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.

News bits: The flaccid rule of law, etc.

IRS shielded Trump from scrutiny

The NYT writes:

I.R.S. Didn’t Audit Trump for 2 Years in Office, 

House Committee Says

The House Ways and Means Committee voted to release six years of Mr. Trump’s tax returns, and members revealed that the I.R.S. failed to follow its own policy because it did not audit Mr. Trump during his first two years in office. It may be days before the tax information is revealed.  

The Internal Revenue Service failed to audit former President Donald J. Trump during his first two years in office despite a program that makes the auditing of sitting presidents mandatory, a House committee revealed on Tuesday after an extraordinary vote to make public six years of his tax returns.

Sigh. Once again, we have a two-tiered rule of law. Once is soft and friendly for the rich and powerful. For the rest of us, the other is usually not nearly as forgiving or friendly. Not only is the rule of law flaccid, our federal government has been poisoned by deeply corrupted Republicans. 

Strange faerie tales from Twitterlandia

The hellscape continues to unfold

Elon Musk must be having some kind of a psychotic break. He loses a Twitter poll to stay on as CEO, 57.5% voted against him, but then says the election was rigged against him. Now, he says he will step down as Twitter CEO. The NYT comments:

Elon Musk said on Tuesday that he would resign as Twitter’s chief executive when he found “someone foolish enough to take the job,” two days after he had asked his 122 million Twitter followers whether he should step down as the leader of the social media site and a majority of respondents answered yes.  

But hours after the poll closed on Monday morning, Mr. Musk stayed silent. When he finally spoke up late Monday, he did not directly address the survey result. Instead, he replied to Twitter users who cast doubt on the outcome and said Twitter would change its poll feature so that only people who paid for its subscription service would be allowed to vote.

So, Elon is looking for a fool to be CEO. This ought to be pretty interesting. No more stolen elections for Musk!! MAGA!!

From the Corporations are Good Citizens Files

The NYT writes:

Wells Fargo to Pay $3.7 Billion Over 

Consumer Banking Violations

The settlement, which includes the largest fine ever imposed by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, allows the bank to resolve claims that it had harmed millions of consumers since 2011.

The consumer protection bureau said Wells Fargo did not record customer payments on home and auto loans properly, wrongfully repossessed some borrowers’ cars and homes and charged overdraft fees even when customers had enough money to cover purchases they made with their bank cards. Wells Fargo stopped the conduct this year as part of a larger effort to clean up other unlawful practices stretching back to 2011, the filing said.

It only took Wells 11 years to deal with whatever it was doing. Well done Wells! See how responsive and efficient the patriotic private sector is compared to the evil, socialist government? 

Note that the CFPB is the federal agency that Republicans in congress hate and want to get rid of. After all, corporations would never do anything naughty, like simply taking away someone’s home or car for no reason. Right? No, wrong!

The rise of corporate power and wealth in the US

This raises some interesting points about how corporations in the US came to escape restrictions on them and empowered to inflict social and environmental damage with impunity. I do not recall this being taught in public schools, but it probably should be.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Reclaim Democracy! writes:

When American colonists declared independence from England in 1776, they also freed themselves from control by English corporations that extracted their wealth and dominated trade. After fighting a revolution to end this exploitation, our country’s founders retained a healthy fear of corporate power and wisely limited corporations exclusively to a business role. Corporations were forbidden from attempting to influence elections, public policy, and other realms of civic society.

Initially, the privilege of incorporation was granted selectively to enable activities that benefited the public, such as construction of roads or canals. Enabling shareholders to profit was seen as a means to that end. The states also imposed conditions (some of which remain on the books, though unused) like these:

• Corporate charters (licenses to exist) were granted for a limited time and could be revoked promptly for violating laws.
• Corporations could engage only in activities necessary to fulfill their chartered purpose.
• Corporations could not own stock in other corporations nor own any property that was not essential to fulfilling their chartered purpose.
• Corporations were often terminated if they exceeded their authority or caused public harm.
• Owners and managers were responsible for criminal acts committed on the job.
• Corporations could not make any political or charitable contributions nor spend money to influence law-making.

