From the ‘Well, duh!’ files: The energy sector lied about its climate change efforts

The New York Times writes: 

Oil Executives Privately Contradicted Public Statements on Climate, Files Show

The documents, subpoenaed in a House investigation of climate disinformation, show company leaders contravening industry commitments.

Documents obtained by congressional investigators show that oil industry executives privately downplayed their companies’ own public messages about efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and weakened industry-wide commitments to push for climate policies.

Internal Exxon documents show that the oil giant pressed an industry group, the Oil and Gas Climate Initiative, to remove language from a 2019 policy statement that “could create a potential commitment to advocate on the Paris Agreement goals.” The Paris Agreement is the landmark 2015 pact among nations of the world to avert catastrophic global warming. The statement’s final version didn’t mention Paris.

At Royal Dutch Shell, an October 2020 email sent by an employee, discussing talking points for Shell’s president for the United States, said that the company’s announcement of a pathway to “net zero” emissions — the point at which the world would no longer be pumping planet-warming gases into the atmosphere — “has nothing to do with our business plans.”

These and other documents, reviewed by The New York Times, come from a cache of hundreds of thousands of pages of corporate emails, memos and other files obtained under subpoena as part of an examination by the House Committee on Oversight and Reform into the fossil fuel industry’s efforts over the decades to mislead the public about its role in climate change, dismissing evidence that the burning of fossil fuels was driving an increase in global temperatures even as their own scientists warned of a clear link.  

On Thursday, the House committee is expected to discuss some of its early findings. “It’s well established that these companies actively misled the American public for decades about the risks of climate change,” said Representative Ro Khanna, a Democrat from California who spearheaded the investigation with Carolyn B. Maloney, the New York Democrat who leads the House committee. “The problem is that they continue to mislead,” Mr. Khanna said.

Well, duh! Exxon lied. What’s new? As usual, there are no legal ramifications for the lies and no mechanism for the public to receive reparations for the avoidable environmental damage and extinct species that carbon pollution caused. The NYT article includes emails indicating that oil executives treated climate change and heat waves as a joke. The oil industry just oozes callous arrogance about climate change damages and deaths. 

“Misled” is too weak a descriptor for what Exxon-Mobile and the others did to us. Like most or all other prominent Democrats, Mr. Khanna needs to up his rhetorical game to meets the needs of the moment.

America desperately needs meaningful regime change. Meaningful regime change definitely does not include the morally and legally corrupt and staunchly pro-pollution Republican Party.

Republican climate change deniers

How Republicans air their dirty laundry — they try not to

As one might expect, maternal deaths associated with loss of abortion rights are going to increase. From the Republican theocrat point of view, that is an inconvenient fact or truth. So, what is a self-righteous Christian theocrat to do? Obviously, hide the truth from the public as best that can be done. Better yet, make sure there is no empirical basis to assert that forced birth laws kill some women -- do not collect data on maternal deaths caused by forced births and/or lie about why you are hiding the data. The Houston Chronicle writes:

Texas health officials have missed a key window to complete the state’s first major updated count of pregnancy related deaths in nearly a decade, saying the findings will now be released next summer, most likely after the Legislature’s biennial session.

The delay, disclosed earlier this month by the Department of State Health Services, means lawmakers won’t likely be able to use the analysis, covering deaths from 2019, until the 2025 legislative cycle. The most recent state-level data available is nine years old.

In a hearing this month with the state’s Maternal Mortality and Morbidity Review Committee, DSHS commissioner Dr. John Hellerstedt said the agency wanted to better align its methodology with that of other states, and that there hadn’t been enough staff and money to finish the review for a scheduled Sept. 1 release.

“The information we provide is not easily understood, and not easily and readily comparable to what goes on in other states,” Hellerstedt told the committee. “And the fact it isn’t easily understood or easily comparable in my mind leaves room for a great deal of misunderstanding about what the data really means.”

There you have it. “The information we provide is not easily understood, ....” What an insulting lie. It’s an in-your-face whopper. Another Houston Chronicle article from July 2022 was entitled: Risk of serious pregnancy complications has doubled since Texas abortion bans, study finds. We all know what is happening. Forced birth laws are injuring and killing women and Texas Republican politicians do not want Texans and the rest of the world to know about it.

I recall one of the things that got me to distrust and dislike Ronald Reagan shortly after he was sworn into office. He started shutting down collection of inconvenient data by the federal government. Without inconvenient and embarrassing data, the GOP would not have to lie to the American people about inconvenient facts and truths and their inconvenient logical implications. 

Republican ideologues, i.e., essentially all Republican Party elites, donors and the GOP propaganda leviathan, e.g., Faux News, hate facts and truths that contradict their dogmas, lies and stated political agendas, e.g., turning America into a bigoted, kleptocratic theocracy dominated by Christian Sharia law.

As time passes, it is a good bet that in places (federal government, states, cities, counties, local PTAs, etc.) where Republicans have political control, they will shut down, hide and/or deny as much inconvenient data collecting as possible. In a year or two, it is reasonable to expect that Texas will simply stop collecting forced birth injury and death data because it undercuts their dogmas, lies and theocratic Christian Sharia agenda.

