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We know that the Perry cronies who run the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality aren’t terribly interested in basing environmental policy on science. But what about the agency’s top scientists?

(For those of you who want to skip the science-talk, go here.)

At an EPA hearing in Houston last week, TCEQ Chief Toxicologist Michael Honeycutt joined with industry groups in decrying the new, stricter smog standard. New York Times:

At the hearing in a hotel ballroom, Michael Honeycutt, the director of toxicology for the Texas commission, questioned the evidence that a higher level of ozone is linked to more hospital admissions for lung problems.

Mr. Honeycutt also declared that no ruling would fly in Texas if it required people to drive less or change their daily habits.

“Programs that require lifestyle changes are unacceptable to the public,” he said.

Although the Times didn’t mention it, Honeycutt also blasted EPA for relying on epidemiological studies that, in his words, “are not scientifically rigorous” because they assume that most people spend 8 to 24 hours outside each day.

Recently, Honeycutt has been lending his scientific credentials to a number of ozone “skeptics,” including Michael Fumento, a conservative journalist who was fired from Scripps Howard News Service four years ago for not disclosing that he had accepted a grant from biotechnology firm Monsanto.

In an op-ed piece for Forbes.com on ozone “alarmism,” Fumento quotes Honeycutt as saying the eight-hour ozone standard “makes no biological sense. Most people are indoors for 90% of the time.”

Honeycutt seems eager to undercut the scientific basis for the new smog rule, an ambitious task since a highly-distinguished panel of experts unanimously recommended the standard four years ago under the Bush administration.

To be fair, Honeycutt is correct that there are areas of significant uncertainty in ozone science. For example in a 2008 report that drew on a wide body of published research, the National Research Council acknowledged:

Uncertainty about the relationship between outdoor ozone concentrations and personal exposure, especially of persons who spend most of their time indoors or use air conditioning during periods of peak ozone concentrations.

However, in that same report, the NRC affirmed the EPA findings that:

[T]he overall evidence supports a causal relationship between acute ambient ozone exposures and increased respiratory morbidity outcomes resulting in increased ED (emergency-department) visits and respiratory hospitalizations during the warm season.

and

clear and convincing evidence of causality for lung function decrements in healthy children under moderate exertion for 8-hr average ozone exposures.

as well as

strong evidence for a causal relationship between respiratory symptoms in asthmatic children and ozone exposures and between hospital admissions for respiratory causes and ambient ozone exposures.

In other words, there’s little to no doubt that ozone can have a detrimental effect on human health. Indeed, the whole rationale for lowering the smog standard is that the latest science points to unacceptable health risks at the current 75 parts per billion level.

But you won’t hear Honeycutt acknowledge that.

Over at the Environmental Defense Fund, toxicologist Elena Craft points out that Honeycutt, in criticizing the link between high ozone days and hospital admissions, is picking and choosing his studies.

Is it just coincidence that Honeycutt chose to single out these reports from among more than 1,700 papers on the issue? When the EPA’s independent, statutorily-established expert panel, the Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee (CASAC), convened to develop a health-based ozone standard – after examining all 1,700 papers on the issue –the verdict was explicit: a unanimous recommendation for decreasing the primary standard to within the range of 60-70 ppb.

Should we listen to Honeycutt, speaking for a notoriously politicized agency, or should we rely on the nation’s top experts who have spent their professional lives studying the subject?

I think what Honeycutt is doing is deeply cynical, especially for a scientist. If he were acting in good faith he wouldn’t be focusing entirely on areas of uncertainty while ignoring the balance of evidence indicating that ozone is bad for people’s health. But if your goal is to cast doubt on, well, it makes sense.

Honeycutt and his bosses know exactly what they’re doing: trying to confuse the public.

The average person tends to throw up her hands when she hears two groups of scientists arguing over a point, even if it’s a side-debate that does nothing to change the long-settled fundamentals.

It’s just very, very interesting. Honeycutt almost never finds any links between pollution and health effects. He almost always sides with industry. And he never finds a reason for laws to be strengthened.

Take a look at just a few of the examples I found in the Lexis-Nexis news database:

“Benzene levels in Texas shale no cause for alarm,” Greenwire, January 28, 2010:

Air samples taken from natural gas fields around the Barnett Shale in North Texas found elevated levels of benzene at 20 percent of the sites, but the levels were low enough not to prompt immediate concern, state environmental officials said.

[...]

“Based on the data we see, there is no need for widespread alarm,” said Michael Honeycutt, director of TCEQ’s toxicology division.

“Feds studying hazards at Texas cement factory town,” AP, July 17, 2009:

“A lot of people have looked at it over the years, and we just can’t find anything based on the data we have,” said Michael Honeycutt, who oversees toxicology studies for TCEQ.

“People everywhere have asthma, have birth defects, have cancer; it’s not a localized phenomenon.”

“Cancer study spurs 2 bills,” Houston Chronicle, January 20, 2007:

“In the past, our state agency has sometimes appeared to be working for industry,” Farrar said. “The TCEQ just hasn’t seemed to have the political will at the top to enforce our air rules.”

