Inevitable: Progressive AG’s Attempt to Use RICO to Punish Global Warming Skeptics

New York Attorney General  Eric Schneiderman is leading an effort by 16 Progressive Democrat AGs to somehow use RICO to prosecute companies and individuals on fraud charges who are Global Warming Skeptics.

   Over the past three decades Democrat progressives have increasingly attacked anyone who disagreed with them, calling them Nazis’, climate criminals, cults and other, even more, atrocious names. In their hatred they have demonstrated that they want to shut down all dissenting discourse, effectively denying the First Amendment of free speech to those they don’t believe deserve it. Until now, however, state and Federal Attorney Generals have steered clear of prosecuting skeptics on criminal charges. That has now changed.

   This jaw-dropping phenomenon includes Senators Eric Schneiderman, Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) and sixteen of the eighteen progressive state Democrat Attorney Generals. The AGs call themselves “AGs United for Clean Power.” They are searching for evidence to punish Exxon-Mobil, Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) and as yet undisclosed organizations and corporations under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act. This, in spite of the fact there is zero evidence of criminal activity to justify it. It is raw intimidation of the type that is typically common in tyrannical governments.

   New York AG Eric Schneiderman brazenly declared that if companies are “committing fraud…we want to expose it and pursue them to the fullest extent of the law” using RICO. He then pontificated “The First Amendment does not give you the right to commit fraud.”
 
   Schneiderman should be careful of his inane outbursts. If anyone should be under RICO investigation it should be the federal government. Almost all the claims and horror stories put out as headlines by NOAA, NASA, EPA and other agencies are wrong. Just to mention a one, the earth has not warmed significantly in 19 years. That’s as long as these agencies said was warming from 1979 to 1998. Even the warm 2016 February had nothing to do with global warming and everything to do with a very strong El Niño, which by the way is now collapsing. Expect much cooler temperatures in the near future. El Niño’s have been occurring as far back as records go.

   In addition, The number of hurricanes and tornadoes is actually down the past 10 years. The coral reefs have recovered from the last strong El Niño in 1998. Claims that the sea level is rising at record levels is also false. It is still rising at the same level as has occurred the past 200 years. It used to be the alarmists at least tried to use data that support their end-of-earth claims, but they don’t even do that anymore. Obama’s 2014 eight-hundred page National Climate Assessment is mainly propaganda, hyperbole and misrepresentation of scientific facts that only occasionally connect to the facts.

    But none of that fazes these progressive Democrat attorney generals. One of the more extremist AG’s from the Virgin Islands, Claude Walker grossly committed an abuse of power by subpoenaing the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) for all their emails, records, reports and donors from 1997 to 2007 by the end of April. This is, of course, impossible which will leave CEI in contempt of court and subject to enormous fines.  The subpoena was part of a consortium of radical environmental groups funded by one of the numerous Rockefeller foundations.

The 21 children ages 8 to 19 that filed a federal lawsuit

claiming their Constitutional rights were violated by global

warming.

 That’s not all. In a stunning decision reported by Forbes, Judge Thomas Collins of the US Federal District Court of Eugene, Oregon ruled that for the first time twenty-one children 8 to 19 were granted permission to sue the US and the fossil fuel industry. The lawsuit claims the federal government has known for decades that when used, fossil fuels emit CO2 which is a greenhouse gas. This, according to the suit is a violation of the Plaintiff’s Constitutional and public trust rights.

   Not only is this a false assumption, how could this judge rule in this way knowing that children have little experience in making valid decisions and are notoriously open to false suggestions?  It borders on child abuse. If the court ever found for the children, how would it be implemented? The US accounts for only a part of the CO2 emissions. Far more is emitted by China and Indonesia. Both are building a new coal-fired generation plant almost every week. Would the US have to sue these and other nations? Would we go to war with China? The case is absurd and opens an unbelievable can of worms.

   It is clear that these AGs intend to use taxpayer resources and the justice system to harass, investigate, intimidate, terrorize, and potentially prosecute or even jail global-warming skeptics. Progressives in the US have long salivated over the hope of eventually using the power of the federal government to squash anyone who disagrees with their unworkable, destructive ideology. We have the opportunity of replacing progressives at all levels of government in November. It’s up to all of us to take advantage of it.

