“The CEOs who have long ranked California as the least-business-friendly state do so more over excessive regulations than high taxes.

“This regulatory zealotry takes many shapes, afflicting both unlucky individuals and California in general.

“The staff of the Coastal Commission, created by state voters in 1972, doesn’t just throw its weight around by blocking development well inland. It often reflects the contempt for constitutional property rights displayed by Peter Douglas, the self-described “radical pagan heretic” who was the agency’s executive director from 1985 to 2010. …

“But it is the recklessness of the California Air Resources Board that has been most consequential. Instead of using cost-benefit analyses to gauge the impact and appropriateness of regulations, the air board now is hostile to the idea that regulations even have an economic downside. This is especially so since Mary Nichols began her second stint as executive director in 2007. … The history of AB 32, the state’s landmark anti-global warming law, couldn’t be more instructive.

“The first-in-the-nation 2006 legislation — which forces a gradual shift to cleaner-but-costlier types of energy — contains a provision allowing a governor to suspend the law in case it is hurting the California economy. This was included because Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, lawmakers of both parties, economists and business interests were worried that if AB 32 didn’t inspire the rest of the world to follow California’s lead, the state would be left with uniquely high energy costs that would make it difficult to compete economically with rival states and nations.

“But when the rest of the world didn’t follow the Golden State, extremist defenders of the law rewrote history by depicting it as a job-creation measure designed to be an engine of economic growth. The air board assisted the campaign with an upbeat 2008 economic forecast of AB 32’s likely effects that was scorned as unrealistic and misleading by Harvard’s Robert Stavins, the world’s leading environmental economist. … .”

The air-board ‘scientist’ who ‘studied’ under a fugitive pedophile

The essay also gave me the chance to bring up the still-incredible story of Hien Tran, who to this day works at a high-paying job at the air board.

“In late 2008 and early 2009, the U-T editorial page documented that costly, far-reaching air board rules to sharply reduce diesel emissions were tainted by academic fraud. They had been overseen by Hien Tran, a staffer who lied about his academic background and then later offered as evidence of his qualifications a Ph.D. from a diploma mill associated with a fugitive pedophile.

“But Nichols refused to fire Tran — only suspending him without pay for two months. She knew of Tran’s deception when her agency’s governing board voted to approve Tran’s diesel rules but chose not to tell most board members about it until 11 months after they voted to approve the rules.

“Soon afterward, the concerns about a lying researcher playing a key role in crafting onerous regulations turned out to be amply justified. In April 2010, several California news organizations reported that emission rules the air board adopted in 2007 for off-road diesel vehicles were based on computer models that grossly exaggerated the emissions. Tran was a primary author of a 2006 study that encouraged the board’s 2007 regulatory decisions.

“He still wasn’t fired. He remains on the air board staff, making $91,500 annually as an air pollution specialist.”

Hien Tran, you need to understand, is doing his bosses’ bidding. That his Ph.D. was from Thornhill, aka FPU (Fugitive Pedophile University)? That’s a minor detail.

By Chris Reed

As soon as I heard EPA chief Lisa Jackson was leaving, I took to Twitter to predict state air board chair Mary Nichols would be considered a hot candidate for the job, as she was in 2008. When the San Francisco Chronicle got around to this angle Saturday, I expected the usual cheerleading. Instead, lo and behold, it acknowledged the Hien Tran scandal that I broke after being tipped off by UCLA epidemiologist James Enstrom — and the Chronicle framed it as the worst thing to happen on her watch:

“Either way, if nominated, it’s likely we’ll hear about some of the not-so-great air board moments under her leadership. Among those is how she handled a researcher whose work supported a major diesel exhaust regulation and who was found to have lied about his scientific credentials.

“Nichols didn’t tell all of the board members about the falsification before they voted to approve a regulation based on his research. Also, he was never fired.”

I began writing about this story in December 2008. When I established that Hien Tran didn’t have the Ph.D. he claimed from UC Davis, it was the lead item on Rough & Tumble one afternoon. Afterwards, it disappeared from California’s mainstream media for a few months, even as I broke the news that the degree Tran presented the air board with was a mail-order Ph.D. from Thornhill University, a diploma mill associated with, yes, a fugitive pedophile.

Thankfully, in March 2009, Lois Henry of the Bakersfield Californian started writing great columns that did a powerful job of demolishing Tran’s rotten science. John and Ken had me on to talk about the scandal and eventually even gave James Enstrom a platform to explain how he figured out Tran’s deceit.

Finally, after a September 2009 air board meeting at which the full governing board was confronted with evidence of Tran’s fraud, did the bleep begin to hit the fan.

Finally, Mary Nichols was held to account for keeping the Tran scandal from a majority of the board even as it voted for highly controversial diesel emission rules based on his work.

Even then, it still took a month for the mainstream media to tackle the story, and when they did, Dan Walters wrote a dishonest column excusing Sacramento journalists for not taking the scandal seriously a year earlier when I broke it.

