"When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying the cross."
-- Sinclair Lewis
Friday, October 16, 2020
"That's A Little Unusual"
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Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) presented a must-watch civics seminar during the Amy Coney Island Baby confirmation hearings. It was a little less than half an hour long but it really should be watched by every American, especially those wondering what all the noise is about around Coney Island Baby's nomination.
An antiquated seniority system among Senate Democrats puked up an incompetent and senile Dianne Feinstein as the completely ineffective leader of the Democratic efforts to derail ACB. Instead Feinstein, exposing Chuck Schumer as the anti-reform Senate leader he is. Whitehouse of Dick Durbin should have been leading the effort.
I had just returned to the U.S. from living almost 4 years abroad when I first heard of Dianne Feinstein. She was a member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors at the time-- a putative Democrat, but in reality the conservative Republican in all but name on that body. Harvey Milk was also a member and we were close enough friends for him to rail against her after nearly every meeting. Anyway, long story short, Feinstein is conservative and corrupt and I never voted for he when she ran for supervisor, nor for mayor-- I supported Jello Biafra-- nor for governor, nor for senator. Last time she ran I worked to try to elect progressive state Senator Kevin de León, who took 5,093,942 votes to her 6,019,422 (which included many Republicans, since there was no one from their own party in the general election). She won 18 counties-- including most of the big ones-- to de León's 40 counties (including Riverside, San Bernardino, Fresno and Kern). There was plenty of monkey business from the Democratic Party establishment on her behalf but she was reelected. But that shouldn't mean a doddering fool should be placed in an important position simply because of seniority.
The Washington Postreported Feinstein's remarks as the hearing wrapped up: "This has been one of the best set of hearings that I’ve participated in. It leaves one with a lot of hopes, a lot of questions and even some ideas perhaps of good bipartisan legislation we can put together." She then thanked Lindsey Graham and walked across the room-- maskless-- and hugged him, also maskless.
“It’s time for Sen. Feinstein to step down from her leadership position on the Senate Judiciary Committee,” Brian Fallon, the executive director of Demand Justice, said in a statement. “If she won’t, her colleagues need to intervene.”
His organization, which opposes conservative judicial nominees, accused the senator of undermining liberals’ calls for a filibuster and court reform, “straight through to thanking Republicans” for what it called “the most egregious partisan power grab” in the high court’s modern history.
...That she praised Graham’s oversight of the process, and then got up and hugged him, was simply the final provocation for many liberals.
“That she can say this about this ongoing travesty,” said Jon Lovett, a former aide to President Barack Obama and co-host of Pod Save America, “is another sad statement about how poorly represented we are by Dianne Feinstein.”
...[I]n recent years, the 87-year-old senator has often gotten more attention for her gaffes. Last year, she was panned on Saturday Night Live for a now-infamous interaction in which she dismissed a group of schoolchildren asking her to advocate for the Green New Deal.
In 2018, during the Senate confirmation hearings for Brett M. Kavanaugh, she drew intense scrutiny for waiting weeks to publicize sexual assault accusations against him from Christine Blasey Ford. The California Democratic Party denied her its endorsement that year, though she easily beat back a more liberal challenger.
Even before the Senate took up another nomination this month, Democrats expressed concerns that Feinstein-- the oldest lawmaker in her chamber and the second-oldest in Congress-- had grown too disengaged to fight the GOP tooth-and-nail over the future of Ginsburg’s seat.
Republicans, too, denounced Feinstein, seizing on comments she made about Barrett’s religious “dogma” during the judge’s confirmation proceedings for the 7th District U.S. Court of Appeals.
...[M]any observers on the left gave her failing marks. She did not, for example, put up much of a battle against Graham when the committee was not at quorum, they pointed out.
“I don’t care that Feinstein and Graham are friends,” wrote Susan Hennessey, executive editor of the Lawfare blog. “I care that Feinstein catastrophically mismanaged the hearings, was outwitted without realizing it, and did a grave disservice to the public.”
Others slammed Feinstein for offering positive praise to Graham as he is locked in a tight race against Jaime Harrison, a former South Carolina Democratic Party chair who has shattered fundraising records in recent months.
Many began floating ideas for ways to force her out of the Senate Judiciary Committee, especially if the Democrats take the White House: Vote her out. Replace her with Rep. Katie Porter (D-CA) Appoint her to a Cabinet position. Send her to Paris!vv
Or, as the comedian Billy Eichner said: “Time to retire.”
And, by the way, ProgressivePunch has given Feinstein's voting record a solid "F," only 13 Democrats voting against progressive roll calls more frequently-- none of them in safe blue seats the way she is. Please watch White House's tutorial and imagine what might have happened if Schumer had appointed him ranking member instead of Feinstein.
by Noah I'm glad Senator Whitehouse has said what he said (above), but it's horrifying to me that it has taken more than two years for even a handful of people in Washington to even begin talking about Donald Trump's obvious severe mental illness and treachery. During the 2016 campaign, any reasonable person could look at any two minute segment of any Trump speech or interview and see that he was not just 25th Amendment material but a strong candidate, not for the presidency, but the nuthouse or a federal penitentiary. So, now, more than two years too late, we get small doses of words but no action. It's the new thoughts and prayers in the face of another national emergency, and the Washington establishment and their establishment media hack brethren talk about who might defeat Trump in 2020 when the possibility of him even getting to run for reelection should be obliterated. This is the definition of complacency and being complicit.
It's Not Just Trump-- The Whole GOP Has A Really Bad Way Of Dealing With The Concept Of An EPA
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Remember when Trump finally fired Scott Pruitt as EPA head? Did you think he’d find someone less antagonistic towards the environment to replace him? Of course you didn’t. And he didn’t. He named a former coal lobbyist, Andrew Wheeler, as the acting chief and on Friday he announced he’ll submit him to the Senate as the EPA head. Yesterday Brady Dennis and Juliet Eilperin, writing for the Washington Post, broke the not unexpected news: Trump plans to nominate Andrew Wheeler, former coal lobbyist, as EPA chief. The move, of course “would ensure a continued deregulatory push at the agency.” If anything, Wheeler will continue to be far worse than Pruitt… and Pruitt was a complete catastrophe.
During his brief tenure as the EPA’s acting chief, Wheeler has proved far different from the man he replaced. Where Pruitt was a politician who appeared to enjoy the limelight and trappings of Cabinet life, Wheeler has long worked behind the scenes on energy and environmental policy and generally avoids public attention. Along with Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar and Veterans Affairs Secretary Robert Wilkie, Wheeler represents the sort of technocrat who has risen through the ranks after an initial Trump Cabinet pick stumbled.
But Wheeler and his predecessor have this in common-- a zeal to deregulate. Wheeler made clear from the start that he intends to carry out many of the regulatory rollbacks set in motion under Pruitt, and to pursue new ones. “I will try to work to implement the president’s agenda,” Wheeler told the Washington Post shortly after he took over the reins at the EPA this summer. “I don’t think the overall agenda is going to change that much, because we’re implementing what the president has laid out for the agency.” In the months since, Wheeler has continued to advance Trump’s agenda, proposing rules to loosen carbon limits on power plants and relax fuel-efficiency standards for cars and light trucks. Those proposals, along with moves to change the way the agency calculates the health benefits of new air-pollution standards, have sparked sharp criticism from environmental and public health groups. ...Just this week, Wheeler announced a plan to impose stricter limits on nitrogen-oxide emissions from heavy-duty trucks, winning praise from the trucking industry and the American Lung Association. Wheeler, like his predecessor, undoubtedly will have the support of industry. ...Wheeler stands a strong chance of winning Senate confirmation, though his nomination is still likely to spur debate. He won approval for his current job in April on a 53-to-45 vote, with three Democrats supporting his nomination. At the time, several Democratic senators questioned his past work for Murray Energy, one of the nation’s biggest coal companies, as well as mining companies and other energy interests.
