Unlike the House, where the strength is in building coalitions, individual senators have a lot of power — the place runs almost entirely on unanimous consent. Personal relationships matter and senators don’t respect those they don’t respect or those who can’t keep their promises.

Especially in an increasingly partisan world, the ability to make friends across the aisle is key in the Senate. For example, Boxer was successful on transportation legislation because she was able to find common ground with Sen. Jim Inhofe, R-Okla., with whom she disagreed with on almost everything else.

“Relationships are very important in a Senate that runs on consensus,” said Jim Manley, former spokesman for Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev.

Sanchez, an Orange County congresswoman, is running against fellow Democrat Kamala Harris, the state Attorney General and frontrunner in both polling and fundraising, as well as two former state Republican party chairs, Duf Sundheim and Tom Del Beccaro.

Harris, Sundheim and Del Beccaro all lack prior legislative experience. Sanchez says she’s the only candidate who is “ready to hit the ground running on Day 1.” While her time in the House would give her a structural advantage (if elected) over other freshman, the issues any of them would be able to fight for would be largely determined by their committee assignments.

Committee Assignments

The Senate as an institution puts a lot of value in seniority — it’s how committee assignments and office space are doled out. It used to be culturally important too, when new senators were expected to stay quiet and learn for a year, although that’s waning in modern times.

Committees are where senators do the vast majority of their work. Bills usually go through committee before heading to the floor. So senators need to either usher their bills through committee themselves or have someone who sits on the committee usher it through for them.

While candidates talk about what they’ll do when they get to Washington, it really comes down to what committees they are assigned to. In fact, instead of going to Washington to change the world and push a laundry list of party priorities — as candidates often talk about on the campaign trail — the first few years are spent getting on the good side of their committee chairs and ranking members, rising in seniority, gaining clout by cosponsoring bills and working with others, becoming an expert in a policy and then finally starting to move legislation through committee.

The leadership determines assignments. Senators will request what committees they want to be assigned to, but the caucus leadership will decide assignments based on expertise and need.

Manley said that Reid, who is retiring, used to spend a great deal of time post-election working with the new senators to fill spots based on where the vacancies were, making sure committees were adequately represented by the different regions of the country, and of course taking into consideration what the new members want — although there were no guarantees.

Senators usually serve on at least three committees, and prior experience is a factor. There’s a good chance that a state attorney general like Harris would be assigned to the Judiciary Committee. And there’s a good chance Sanchez would be assigned to Armed Services or Homeland Security & Governmental Affairs Committees, since she currently serves on similar committees in the House.

With Boxer leaving, there will be an opening on the Environment and Public Works Committee, which is a prime spot for a Californian as this committee has jurisdiction over roads and environmental policy. So a Californian could make the case for this assignment based on regional representation. And a nod from Boxer could help too.

Boxer will also leave an opening on the Foreign Relations Committee, where senators can boost their foreign policy credentials — a nice launch pad for a presidential run, if any of them feel so inclined (as the saying goes: every senator sees a future president when they look in the mirror).

Former or current members of Foreign Relations are: President Barack Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, Secretary of State John Kerry, Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., and Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky.

History

In the old days, the motto was freshman should be seen and not heard. In fact, the maiden speech was a big deal — freshman wouldn’t speak on the floor for a year.

The tradition has eroded over the years. In 2015, Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., waited just a few months into his term to deliver his maiden speech. And Sen. Ben Sasse, R-Neb., made news by actually waiting a year — the only freshman in a class of 13 to do so.

How will experience help?

Besides Sanchez, none of the top candidates have legislative experience. But, according to Manley, Harris’ time as AG gives her other experience, like running a large department and being decisive.

Structurally, Sanchez’s 19 years in the House gives her an advantage over other freshman, since multiple senators are sworn in on the same day. Ties in seniority need to be broken somehow.

Priority is given to former senators, then former members of the House, then former presidents, vice presidents, cabinet members and governors. If none of those apply, then it falls on population of the state. And if that doesn’t work, it goes by alphabetical order.

Sanchez has served with many current senators over the years, since many were elected out of the House. She’s also served on conference committees (when the two chambers come together to work out the differences between the House version of a bill and the Senate version). She’s also served on the Joint Economic Committee, which has members of both chambers on it.

But her experience and existing relationships alone may not get her more respect on the other side of the Capitol. Sanchez would have to prove herself just like the others.

“You either demonstrate you have the chops or not,” said Manley.

Read more: “Sanchez: Don’t Touch the Filibuster“

“But while the public’s attention has been on his diplomacy in the Middle East, behind the scenes at the State Department Mr. Kerry has initiated a systematic, top-down push to create an agencywide focus on global warming.

“His goal is to become the lead broker of a global climate treaty in 2015 that will commit the United States and other nations to historic reductions in fossil fuel pollution.”