Michael Coffman, Ph.D.

Europe Is Meeting Carbon Reductions by Killing Citizens and Destroying Industry

The elderly suffer the most from the high cost of green electricity. Source: Unknown 

 

  For years I have been warning that Europe’s carbon reduction is going to result in an unmitigated disaster. That day has come. The death toll is skyrocketing in Europe. Forty thousand elderly and poor actually died in 2014, at least half because their power was turned off or they just kept their homes cold because they couldn’t afford the electricity. The culprit; energy poverty. Energy poverty is created when the cost of energy exceeds 10 percent of the household income for heat alone. That doesn’t include lights, refrigerator, washer and dryer, dishwasher, vacuum cleaner, television, computer, or anything else–just home heating, just in the months when it’s required. That has forced many of the poor and elderly have to decide whether to eat or be warm.

  Professor Dame Sally Davies, England’s Department of Health’s chief medical officer, said “Excess deaths are not just deaths of those who would have died anyway in the next few weeks or months due to illness or old age. There is strong evidence some of these deaths are indeed “extra” and are related to cold temperatures, living in cold homes as well as infectious diseases such as influenza.”

  Germany’s Focus wrote: “In 2014 Europe suffered about 40,000 winter deaths because millions of people were unable to pay for their electric bills – the so-called energy poverty currently impacts about ten percent of all Europeans. In the past 8 years the price of electricity in Europe has climbed by an average of 42 percent.” (bold original) In Bulgaria people see half of their income gobbled up by energy costs alone. In Spain 28 percent of the citizens live in “energy poverty”. In Germany 7 million households are considered to be living in “energy poverty”.

A comparison of electricity costs from developed nations worldwide. Note that the US has the lowest rate in this comparison, which should make it highly competitive. However, China subsidizes its heavy industry making it the largest steel and aluminum manufacture in the world. 

 

  Overall, Focus reports that ten percent of Europe now lives in energy poverty. Environmentalists have made coal and nuclear power into evil words in Europe, just as they have in the US. In Germany, however, Chancellor Angela Merkel was pressured by environmentalists to shutter all nuclear plants following the Fukushima meltdown in Japan. At the time 35 percent of German power came from these nuclear plants. By 2016 it had been slashed to about 14 percent. It will be phased out entirely by 2022. Energy is becoming a luxury in Europe.

  The production of green energy is grossly inefficient. The Internet news source Handelblatt notes that “The inefficiency is shocking: the renewable energy produced by €25 billion ($28.5 billion) in electricity-bill surcharges this year will only be worth €3.6 billion ($4.3 billion) on the market, according to the economics ministry.” That means people and companies will be charged €25 billion ($28.5 billion) in electrical surcharges that would only cost €3.6 billion ($4.3 billion) using fossil fuels and nuclear. Because of the incredible inefficiency of green power, E.ON and RWE, German’s biggest electrical producers, have to keep their fossil fuel and nuclear power plants going to instantly fill in the loss of green power when the sun goes behind a cloud or the wind stops blowing. Environmentalists know this, but they don’t care as long as they get their coveted green energy.

  The transition to green energy has been devastating. Handelblatt reports that 32,000 jobs have been lost in just two utilities; E.ON and RWE. Thousands more have been lost in the supply chain. Together, both companies have lost 76 percent of their stock value. Of course, local communities supporting the utilities have also been decimated. All at the holy alter of green energy.

Heavy industry is being destroyed in Europe because of the high cost of green electricity. Source: edie.net.

 

  The catastrophe has not been confined to Germany and mainland Europe. England suffered a major shock when England’s largest steel producer, Tata Steel, announced it was selling its entire production facility in Port Talbot. While the lousy economy and cheap Chinese steel account for some of the losses the company faces, the increased electricity costs also plays a big role. The increase in electricity tariffs and alternative energy charges for energy intensive industries is now £390 million ($555 million) annually and climbing.