Two of the three ultra-conservative Democrats who voted for Wheeler’s confirmation last April were defeated in their reelection bids-- Joe Donnelly (IN) and Heidi Heitkamp (ND). It never pays for Democrats to suck up to Trump because Republicans aren’t going to vote for them anyway and by deflating base enthusiasm they wind up losing anyway. Rhode Island Senator Sheldon Whitehouse: “I hoped Scott Pruitt’s policy dirty work would dry up after he left the EPA in disgrace, but proposals like the forthcoming rule to weaken or eliminate protections against mercury emissions make it clear Andrew Wheeler plans to continue... with rollbacks of vital environmental protections."
Do Senate Democrats Want to Block Kavanaugh? Feinstein Withholds Damaging #MeToo Document from Fellow Democrats
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Subtract Anthony Kennedy from the image above and add Brett Kavanaugh. Thanks to Senate Democrats, he's as good as confirmed. This is your Supreme Court for the next generation (source; click to enlarge)
by Gaius Publius
Updated below.
In years to come, when Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, smart as a whip and Koch brothers–ideologue to the core, spearheads destructive 5-4 decision after tragic 5-4 decision, blame Senate Democrats for what the nation will suffer under. Our constitution-as-practiced is about to change radically, starting as soon as October, thanks to Senate Democrats.
They should be playing the strongest card in their hand, which is a full, immediate and open release of all documents in their possession to the public. Instead, they're acting as enablers.
First, it's clear that Senate Democrats are all aligned to protect their pro-Kavanaugh, certain-to-confirm-him colleagues like Joe Manchin, Heidi Heitkamp and Joe Donnelly:
Liberal critics say Schumer is giving Kavanaugh a pass, and Republicans are trying to hitch vulnerable red-state Democrats to the New Yorker. But no matter: Schumer is expected to have broad support heading into 2019. Even a loss of Senate seats this fall is unlikely to significantly shake Schumer’s level of support.
“There is universal confidence in the Democratic Caucus for Sen. Schumer, whether they’re the progressives or the more conservative members of our caucus. There’s strong respect and admiration for how he handles diversity in our caucus,” said Maryland Sen. Ben Cardin.
"Universal confidence" in Schumer, even among self-styled progressives like Sheldon Whitehouse who "praised Schumer for 'holding a very wide ranging caucus together in a way that has made strong points in the hearing without causing problems for our 2018 candidates.'" Whitehouse added, "There is what I call Democrat disease, which is to waste our time fighting with each other and quarreling over purity contests."
So much for our heroes of the resistance.
Feinstein Withholds Damaging Kavanaugh Letter
Now, and even worse, Judiciary committee Democrat Dianne Feinstein appears to be protecting Kavanaugh by withholding a damaging document, not just from the public, but from the rest of the Democrats on the committee.
Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee have privately requested to view a Brett Kavanaugh-related document in possession of the panel’s top Democrat, Dianne Feinstein, but the senior California senator has so far refused, according to multiple sources familiar with the situation.
The specific content of the document, which is a letter from a California constituent, is unclear, but Feinstein’s refusal to share the letter has created tension on the committee, particularly after Feinstein largely took a back seat to her more junior colleagues last week, as they took over Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearings with protests around access to documents.
So Feinstein is protecting Brett Kavanaugh. Ultimately this goes back to Chuck Schumer, who as noted has taken a hands-off position on the Kavanaugh nomination. Contrast that with how Republicans handle their caucus on matters they care about.
Which leads to the question, just what do Senate Democrats care about, blocking Kavanaugh or appearing to block Kavanaugh?
Kavanaugh's #MeToo Moment?
What's in the letter? Here's a tantalizing glimpse:
Different sources provided different accounts of the contents of the letter, and some of the sources said they themselves had heard different versions, but the one consistent theme was that it describes an incident involving Kavanaugh and a woman while they were in high school. Kept hidden, the letter is beginning to take on a life of its own. ...
The woman who is the subject of the letter is now being represented by
Debra Katz, a whistleblower attorney who works with #MeToo survivors.
No one is commenting further, not the law firm, not the Democratic House member who passed the letter to Feinstein, and not Feinstein herself.
Are Democrats Enabling Kavanaugh's Confirmation?
I think we can draw two fair conclusions from this. First, if the letter weren't damaging, it would have been released by now. So, it's damaging, and my headline reflects that. All indicators point to a #MeToo revelation about Kavanaugh, at precisely the time when #MeToo moments are powerful.
Second, how can anyone believe that Senate Democrats want to block Brett Kavanaugh's confirmation? They're acting to enable it
The only real question is: Are they doing it on purpose, Schumer and Whitehouse and Feinstein and all the rest? Sure looks like it from the cheap seats.
Update 1: According to Buzzfeed, Feinstein has not released the letter because "[t]hat individual strongly requested confidentiality, declined to come
forward or press the matter further, and I have honored that decision. I
have, however, referred the matter to federal investigative
authorities."
Feinstein says "That individual strongly requested confidentiality, declined to come forward or press the matter further." So, that's where we're at. Who knows with the FBI, as they're not saying anything yet.
If so, that seems fair enough. I still question, however, the lack of full release of the 200,000 pages of Kavanaugh documents in Democratic hands, and am more than concerned that Democratic "resistance" to Kavanaugh (which seems more brave-but-futile than let's-go-get-him) is less than what is needed, and less than they could do.
I'm convinced there will be at least three Democratic votes for Kavanaugh on the Senate floor, which will put Kavanaugh on the Court and save the jobs of Republicans Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski — all because Schumer, with the full backing of his caucus, allowed this.
Update 2: And then there's this. Feinstein has had the accusatory letter since July and seems to have kept it secret, even from other Democrats on the committee. That is, she not only kept its contents secret; she kept its existence secret as well.
More (emphasis added):
Feinstein’s decision to handle the matter in her own office, without notifying other members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, stirred concern among her Democratic colleagues. For several days [after other senators learned of the existence of the letter], Feinstein declined requests from other Democrats on the Judiciary Committee to share the woman’s letter and other relevant communications. A source familiar with the committee’s activities said that Feinstein’s staff initially conveyed to other Democratic members’ offices that the incident was too distant in the past to merit public discussion, and that Feinstein had “taken care of it.” On Wednesday, after media inquiries to the Democratic members multiplied, and concern among congressional colleagues increased, Feinstein agreed to brief the other Democrats on the committee, with no staff present. [...]
Sources familiar with Feinstein’s decision suggested that she was acting out of concern for the privacy of the accuser, knowing that the woman would be subject to fierce partisan attacks if she came forward. Feinstein also acted out of a sense that Democrats would be better off focussing on legal, rather than personal, issues in their questioning of Kavanaugh. Sources who worked for other members of the Judiciary Committee said that they respected the need to protect the woman’s privacy, but that they didn’t understand why Feinstein had resisted answering legitimate questions about the allegation. “We couldn’t understand what their rationale is for not briefing members on this. This is all very weird,” one of the congressional sources said. Another added, “She’s had the letter since late July. And we all just found out about it.”
So, Dianne Feinstein had this letter since July and sat on it, even to the extent that she didn't alert other committee senators of its existence, acting "out of a sense that Democrats would be better off focussing on legal, rather than personal, issues".
And she made this decision alone, in the same way that she decided by herself to "take care of" the matter by herself.
I think we're back to a question of motive. Why she did she taking it on herself to manipulate other senators in her caucus by unilaterally controlling the ground on which the Kavanaugh battle was fought on?
Was she protecting Kavanaugh, or in some weird way, the Party? Or both?
Democrats Complicit in Advancing Christopher Wray Confirmation as FBI Director
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Constituents giving Hero of the Resistance Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse a piece of their minds after his vote to confirm pro-torture Mike Pompeo as CIA director
by Gaius Publius
It seems "our" Democrats never learn.