Germaine’s political rules of thumb: It is much easier to deny inconvenient facts and truth when there is no data to assert what reality is. Therefore, morally rotted autocrats, ideologues, forced birthers, fundamentalist Christian nationalists and kleptocrats all work hard to not collect inconvenient data. But when it pops up despite their efforts to hide it, they enthusiastically deny, distort and otherwise lie, spin and/or apply crackpot motivated reasoning to downplay it. Republicans are especially expert at, and enthusiastic about, this political deceit tactic.

As Senate Democrats diddle, piddle and fiddle, their time to act slips quietly away

If the Democrats lose control of the Senate in the 2022 elections, the Republicans will probably not consent to even one federal judge nominee. At present, all Senate Republicans vote against judges that Biden nominates. The Hill writes:

President Biden’s nominee to serve as the first Black woman judge on the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals failed to win confirmation in the Senate Tuesday after two Democratic senators missed the vote: Sens. Maggie Hassan (N.H.) and Tammy Duckworth (Ill.).

Public defender Arianna Freeman’s nomination to the appeals court failed by a vote of 47 to 50. Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) voted “no” to give him the procedural flexibility to bring her nomination back to the floor at a future date.

Hassan and Duckworth were absent, as was Republican Sen. Todd Young (R-Ind.).

Every Republican present voted against the nominee.

If both absent Democrats had been present and voted “yes” along with Schumer, Freeman would have won confirmation in a 50-49 vote. Democrats also could have won Freeman’s confirmation in a 49-49 vote, with Vice President Harris breaking the tie because of Young’s absence.

The Democrats in the Senate appear to be unable to get their effing act together. That is on them.

How Russia attacks democracy and corrupts democracy and politics worldwide

For some years now it looked as if political corruption should rank as an existential threat to modern civilization, democracy, the environment and maybe even to the human species. Civilization because political corruption tends to flourish best when there is conflict. Democracy because corruption works best in secrecy under cruel, immoral-evil tyrants, theocrats and kleptocrats. The environment because it is easiest and fastest to generate major wealth and revenues by exploiting easy to access natural resources and polluting the planet in the process.

The New York Times reports on how Russia exports pro-tyranny, anti-democratic political corruption on a vast scale worldwide.

Russia Secretly Gave $300 Million to Political Parties and Officials Worldwide, U.S. Says

Russia has covertly given at least $300 million to political parties, officials and politicians in more than two dozen countries since 2014, and plans to transfer hundreds of millions more, with the goal of exerting political influence and swaying elections, according to a State Department summary of a recent U.S. intelligence review.

Russia has probably given even more that has gone undetected, the document said.

“The Kremlin and its proxies have transferred these funds in an effort to shape foreign political environments in Moscow’s favor,” the document said. .... The State Department document was sent as a cable to American embassies around the world on Monday to summarize talking points for U.S. diplomats in conversations with foreign officials.

U.S. intelligence agencies have determined that Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election in favor of Donald J. Trump, the Republican candidate who defeated Hillary Clinton, the Democratic nominee. Its methods included the use of cyberoperations to spread online disinformation. U.S. intelligence officials also found that President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia authorized a campaign to try to hurt the candidacy of Joseph R. Biden Jr. when he ran for office against Mr. Trump in 2020.

The Russians pay in cash, cryptocurrency, electronic funds transfers and lavish gifts, the document said. They move the money through a wide range of institutions to shield the origins of the financing, a practice called using cutouts. Those institutions include foundations, think tanks, organized crime groups, political consultancies, shell companies and Russian state-owned enterprises.

The money is also given secretly through Russian Embassy accounts and resources, the document said.  

The State Department said in the summary that it was urging governments to guard against covert political financing “not just by Russia, but also by China and other countries imitating this behavior.”

As one can imagine, countries doing this corruption business are not going to support pro-democracy politicians or political parties. They are going to support corrupt autocrats, kleptocrats and theocrats. That is why Russia supports Trump and the Republican Party and its politicians, not Democratic politicians or the Democratic Party.

This post is intended to be just another warning about the many avenues of attack on worldwide democracy and honest governance that are now being used to advance the cause of corrupt tyranny.

Christian nationalists are dropping a gigantic nuclear bomb on democracy and secular law

Fear the the radical Christian 

nationalist Supreme Court

This true horror story will curdle your blood, milk and cottage cheese. It will also dry your laundry, and burn your house and country to the ground. 

The bottom line is that Christian nationalists on the Supreme Court, led by the hyper-radical fundamentalist Sam Alito, want to exempt all religious people and organizations from essentially all legal obligations that now exist for everyone. The reason for exempting the religious crowd is to block burdens on their freedom of religion that Christians claim unduly burdens their religious beliefs and practice. The sleight of hand the Christian nationalists use for a “rationale” is that if one can imagine the possibility of a hypothetical, nonexistent government program that could substitute for the legal obligation, e.g., to provide birth control to employees by a Christian employer who sees contraception as offensive to his Christianity, then the Christians can opt-out of laws they dislike. 