For 100 years after the American Revolution, legislators maintained tight control of the corporate chartering process. Because of widespread public opposition, early legislators granted very few corporate charters, and only after debate. Citizens governed corporations by detailing operating conditions not just in charters but also in state constitutions and state laws. Incorporated businesses were prohibited from taking any action that legislators did not specifically allow.

States also limited corporate charters to a set number of years. Unless a legislature renewed an expiring charter, the corporation was dissolved and its assets were divided among shareholders. Citizen authority clauses limited capitalization, debts, land holdings, and sometimes, even profits. They required a company’s accounting books to be turned over to a legislature upon request. The power of large shareholders was limited by scaled voting, so that large and small investors had equal voting rights. Interlocking directorates were outlawed. Shareholders had the right to remove directors at will.

But the men running corporations pressed on. Contests over charter were battles to control labor, resources, community rights, and political sovereignty. More and more frequently, corporations were abusing their charters to become conglomerates and trusts. They converted the nation’s resources and treasures into private fortunes, creating factory systems and company towns. Political power began flowing to absentee owners, rather than community-rooted enterprises.

The industrial age forced a nation of farmers to become wage earners, and they became fearful of unemployment–a new fear that corporations quickly learned to exploit. Company towns arose. and blacklists of labor organizers and workers who spoke up for their rights became common. When workers began to organize, industrialists and bankers hired private armies to keep them in line — sometimes by killing key leaders. They bought newspapers to paint businessmen as heroes and shape public opinion. Corporations bought state legislators, then announced legislators were corrupt and said scrutinizing every corporate operation wasted public resources

Government spending during the Civil War brought these corporations fantastic wealth. Corporate executives paid “borers” to infest Congress and state capitals, bribing elected and appointed officials alike. They pried loose an avalanche of government financial largesse. During this time, legislators were persuaded to give corporations limited liability, decreased citizen authority over them, and extended durations of charters.

Attempts were made to keep strong charter laws in place, but with the courts applying legal doctrines that made protection of corporations and corporate property the center of constitutional law, citizen sovereignty was undermined. As corporations grew stronger, government and the courts became easier prey. They freely reinterpreted the U.S. Constitution and transformed common law doctrines.

One of the most severe blows to citizen authority arose out of the 1886 Supreme Court case of Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad. Though the court did not make a ruling on the question of “corporate personhood,” thanks to misleading notes of a clerk, the decision subsequently was used as precedent to hold that a corporation was a “natural person.” (This story was detailed in “The Theft of Human Rights,” a chapter in Thom Hartmann’s Unequal Protection.)

From that point on, the 14th Amendment, enacted to protect rights of freed slaves, was used routinely to grant corporations constitutional “personhood.” Justices have since struck down hundreds of local, state and federal laws enacted to protect people from corporate harm based on this illegitimate premise. Armed with these “rights,” corporations increased control over resources, jobs, commerce, politicians, judges, and the law.

A United States Congressional committee concluded in 1941, “The principal instrument of the concentration of economic power and wealth has been the corporate charter with unlimited power….”

Some observations & commentary

Notice how power and wealth are persistent. They never stop looking for ways to get more, even if it takes centuries. Power and wealth accumulated by corporations have corrupted government and gained great power over citizens. That power often or usually is not used for the benefit of citizens. Instead, it is used to gain more power and wealth for corporations.

I keep harping here on the importance of keeping eyes on the flow of power when radical right American politicians howl about the tyrannical socialist horrors of business regulations. When those politicians deregulate, power usually flows from government and/or citizens to special interests. Power in the form of consumer protections, civil liberties and freedom from corporate deceit does not tend to flow to citizens. It usually flows away from citizens and/or government. 

Right now, our radical right, brass knuckles capitalist Republican Supreme Court is in the process of arrogating power to itself so it can block government efforts to deal with climate change and give state legislatures the power to turn elections into a non-democratic farce. Power flows away from citizens and to political elites and allied corporations who buy those elites.

Republicans in congress want to completely get rid of federal Consumer Finance Protection Bureau because it protects citizens, not corporations. Recent Supreme Court decisions shield corporate political activities behind an impenetrable wall of opacity. That allows for plausible deniability about corporations corrupting government (via campaign contributions, etc.), opposing efforts to deal with climate change, profiting from polluting, and spreading lies in vast propaganda campaigns to deceive the public and politicians. 