During the earlier rounds of confirmation on Trump cabinet nominees, a group of early votes to confirm some of the worst and least qualified included far too many Democrats saying Yes.
One of the worst votes was the confirmation of torture advocate Mike Pompeo as CIA director 66-32-2, with such Heroes of the Resistance as these...
Now our Heroes of the Resistance (including Sens. Whitehouse and Franken; see below) are at it again, this time on the recent vote to confirm Trump nominee Christopher Wray to replace James Comey as FBI Director.
Senate Panel Unanimously Approves Chris Wray's Nomination As FBI Director
All 20 members of the committee voted to advance the nomination.
WASHINGTON, July 20 (Reuters) - The U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday unanimously approved the nomination of Christopher Wray to be FBI director following the dismissal of the agency’s former chief, James Comey, by President Donald Trump.
All 20 members of the committee voted to approve Wray, a white-collar crime lawyer and former assistant attorney general under President George W. Bush, sending his nomination to the full Senate for a vote.
Trump nominated Wray last month after firing Comey during an FBI investigation into whether Trump campaign associates colluded with the Russians to help him with the 2016 presidential election.
Needless to say, Trump would not have chosen Wray in the first place if Wray were going to operate in the recent James Comey mode, meaning independent of White House direction.
Who Is Christopher Wray?
According to Reuters, Christopher Wray is lawyer who specializes in prosecuting and defending white collar crime. He's also Chris Christie's personal lawyer "in a political scandal."
As a bonus, Wray also has a nice connection to the Russian energy giant Gazprom: "Wray works as a King & Spalding litigation partner and represents companies and individuals in a white-collar criminal and regulatory enforcement matters. King & Spalding has represented Russian companies including state gas monopoly Gazprom, according to its website. According to the website, the firm's energy practice also has represented businesses taking part in deals involving Russian entities including state-owned oil major Rosneft."
In other words, Wray is connected to all the right right-wing people. As we'll discuss at another time, part — or maybe most — of the Trump-Russia battle over sanctions may well be related to the U.S. attempt to corner the E.U. LNG (liquified natural gas) market for struggling U.S. suppliers and freeze out Russian suppliers and pipelines that would deliver Russian LNG to the West.
That may be good or bad, depending on whether you think U.S. military policy should protect U.S. fossil fuel corporations. But with Trump and Tillerson firmly in the "let Russia sell their natural gas" camp, you can be pretty sure which side Christopher Wray will be on — Trump's.
A Loyal Trumpie?
Do you think Trump will expect the same "loyalty" from Wray that he expected from Comey? Reuters again:
In written testimony released by the panel on Wednesday, Comey said Trump told him on Jan. 27 that "I expect loyalty," and in a Feb. 14 meeting asked him to back off from a probe into former national security adviser Michael Flynn's ties with Russia. ... In a statement, Trump called Wray "an impeccably qualified individual" who will serve "as a fierce guardian of the law and model of integrity."
I think it would be foolish to think otherwise.
"Heroes of the Resistance"
And these fine members of the Senate Judiciary Committee voted (pdf) to send the nomination to the Republican-dominated Senate floor, making confirmation a bipartisan certainty:
Al Franken
Sheldon Whitehouse (again)
Amy Klobuchar
Patrick Leahy
Dick Durbin
Richard Blumenthal
Mazie Hirono
As CREDO Political Director Murshed Zaheed put it, "Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee just failed the resistance. ... Every Democratic member of the Senate Judiciary Committee should be ashamed of themselves for rewarding Trump by rubber-stamping his pick to fill the role. If Senate Democrats don’t have the backbone to stand up to Trump’s dangerous regime they might as well go home and find a new line of work."
A New Leaf, or the Old One?
They never learn. How do they expect us to think they've turned a new leaf if they keep showing us the old one?
So we're back to the question we asked earlier — how much Democratic complicity is too much? It seems that Democratic senators are determined to help us find out.
Even my twitter polls don't usually result in such unanimity. But let's not kind ourselves, Donald Trump isn't fit to appoint a justice to the Supreme Court. I almost feel sorry for Gorsuch. Almost. But not quite... because I don't feel sorry for corporate whores who seek to make the lives of ordinary American families worse. And that, after all, is exactly what Neil Gorsuch is. Yesterday, the country was more focused on the drama of the House Intelligence Committee questioning FBI Director Comey and the fireworks that ensued, but yesterday was also the first day of hearings into the suitability of Gorsuch to be confirmed for a lifetime appointment by Donald Trump to the Supreme Court. Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley began the hearings by laying out a schedule that would have the committee vote on the nomination in two weeks. Democrats, still fuming that the Senate Republicans refused to even consider the nomination of Merrick Garland, see no reasons to rubber-stamp this controversial nomination the way extremists like Ted Cruz is demanding that they do. Jeff Merkley (D-OR), the first senator to endorse Bernie Sanders, was also first Senator to stand up and commit to opposing Gorsuch, explaining that "the Republicans stole this seat, which they clearly did. Merkley said he is still eager to hear Gorsuch answer some tough questions:
• Trump promised to nominate someone who opposed abortion. Would you overturn Roe v. Wade? • Is money speech? Can Congress regulate campaign fundraising at all? • Do Americans have a right to health care? What about clean air and water? Or education? • Do people have a right to equal protection under our law and protection from discrimination, including visitors like immigrants, Muslims, and LGBT Americans?
The most compelling line of questioning yesterday came from former Rhode Island Attorney General, Sheldon Whitehouse, whose case against Gorsuch is essentially that "a conservative court," as Matt Stoller put it, "a corrupt cog in a political machine." In it's report on the hearings, the NY Times writers were struck with Whitehouse's "blistering attack on the United States Supreme Court led by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., listing more than a dozen decisions in which the court had voted 5 to 4 to limit voting rights, increase the role of money in politics and favor business interests. In each, he said, the five Republican appointees were in the majority. It is true the Roberts court has been closely divided along partisan lines. Several studies have also showed that the Roberts court tends to favor business interests. If Judge Gorsuch fills the seat left vacant by Justice Scalia’s death last year, he will return the court to a familiar dynamic, with a five-member majority of conservative justices, all appointed by Republican presidents, and a four-member bloc of liberal justices, all appointed by Democratic presidents." Gorsuch looks normal, both physically and on paper, qualified even. But he's a monster in normal people clothing, who has a destructive agenda. Would Trump-- I mean Bannon and Pence, of course-- have picked him under any other circumstance? Overturning Roe v Wade, dragging LGBT equality back into the 1950s and pushing Bannon's (and Mercer's) favorite project forward: deconstructed the administrative state, i.e., an agenda for the law of the jungle with no EPA, no FEC, no FCC, no CFPB, no effective regulatory agencies of any kind. Anyone voting in committee to move Gorsuch's nomination towards a vote will be embracing exactly that. Matt Stoller was awed by how forthright in his critique Whitehouse was yesterday. "There’s been a lot of bullshit peddled by the press and by insiders," he wrote, "that Neil Gorsuch can’t be beaten, that Democrats don’t have a message. He’s just so qualified, say the American Bar Association, Obama hack Neil Katyal and [Gorsuch's] former clerks. Essentially this is all coming from BigLaw firms. BigLaw firms-- both on the Democratic and Republican sides-- love a court that rules for their big business clients. He’s so qualified, they argue. Gorsuch is polite, rarely late, and has many leather bound books."
