Nov 01

Mainstream News explains Chilean riots as protests against privatized pensions!

“News” story ignores the public’s anger at government climate regulations

Reuters news agency has been repeatedly exposed as funded in part by the CIA. See here and here.

Now the pro-government news bureau is out with a story attempting to explain the recent riots in Chile—which saw a million Chileans take to the streets to protest transportation cost increases caused by the government’s “climate change” policies—as being “fueled by fears of poverty in old age.”

Chile’s privatized pension system has long been a sore point for socialists and pro-government extremists in the world’s journalism establishment. Chile privatized its social security program decades ago, allowing workers to choose where to invest ten percent of their earnings. The experiment was a renowned success and catapulted Chilean living standards to the highest in South America. Unlike the U.S. Social Security system—which incentivizes American workers to work less and save less, and which has made the U.S. at least 3 percent poorer than it would be otherwise, according to Harvard research—the Chilean system incentivizes work, saving and investment.

Government trusters worldwide have long despised the Chilean pension system, which has been copied and adopted in several other nations.

So now, in the wake of the recent Chilean riots, the government-supporting (and supported) Reuters news network publishes the headline “Chile’s fiery anger fueled by fears of poverty in old age.”
Reuters’ evidence: “one elderly couple stood out from the largely youthful crowd and complained that Chile’s “pension system that has left many retired workers with scarce funds to get by.” The “plight of pensioners,” according to Reuters, “is key to understanding the potent violence that has seen buildings and buses burned, shut down the Santiago metro system, and forced President Sebastian Pinera to axe a third of his cabinet and cancel two major global summits.” There are a few quotes and a reference to “one viral video” in which “a young man wearing a hood and gas mask took the hands of an elderly woman to perform an impromptu dance.”

Even the Reuters story reluctantly admits that the pension privatization of the 1980s yielded bountiful prosperity: “The money that poured into the [pension] coffers – at present $216 billion, equivalent to 80% of gross domestic product – helped fuel an economic boom that saw a small elite flourish and gleaming glass and mirror towers come to dominate the skyline of Santiago.”

Nov 01

Billionaires continue to flee socialist New York; the latest is Donald Trump

New York’s high taxes and regulations have driven yet another wealthy New Yorker to flee to a lower tax state.

This time, the billionaire in question is Donald Trump himself.

The pro-government (and government supported) New York Times reported that “White House officials declined to say why Trump changed his primary residence, but a person who is close to the president said that the decision was made primarily for tax purposes.”

“Leaving New York could also save money for Trump’s heirs at the time of his death. New York imposes a top estate tax rate of 16 percent for estates larger than $10.1 million.”

Oct 31

The Downsized “Exxon Knew” trial proves that the “Merchants of Doubt” theory was always science fiction

by Roger I. Roots

Remember that book, and later movie, entitled “Merchants of Doubt”? It told how the world’s oil, gas and coal giants were secretly funding a “climate denial” movement in order to confuse and mislead the world into questioning the settled, unequivocal, unchallengeable science of catastrophic manmade climate change.

It turns out that the entire notion was groundless. The New York Attorney General’s office, subsidized by millions of dollars from the Rockefeller trusts and Michael Bloomberg, after examining 4 million pages of documents in a 3-year investigation, could not make a case. Exxon’s (and Mobil’s) treatment of climate science has largely tracked that of the rest of the world. Corporate management made decisions years ago to adapt to “mainstream” messaging on the issue, and to prepare for a more CO2-regulatory future.

The NYAG, doubtlessly exhausted after investigating ExxonMobil for 3 years, finally filed a scaled down version of the case everyone was waiting for in October 2018. The complaint—some 93 pages long—is merely that ExxonMobil’s projected costs-per-ton-of-carbon “proxies” described in some of the company’s glossy reports did not accurately reflect the company’s internal assessments of its own petroleum assets. As such the allegation is a securities fraud case; sort of. (This downsized “Exxon knew” allegation doesn’t meet one of the most important elements of traditional securities fraud —proof of intent—so the case is being brought under New York’s Martin Act, which requires only proof of negligence.)

Watching the trial play out last week in the New York Supreme Court courtroom of Judge Barry Ostrager, one couldn’t help but sense that the case is surreal. Here were ExxonMobil officials testifying about their desire for uniform global carbon taxes and regulations, their support for the Copenhagen and Paris climate agreements and their disappointment in the world’s failure to ‘do something’ about climate change.

