The laughingly named state Pollution Control and Ecology Commission today slam-dunked the effort by conservation groups to get carbon dioxide defined as a contaminant. The U.S. Supreme Court thinks that’s a reasonable proposition, and they’re not exactly liberals.

Randy Young of the laughingly named Arkansas Natural Resources Commission dropped a pollution lobby-crafted order on the commission which then duly approved it. The commission didn’t even bother to give the conservation groups’ proposed rule change a formal vote.

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It was just more of the same. This agency has never been about anything but protecting polluters to the extent possible.

What crazy weekly newspaper was it that quoted somebody as saying Gov. Mike Beebe was good on environmental issues? His office’s silence on this issue was deafening. Neither he nor his staff talked to any of the commissioners, many of them gubernatorial appointees, about the issue. Commissioners with conflicts of interest not only voted, but aggressively participated in the debate (see Tom Schueck).

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UPDATE: Yes, I’m reminded by someone with a better memory, the governor has been the recipient of a free jet ride from industrialist Schueck. Schueck and family also gave $9,000 to the Beebe campaign in 2006 and $41,000 to the Arkansas Democratic Party. You think he could get in to see the guv? Also, Schueck is an investor with Jay DeHaven in that Lake Maumelle watershed grass farm land that they hope to flip into a huge profit at ratepayers’ expense with the help of wobbly water commissioners and others.

This same “Pollution Control” group will “deliberate” and vote soon on that poison-spewing coal-fired power plant in Hempstead County, too. Randy Young can give you the vote now. He probably has the order already drafted.

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