Well Democratic Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, in his opening statement at the Gorsuch nominating hearings, isn’t having it. Gorsuch, he said, will fight for big corporations versus actual ‘humans’ in every arena possible. Whitehouse eviscerated Gorsuch as a payoff to a big conservative political machine. The special interests who financed the campaign to put Gorsuch on the court, he said, “obviously think that you will be worth their money”. Beyond that, he points out, John Roberts sat before the Senate Judiciary Committee and lied that he would just be an unbiased umpire calling balls and strikes. Roberts then went on the court and ruled for big business in every case that came before the court which involved big business. “Once burned, twice shy,” said Whitehouse. Gorsuch will join a court that ruled for big business in everything from class actions to labor to jury systems to voting rights. Whitehouse listed a litany of cases and their impacts, with this one as a particular kicker, “Help insulate investment bankers against fraud claims? Why not?” The special interests that financed this big business takeover of the court is not principled, said Whitehouse, it isn’t intellectual, it is simply a “delivery service” for big business. Gorsuch is highly qualified, Whitehouse noted. But fundamentally Gorsuch is a payoff to the special interest groups that will profit from his rulings. It’s important to note here that Whitehouse is making a broader claim about the court. His point isn’t just that Gorsuch should be rejected, but that Democrats should have no respect for the legitimacy of the court so long as the court serves a role as a cog in a corrupt big business machine. He’s pointing to a long-term strategy, regardless of whether Gorsuch wins. The Democrats are going to try and strip the court of the powers that it no longer deserves, because the routine bad faith big business friendly rulings that eviscerate our democratic traditions. The court itself has set itself up for this through decades of malevolent ruling to help big business. The American public is losing faith in its rulings, and that faith is in reality the only real power the court has. Most elite lawyers won’t say this, because they don’t want to anger the establishment they depend on for social, political, and financial currency. But they all know it. Whitehouse is a very smart lawyer. It is a BIG deal to have an elite credentialed legal thinker like Whitehouse saying what we all know, which is that the Supreme Court is at this point an entirely political and anti-democratic chokepoint meant to sustain Republican and big business dominance of American culture. Now that’s a populist message.
Democrat-Supported CIA Chief Hires a Torturer of Muslims as Deputy
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" Bold anti-Trumpist" Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) confronted by "Resist Hate RI" constituents for his Yes vote for pro-torture CIA Director Mike Pompeo. (I've queued the clip to start when Whitehouse speaks. Feel free to start from the beginning.)
by Gaius Publius
A pro-torture vote is a vote for torturing Muslims, at least so far.
As regular readers know, I've been looking at the group of mainstream Democrats relative to the "resistance" they presume to be leading (and occasionally are). In a great many cases, though, they're falling on their faces, or have been forced into stronger stands by a base that's way ahead of them in hating what's happening.
(A bit of background: The same money that buys Republican politicians' votes buys Democratic politicians' votes. But maybe you already knew that. If so, consider this a reminder on the off chance that, as you read this pieces, you wonder, "Now why would Democrats do that?" The obvious answer in many cases is, they can't afford to offend their real base, meaning their donors. In the case of torture, "their donors" includes the entire U.S. "defense" industry and the banks that finance it.)
I'll have more to say in the future about how Democratic voters are ahead of "their" politicians in actually resisting what Trump is doing. The instance detailed below is just one example of that.
Mike Pompeo, Torture and the Democratic Party
As we noted here, Kansas Republican Mike Pompeo, newly confirmed CIA Director, is pro-torture. Read the piece at the link for some of the detail on that (the source for that detail, interestingly, is the lone anti-Pompeo Republican, Rand Paul).
In that piece I listed the "pro-Resistance" Democrats who collaborated with Donald Trump to put pro-torture Mike Pompeo in charge of the CIA:
Which Democrats Voted For Pro-Torture Pompeo?
The vote, 66-32, was quite lopsided. There are 52 Republicans in the Senate, 46 Democrats and two Independents (Sanders and Maine's Angus King). Only one Republican crossed the aisle to vote No — Rand Paul.
Fourteen Democrats (plus Angus King) put the stamp of approval on pro-torture Mike Pompeo, the new head of Donald Trump's CIA...
• Joe Donnelly (IN)
• Dianne Feinstein (CA)
• Maggie Hassan (NH)
• Heidi Heitkamp (ND)
• Tim Kaine (VA)
• Amy Klobuchar (MN)
• Joe Manchin (WV)
• Claire McCaskill (MO)
• Jack Reed (RI)
• Brian Schatz (HI)
• Jeanne Shaheen (NH)
• Mark Warner (VA)
• Sheldon Whitehouse (RI)
...including the Senate Minority Leader...
• Chuck Schumer (NY)
The roll call also includes these names as "not voting":
• Richard Blumenthal (D-CT)
• Chris Murphy (D-CT)
Unless these two were ill or incapacitated, this was a cowardly act. They are either anti-torture and afraid to show it, or pro-torture and afraid to show it. (Blumenthal did vote No on the motion to proceed three days earlier. Murphy voted Yes.)
Here's that reduced list of self-styled "strong anti-Trump resistance fighters" in a slightly different order. These people are branded, or self-branded, as "liberals," as among the "good" Democrats:
Schumer is positioning himself as the bold face of Senate "resistance." He's all over the TV lately, looking and sounding tough. Kaine was Clinton's VP pick, so a foolish (or low information) voter might mistake him as a tough anti-Trumpist as well.
Whitehouse — good on some issues, especially climate, but not so good on a lot of others. (See the video above for what may have given him "religion" lately — his constituents, who seem to be way out in front of him, complaining about his vote en masse. Too bad he didn't "get religion" in time to keep his fingerprints off of his pro-torture, and therefore anti-Muslim, vote. (Remember, a vote for torture is a vote for torturing Muslims, at least so far.)
Murphy and Klobuchar get lots of face time on MSNBC, painted by the evening hosts as speaking for the so-called the left of the party. It's false cred, as you can see above (and there's more where that "false cred" charge comes from — Klobuchar, for example, is a reliable Monsanto vote, as is Al Franken, who's also getting some good "resistance" limelight lately).
Schatz should not be voting this way. He's actually further left than this makes him appear. And Blumenthal is bad on a lot of things, worse than many realize, but rarely makes the news outside of his home state.
Note that none of their Yes votes (or abstentions) were needed. The final tally was 66-32-2 and only 51 votes were needed. Four, five or six fewer Yes votes would not have changed the result.
Pro-Torture Pompeo Hires a Torturer as Deputy
To restate: The CIA director reports to the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) and the president. The CIA runs the president's drone kill program. The CIA also runs many or most of the "war on terror" black sites at which torture and death are dealt to enemies designated by the president.
Trump's new CIA chief, Mike Pompeo has hired Gina Haspel as his Deputy Director. Here's what the Deputy Director does:
The Deputy Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (DD/CIA) is a statutory office (50 U.S.C.§ 3037) and the second-highest official of the Central Intelligence Agency. The DD/CIA assists the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (D/CIA) and is authorized to exercise the powers of the D/CIA when the Director's position is vacant or in the Director's absence or disability.
Under current law, the Deputy Director is appointed by the President and is not required to be confirmed by the U.S. Senate.
So, no Senate confirmation for Ms. Haspel. The Senate has had its last bite of the CIA-torture-drone kill apple.
And here's who Gina Haspel is. Glenn Greenwald writes (my emphasis):
In May, 2013, the Washington Post’s Greg Miller reported that the head of the CIA’s clandestine service [Haspel] was being shifted out of that position as a result of “a management shake-up” by then-Director John Brennan. As Miller documented, this official – whom the paper did not name because she was a covert agent at the time – was centrally involved in the worst abuses of the CIA’s Bush-era torture regime.
As Miller put it, she was “directly involved in its controversial interrogation program” and had an “extensive role” in torturing detainees. Even more troubling, she “had run a secret prison in Thailand” – part of the CIA’s network of “black sites” – “where two detainees were subjected to waterboarding and other harsh techniques.” The Senate Intelligence Committee’s report on torture also detailed the central role she played in the particularly gruesome torture of detainee Abu Zubaydah.