Things must seem pretty warm in the countries he visited, mainly warm places like India and Vietnam. Except here’s a headline:

India Suffers Through Coldest Winter In 44 Years…

Even the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change now admits there has been a “hiatus” in global warming for 15 years. “Hiatus” is a euphemism for: global warming stopped.

But back in the country he represents, here are today’s headlines from the Drudge Report, beginning with a report from Kerry’s home area:

BLAST: UP TO 30″ OF SNOW IN NEW ENGLAND…
HISTORIC FREEZE: WINDCHILLS 70 BELOW ZERO?
MINNESOTA 'WORST' DEEP FREEZE IN 20 YEARS...
SUNDAY COLDEST GAME IN HISTORY?
WINDCHILLS MAY HIT -50°
‘EXPOSED SKIN FREEZES IN 15 MINS’…

It’s long been conventional wisdom that little, if anything, can be accomplished in the nation’s capital. The government shutdown, essentially a worst-case scenario of gridlock, only further reinforces the point. Story after story shows how toxic relationships, divided government, and polarized constituencies have made the last few years particularly unproductive in Washington, D.C.

Meanwhile, California — under a one party, filibuster-proof rule — is undergoing rapid transformation, ill-advised or not. Scores of bills affecting virtually all Californians were passed.

One policy area in which California — home to Silicon Valley — has significantly sped up change is online privacy. Gov. Jerry Brown has signed several bills that make important changes to online privacy law, an area that has seen little action in D.C. Even more interestingly: the California legislature actually passed each online privacy bill with either unanimous or significant bipartisan support.

In September, Brown signed into law legislation that would give minors an “eraser button” for online activity. Currently, social networks like Facebook and Twitter allow users to delete posts; the law requires all websites to allow minors to delete content they generated — and to clearly explain how to go about it. The bill passed the Assembly 62-12 and the state Senate 38-0.

On October 1, on the same day the partial federal government shutdown began, Brown signed into law a bill that would make posting “revenge porn” — the practice of sharing nude pictures from a previous romantic partner online — a crime. The bill passed unanimously in the Senate. Only Assemblyman Tim Donnelly, R-Twin Peaks, opposed the measure in the Assembly. Although critics charged that the law is filled with potential loopholes that make prosecution difficult, most hailed it as at least an imperfect step in the right direction.

AB370

The most substantive legislation that’s became law, though, is AB370, a bill signed into law last month after passing through the Senate and Assembly unanimously. The Verge explains how the law works:

[AB 370]…requires internet companies that collect personally identifiable information to declare how they respond to Do Not Track requests. The idea is to pressure advertising networks like Google's AdSense and Facebook's FBX to be more transparent about how they track users' activity around the web.

Currently, users can only ask companies not to track their activity without knowing whether or not the company will comply. The law forces the companies to do so. It’s a popular law among internet privacy advocates who have hoped for federal legislation that would address the problem….

Brown's signature comes as Do Not Track's future has been called into question at the national level. Earlier this month, a key online advertising industry group pulled out of discussions to create a national Do Not Track standard. The Digital Advertising Alliance, a trade group that represents advertisers, said discussions with the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) had “reached the end of [their] useful life.” It was the latest in a series of setbacks that has seen the W3C miss multiple deadlines to craft a final proposal for the Federal Trade Commission and Congress to review.

Gov. Brown, a man who has always harbored national political ambitions, likely will not make another run for president. But he hasn’t given up on trying to affect national politics. Whether or not Do Not Track legislation gains traction at the federal level will be testament to just how powerful Brown’s voice remains on the national stage.

Currently, no federal lawmakers have announced plans to advance such legislation. It last had a chance in 2011, when Sens. John Kerry, D-Mass., (now the secretary of state) and John McCain, R-Ariz., pushed a bipartisan reform bill.

“I’m a student of history, and I love to go back and read a particularly great book like Kissinger’s book about diplomacy where you think about the 18th, 19th centuries and the balance of power and how difficult it was for countries to advance their interests and years and years of wars. And we sometimes say to ourselves, boy, aren’t we lucky. Well, folks, ever since the end of the Cold War, forces have been unleashed that were tamped down for centuries by dictators, and that was complicated further by this little thing called the internet and the ability of people everywhere to communicate instantaneously and to have more information coming at them in one day than most people can process in months or a year.”

What an elitist. He longs for a world when the Elite, like him, “process” everything, and the rest of us are left out. He continued about the Internet:

“It makes it much harder to govern, makes it much harder to organize people, much harder to find the common interest, and that is complicated by a rise of sectarianism and religious extremism that is prepared to employ violent means to impose on other people a way of thinking and a way of living that is completely contrary to everything the United States of America has ever stood for. So we need to keep in mind what our goals are and how complicated this world is that we’re operating in.”

Actually, the Internet makes it easier for people to “find the common interest.” Just 20 years ago, it was difficult to find libertarian publications. Now it’s easy to find such sites as LewRockwell.com and Antiwar.com. Of course, those sites relentlessly criticize him. So I can see why he doesn’t like it and wants to go back to the days of the Elite controlling information.

