborne Particulate Matter in California, the basis for new regulations on heavy duty trucks and buses. State environmental secretary Linda S. Adams contended that Tran held a PhD in statistics from UC Davis. As it turned out, Tran purchased a mail-order PhD from Thornhill University, a diploma mill headquartered in a New York UPS store. Nichols hid the scandal for nearly a year, and after a brief suspension CARB kept Tran on staff as a pollution analyst.
In 2012, Nichols teamed with Assembly Speaker John Perez to exempt CARB from the open meetings act, allowing carbon trading auctions without public scrutiny. Also avoiding scrutiny was the suddenly altered testimony of Susan Hoerchner in the Clarence Thomas hearings. Her lawyer was Janet Napolitano, who legal career should have ended there.
As Arizona governor, Napolitano vetoed seven bills intended to fight illegal immigration and as Department of Homeland Security boss expunged the word “terrorism” from the DHS lexicon. On Napolitano’s watch, the DHS put out Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment, targeting those who champion limited government, individual rights and the Constitution.
As president of the University of California, Napolitano violated the state’s ban on racist admissions (Proposition 209), hiked tuition, and maintained a secret slush fund of $175 million. The Biden-Harris administration has now tapped this partisan Democrat, to investigate the attempted assassination of former president Donald Trump.
Napolitano and Nichols symbolize the bloated administrative state, a voracious consumer of taxpayer dollars that delights in making life miserable for the people. If anybody thought the useless fat ladies are worse than the childless cat ladies it would be hard to blame them.
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2024/09/useless-fat-ladies.php
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