Michael Honeycutt, manager of toxicology at the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, disagrees. Emissions of 1,3-butadiene are now three times lower at a Milby Park monitor than they were in 2003 data used in the new study.

“My point is you don’t have to pass a law to make us do our job,” he said. “We’re doing our job.”

The Texas Association of Business, which has petrochemical company members, is opposed to the legislation.

“Coal plants will cause 240 deaths annually, new report says,” Associated Press, November 22, 2006:

TCEQ chief toxicologist Dr. Michael Honeycutt said in a statement that with TXU’s planned 20 percent cut in emissions, no increase in harmful fine particle pollutants are expected from the new plants.

“Citgo’s Troubled Corpus Plant; As pollution spews, law lags,” San Antonio Express-News, October 1, 2006:

Although the benzene is over the state screening levels, Honeycutt said it really doesn’t pose a major threat, particularly because the Oak Park neighborhood is now abandoned. Even if it weren’t, levels at the Oak Park monitor are roughly equal to those found in a home of someone who routinely parks a car in the garage.

Debra Medina, the insurgent Republican candidate for governor, screwed up big-time on Glenn Beck’s radio show on Thursday. Asked whether she’s a 9/11 “truther,” Medina failed to say that she doesn’t subscribe to the nutty conspiracy theories about the Bush administration having some culpability or knowledge of the deadly terror attacks on the World Trade Center. Instead, she said, “I don’t have all the evidence,” and that “there are some very good questions that have been raised” about it.

Since the 9/11 conspiracy is propounded mostly by left-wing and libertarian nuts, rather than Republican loonies, it’s one of the few conspiracies that Beck doesn’t actively promote. If Medina had gone on the show and said that ACORN stole the 2008 election, or that global warming is a fiction cooked up by socialist one-worlders, she’d have gone over just dandy. But “trutherism” is a no-no for Beck. So he quickly cut off Medina and declared himself ready to “French kiss Rick Perry”—who’d been slammed on the show recently as well.

There are two ways to process Medina’s “truther” comments: either she’s one herself, and trying to hide it, or she was caught off-guard by the question and bungled the answer badly. I’ve spent a lot of time speaking with Medina, in preparation for an upcoming profile, and I have no idea which is true. Nor do I particularly give a hoot. Somehow, it didn’t occur to me that a candidate for governor of Texas should be judged by whether she believes in some far-fetched conspiracy theory about a terror attack.

The more interesting thing, to me, has been the swift and shocked response from the conservative establishment — led, as usual, by Paul Burka, the Texas Monthly blogger, who dashed off a post headlined, “Medina self-destructs on Glen Beck radio show,” his fingers flying so fast that he didn’t take the time to spell Beck’s first name correctly.

Why did Medina’s silly answer about something that has nothing to do with governing Texas mean that she had “self-destructed”? Burka didn’t explain (fingers, again, perhaps flying too fast). The things Medina very clearly stands for — nullification and eliminating property taxes, to name two biggies — are sufficiently radical that you wouldn’t think her supporters would be especially put off by the fact that she wouldn’t take a definitive position on “trutherism.”

As usual, one of Burka’s commenters made more sense than the man himself: “Anonymous” wrote, “Seriously – how is flirting with 911 truthers considered ‘self destructive’ when Medina and Perry are openly embracing secessionists, separatists, and people who threaten violence because of their fringe views? Who is deciding what is acceptable and what isn’t? 911 truthers just litter internet message boards with their garbage. There are actual people bringing guns to rallies and presidential speeches and calling for secession. Why isn’t that self destructive?”

Similarly, we might ask why giving beaucoup millions of taxpayer dollars to the subprime kings, Countrywide Financial, isn’t considered “self-destructive” to Gov. Perry’s prospects. I wouldn’t by any means be thrilled to see Medina in the governor’s office, but in general, I’d be more open to a “truther” (or even a “birther”) than someone who has abused the office the way Perry has.

But Gov. Perry, like Sen. Hutchison, is “acceptable” to the likes of Burka. Medina has wild ideas (along with a few good ones, like calling for a death-penalty moratorium), but her greater crime seems to be that she’s an outsider, a regular person who’s running for office on a shoestring — and thus doesn’t have a staff full of highly paid handlers who might prepare her for the kinds of “gotchas” that the likes of Glenn Beck might toss her way. Or to prepare her for the fact that her ideas about governing Texas might matter less to people like Burka than a stupid answer on a lunatic’s radio show.

Medina’s comments will probably hurt her with some Republican voters. But it won’t be so much the comments themselves that do the damage; it’ll be the media-fueled hysteria driven by Burka and other establishment journalists.

Her campaign tried to do damage-control soon after the flap erupted. Here’s Medina’s statement:

“I was asked a question on the Glenn Beck show today regarding my thoughts on the so-called 9/11 truth movement. I have never been involved with the 9-11 truth movement, and there is no doubt in my mind that Muslim terrorists flew planes into those buildings on 9/11. I have not seen any evidence nor have I ever believed that our government was involved or directed those individuals in any way. No one can deny that the events on 9-11 were a tragedy for all Americans and especially those families who lost loved ones.