As to “a rise of sectarianism and religious extremism,” there’s been a lot of that over the ages. Nothing new. But except for North Korea, we no longer have the secular regimes that murdered tens of millions of people in the last century, especially religious people. Even Castro’s Cuba is pretty tame now. That’s largely due to the communications revolution. It’s a lot harder to perpetrate an Auschwitz or a Gulag today because people would write about it on the Internet, and Google Maps would provide satellite pictures.

Elitists like Kerry don’t like losing control. Well, they lost control — and it’s gone for good.

By John Seiler

California leads in state implementation of Obamacare. In 2010, then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed legislation making our state the first to set up the “insurance exchanges” that are supposed to make the system work (except it’s having big problems). He said at the time, “For national reform to succeed, it will be up to the states to make it work, and California is moving forward on reforms that will provide affordable and quality health care insurance.”

He should have told that to then-Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., now the U.S. secretary of state. When the U.S. Congress passed Obamacare in 2010, Kerry was interested in one thing: Ripping off the patients in the other 49 states, leaving them to suffer and die painfully, as he shifted their health-care money to his state. He was following the path of his fellow Democratic senator from Massachusetts, Teddy Kennedy, who had died a year before, in 2009. Teddy spent his 47 years in the Senate obsessed with imposing socialized medicine on America, and fell just a year short of seeing it done.

Massachusetts also imposed the socialist Romneycare a decade ago under then-Gov. Mitt Romney, a Republican rejected last year by voters in his presidential bid. Voters figured that, as Romneycare inspired Obamacare, there wasn’t much difference between the two candidates.

Kerry’s con

Anyway, here’s what happened thanks to John Kerry — who, like Teddy and Mitt, is fabulously wealthy, so he always could buy expensive private medical care in Switzerland. Kimberley A. Strassel writes:

“Everyone remember the origins of the so-called Affordable Care Act? The Cornhusker Kickback, the Louisiana Purchase, Gator-Aid, and other buyoffs for the votes of key Senate Democrats?

“Three years on, yet another sweetheart deal has declared itself, this one inserted by the then-senator for Massachusetts. In Congress, it’s becoming known as the Bay State Boondoggle.

“At issue are the dollars that Medicare pays to hospitals for the wages of doctors and staff. Before the new health law, states were each allocated a pot of money to divvy among their hospitals. The states are required to follow rules in handing out the funds, in particular a requirement that state urban hospitals must be reimbursed for wages at least at the levels of state rural hospitals.

“Enter Mr. Kerry, who slipped an opaque provision into the Obama health law to require that Medicare wage reimbursements now come from a national pool of money, rather than state allocations. The Kerry kickback didn’t get much notice, since it was cloaked in technicality and never specifically mentioned Massachusetts. But the senator knew exactly what he was doing.

“You see, ‘rural’ hospitals in Massachusetts are a class all their own. The Bay State has only one, a tiny facility on the tony playground of the superrich—Nantucket. Nantucket College Hospital’s relatively high wages set the floor for what all 81 of the state’s urban hospitals must also be paid. And since these dramatically inflated Massachusetts wages are now getting sucked out of a national pool, there’s little left for the rest of America. Clever Mr. Kerry.

“The change has allowed Massachusetts to raise its Medicare payout by $257 million, forcing cuts to hospitals in 40 other states. The National Rural Health Association and 20 state hospital associations in January sent a panicked letter to President Obama, noting that the Massachusetts manipulation of the program would hand that state $3.5 billion over the next 10 years at the expense of Medicare beneficiaries everywhere. They quoted Mr. Obama’s former head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, Donald Berwick, admitting that ‘What Massachusetts gets comes from everybody else.'”

Arnold’s role?

One question I have: What role did Schwarzenegger play in all this? As I noted in my review of “Governator,” the biography of Arnold by Ian Halperin, at the end of his term in office, Arnold basically was tired of it all and let his wife, Maria, make most of the decisions. Maria of course is Maria Shriver-Kennedy, niece of Teddy, and of President JFK and Senator RFK.

So was she the one who turned Arnold’s original opposition to Obamacare, calling it a “ripoff” in Jan. 2010, into signing the implementation bills in Oct. that year?

We also know that the Schwarzeneggers were suffering marital problems in late 2010, and would split the next year when it came out that Arnold had a love child from the family maid.

In such a situation, it’s hard to see Arnold going against Maria on the sweetheart deal set up for Massachusetts, no matter how much Californians suffered.

This is another indication that, to Arnold, the people of California, to use a catch phrase of his from the end of “Commando,” are “Juszt bodiez.”

By John Seiler

The old Soviet Union tyranny tightly controlled Xerox copiers. Every machine had to be registered with the government, which kept copies of the printouts. Each copier had a “footprint” that’s different from other copiers. So if someone used a particular Xerox machine to print criticisms of the government, the person could be tracked down and imprisoned.

