News bits: The futility of government vs. climate change under capitalism, etc.

Climate change futility 

Rolling Stone writes:

Thanks to Big Oil, Your Tax Dollars Are Spent Ruining the Climate

The same dynamic keeps playing out over and over: the rich pollute, the poor suffer, and the rich really don't care

About $11 million a minute. That’s the amount of direct and indirect subsidies the International Monetary Fund calculates the global fossil fuel industry receives to ensure that cooking the planet remains profitable for them. If you do the math, it comes to about $5.9 trillion a year.

As The Atlantic’s Robinson Meyer has pointed out, only $826 billion of that comes from actual price cuts or tax breaks. The rest is calculated from damages caused from the environmental and health costs of carbon pollution. But that’s sorta the point. This is an antiquated industry that is knowingly and willfully poisoning the planet and killing millions of people every year. And governments of the world — which ultimately means you and me and everyone else who pays taxes — are essentially paying them to do it. 

The fossil fuel mafia has used money and political muscle to stall and derail action on the climate crisis, and they will do everything they can to draw out the inevitable transition to clean energy as long as possible. Given the stunning decline in the cost of solar and wind power in most of the world, they know their days are numbered. It’s not a question of if they go. It’s a question of how fast. But every day they wait, every delay tactic they come up with, imperils the rest of us [and makes the climate worse and oil companies more wealthy and powerful].

Acknowledgement: Thanks to Peach Freeze who brought this article to my attention. 

A snippet of poison from the 1/6 Committee

CNN writes: 

The January 6 committee made a startling allegation on Monday, claiming it had evidence that a Trump-backed attorney urged a key witness to mislead the committee about details they recalled.

.... CNN has learned that Stefan Passantino, the top ethics attorney in the Trump White House, is the lawyer who allegedly advised his then-client, former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson, to tell the committee that she did not recall details that she did ....

Trump’s Save America political action committee funded Passantino and his law firm Elections LLC, including paying for his representation of Hutchinson, other sources tell CNN. The committee report notes the lawyer did not tell his client who was paying for the legal services.

The sleaze and slime attached to Trump and most people he deals with just keeps oozing out. One can only wonder what kind of people, both elites and rank and file, Republicans who support all of this are. Good decent people, shockingly deceived, and/or cynical thugs?

A US corporation gets aggressive about attacking critics

An Intercept article writes about an attorney who tries to get accountability for corporations involved in wrongdoing, e.g., murder. American corporations are starting to fight back hard. The Intercept writes:

On March 12, 2001, paramilitary gunmen [in Colombia] dragged Orcasita and another union leader, Valmore Locarno, from a company bus as the men returned home from work. The gunmen shot Locarno on the spot and carried Orcasita off in the bed of their pickup truck. His body was found the next day. He’d been shot in the head, his teeth knocked out.

The miners’ union was convinced that Drummond was involved in the murders. They suspected that the company was secretly paying the paramilitary group that executed their leaders. Ultimately, a Drummond food service contractor who ran the mine’s cafeteria was convicted of plotting the murders and sentenced to 38 years in prison.

To make the case that the company was complicit in the killings, the union turned to Terry Collingsworth, a lifelong human rights attorney based in Washington, D.C.

Collingsworth’s decision to file suit in the United States made Orcasita’s widow hopeful that justice would prevail. For years, she had felt that justice would be impossible in Colombia due to Drummond’s political clout.

“What we were most excited about was bringing the lawsuit in Alabama,” she said. “There it would not be so easy for them to traffic their influence.”

Collingsworth lost an initial trial in 2007, when a jury found there wasn’t clear evidence tying the company to the crimes. Another of his lawsuits was dismissed for being too similar to the first. But Collingsworth continued to press his case, offering new witnesses with firsthand testimony implicating Drummond.

Then, in March 2015, the case took a surprising turn.

Drummond had returned fire in the legal fight with an unusual accusation. The company charged that Collingsworth — an advocate who recently brought a case before the U.S. Supreme Court — had led a “multifaceted criminal campaign” to extort Drummond into paying a costly settlement. This campaign, Drummond alleged, was in fact a racketeering conspiracy as defined by the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, better known as RICO.

If one trusts the American legal system and corporations, Drummond did nothing wrong. There wasn’t enough evidence to legally implicate the company in the murders. But if one does not trust, maybe an American corporation literally got away with murder. By filing a RICO suit against the attorney, the company signals it will engage in scorched-Earth legal tactics. Drummond wants to bankrupt Collingsworth to shut him up. This is perfectly legal. 

If American corporations operated with less opacity and in good faith to the public interest, there would be no reason to distrust the lawsuit’s outcome. But that is probably not how most American corporations generally operate. Secrecy, opacity, deceit (“public relations”) and non-disclosure agreements effectively hide everything a company wants to hide, innocent and guilty. American laws are heavily rigged to protect corporations and elites. As long as Drummond is not found responsible in court, it will publicly trumpet its innocence, regardless of what it did or did not do. 

And Collingsworth? He is going to face years of hell on Earth in the courts.

Republican Party election fraud zealots in Florida struggle 
to whack a few dozen voters while undermining trust in elections

NPR reports:

Back in August, Florida officials announced they were charging 20 people with alleged voter fraud. It was the first big set of cases investigated by the state's new election crimes unit, which was created at the urging of Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis.

The statewide prosecutor recently secured one conviction through a plea deal. But at least three other cases so far have been dismissed on procedural grounds. And attorneys representing those who were charged say Florida's cases face a tough road — even if they make it to trial.

Roger Weedon, who is representing two individuals charged for alleged voter fraud, says he thinks there is even a case to be made that the state entrapped these voters. He says the state could have created a system where local election officials and formerly incarcerated people could see if they're eligible to vote.

"The government shouldn't be able to prosecute cases in which they are almost co-conspirators by sending the registration cards and allowing them to vote," Weedon said.

Weedon says he's working to get the cases against his two clients dismissed. So far, three cases out of the initial collection of charges have been thrown out. The state has appealed at least two of those dismissals.

DeSantis: Working hard to suppress votes and undermine public trust 

in elections by entrapping people and punishing their honest mistakes

What a patriot!  /s

What a hypocrite and liar!  not/s

Fantasylandia: Just imagine if you will, a fairy tale. In this wistful tale in a magic land far away, Republican elites were as hell bent on prosecuting law violations of law such as obstruction of justice, insurrection, criminal conspiracy, blatant corruption, treason and the like by any and all politicians in office. End of fairy tale. Back to cold reality.

Obviously, Republicans are hell bent on such law enforcement when it comes to crimes and sleaze by Democrats. But when it comes to crimes and sleaze by Republicans and big corporate donors, Republican Party elites, no such zealotry will ever be turned against those miscreants. Being radical right Christofascist and profoundly mendacious, corrupt, hypocritical and morally rotted, prevents such zealotry by Republican elites in defense of democracy, inconvenient truth or the public interest. 

Hunter Biden should be ready for what’s to come. But Trump can probably rest easy that his cult will not turn on him. That’s the sad, anti-democratic reality of the hypocrite Christofascist Republican Party.