“The question surprised me because it’s not relevant to this race or the issues facing Texans. This campaign has always been about private property rights and state sovereignty. It is focused on the issues facing Texans. It is not a vehicle for the 9-11 truth movement or any other group.

“The real underlying question here, though, is whether or not people have the right to question our government. I think the fact that people are even asking questions on this level gets to the incredible distrust career politicians have fostered by so clearly taking their direction from special interests instead of the people, whether it’s Rick Perry and the his HPV mandate or Kay Hutchison and voting for the bank bailout. It is absolutely the right and duty of a free people to question their government. Texas does not need another politician who tells you what you want to hear, then violates your liberties and steals your property anyway. I fully expect to be questioned and to be held accountable as Governor, and that’s the underlying issue here: should people be questioning their government. And the answer is yes, they should be.”

The Department of Homeland Security has suspended its deportations through the Presidio port of entry. Apparently, it was not due to Governor Perry’s last minute letter of concern but because there were not enough immigrants to fill up the two Wackenhut busses they were sending every day from Arizona.

John Waters, publisher of the Big Bend Gazette, dropped me a line yesterday to let me know the feds had suspended the program “for now.” The Gazette had been following the short-lived deportation program since it began in November.

The Gazette reports that Bill Brooks, the border patrol’s Marfa Sector spokesman said the program had been suspended “primarily because the Tucson Sector’s number of daily apprehensions dropped and they could no longer fill a bus with qualified candidates for repatriation.”

The reduction, however, was not due to the border wall or increased surveillance. Brooks cited a “seasonal decline in illegal entries into the U.S. as the main reason for the decreased number of Tucson Sector apprehensions.”

“The program could very well resume at any time,” he told the Gazette.

Larry Swearingen lost another appeal yesterday.

This wasn’t all that surprising. For one, The Court of Criminal Appeals—which turned down his request for more DNA testing before the state executes him—is notoriously hostile to defendants, especially those on death row.

Second, Swearingen has lost many appeals. In fact, he’s nearly been executed twice. His case received quite a bit of attention in January 2009, when a federal court stayed his execution just one day before he was scheduled to die.

And, third, Swearingen isn’t an angel. He has a criminal history, including a conviction for rape, according to news reports.

Still, there’s some compelling evidence that Swearingen may be innocent.

He was sentenced to death for murdering Melissa Trotter, a 19-year-old college student, in Conroe in December 1998.

Swearingen’s defense team, which includes the New York-based Innocence Project, has contended that Swearingen couldn’t have killed Trotter because, at the time of the murder, he was sitting in jail for outstanding traffic tickets.

Six forensic experts have now studied the evidence in the case and concluded that Trotter’s body was dumped in the woods a good while after Dec. 11, when Swearingen was put in jail.

Swearingen’s defense team has repeatedly asked courts to allow them to test DNA samples in the case—tests that might prove Swearingen’s innocence or confirm his guilt. So far, they’ve been turned down every time.

For more on this case, read Lisa Falkenberg’s two excellent columns on Swearingen a year ago in the Houston Chronicle. (You can read them here and here.)

Having lost in the state’s highest criminal court, Swearingen can take his case back to federal court. The question is, will any judge give Swearingen the chance to prove his claims of innocence before the next execution date?

Are you feeling sorry for Wall Street bankers yet? Poor babies; everyone is down on them. First, We the People are steamed that these bailed-out barons of finance are again putting billions of dollars of bonus pay into their pockets. Second, a special national commission is publicly grilling top bankers about the damage their greed has done to our economy.

And third, President Barack Obama is proposing to slap a greed tax on the biggest of the giants. Wow. Three strikes and you’re out, right? In baseball, yes; in bankerball, never.

Such human traits as modesty, shame and personal responsibility are not in the genetic makeup of Wall Streeters, so they have an answer for everything that’s being thrown at them. Start with those bonuses. yes, say the bankers, we’re stuffing ourselves with money that we should be lending to help Main Street recover from the crash we caused, but—hey— we’ve also started a few charities to help, you know, the little people.

So buzz off, killjoy. As for that commission digging into who caused Wall Street’s financial meltdown, the bankers’ answer is unanimous: no one. The jefe of JPMorgan Chase, for example, explained to the commission that a financial crisis “happens every five to seven years. We shouldn’t be surprised.” Uh, this is the worst crash since the Depression—and we are surprised.

And angry.

Then there’s Obama’s tax. Unfair, screeches the Wall Street flock, apparently clueless that their own greed caused the crash, which led to the bailout, which let them grab bonus cash for themselves. That’s the definition of unfair.

Not only should these sorry greedheads have their banks taxed to recover all of our bailout money, but we should also tax all of the bonus pay they’re ripping off.

Find more information on Jim Hightower’s work— and subscribe to his awardwinning monthly newsletter, The Hightower Lowdown— at www.jimhightower.com