Once-free America now is like that. The U.S. State Department just banned distribution of blueprints for making a gun on a 3D printer. The Guardian:

“The US government has blocked a Texas-based company from distributing details online of how to make a plastic gun using a 3-D printer.

“The ban, by the State Department citing international arms control law, comes just days after the world’s first such gun was successfully fired.

“Defense Distributed, the company that made the prototype, stated on Twitter that its project had ‘gone dark’ at the instigation of the government….

“Fifteen of the gun’s 16 pieces are constructed on the $8,000 Stratasys Dimension SST 3D printer, Forbes said. The final piece is a common nail, used as a firing pin, that can be found in a hardware store.”

But the ban came after about 100,000 copies of the blueprint had been downloaded. Right away, the blueprints were available at Pirate Bay and other sites in freer countries. So, like a samizdat smuggled out of the USSR, the 3D blueprint already have popped up on sites out of the reach of the USSA.

The State Department is so bumbling it couldn’t prevent its own personnel from being killed in Benghazi, which ongoing hearings are investigating.

Secretary of State John Kerry has been shown to be the pompous incompetent he is. President Brezhnev Obama has been shown as out of touch with new technologies his autocracy seeks to control, but can’t. And attempts to pass new anti-gun laws in California and elsewhere have been proven irrelevant.

Here’s a YouTube of how the gun works.

Following that is a copy of the ukase issued by the Supreme Soviet.

————————————————

United States Department of State

Bureau of Political-Military Affairs

Offense of Defense Trade Controls Compliance

May 08, 2013

In reply letter to DTCC Case: 13-0001444

[Cody Wilson’s address redacted]

Dear Mr. Wilson,

The Department of State, Bureau of Political Military Affairs, Office of Defense Trade Controls Compliance, Enforcement Division (DTCC/END) is responsible for compliance with and civil enforcement of the Arms Export Control Act (22 U.S.C. 2778) (AECA) and the AECA’s implementing regulations, the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (22 C.F.R. Parts 120-130) (ITAR). The AECA and the ITAR impose certain requirements and restrictions on the transfer of, and access to, controlled defense articles and related technical data designated by the United States Munitions List (USML) (22 C.F.R. Part 121).

The DTCC/END is conducting a review of technical data made publicly available by Defense Distributed through its 3D printing website, DEFCAD.org, the majority of which appear to be related to items in Category I of the USML. Defense Distributed may have released ITAR-controlled technical data without the required prior authorization from the Directorate of Defense Trade Controls (DDTC), a violation of the ITAR.

Technical data regulated under the ITAR refers to information required for the design, development, production, manufacture, assembly, operation, repair, testing, maintenance or modification of defense articles, including information in the form of blueprints, drawings, photographs, plans, instructions or documentation. For a complete definition of technical data, see 120.10 of the ITAR. Pursuant to 127.1 of the ITAR, it is unlawful to export any defense article or technical data for which a license or written approval is required without first obtaining the required authorization from the DDTC. Please note that disclosing (including oral or visual disclosure) or tranferring technical data to a foreign person, whether in the United States or abroad, is considered an export under 120.17 of the ITAR.

The Department believes Defense Distributed may not have established the proper jurisdiction of the subject technical data. To resolve this matter officially, we request that Defense Distributed submit Commodity Jurisdiction (CJ) determination requests for the following selection of data files available on DEFCAD.org, and any other technical data for which Defense Distributed is unable to determine proper jurisdiction:

1. Defense Distributed Liberator pistol
2. .22 electric
3. 125mm BK-14M high-explosive anti-tank warhead
4. 5.56/.223 muzzle brake
5. Springfield XD-40 tactical slide assembly
6. Sound Moderator – slip on
7. “The Dirty Diane” 1/2-28 to 3/4-16 STP S3600 oil filter silencer adapter
8. 12 gauge to .22 CB sub-caliber insert
9. Voltlock electronic black powder system
10. VZ-58 sight

DTCC/END requests that Defense Distributed submits its CJ requests within three weeks of the receipt of this letter and notify this office of the final CJ determinations. All CJ requests must be submitted electronically through an online application using the DS-4076 Commodity Jurisdiction Request Form. The form, guidance for submitting CJ requests, and other relevant information such as a copy of the ITAR can be found on DDTC’s website at http://www.pmddtc.state.gov.

Until the Department provides Defense Distributed with the final CJ determinations, Defense Distributed should treat the above technical data as ITAR-controlled. This means that all such data should be removed from public access immediately. Defense Distributed should also review the remainder of the data made public on its website to determine whether any additional data may be similarly controlled and proceed according to ITAR requirements.

Additionally, DTCC/END requests information about the procedures Defense Distributed follows to determine the classification of its technical data, to include aforementioned technical data files. We ask that you provide your procedures for determining proper jurisdiction of technical data within 30 days of the date of this letter to Ms. Bridget Van Buren, Compliance Specialist, Enforcement Division, at the address below.

