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.