As my buddy and I sat outside Peet's, on our 17th or 18th "Spare The Air Day" we experienced what must qualify as a "World Class/Guinness Book of Records" optical illusion, or maybe it was a mirage.  As we raised our eyes to the sky, squinting into the bright blue sky, even with sunglasses we found we could read the registration numbers on the balloons wafting their way south from up valley.  Probably between 1500 and 2000', but wait, as our eyes continued upward, we found ourselves counting contrails of the out-bound traffic from Oakland Airport, probably at about 20,000 +/- at this point.  But how could this be???  The little pointy headed, parasitic, non elected bureaucrats from Air Quality Control told us we were covered by a disgusting brown/yellow layer of SMOG which would send us all to the hospital in full respiratory arrest, and even televised pictures of the air over Richmond and Benicia refineries, and of the 80/680/880/280 interchange at the Bay Bridge to "prove" their point.  Would the government lie to us??  Of course not, they just use selective numbers and extrapolate it across nine counties. Remember when you first heard that "figures don't lie, but liars can figure"?  

Come on people wake up!  Are we so caught up in our own little world of Face Book, Twitter, and whatever the latest fad is now, we are going to allow these non-elected role riders to lead us around by nose rings like a lobotomized herd of lemmings?  Several weeks ago the Register carried a news article quoting a former employee of "Big Bother of All Things Air" in which, in a role which I suppose qualifies him as a "Whistle Blower"  he alleges they (Big Brother) are in essence, cookin' the books.  Is anyone surprised by this allegation?  Non-elected bureaucrats have to work even harder than our elected pols at keeping their jobs. If they don't continually expand by convincing you they have a real job, someone might decide, or is it realize, they're superfluous?    Some of you must remember several years ago when there was a move afoot to ban all wood burning. Fortunately, reason prevailed, however, like any good entrenched cabal of those feeding at the public trough, they just found another way.  Since they can't get a total ban, they'll just have to get along by declaring "no burn days" one day at a time.  Besides now, they'll have to expand their fiefdom by hiring more role riders to write no burn day press releases and certainly someone to set up a computer program to store their press releases, daily day counts, and fudged figures.  What next?  A task force to decide on an alphabetical list  of gender neutral, politically correct names for each declared day?  Have to make room for that in the new computer program too.

One last thing. In today's paper, side by side, were two articles. The first notes a "Red Flag Warming" has been issued because of high winds and high fire danger.  The second declares another "No Burn Day" because of stagnant air.  Can someone explain, with a straight face, how you can have high winds and stagnant air at the same time in the same place??   Isn't there one lawyer out there who is hungry enough to pull together a class action suit and lance this boil on the publics' posterior before it gets any sorer?

You can't imagine how Sincerely,

Charlie Kampton