Office of Defense Trade Controls Compliance

PM/DTCC, SA-1, Room L132

2401 E Street, NW

Washington, DC 20522

Phone 202-663-3323

We appreciate your full cooperation in this matter. Please note our reference number in any future correspondence.

Sincerely,

Glenn E. Smith

Chief, Enforcement Division

By John Seiler

One of the more insufferable things about living in Washington, D.C., a hideous place I barely survived between 1982 and 1987, was being subjected to Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen. His knee jerked faster than Pele’s.

He’s still at it. A recent column on gun control was titled, “Why not arm the kids?” It’s supposed to be ironic.

But even though he’s 72, he doesn’t know that public schools once commonly sponsored gun clubs. Back when I attended it, 1970-73, Wayne Memorial High School in Michigan sponsored such a club. I didn’t join it because I was in other clubs. And my father, a captain of ordnance in the U.S. Army in World War II who knew weapons like Heifitz knew his violin, took my brother and me shooting every couple of months. So we learned from a real expert.

I still remember the gun club kids walking around school with their rifles. Given how easy it was to get ammo back then, they could have blown away a lot of people if they wanted to. They didn’t. They were good kids.

But if some psycho had opened fire with guns like in Columbine back in 1999, the gun club kids would have fired back and ended the massacre posthaste. Maybe that’s one reason such mass school killings were more rare back then.

Unfortunately, because of anti-gun hysteria in recent years, almost all gun clubs have been expelled from school.

So Cohen thinks he’s being ironic, but isn’t. He’s just being ahistorical. Now that he’s brought it up, let’s bring back gun clubs in every high school in the country.

Even Secretary of State John Kerry belonged to the Rifle Club at his high school.

By WAYNE LUSVARDI

Are babies being damaged by too much perchlorate in the water? Should the amount be reduced by a mouthful of a bureaucracy, the Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment, part of the California Environmental Protection Agency?

New regulations could cost Californians billions as the state finally is rising from a deep three-year economic recession. Moreover, according to reputable scientists, there are no proven health benefits from reducing the level of perchlorate in drinking water from an infinitesimal 6 parts per billion to 1 part per billion, as proposed by OEHHA.  The science behind the OEHHA’s proposed new standard smacks of the recent scandal in the Delta Smelt court case.

Repeating the Delta Smelt Case?

From 2007 to 2010, water agencies such as the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California jacked up water rates by about 34 percent due to a court-ordered drought to protect a fish in the Sacramento Delta. But federal Judge Oliver Wanger eventually found that the environmental science on which the case was based was bogus and the government scientists were “zealots.” None of the water agencies across the state repealed their rate hikes — even though the drought was contrived. Water ratepayers are still not laughing.  In fact, they didn’t even get the joke. They just got stuck with a higher water bill.

And now the California OEHHA wants to lower the level of perchlorate in drinking water from 6 parts per billion (ppb) down to 1 ppb.  That is equivalent to one drop of water in an Olympic size swimming pool. But this is what might be called “dark humor.”

As Bill Romanelli of the Perchlorate Information Bureau wrote to me in an email: “The real issue on this is that given that there are no public health benefits in going from 6 ppb down to 1 ppb, it’s an unjustifiable expense regardless of the ‘solution.’  Drilling further down, the problem is one of cost.  The stricter the standard, the more ‘clean’ water is needed to dilute the supply, and the costs can go up geometrically (and will be borne by customers).”

Like California’s contrived court-ordered drought, reputable scientists are saying the new perchlorate standard is scientifically indefensible. Dr. Richard Pleus, toxicologist and managing director of Intertox consulting in Seattle and adjunct professor in the Department of Pharmacology at the University of Nebraska Medical Center, wrote in an email to me, “The [scientific] record demonstrates that, in over 60 years of research, no study has reported adverse effects on human health with exposure to environmental levels of perchlorate.”

But will water agencies have to build costly new treatment plants to comply with this new standard, only to find out much later that the scientific basis of the new rule is bogus? This is what happened in California’s infamous “wet” drought.

Perchlorate does not cause cancer, nor is it a poison.  Perchlorate is suspected to cause a nutritional deficiency of iodine in the fetus and infants. The perchlorate compound is roughly the same shape and has the same negative chemical electric charge as iodine (iodide).  Thus, perchlorate is believed to be capable of blocking absorption of iodine in the thyroid gland.  Iodine is needed for natural growth and educational development and can be obtained from fish and other foods.  Perchlorate occurs naturally. And it is industrially added to fireworks, solid rocket fuels and road flares as a booster because it is oxygen rich.