Beyond all that, she played a vital role in the destruction of interrogation videotapes that showed the torture of detainees both at the black site she ran and other secret agency locations. The concealment of those interrogation tapes, which violated both multiple court orders as well the demands of the 9/11 Commission and the advice of White House lawyers, was condemned as “obstruction” by Commission Chairs Lee Hamilton and Thomas Keane. A special prosecutor and Grand Jury investigated those actions but ultimately chose not to prosecute.
That CIA official’s name whose torture activities the Post described is Gina Haspel. Today, as BuzzFeed’s Jason Leopold noted, CIA Director Pompeo announced that Haspel was selected by Trump to be Deputy Director of the CIA.
That's who Mike Pompeo made his deputy — a woman who ran torture sites, personally ran a "secret prison in Thailand," was involved in the horrific torture of Abu Zubaydah, and who played a "vital role" in the destruction of the CIA interrogation tapes in violation of multiple court orders.
And that's who our "liberal" anti-Trump defenders — Schumer, Whitehouse, Klobuchar, Kaine, Schatz — just affirmatively enabled. These are your bold, pro-torture "Resistance fighters."
Remember their names. What Pompeo and Haspel do is on them. And if Trump, Pompeo and Haspel ever decide to take this presidential power "local" — the power to torture and kill — and use it on his enemies in the "homeland," that's on these senators as well.
Sen. Whitehouse Renews His Call for a RICO Investigation of Exxon and the Fossil Fuel Industry
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Thom Hartmann on Exxon's Climate Coverup: "After a 7 year federal investigation - the tobacco lobby was found
guilty of violating federal racketeering laws. And now the prosecutor
who tried that case is calling for a federal investigation into Exxon.
Find out why..."
by Gaius Publius
As most readers know, we've been following the "Exxon Knew" story for quite some time, ever since the blockbuster exposé of internal Exxon documents going back to 1977. For an excellent backgrounder on that part of the story, listen to Thom Hartmann in the video above. He's clear and concise.
Or if you prefer words in print, read the following by climate activist Bill McKibben from his recent piece in The Nation:
A few weeks before the last great international climate conference—2009, in Copenhagen—the e-mail accounts of a few climate scientists were hacked and reviewed for incriminating evidence suggesting that global warming was a charade. Eight separate investigations later concluded that there was literally nothing to “Climategate,” save a few sentences taken completely out of context—but by that time, endless, breathless media accounts about the “scandal” had damaged the prospects for any progress at the conference.
Now, on the eve of the next global gathering in Paris this December, there’s a new scandal. But this one doesn’t come from an anonymous hacker taking a few sentences out of context. This one comes from months of careful reporting by two separate teams, one at the Pulitzer Prize–winning website Inside Climate News, and other at the Los Angeles Times (with an assist from the Columbia Journalism School). Following separate lines of evidence and document trails, they’ve reached the same bombshell conclusion: ExxonMobil, the world’s largest and most powerful oil company, knew everything there was to know about climate change by the mid-1980s, and then spent the next few decades systematically funding climate denial and lying about the state of the science....
We also noted that last May Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, a former prosecutor, called for a tobacco-lawsuit-style RICO investigation into the fossil fuel industry, and we asked aloud if he would renew that call in light of the "Exxon Knew" documents.
Sen. Whitehouse Renews His Call for a RICO Investigation into the Fossil Fuel Industry
Sen. Whitehouse has renewed that call. Below is his speech to the Senate as prepared for delivery. Video is here if you prefer to listen instead.
Sen. Whitehouse uses much of this speech to detail the wailing of the denier industry after his original speech in May, and asks, "Have we perhaps touched a little nerve?" Indeed, and that's a tell. RICO has the force of law, which makes it dangerous to them. That wailing by the denier industry should be a sign to us: proceed at once.
I've highlighted the most pertinent portions of the speech below, but if you want one takeaway, it's this one sentence from near the end:
it is clearly long past time for the climate denial scheme to come in
from the talk shows and the blogosphere, and have to face the kind of
truth-testing audience that a civil RICO investigation could provide.
Here's the full speech (italics mine):
Time to Wake Up: Touched a Nerve
As Prepared for Delivery
Tuesday, October 20, 2015
Mr. President, last week, former head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Robert M. White passed away at the age of 92. Dr. White served this nation under five presidents and pioneered the peaceful use of satellites to understand our weather and climate. “We do have environmental problems and they’re serious ones, the preservation of species among them,” he said, “but the climate is the environmental problem that’s so pervasive in its effects on the society. . . . The climate is really the only environmental characteristic that can utterly change our society and our civilization.”
That was in 1977. That same year, James F. Black, a top scientific researcher at the Exxon Corporation gave that company’s executives a similar warning: “[T]here is general scientific agreement,” he told Exxon’s Management Committee, “that the most likely manner in which mankind is influencing the global climate is through carbon dioxide release from the burning of fossil fuels.” According to emerging reports, Exxon executives kept that warning a closely guarded company secret for years.
I rise today for the 115th time to urge that we wake up to the threat of climate change. I rise in the midst of a decades-long, purposeful corporate campaign of misinformation, which has held this Congress and this nation back from taking meaningful action to prevent that utter change.
Scrutiny of the corporate campaign of misinformation intensifies, and scrutiny of the fossil fuel polluters behind it intensifies, and the regular cast of right-wing, climate-denier attack dogs have got their hackles up.
On May 6, I gave a speech here on the Floor. The speech compared the misinformation campaign by the fossil fuel industry about the dangers of carbon pollution to the tobacco industry’s misinformation campaign about the dangers of its product.
The relevance of that comparison is that the United States Department of Justice, under the civil provisions of the federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations statute—RICO for short, brought an action against the tobacco industry. The United States alleged that the tobacco industry’s misinformation campaign was fraudulent. And the United States won, in a lengthy and thorough decision by United States District Judge Gladys Kessler.
Go ahead and read them. DOJ’s complaint and Judge Kessler’s decision can be found at the websites of the Justice Department and the Public Health Law Center, respectively, and are linked on my website, whitehouse.senate.gov/climatechange. I will warn you: the judge’s decision is a long one—but it makes good reading.
The comparison is strong. There are whole sections of the Department of Justice civil RICO complaint, and whole sections of Judge Kessler’s decision, where you can remove the word “tobacco” and put in the word “carbon,” and remove the word “health” and put in the word “climate,” and the parallel with the fossil fuel industry climate denial campaign is virtually perfect.
This is not an idea I just cooked up. Look at the academic work of Professor Robert Brulle of Drexel University and Professor Riley Dunlap of Oklahoma State University. Look at the investigative work of Naomi Oreskes’s book Merchants of Doubt, David Michaels’s book Doubt is Their Product, and Gerald Markowitz and David Rosner’s book Deceit and Denial, describing the industry-backed machinery of deception.
Look at the journalistic work of Neela Banerjee, Lisa Song, David Hasemyer, and John Cushman Jr. in the recent reporting of InsideClimate News about what ExxonMobil knew about climate change versus the falsehoods it chose to tell the public. Look at a separate probe by journalists Sara Jerving, Katie Jennings, Masako Melissa Hirsch, and Susanne Rust in the Los Angeles Times.
From their work, we now know that Exxon, for instance, knew about the effect of its carbon pollution as far back as the late 1970s, but ultimately chose to fund a massive misinformation campaign rather than tell the truth. “No corporation,” said professor and climate change activist Bill McKibben, “has ever done anything this big and this bad.”
Here’s how Judge Kessler depicts the culpable conduct of the tobacco industry: “Defendants have intentionally maintained and coordinated their fraudulent position on addiction and nicotine as an important part of their overall efforts to influence public opinion and persuade people that smoking is not dangerous.”