And there is this parody of an oil company ad pretending to care about climate change, in the initial ~1:40 of the video:

Acknowledgement: Thanks to Freeze Peach for bringing this article to my attention.

Thoughts on juries, plausible deniability and the reasonable doubt concept

NPR broadcast a sad story yesterday about a parent (or sibling) of a 20-something woman who died from an overdose of fentanyl that was in some other drug (heroine?). The young woman was in daily phone contact with the parent but one day she didn’t call. The parent got worried and started searching. The next day, the found the body of the woman. She was killed by fentanyl in the drug. The police caught the drug dealer. He confessed to selling the bad drug to the dead woman. 

One member of a 12-person jury acquitted the drug dealer because they had a reasonable doubt about whether the drug dealer was one who actually sold the tainted drug to the dead woman. That one juror said they “reasonably” believed the dead woman could have bought the bad drug from someone else during the ~24 hour delay before her body was found. The drug dealer was released and faced no criminal liability in the incident.

That is how fragile and unpredictable it can be to find criminal guilt in court. All it takes is to create a “reasonable” doubt in the mind of just one person. All it took was for the drug dealer’s defense attorney to point out that it was possible that the dead woman bought some tainted drug from someone else, even though there was no evidence of another drug dealer. The belief in guilt of the other eleven jurors was irrelevant. Just that one person and their doubt let the drug dealer go free.

In the eyes of the law, justice was swerved. But was justice really served? Why did eleven people see guilt where just one did not? Exactly what does “reasonable doubt” mean?

Now, think about all the defenses that Trump will raise if he ever is indicted for anything related to his 1/6 coup attempt and the Republican Party’s culpability. It is hard and unpredictable to get criminal convictions for blue collar crimes and criminals. It is about ten times worse for white collar criminals like Trump or Republican elites. It is almost a miracle that Trump’s charity and university were found to be fraudulent criminal operations. But even there, Trump suffered no serious personal repercussions. He paid a pipsqueak fine and paid some stolen money back. Big deal. /s

The Imperial Supreme Court rises to power over all

This legal analysis is very important to know at least a little about. It directly speaks to how Republican Party fascism will most likely rise to power. It hints at the terrifying influence that (i) brass knuckles capitalism, (ii) rabid Christian nationalism, and (iii) the court’s often contradictory and/or irrational ‘all ends justify any means mindset.’ 

The argument laid out here strongly suggests that American fascism will most likely rise mostly via the least democratic federal institution, the now Imperial US Supreme Court. I posted this yesterday but it got lost in the focus on Trump’s criminal referrals to the DoJ. Due to its importance, I deleted this from yesterday’s original post, and repost and expand it here as a stand alone item. This really does deserve some attention.

The NYT writes:

The conventional critique of the Supreme Court these days is that it has lurched to the right and is out of step with the public on many issues. That is true so far as it goes.

But a burst of recent legal scholarship makes a deeper point, saying the current court is distinctive in a different way: It has rapidly been accumulating power at the expense of every other part of the government.

The phenomenon was documented last month by Mark A. Lemley, a law professor at Stanford, in an article called “The Imperial Supreme Court” in The Harvard Law Review.[1]

“The court has not been favoring one branch of government over another, or favoring states over the federal government, or the rights of people over governments,” Professor Lemley wrote. “Rather, it is withdrawing power from all of them at once.” 

He added, “It is a court that is consolidating its power, systematically undercutting any branch of government, federal or state, that might threaten that power, while at the same time undercutting individual rights.” 

In a similar vein, Justice Elena Kagan noted the majority’s imperial impulses in a dissent from a decision in June that limited the Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to address climate change.

“The court appoints itself — instead of Congress or the expert agency — the decision maker on climate policy,” she wrote. “I cannot think of many things more frightening.”

A second study, to be published in Presidential Studies Quarterly, concentrated on cases involving the executive branch and backed up Professor Lemley’s observations with data. Taking account of 3,660 decisions since 1937, the study found that the court led since 2005 by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. has been “uniquely willing to check executive authority.”  

The study’s authors, Rebecca L. Brown and Lee Epstein, both of the University of Southern California, wrote that “there is little indication that the Roberts court’s willingness to rule against the president bears any reliable relation to preserving the balance among the branches or the workings and accountability of the democratic process.”