Perchlorate has been selected for regulation partly because it has an image of “rocket fuel.” And the deep pockets of industries can be made to pay mega millions to clean up groundwater basins without any direct cost to taxpayers or drain on the state budget.  But products such as soy that have a “green” image and no deep pockets haven’t been regulated. Neither have products that have a “home made by mom” image such as breads with bromide.  Yet industrial perchlorate is the perfect target for regulators.

The Bureaucratic Vetting Process

In California, the approval of a Minimum Contaminant Level (MCL) for an environmental substance goes through a 10-step process before being adopted into law.  The first five steps involve internal scrutiny by the California Environmental Protection Agency. The five steps follow the administrative departments dealing with regulations, budget, finance, health, and law must put the law on the books.

Once approved, the rule is published in the California Regulatory Notice Register.  The publication signals the start of a 45-day comment period.

Once the comments have been received, an additional 15-day public comment period is held before the final rule is drafted for review by the director of the California EPA.  If the rule is signed, there is a 30-day review by the Office of Administrative Law.

If the new rule advances that far, it is then filed with the Secretary of State and is enacted into law in 30 days.

California is presently in the process of reviewing comments and undertaking a scientific peer review before forwarding the new rule to the head of the state EPA.

Bureaucratic Kangaroo Court?

But unlike the Delta Smelt case, there will be no impartial judge, no evidence code to comply with and no cross-examination. Instead there will be public comments and a peer review by a panel of scientists hand-picked by the OEHHA bureaucrats.  Unlike picking a jury, there will be no way to challenge the selection of a peer reviewer.

The peer reviewers are not peers drawn from the community, as in done in court juries. The OEHHA has picked them from other states.

The bureaucratic review process is not democratic.  There are no checks and balances in the review process.  The governor can’t veto an adopted new standard.  A lawsuit to strike down an environmental regulation as unconstitutional would be difficult and costly.

The Lockheed and Kerr McGee corporations sued OEHHA in 2002 by claiming that they were legally entitled to a second scientific peer review of the perchlorate level proposed at that time.  The judge in the case ruled that the two firms’ request for a second opinion was valid and ordered such.

The Proponents and the Opponents

In favor of more costly and unrealistic standards are: Clean Water Action, the Environmental Working Group, National Resources Defense Council and Citizens for Safe Water.

The NRDC is the same organization that filed the 2006 lawsuit in California to protect the Delta Smelt fish based on bogus science. Teresa Heinz Kerry, former senator and the wife of Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., has provided past funding for the Environmental Working Group.  Clean Water Action is a group of self-described activists, lobbyists and community organizers in San Francisco.

Opposed to more costly and unrealistic new standards are: the Association of California Water Agencies, the East Bay Municipal Water District, the Riverside Public Utilities Department, San Bernardino County, Golden State Water Co., the Perchlorate Study Group, the Partnership for Sound Science and Environmental Policy, the U.S. Department of Defense, numerous agricultural associations, Health Risk Strategies consulting and Exponent Science and Technology Consulting.

Ask yourself whom you trust the most: your local water agency, which is accountable to you to keep water rates low — or activists, lobbyists, and community organizers?

Who Are the Science Peer Reviewers?

None of the three science peer reviewers was asked to evaluate the costs versus the benefits of reducing the level of perchlorate in drinking water.  Their review was confined to strictly narrow scientific and statistical issues concerning the proposed 1 ppb new standard for perchlorate in drinking water.

All three of the science peer reviewers are well qualified. None of them can be characterized as “zealots,” as were the scientists in the Delta Smelt case.

But why OEHHA picked three out-of-state science peer reviewers, when there are so many equally or more qualified scientists in California, is a question. The three peer reviewers selected by the OEHHA are:

* Dr. Andrea Kirk, PhD., professor of environmental health at North Texas University.  Dr. Kirk has made $470,426 from research grants mainly on studying perchlorate levels in breast milk.  Her science peer review of OEHHA’s new rule can be found here.

* David Rich, Sc.D., MPH, is a professor at the Department of Community and Preventive Medicine at the University of Rochester Medical Center in New York.  His principal focus of research has been on strokes, diabetes and growth defects in the unborn triggered by air pollution.  Rich’s one science paper on perchlorate was co-authored with eleven other researchers. It found no evidence of lack of iodine (iodide) or deficiencies in weight, length, or head size in newborns due to perchlorate.  I couldn’t find where Dr. Rich mentioned this in his peer review of OEHHA’s new perchlorate standard.  Rich’s science review of the OEHHA new rule can be found here.

* Stephen H. Lafranchi, M.D., is a baby doctor and professor at the Oregon Health and Science University. It might be questioned why a medical practitioner was selected.  His science review of OEHHA’s new rule can be found here. 

None of the peer reviewers was asked to indicate whether perchlorate is more or less a health threat to the unborn and infants than such foods as soy, broccoli, Brussels sprouts and bromate in bread, all known also to block iodine absorption.

Neither were the researchers asked to indicate whether reducing the level of perchlorate in drinking water from 6 ppb to 1 ppb would result in demonstrably greater health benefits to vulnerable subpopulations, other than mere statistical projections.