  These energy intensive industries provide about 600,000 jobs and £52 billion ($74 billion) to England’s economy. England’s Department for Business, Innovation and Skills is working to provide its energy intensive industry an exemption from tariffs and add-on energy renewable costs. So far no plan as to how to make up the economic losses to the government by the exemption has been revealed.

  That, however, may be the least of the government’s concerns. There has been a quiet, but steady investment migration of industry from Europe to other nations like the US where energy is still cheap. The loss of industry will eventually gut the economy of Europe. But the socialists and greenies in Europe really do believe that green energy will eventually pay for itself, ushering in an era of utopia. Additionally, if the huge death toll of the elderly and poor continues because of energy poverty, the current government may be the victim of a voter revolt.

  Environmentalists are not the friend of people. They suffer from some sort of psychosis that blinds them to the enormous destruction they are causing. It is becoming obvious to anyone who has eyes. What they are doing is utterly evil. The enormous political clout they have in the Western World must be neutralized before they send us back to the dark ages.

 

Michael Coffman, Ph.D.

The Road to Regulatory Tyranny II

 

Most citizens are shocked to find out that federal regulations cost our economy nearly an estimated $1.9 trillion annually. That's 11% of the US gross domestic product. It's a huge drag on our entire economy. This is one more reason why it is important to vote wisely this election cycle.

The greatest hit comes from environmental ($386 billion), economic ($399 billion) and tax compliance ($316 billion); areas that impact every person and business in America. To be sure some regulations are necessary and needed. However, these needed regulations are but a small portion of those that actually necessary and needed. Most regulations, however, are lawless (unconstitutional according to original intent), allowing federal agencies the ability to abuse citizens in their jurisdiction.

The information comes from Ten Thousand Commandments, an annual in-depth report on federal regulation by Vice President for Policy Wayne Crews of the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI). Before you continue reading be sure to take your blood pressure medication. A couple of aspirin wouldn't hurt either.

Lest you think this doesn't pertain to you, the study found that if your family is average, your family's share is $14,976, or 29% of the $51,000 expenditures you make every year. That's only slightly less than the $17,148 your family pays annually for your mortgage and maintenance of your home.

Regulations are a hidden tax that falls on everyone, but especially heaviest on the poor. If you never seem to get ahead of the game, it's probably because of the huge regulatory cost making everything much more expensive. Take for instance, small business. In 2014 Congress passed 224 laws (and you thought it was a do-nothing Congress) that were then used by unelected federal bureaucrats to impose 3,554 “final rules” found within 77,687 pages of the Federal Register. Those "final rules" essentially become the law.

If that doesn't overwhelm you, there have been 90,836 final rules since 1993. Worse, the agencies publish 24,000 public notices annually, usually buried in the back of the newspaper somewhere where those impacted won’t find them. Big companies have a bevy of lawyers to keep up with the myriad of new rules. But a small business can't afford that.

Small businesses may not even know about a destructive "final rule" until a zealous agency enforcer or informer rats on them and the business suddenly finds itself out of conformance facing penalties of tens of thousands of dollars a day. Many go out of business, along with the jobs they provide. If they manage to stay in business these companies pass the cost onto the consumer, increasing the cost of living.

There is a benefit to federal agencies promulgating thousands of final rules every year. There is rarely any oversight. Very few of the final rules are accompanied by a cost-benefit analysis. Even if there is, the benefits of the final rules are greatly exaggerated; often by orders of magnitude larger than justified. The examples are legion, yet the agencies are rarely challenged.

Writing for CFACT Paul Driesson states, "Many [rules] are supported only by 'homogenized,' manipulated data; elaborate, imaginative or imaginary regulatory benefits; cavalier dismissal of costs; and no mention of benefits from the activity, chemical, energy source, industry or jobs being regulated, sometimes into oblivion." Obama's War on Coal is a good example. (See the previous blog)

During the Obama administration it has become the rule for agencies to grab as much power as possible; making examples of individuals and businesses as part of the process. If their overreach is challenged in court, and they lose, so what? It is your money they are spending. In the meantime the agency lives to create three new rules for the one they lost in court. It is lawless tyranny.