“Instead,” they wrote, “there are increasingly frequent indications that the court is establishing a position of judicial supremacy over the president and Congress.”

Why is the Supreme Court accumulating power? To advance the raging Christian nationalist and brass knuckles capitalist agendas that they were knowingly put on the bench to advance. All the evidence so far is that the radical right Christian nationalist-laissez-faire capitalist Supreme Court is going to try to completely rework the federal government and Christianize American society under Christian Sharia law. The court intends to kill secularism, secular law, secular public education, democracy, civil liberties and regulation of business, consumer protections, guns and pollution. That is the court’s agenda. It is the same as the fascist Republican Party’s agenda. 

If the Republican Christofascist Supreme Court gets its way, government, social and commercial power will be wielded by cruel, corrupt, arrogant plutocrats and an enraged White male Christian Taliban. Secular public schools will be replaced by radicalized Christian Madrasas schools that brainwash innocent children to accept and practice hate, intolerance and White Christian bigotry.

Rulers and teachers in the Christian Madrasas

Q: How likely is it that the Supreme Court, staunchly backed by a radical right Republican Party, will be able to radically Christianize America and convert it to some form of a non-democratic, radical capitalist Christofascist theocracy-kleptocracy in the next ~5 years? 0%? ~5%? ~20%? Something else?

Footnote: 

1. Lemley wrote in his Harvard Law Review article:

The past few years have marked the emergence of the imperial Supreme Court. Armed with a new, nearly bulletproof majority, conservative Justices on the Court have embarked on a radical restructuring of American law across a range of fields and disciplines. Unlike previous shifts in the Court, this one isn’t marked by debates over federal versus state power, or congressional versus judicial power, or judicial activism versus restraint. Nor is it marked by the triumph of one form of constitutional interpretation over another. On each of those axes, the Court’s recent opinions point in radically different directions. The Court has taken significant, simultaneous steps to restrict the power of Congress, the administrative state, the states, and the lower federal courts. And it has done so using a variety of (often contradictory) interpretative methodologies. The common denominator across multiple opinions in the last two years is that they concentrate power in one place: the Supreme Court. (emphasis added)

My quibble with Lemley is this. Those Republicans are not merely “conservative Justices on the Court.” They are radical right extremists at the least, Christofascists IMO.

Trump's criminal referrals

The 1/6 committee referred the traitor thug Trump to the DoJ for breaking four laws. As always for white collar crimes like that criminal intent is front and center. Goon tyrants in the US like Trump are expert at making sure plausible deniability is sufficient to convince at least 1 juror there is reasonable doubt or plausible deniability. People like the lying pro-tyranny lawyer John Eastman gave advice to Trump that he will point to as evidence he seriously believed he was not breaking any law.

That is one huge bulwark that defends Trump against a criminal indictment.

Another bulwark in favor of Trump is the paralyzed Merrick Garland.

Between the plausible deniability and the ineffective Garland, the criminal referrals of the 1/6 Committee may not go anywhere.

The unknown here is special prosecutor Jack Smith. I don’t know if the criminal referrals will reach Smith or not.

NBC News summarized:

• The committee voted to make criminal referrals to the Justice Department for former President Donald Trump, lawyer John Eastman and unspecified "others." Trump was referred under four criminal statutes: obstructing an official proceeding, making false statements, defrauding the U.S. and inciting an insurrection.

• The panel also referred four Republican members of Congress to the House Ethics Committee for ignoring its subpoenas, though it did not name the members.

• The committee released a 154-page summary of its findings Monday. The full final report is expected to be made public later this week.

The 154 page 1/6 Committee introductory material is at this link. The final full report will be released with in the next week.

The Hill comments on the referrals:

Investigators on the committee said they decided on criminal referrals against Trump based on sufficient evidence showing that he violated various statutes: inciting, assisting, or aiding and comforting an insurrection; obstructing an official proceeding; conspiracy to defraud the United States; conspiracy to make a false statement; and other conspiracy statutes.

The recommendations themselves, however, are largely symbolic, as the Department of Justice is not required to look into referrals from congressional committees. They also come as the agency is conducting its own investigation into the Capitol riot that was recently put under the purview of an independent special counsel.

But the referrals nonetheless mark a significant escalation in the political fight between the committee and Trump, especially as the former president wages his third bid for the White House.