The reviewers were also not asked whether it would be more effective to reduce perchlorate to 1 ppb in drinking water by costly treatment methods, instead of just ingesting added iodine by eating cheap iodized salt, as has been done for decades.  To answer this question might pose a threat to the livelihoods of perchlorate scientists and the public health bureaucracies that regulate it.

Iodine Supplements

The U.S. EPA’s Office of Inspector General essentially stated in a 2010 scientific analysis of perchlorate that ensuring proper prenatal supplementation of iodine in pregnant women, rather than individual chemicals, was the best approach.

The reviewers were not asked if there could be what is called a “confounding variable” — alcohol consumption during pregnancy — that could be a contributing cause of retarding or intellectual deficits in children.  Statistics don’t separate out mothers who alcohol drinkers from non-drinkers; or healthy babies from those born with congenital defects.

Most of the perchlorate studies involve measuring iodine or perchlorate levels in milk or blood, or perchlorate levels in drinking water.  There never has been a long-term comparison and control study of whether educational deficits in children significantly decreased in a community that has reduced perchlorate levels in its drinking water.

All the past cleanups of perchlorate in drinking water have focused on underground water basins where perchlorate gets trapped. Perchlorate on the ground surface can get diluted by rain and rendered relatively harmless.  Contaminated water from a well mixed with uncontaminated water in pipelines can be diluted to an acceptable level. As the old saying has it, “The solution to pollution is dilution.”  That is, unless you move the acceptable level of perchlorate to near zero, which is what the OEHHA is proposing.

Intertox: No Scientific Basis to New Rule

Intertox, a scientific consulting firm in Seattle specializing in toxic exposures, prepared scientific comments to OEHHA’s new perchlorate standard for the Environmental Study Group.  The Environmental Study Group is an association of industries that have been subject to perchlorate regulation. On its website, Intertox lists that it has worked on both sides of environmental risk assessments — both for the government and for defendants in toxic lawsuits.

Intertox is especially well qualified with perchlorate safety standards.  Intertox experts co-authored the definitive study assessing health risk exposure to perchlorate.  Intertox’s comments to OEHHA’s new rule is here.

Intertox states that reducing the level of perchlorate in drinking water from 6 ppb to 1 ppb is “unlikely to have a public health benefit.”  Intertox additionally concludes that perchlorate, a natural substance, can’t be compared to other potentially toxic substances such as mercury, beryllium, nickel and simazine.

Instead, perchlorate should be compared with other food substances that can block iodine absorption in young children such as soy, broccoli, Brussels sprouts and bromide in bread.

Intertox concluded that the most vulnerable population segment to perchlorate exposure — pregnant women and their babies — were protected under the existing standard by a factor of three times what would be considered safe.  The new standard would increase the safety factor to 10 times the safety level, without proven reductions in birth defects or educational deficits.

The California OEHHA’s own document, “Public Health Goals for Chemicals in Drinking Water — Perchlorate,” dated March 2004, states that there is no scientific justification for increasing the safety margin from 3 to 10 times the safe level for infants (p. 86).

Who Will Be Affected?

As shown in the table below, it will mainly be Southern California that will be affected by reducing the Maximum Contaminant Level (MCL) of perchlorate in drinking water from 6 ppb to 1 ppb.

Active and Standby Sources with Perchlorate Detections — 2002 to 2007

A 2005 study conducted by the National Academy of Science concluded that perchlorate in drinking water below 245 ppb does not have a measurable effect on human health.

None of the drinking water sources or systems shown in the table above is close to the threshold of 245 ppb.  The lowest is 5.4 ppb and the highest is 100 ppb, with an average of 40.1 ppb.

The level of perchlorate in the Colorado River Aqueduct is about 6 ppb.  The Colorado River Aqueduct serves all of Southern California.  This massive system would now need to construct costly treatment plants to remove perchlorate.

A 2004 study conducted by Kennedy/Jenks Consultants indicated that the cost to comply with a lower Public Health Goal (PHG) of 4 ppb of perchlorate from water wells would be from $1 billion to $2.2 billion over 20 years.  The cost to reduce perchlorate to a level of 1 ppb.  Nor was the cost to treat Colorado River Aqueduct water included.

You’re Next

If the safety level for perchlorate is dropped to 1 ppb, it likely won’t be just single-point sources of perchlorate, such as water basins, that will be targeted.  It is likely that fertilizer in home lawns that contain nitrates will eventually be the next target for regulation. Nitrates are also suspected as a potential blocker of endocrine glands. Say goodbye to your lawn and rose garden.  You may be added to the list of “baby killers or retarders.”

A Ph.D., thesis in 2008 titled “Nonpoint Sources of Nitrate and Perchlorate in Urban Land Use to Groundwater: Suffolk County, New York,” found low-level sources of perchlorate in lawns, sewage systems, turf grass and road runoff.  If acceptable perchlorate levels are going to be reduced to 1 ppb in drinking water, it won’t be long before homeowners will also be regulated.