Compare that to the findings of Dr. Brulle, whose research shines light on the dark money campaigns that support climate denial. The climate denial operation, to quote Dr. Brulle, is “a deliberate and organized effort to misdirect the public discussion and distort the public’s understanding of climate.”
The parallels between what the tobacco industry did and what the fossil fuel industry is doing now are so striking, I suggested in my speech of May 6, that it was worth a look: that civil discovery could reveal whether the fossil fuel industry’s activities cross the same line into racketeering. I said that again in an op-ed piece I wrote in the Washington Post on May 29 regarding the civil RICO action against tobacco.
Oh, my, what caterwauling has ensued from the fossil fuel industry trolls! Here’s a quick highlight reel of the tempest of right-wing invective.
One climate denier, Christopher Monckton, declared, “Senator Whitehouse is a fascist goon.” Another denier compared me to Torquemada, the infamous torturer of the Inquisition. And the official Exxon responder got so excited about this suggestion he used a word I am not even allowed to say on the Senate Floor! He forgot Rule One in crisis management: don’t lose your cool.
The right-wing website Breitbart.com responded by calling me “the preposterous Democrat senator for Rhode Island,” and saying the notion that there is an industry-funded effort to mislead the American people about the harm caused by carbon pollution is “a joke,” a conspiracy theory on par with Area 51 or the faking of the moon landing. Tell that to tobacco.
Paul Gigot, editorial page editor of the Wall Street Journal, said global warming concerns, “are based on computer models, not by actual evidence, not by actual evidence of what we’ve seen so far.”
The polluter-funded George Marshall Institute, a long-time climate denial outfit, wrote that this was an attack on constitutional rights; a presumptuous argument on their part given that there’s no constitutional right to commit fraud.
Similarly, Calvin Beisner, founder of a phony-baloney industry front called the Cornwall Alliance, said the same: the mere suggestion represents a “direct attack on the rights to freedom of speech and the press guaranteed by the First Amendment” and is “horrifically bad for science.” Coming from a science denial outfit, that concern for science is rich. And again, fraud is not protected by the First Amendment.
In the National Review, I was accused of wanting to launch “organized crime investigations . . . against people and institutions that disagree with [me] about global warming,” in order to “lock people up as Mafiosi.”
“Crime”? “Lock people up”? Let’s remember, Mr./Madam President, that we are talking about civil RICO, not criminal. No one went to jail in the tobacco case. Investigating the organized climate denial scheme under civil RICO is not about putting people in jail. Query why the National Review would mislead people about such an obvious fact.
All a civil RICO case does is get people to have to actually tell the truth, under oath, in front of an actual impartial judge or jury, and under cross-examination—which the Supreme Court has described as “the greatest legal invention ever invented for the discovery of truth.” No more spin and deception.
But that’s exactly the audience polluters and their allies can’t bear, so the flacks set off criminal smokescreens and launch “fascist goon” and “Torquemada” hysterics. A few weeks ago, 20 scientists agreed with me, and wrote a letter to Attorney General Lynch supporting the idea of using civil RICO.
That was too much for the Troll-in-Chief for the fossil fuel industry: the Wall Street Journal editorial page. The Wall Street Journal editorial page has long been an industry science-denial mouthpiece. They use the same playbook every time: one, deny the science; two, question the motives of reformers; and three, exaggerate the costs of reforms.
When scientists warned that chlorofluorocarbons could break down the atmosphere’s ozone layer, the Wall Street Journal ran editorials—for decades—devaluing the science, attacking scientists and reformers, and exaggerating the costs associated with regulating CFCs.
When acid rain was falling in the Northeast, the Wall Street Journal editorial page questioned the science, claimed the sulfur dioxide cleanup effort was driven by politics, and said fixing it carried a huge price tag. Ultimately, the Journal’s editorial page, after years of this, had to recant and admit that the cap-and-trade program for sulfur dioxide “saves about $700 million annually compared with the cost of traditional regulation and has been reducing emissions by four million tons annually.”
Now, on climate change, the Journal is back to the same pattern: deny the science, question the motives of climate scientists, exaggerate the costs of tackling carbon pollution. For decades, the Journal has persistently published editorials against taking action to prevent manmade climate change.
On this the editorial page said, by talking about civil RICO I’m trying to “forcibly silence” the denial apparatus. “Forcibly silence”? First of all, against the billions of the Koch Brothers and ExxonMobil, fat chance that I have much force to use. And “silence”? I don’t want them silent; I want them testifying, in a forum where they have to tell the truth. Is the Journal really saying that in a forum where deniers have to tell the truth their only response would have to be silence? Making them tell the truth forcibly silences them? Because the only thing civil RICO silences is fraud.
By the way, the Journal editorial never mentions that the government won the civil RICO case against tobacco on very similar facts. That would detract from the fable.
Who does the Journal cast as the victim in their fable? None other than Willie Soon, who they said I singled out for—here’s what they said—having “published politically inconvenient research on changes in solar radiation.” Actually, what’s inconvenient for Dr. Soon is that the New York Times reported that he gets more than half of his funding from big fossil fuel interests like ExxonMobil and the Charles G. Koch Foundation, to the tune of $1.2 million, and didn’t disclose it. Dr. Soon’s research contracts even gave his industry backers a chance “for comment and input” before he published, and he referred to the papers he produced as “deliverables.”
In case you don’t know it, that’s not how real science works.
Of course, none of this sordid financial conflict is even mentioned by the Wall Street Journal editorial page. They’d rather pretend Dr. Soon is being singled out for “politically inconvenient” views. Please.
It gets better. In the editorial, the role of neutral expert commenting on this goes to Georgia Tech’s Judith Curry. She offers the opinion that my “demand . . . for legal persecution . . . represents a new low in the politicization of science.” This is a particularly rich and conflict-riddled opinion, as Ms. Curry is herself a repeat anti-climate witness performing regularly in committees for Republicans here in Congress. Again, no mention of this interest of Ms. Curry’s by the Wall Street Journal editorial.
The fossil fuel industry’s climate-denial machine rivals or exceeds that of the tobacco industry in size, scope, and complexity. Its purpose is to cast doubt about the reality of climate change in order to forestall a move toward cleaner fuels and allow the Kochs and Exxons of the world to continue making money at everybody else’s expense. And the Wall Street Journal editorial page plays its part in the machine.
Even though it’s only the editorial page, and not the Journal's well-regarded newsroom, facts and logic are supposed to matter. Ignoring the successful tobacco litigation; omitting the salient fact of Dr. Soon being paid by the industry involved in his research; and bringing in a climate denier as their neutral voice without disclosing that conflict—I’d like to see them get this editorial by the editorial standards of their own newsroom.
So why all the histrionics on the far right, Mr./Madam President? Why the deliberate subterfuge between civil and criminal RICO? Why the name-calling? Have we perhaps touched a little nerve? Have we maybe hit a bit too close to home? Are the cracks in the dark castle of denial as it crumbles maybe beginning to rattle the occupants?
Whatever the motivation of the Wall Street Journal and other right-wing climate denial outfits, it is clearly long past time for the climate denial scheme to come in from the talk shows and the blogosphere, and have to face the kind of truth-testing audience that a civil RICO investigation could provide. It’s time to let the facts take their place, and let climate denial face that “greatest legal engine ever invented for the discovery of truth.”
I yield the floor.
The first attorney general, either Loretta Lynch or a state AG in a state with anti-racketeering laws, who will deliver a decisive blow to the fossil fuel industry and to their credibility by launching a RICO suit, will be a hero and a game-changer.
Listen to the crowd after Sanders speaks. The people get it.
And the first presidential candidate to promise, if elected, that she or
he will appoint such an Attorney General, will be as wildly cheered as
Bernie Sanders was cheered at this moment in the recent debate.