Obviously, with Republicans in congress able and happy to block essentially all expansions of all government domestic spending programs, the government could not step in and provide the obligation that Christianity denies them, e.g., birth control. In essence, Christians would be free to discriminate almost as much as they wanted against whoever they choose, with no government protection for those discriminated against.

What Christian nationalists want is almost absolute freedom of religion (specifically Christianity) from almost all laws and obligations that any Christian (real or fake) says offends their beliefs. In the hyper-radical Christian fundamentalist world, it may even be the case that Christian nationalists will eventually demand exemptions from criminal laws that offend their religious sensibilities. For example, one can envision an argument that because God is OK with it, they can legally engage in insider stock trading that would amount to a felony for the rest of us. 

I do not know how far this horror show could go, but I strongly suspect it is a lot farther than even mindlessly blabbermouth Christian nationalists would be willing to admit in public. In essence, Christian nationalists are elevating religious freedom above all other rights, making the law religious and Christianity the core of theocratic law. 

The Hill writes in an opinion piece by Andrew Koppelman, John Paul Stevens Professor of Law at Northwestern University:

Religion and Samuel Alito’s time bomb

An irresponsible sentence that Justice Samuel Alito wrote eight years ago may now excuse religious people from nearly every legal obligation they have, so long as a hypothetical, nonexistent government program could substitute for it.

That became clear this week when Judge Reed O’Connor declared in Braidwood Management v. Becerra that employers with religious objections may offer health plans without drugs that prevent transmission of HIV, contraception, the HPV vaccine and screenings and behavioral counseling for STDs and drug use. The employers claim that providing such coverage makes them complicit in homosexual behavior, drug use and sexual activity outside of marriage.

The plaintiffs obviously were shopping for a favorable judge when they brought their case to O’Connor, who has repeatedly stretched the law in ways that disrupt ObamaCare. Here, however, his extravagant conclusion may well be sustained by the Supreme Court, which has embraced an increasingly extreme account of religious liberty.

[In a 2014 Supreme Court decision, Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores] opinion [Alito] mused that the “most straightforward way” of providing coverage “would be for the Government to assume the cost of providing the four contraceptives at issue to any women who are unable to obtain them under their health-insurance policies due to their employers’ religious objections.” He rejected the Obama administration’s claim that “RFRA cannot be used to require creation of entirely new programs.”

The court [in Hobby Lobby] split 5-4, and the swing vote, Justice Anthony Kennedy, declared that he was skeptical about the “imposition of a whole new program or burden on the Government.” In Hobby Lobby, he declared, there happened to be “an existing, recognized, workable, and already-implemented framework” for accommodating the religious objection. This fact “might well suffice to distinguish the instant cases from many others in which it is more difficult and expensive to accommodate a governmental program to countless religious claims based on an alleged statutory right of free exercise.”  

Kennedy has since retired, replaced by Neil Gorsuch, who has never voted to deny any religiously based claim. He is willing to expose frail patients to COVID-19 for the sake of religious liberty. Alito now proposes, on the basis of weak originalist evidence, to constitutionalize RFRA and require religious exemptions for all laws, state and federal alike.

Alito’s dictum was the basis for Judge O’Connor’s decision last week. Quoting “Hobby Lobby,” O’Connor wrote that the Biden administration had not “shown that the government would be unable to assume the cost of providing [HIV preventive] drugs to those who are unable to obtain them due to their employers’ religious objections.”

And that was that. With this one sentence, the employees’ coverage disappeared. Gone are Kennedy’s concerns about the difficulty and expense of demanding entire new programs. Or the certainty that those programs will not in fact ever be enacted, so that the employees must simply do without. And a majority of the new, extremely conservative court appears likely to agree with Alito.  

[In her dissent in Hobby Lobby, Justice Ruth Bader] Ginsburg was right that there is no stopping point. Perhaps emergency rooms in religious hospitals can turn away women hemorrhaging from failed pregnancies, because government could always build emergency rooms of its own.

There is today a serious danger to religious liberty. But it is coming from the Supreme Court, which has been construing it to mean a right to hurt people. If this is now its authoritative meaning, then the longstanding, broad consensus that supported it will collapse.

Professor Koppelman’s bland assertion that “the longstanding, broad consensus that supported it will collapse” is a gross understatement. Democracy and pluralistic secular law will both collapse if hyper-extremist Alito and Christian nationalists get their way. Democracy and secular law will be replaced by bigoted Christian fundamentalist theocracy backed by cruel, aggressive, vengeful Christian Sharia law. 

This is how threatening and aggressive American Christian nationalism and our Christian nationalist Supreme Court are toward democracy and pluralistic secularism. Short of a modern version of full blown civil war, our situation can’t get much worse than this.

Do we have a crisis among young men?

 

Questions, comments, war stories?

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