A Matter of Cultural Values, Not Science

Environmental scientist William Cooper has asked the question, “What does it mean to reduce the level of some potential contaminant to effectively zero?”  His answer is not solely a scientific issue, but one of cultural values and what is acceptable risk.

Paraphrasing Cooper:  “Is the cup half empty or half full?  You can view the existing 6 ppb standard as a ‘license to kill’ or as regulatory overkill. What you will find that you do risk assessment for human health is that it is halfway between black magic and a Ouija board.  It basically comes down to common sense and judgment.  You cannot print money fast enough to solve all the environmental problems to the level of zero risk.”

Science has evolved to be able to measure substances that heretofore were undetectable at infinitesimally low levels. But science is not mere measurement.  Nor is it the ability to make statistical predictions that are not validated in the empirical world.  There is too much measurement and statistical projection and no valid evidence anywhere in the scientific record, or otherwise, of adverse effects from low doses of perchlorate.

How did a dietary and nutritional problem of mostly pregnant mothers and infants morph into a huge scientific and water treatment industry that proverbially strains at gnats — parts per billion of perchlorate in drinking water — but ignores swallowing a camel — alcohol consumption during pregnancy or other food substances?  Why is it science to measure the amount of perchlorate in drinking water approaching a zero limit and its statistical probability, while avoiding the monitoring of the actual number of children with retardation or educational deficits exposed to perchlorate in the real world?  Has “regulatory science” become a substitute for real science?

The uncertainty factor in minute low dosages of any environmental substance is bound to be high.  Common sense dictates that marginally lowering perchlorate levels from 6 ppb to 1 ppb won’t result in demonstrable health benefits.  If lowering perchlorate to a near zero level is a cultural value, then why do we entrust this decision to a bureaucracy that, like all bureaucracies, can be self-serving?

Perchlorate wasn’t “discovered” in California until about 1985.  Most of the major contamination sites are already in the process of being cleaned up.  What are left are the low-level sites. In a time when the governor is downsizing state agencies and the state budget has been running deficits, is it beyond questioning whether the OEHHA’s actions are a protection of bureaucratic turf more than public health?  Can government bureaucracies just unilaterally impose costs on private industries without any proven health benefit?  Where are the checks and balances to expansionist government bureaucracies?

Elite vs. Mass Politics

This is why nearly anything having to do with environmental regulation in California reflects elitist politics. There are little to no checks on the power of agencies regulating the environment.  There is no ballot initiative that could invalidate the OEHHA’s standard to reflect the “will of the people.”  The courts have not provided an adequate check and balance to expansionist policies of government bureaucracies.

If the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association reflects mass politics, the OEHHA reflects elite politics. That is why California’s environmental agencies, regulations and projects often are the playground for elites and the politically well connected.

The Fable of the Bear and the Hunter

At the end of David Woodbury’s novel, “You’re Next on the List: A Satire on Modern Bureaucracy,” is the following fable:

“Once upon a time a hunter cornered a bear in the wilderness and took careful aim at close range.  Just before he was about to pull the trigger, the bear held up a paw and said: ‘Wait a minute, Mr. Hunter, there’s no reason you and I can’t negotiate this matter and coexist peacefully. After all, you want a fur coat and all I want is a full stomach.  So let’s sit down and talk it over.’

“Being a typical American who knows there’s nothing to be hurt by sitting down and talking things over, the hunter agreed. So they sat down and negotiated. And both did get what they wanted. The bear got a full stomach and the hunter got a fur coat.”

Moral: You can’t negotiate with the California Bear about the nutritional standard of bears of 1 ppb — one person per bite — that is based on the bear’s self interest, not science.

We have a lot or super-rich candidates and office-holders now: Schwarzenegger, Whitman, Poizner, Fiorina, that wrestling lady in Connecticut, John Kerry (got his money the old way: married into the Heinz catsup fortune), the Bushes, etc.

They run for office, have a jolly old time, yet face no consequences if they wreck the country or state.

Here’s a better idea: If they win, they sign a document stipulating that if, during their time in office, the state, country, city, etc. gets worse, all their fortune is taxed at 100%. It’s gone.

So, given that Arnold has been a total disaster, all his hundreds of millions would go to the state treasury. If Whitman fails, same thing. John Kerry’s money would have been forfeited to the U.S. Treasury because his time in office has seen the worst Depression since the Great Depression. And so on.

On the other hand, if the economy grew during a politician’s term in office, he could keep his money. So, Reagan, JFK and other successful politicians could have kept their money.

If this policy were adopted, you can bet these super-rich politicos would be more careful with their policies. As things now stand, it’s only the “little people” — you and I — who get hammered whenever their crackpot schemes end in inevitable disaster.

Let them put their money where their ambitions are.