But now it could cost Nichols an EPA seat. The story of how Tran kept his job while Enstrom got fired for rocking the boat would be riveting at a Senate hearing — and the background information is plentiful on the web.

Yo, Mary: karma time!

Nov. 5, 2012

By Chris Reed

It was four years ago yesterday that the California Air Resources Board sent out a letter that marked the beginning of an amazingly juicy and revealing scandal that the Los Angeles Times and San Jose Mercury-News chose to ignore — a scandal that the Sacramento Bee later tried to pretend it hadn’t ignored.

In the Nov. 4, 2008, letter, state Secretary for Environmental Protection Linda S. Adams responded to S. Stanley Young of the National Institute of Statistical Sciences, based in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina. Young had questioned the expertise of the authors of an air board report on the purportedly extreme health risks posed by tiny airborne pollutants contained in diesel emissions. Adams wrote that Young was off-base:

“Regarding the professional background of the authors, the lead author and project coordinator, Hien Tran, holds a doctorate degree in statistics at the University of California at Davis …”

Except he didn’t, as I established seven weeks later. (I had been contacted by UCLA epidemiologist James L. Enstrom, who worked with Young in questioning Tran’s credentials.) But for months, no California newspaper, except the editorial page of my newspaper, the U-T San Diego, covered this undeniable scandal. This greenout occurred even though Rough & Tumble had my blog item on Tran’s deception as its lead story for several hours on Dec. 23, 2008.

Truth kept from CARB leaders for nearly a year

Incredibly, most of the governing board of CARB didn’t hear about Tran’s deceit from the staff of air board chair Mary Nichols for nearly a year.

What followed the events of December 2008 was a slow-unfolding debacle in which Enstrom became a martyr for scientific integrity and Tran turned out to be the perfect symbol of CARB arrogance and media incompetence, unprofessionalism and bias.

Tran did have a statistics Ph.D. — a mail-order document (shown above) from an online degree mill with a mailing address that matched a New York City UPS office and that was associated with a fugitive pedophile named Avrohom Mondrowitz.

But Tran didn’t get fired by CARB. He only got suspended without pay for two months and demoted. He now makes $87,492.52 a year as a CARB pollution analyst.

Given that the rules for diesel particulates that Tran crafted were costly and controversial, isn’t this a perfect storm for a scandal gleefully detailed by a media eager to heap scorn on some really bad public servants? How can the pedophile link not be irresistible?

Media were air board’s partner in deceit

Well, when you’re as deeply in the green tank as most of the people covering CARB, it’s plenty resistible.

(The San Francisco Chronicle did a solid job. But, incredibly, it didn’t depict “Thornhill University” as a diploma mill. It called it a “distance learning” institution.)

The L.A. Times has never mentioned Hien Tran in its pages. The Mercury-News never covered the scandal either, with Tran only mentioned in two columns by non-Merc writers.

And when the scandal finally broke wide open, the Sacramento Bee — the newspaper of record for state government — tried to rewrite history. In December 2009, after CARB’s governing board publicly confirmed Hien Tran’s lies, Bee columnist Dan Walters said the scandal had received “a couple of brief media mentions.” In his front-page story, Jim Sanders of the Bee said that Tran’s lies had been detailed by “bloggers.”

Actually, as Nexis confirms, I’d written about it over and over again on the pages of the UT San Diego — a total of 10 editorials and columns. Lois Henry, star columnist for the Bakersfield Californian, had also covered it thoroughly. I pointed this out to several people at the Bee. None thought it was worth correcting. Why? Because the Bee’s account made the Bee look good, but not the truth.

This is your mainstream media, California. I don’t know what we did to deserve this.

I was asked on a radio show a few months ago how on Earth reporters could actually promote the bizarre CARB claim that arbitrarily increasing the cost of energy via AB 32 would somehow help the economy.

I replied that nothing is beneath California’s environmental journalists — starting with those at the L.A. Times and Mercury-News.

Consider the amazingly juicy basics of the Tran scandal:

* Costly, controversial pollution rules were crafted by a guy who lied about his scientific background.

* The liar’s mail-order degree came from a bogus institution linked to a fugitive pedophile.

* The liar not only didn’t get fired, he continues to write state regulations.

* His leading academic critic did get fired (by UCLA).

* The boss of CARB didn’t tell members of the governing board about the scandal until forced to nine months later by comments made at a public hearing.

Air board boss the luckiest woman in the world

If the L.A. Times and Mercury-News didn’t think this was worth sharing with their readers, their reporters and editors are capable of infinite distortions on behalf of their green gods and their friends at the air board.

CARB Director Mary Nichols is the luckiest woman on Earth. In any responsible organization, her handling of the Tran scandal gets her fired. But here in California, she’s a media hero who could soon become a Cabinet member if President Obama wins re-election.

If that happens, I hope someone brings up Hien Tran in the confirmation hearings — so the L.A. Times and Mercury-News can ignore him all over again, and the Sac Bee can pretend once again in its coverage that its staff wasn’t part of a shameful media cover-up.