Will Senator Whitehouse Renew His Call for RICO Prosecution of Climate-Denying Companies like Exxon?
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One of several Frontline videos discussing the blockbuster release of internal Exxon documents showing that global warming could well be real and that Exxon was worried about the effect of this knowledge on their business
by Gaius Publius
I've been writing recently about the blockbuster report by Inside Climate News that Exxon knew, as early as 1977, that climate change was very likely real and that continuing to burn fossil fuels would disrupt the livability of the planet. The main page of the ICN report is here. My initial discussion is here.
Prior to those revelations, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (see below) and others were calling for RICO civil suits against companies financing climate deniers to determine if these companies are guilty of defrauding the public in the same way the tobacco companies were guilty of defrauding the public. This piece is about those calls for RICO lawsuits, in particular, Sheldon Whitehouse's.
Bottom line first, to keep the timeline clear:
Before it was known that Exxon knew (before the full release of their internal documents), Senator Whitehouse and others thought companies funding deniers may be defrauding the country in the same way tobacco companies defrauded the country and their customers.
Whitehouse and others have already called for a federal RICO (racketeering) lawsuit to investigate the allegation and, if proved, to stop the lying and the fraud and seek damages.
One of the hurdles for a RICO conviction (as opposed to a lawsuit or investigation) involves proving that the companies knew they were lying. In the case of tobacco companies, pre-trial discovery overcame that problem. Subpoenaed internal company documents showed they knew.
Now Inside Climate News has released a treasure trove of internal Exxon documents going back to 1977, documents that appear to show the company knew, internally, that global warming was real and that the likely cause was carbon (CO2) emissions. ICN has also, with Frontline, interviewed many of the participants in Exxon's then study of global warming. This evidence is strongly against Exxon's claim that global warming is "uncertain" or unrelated to burning fossil fuel, its main product.
In light of this new information, will Sen. Whitehouse renew his call for a federal RICO investigation? Will others?
Will climate-aware voters call for Democratic political candidates to go on the record about RICO investigations?
The last two bullets above represent next steps. Care to help?
Now the details.
Sheldon Whitehouse Wants to Sue Fossil Fuel Companies For Climate Fraud
Back in late May, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), a former prosecutor, wrote an op-ed calling for RICO investigations into companies engaged in and financing climate denial, likening these practices to the fraudulent practices of tobacco companies, who were similarly sued. (Hat tip to Daniel Marans at the Huffington Post, who wrote about the op-ed and from whom I borrowed this section's heading.)
Whitehouse starts by discussing the case of the tobacco companies (my emphasis throughout):
The fossil-fuel industry’s campaign to mislead the American people
by Sheldon Whitehouse
Fossil fuel companies and their allies are funding a massive and sophisticated campaign to mislead the American people about the environmental harm caused by carbon pollution.
Their activities are often compared to those of Big Tobacco denying the health dangers of smoking. Big Tobacco’s denial scheme was ultimately found by a federal judge to have amounted to a racketeering enterprise.
The Big Tobacco playbook looked something like this: (1) pay scientists to produce studies defending your product; (2) develop an intricate web of PR experts and front groups to spread doubt about the real science; (3) relentlessly attack your opponents.
Thankfully, the government had a playbook, too: the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, or RICO. In 1999, the Justice Department filed a civil RICO lawsuit against the major tobacco companies and their associated industry groups, alleging that the companies “engaged in and executed — and continue to engage in and execute — a massive 50-year scheme to defraud the public, including consumers of cigarettes, in violation of RICO.”
Tobacco spent millions of dollars and years of litigation fighting the government. But finally, through the discovery process, government lawyers were able to peel back the layers of deceit and denial and see what the tobacco companies really knew all along about cigarettes.
In 2006, Judge Gladys Kessler of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia decided that the tobacco companies’ fraudulent campaign amounted to a racketeering enterprise. According to the court: “Defendants coordinated significant aspects of their public relations, scientific, legal, and marketing activity in furtherance of a shared objective — to . . . maximize industry profits by preserving and expanding the market for cigarettes through a scheme to deceive the public.”
Notice that Whitehouse is not accusing the carbon (fossil fuel) companies of having different ideas than most climate scientists. He's accusing them of fraud. You'll hear cries of "criminalizing ideas" from professional climate deniers if this lawsuit moves seriously forward. Far from having differing ideas, however, a successful suit will prove that the carbon companies, like the tobacco companies, have the same ideas the public and most scientists have ... and that they lied about what they knew. That's not prosecuting ideas; it's prosecuting ... well, fraud, something the government frequently does (except in the case of Wall Street investment banks) and should do as part of its job.
Whitehouse: Fossil Fuel Companies Are Acting Like Tobacco Companies
Whitehouse documents considerable similarity between the tobacco industry's funding of claims it knew to be wrong — that smoking was safe, or at best, its harm was "unproven" — and the funding of similar claims by the carbon companies. For example:
The shape of the fossil fuel industry’s denial operation has been documented by, among others, Drexel University professor Robert Brulle. In a 2013 paper published in the journal Climatic Change, Brulle described a complex network of organizations and funding that appears designed to obscure the fossil fuel industry’s fingerprints. To quote directly from Brulle’s report, it was “a deliberate and organized effort to misdirect the public discussion and distort the public’s understanding of climate.” That sounds a lot like Kessler’s findings in
the tobacco racketeering case.
There's more to back up his assertions in the op-ed. This is just part of the evidence he cites.
Whitehouse Wants to Use Discovery to See if Carbon Companies Are Guilty of Lying
At the time he wrote the op-ed, May 2015, Whitehouse wasn't sure — he didn't have the evidence — that the carbon companies were guilty in the same way the tobacco companies were. He didn't know, in other words, whether they knew they were lying. In the case of the tobacco companies, it took the "discovery" phase of the lawsuit to uncover the proof:
The tobacco industry was proved to have conducted research that showed the direct opposite of what the industry stated publicly — namely, that tobacco use had serious health effects. Civil discovery would reveal whether and to what extent the fossil fuel industry has crossed this same line. We do know that it has funded research that — to its benefit — directly contradicts the vast majority of peer-reviewed climate science. One scientist who consistently published papers downplaying the role of carbon emissions in climate change, Willie Soon, reportedly received more than half of his funding from oil and electric utility interests: more than $1.2 million.
To be clear: I don’t know whether the fossil fuel industry and its allies engaged in the same kind of racketeering activity as the tobacco industry. We don’t have enough information to make that conclusion. Perhaps it’s all smoke and no fire. But there’s an awful lot of smoke.
Thanks to the ICN report, we now appear to have that information.
Will Sheldon Whitehouse Renew His Call for RICO Lawsuit in Light of the Exxon Documents?
Above, Whitehouse wrote (and I bolded): "I don’t know whether the fossil fuel industry and its allies engaged in the same kind of racketeering activity as the tobacco industry. We
don’t have enough information to make that conclusion." I think any interpretation of Exxon's own internal documents is a strong indicator of real concern and guilty knowledge on their part.
At a meeting in Exxon Corporation's headquarters, a senior company scientist named James F. Black addressed an audience of powerful oilmen. Speaking without a text as he flipped through detailed slides, Black delivered a sobering message: carbon dioxide from the world's use of fossil fuels would warm the planet and could eventually endanger humanity.
"In the first place, there is general scientific agreement that the most likely manner in which mankind is influencing the global climate is through carbon dioxide release from the burning of fossil fuels," Black told Exxon's Management Committee, according to a written version he recorded later.
It was July 1977 when Exxon's leaders received this blunt assessment, well before most of the world had heard of the looming climate crisis.
A year later, Black, a top technical expert in Exxon's Research & Engineering division, took an updated version of his presentation to a broader audience. He warned Exxon scientists and managers that independent researchers estimated a doubling of the carbon dioxide (CO2) concentration in the atmosphere would increase average global temperatures by 2 to 3 degrees Celsius (4 to 5 degrees Fahrenheit), and as much as 10 degrees Celsius (18 degrees Fahrenheit) at the poles. Rainfall might get heavier in some regions, and other places might turn to desert.
"Some countries would benefit but others would have their agricultural output reduced or destroyed," Black said, in the written summary of his 1978 talk.
Other documents and company actions show Exxon took Black's warning very seriously. ICN is writing analyses of the documents it has released (document repository here, if you want to lookat them for yourself). For example, read "Exxon Confirmed Global Warming Consensus in 1982 with In-House Climate Models". In it you'll learn that in 1979 a researcher told company executives that "unless fossil fuel use was constrained, there would be 'noticeable temperature changes' and 400 parts per million [ppm] of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the air by 2010, up from about 280 ppm before the Industrial Revolution." We're at 400 ppm today. The company spent millions studying global warming, including funding a then-state-of-the-art supertanker to take sea and air temperature readings.
This is explosive information. Will Sheldon Whitehouse renew his call for the government to file a RICO lawsuit against Exxon and others like them who finance climate denial in order to continue their profits? He should, in my view. Who knows what other documents will be uncovered by aggressive "discovery" and subpoenas?
If you recall, the tobacco companies lost their case, lost it big, and paid a heavy price. Isn't it time the carbon companies — Exxon, the Koch companies, BP and Shell — paid a price for their misdeeds as well? Just because we may have crossed some lines, reached some tipping points (peak water in California) doesn't mean we can't act now to prevent even worse consequences (multi-meter sea level rise in this century, as much as 240 feet when all ice melts).
James Hansen would call this a moral obligation. So would I.
It's Going to Take Force
I'd like to close with something I wrote earlier: Don't be confused. It's going to take force to defeat the fossil fuel companies. We're not in a debate with them, we're in a battle. It will take an exercise of power to make the Kochs and the Exxons stand down. Battle means weapons — the weapon of public opinion, yes, but stronger ones too, the strongest we can find.
A multi-billion-dollar federal lawsuit, one with every chance of succeeding, would count as force in my book. Would Senator Whitehouse, Senator Sanders or candidate Clinton be willing to call for one? Perhaps it's time to ask them.
(Updated to reflect the fact that the government's RICO tobacco suit was a civil suit, not a criminal prosecution.)
In Light of the Exxon Revelation — "They Knew" — A Call for RICO Investigations
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"... or a lawsuit you never recover from?" (source)
by Gaius Publius
I don't want to lose this piece of the story — as you read, keep the name Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse and the federal RICO statute in mind. I'll return to Whitehouse and RICO with full focus in a separate piece.
Recently we wrote about this Inside Climate News report that, based on a trove of Exxon's own internal documents, the company knew as early as 1977 that earth's climate was being disrupted by CO2 emissions and that this disruption would get worse. Yet in the late 1980s they chose to join the — we have to say, lying — team of climate change deniers instead. All for profit.
From the report (my emphasis):
At a meeting in Exxon Corporation's headquarters, a senior company scientist named James F. Black addressed an audience of powerful oilmen. Speaking without a text as he flipped through detailed slides, Black delivered a sobering message: carbon dioxide from the world's use of fossil fuels would warm the planet and could eventually endanger humanity.
"In the first place, there is general scientific agreement that the most likely manner in which mankind is influencing the global climate is through carbon dioxide release from the burning of fossil fuels," Black told Exxon's Management Committee, according to a written version he recorded later.
It was July 1977 when Exxon's leaders received this blunt assessment, well before most of the world had heard of the looming climate crisis.
A year later, Black, a top technical expert in Exxon's Research & Engineering division, took an updated version of his presentation to a broader audience. He warned Exxon scientists and managers that independent researchers estimated a doubling of the carbon dioxide (CO2) concentration in the atmosphere would increase average global temperatures by 2 to 3 degrees Celsius (4 to 5 degrees Fahrenheit), and as much as 10 degrees Celsius (18 degrees Fahrenheit) at the poles. Rainfall might get heavier in some regions, and other places might turn to desert.
"Some countries would benefit but others would have their agricultural output reduced or destroyed," Black said, in the written summary of his 1978 talk.
So they knew. Yet:
Then, toward the end of the 1980s, Exxon curtailed its carbon dioxide research. In the decades that followed, Exxon worked instead at the forefront of climate denial. It put its muscle behind efforts to manufacture doubt about the reality of global warming its own scientists had once confirmed. It lobbied to block federal and international action to control greenhouse gas emissions. It helped to erect a vast edifice of misinformation that stands to this day.
Many, including Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, think this may amount to fraud, in the same sense that the tobacco industry may well have committed fraud and conspiracy to commit fraud. For example, note this about the Supreme Court tobacco case Cipollone v. Liggett Group:
The [Supreme Court] ... opinion did not exclude fraud and conspiracy or express warranty, as section 5b of the 1969 Act does not explicitly define this; if the plaintiff could prove that the industry conspired to hide evidence concerning the harms of smoking or lied to the public about them, or if express warranties were breached, then a new case can be filed, as there is no discussion of tort litigation or damage claims in the Act.
That seems pretty clear. Open and shut? Maybe not. But worth prosecuting? Absolutely.
A Call for Obama and AG Lynch to Start a RICO Investigation into Climate Deniers
I've said all along, fixing the climate is going to take force. We're not having a national conversation; we're having a power struggle, plain and simple. Opening a RICO investigation counts as force.
Now comes a call, the first of what I expect to be many, to prosecute climate deniers — and in particular, in light of the report cited above, ExxonMobil — under federal RICO statutes. Again, note that Senator Whitehouse is on board.
Letter To President Obama: Investigate Deniers Under RICO
The following is the text of a letter written by a number of scientists asking for a federal investigation of climate science denial under the RICO statute.
...
September 1, 2015
Dear President Obama, Attorney General Lynch, and OSTP Director Holdren,
As you know, an overwhelming majority of climate scientists are convinced about the potentially serious adverse effects of human-induced climate change on human health, agriculture, and biodiversity. ...
We appreciate that you are making aggressive and imaginative use of the limited tools available to you in the face of a recalcitrant Congress. One additional tool – recently proposed by Senator Sheldon Whitehouse – is a RICO (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act) investigation of corporations and other organizations that have knowingly deceived the American people about the risks of climate change, as a means to forestall America’s response to climate change. The actions of these organizations have been extensively documented in peerreviewed academic research (Brulle, 2013) and in recent books including: Doubt is their Product (Michaels, 2008), Climate Cover-Up (Hoggan & Littlemore, 2009), Merchants of Doubt (Oreskes & Conway, 2010), The Climate War (Pooley, 2010), and in The Climate Deception Dossiers (Union of Concerned Scientists, 2015). We strongly endorse Senator Whitehouse’s call for a RICO investigation.
The methods of these organizations are quite similar to those used earlier by the tobacco industry. A RICO investigation (1999 to 2006) played an important role in stopping the tobacco industry from continuing to deceive the American people about the dangers of smoking. If corporations in the fossil fuel industry and their supporters are guilty of the misdeeds that have been documented in books and journal articles, it is imperative that these misdeeds be stopped as soon as possible so that America and the world can get on with the critically important business of finding effective ways to restabilize the Earth’s climate, before even more lasting damage is done.
Sincerely ...
The number of scientists is impressive, and spread across an impressive range of institutions, from George Mason University (home of the Koch-funded "thinktank" Mercatus Center) to Columbia University. Click to see the full list.
For more on what Exxon knew, watch the brief Frontline video below:
Once more — don't be confused. This is not a debate. It's a battle, it's going to take force to make the Kochs and the Exxons stand down, and battle means weapons. Not much better weapon than a federal RICO investigation.