Also testifying in the trial were representatives of very left-leaning, “socially conscious” investment funds who claim to believe the world is speeding toward imminent climate apocalypse but who simultaneously hold onto their ExxonMobil stock because of its reliability for steady growth and profits. Belief in the climate change doomsday scenario necessarily includes an understanding that Exxon and other fossil fuel interests will soon see their fortunes crater to virtually nothing as the apocalypse nears. But there are immense institutional investors such as CalPERS (California’s employee pension funds) and the New York City pension funds holding millions of dollars in ExxonMobil stock who claim to simultaneously support the theory.

These institutional investors forced ExxonMobil to issue a report in 2014 explaining how the corporation intended to address the threat of future climate change. Exxon produced several glossy reports with color-coded maps indicating that the company was prepared to pay as much as $80 per ton of carbon due to regulations in some countries by the year 2040.

The NYAG now claims those color-coded maps constituted securities fraud. Attorneys for the State of New York are now pointing to other, internal, Exxon documents which gave differing costs-per-ton estimates for 2040. (ExxonMobil defends by arguing that the differing sets of figures are apples and oranges; that some represent future demand estimates while others represent future cost estimates.)

Oct 31

Update: mainstream media cracks; begins to report Chilean protests were ignited by carbon taxes

After weeks of anti-government rioting in Chile and the embarrassing cancellation of the upcoming UN climate conference in Chile, some mainstream (i.e., government supported and supporting) news outlets are reluctantly reporting a connection to recent carbon taxes imposed by the Chilean government.

The Washington Post, conceding that capitalistic reforms have catapulted Chile to prosperity since 1975, reports that “Chileans have revolted against the cost of living” and cautions that transportation cost increases “incite rebellion like nothing else–a point that those who hope to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions via a carbon tax should bear in mind.”

Reuters, which, like the Washington Post has been repeatedly exposed as a funnel for CIA-generated propaganda, reluctantly mentioned a connection between carbon taxes and the Chilean riots. “Using price hikes as a policy tool has failed elsewhere too,” wrote Reuters. “France’s carbon tax helped spark months of “gilet jaunes” street protests.”

Oct 27

Mainstream media conceals the primary cause of the deadly Chilean riots: carbon taxes

This week saw major stories in many newspapers about the growth of protests and riots throughout the world. The Guardian published a detailed expose’ of protests in Hong Kong, Paris, Chile, Iraq, Ecuador and elsewhere which suggested the root cause of all these protests was young populations angry about “income inequality.” Reuters published a detailed report about the deadly riots in Chile, blaming the riots on “entrenched inequality.”

Hardly a word in any mainstream news story mentioned THE BIGGEST CAUSE of the Chilean riots–which have drawn about a million Chileans into the streets: climate taxes.

Chile is hosting a major U.N. climate conference in December, and its government has been positioning the South American country for attention as a climate action showpiece. The Chilean government recently imposed a carbon tax and switched its Metro transport system to renewable power.

“Now,” according to the Epoch Times, “the people of Chile are rising up and firing a shot across the bow of other nations considering similar energy taxes and expensive renewable energy programs.”

On Friday, protesters took to the streets throughout Santiago in response to Metro fare hikes. The protests soon spread to other cities and led to rioting and at least five reported deaths. The Chilean government and the legacy media blamed the fare hikes on rising oil prices. But that is not true.

Not only have oil prices NOT risen; they have dropped. But Chilean bus and train fares have risen because the government switched the bus and train systems to wind and solar power–and hiked fares accordingly.

Carbon taxes and “climate” regulations fall disproportionately on the poor.

“For U.N. officials planning the 25th Conference of the Parties (COP25) climate conference, scheduled for the first two weeks of December in Santiago, the protests are especially embarrassing.”

“The Chilean protests, like the Yellow Vest protests that erupted in France a year ago, highlight how out of touch the international climate class is with the people they seek to govern and control.”

Oct 26

What really caused the 2014 riots in Ferguson, Missouri? A new study suggests they were fueled by “taxation by citation”

Reason’s Brian Doherty is out with an article on city governments that use “taxation by citation” as major components of their income.

Doherty cites a study from the Institute for Justice, “The Price of Taxation by Citation.” The study looked at 3 Georgia cities which derive 14 to 25 percent of their revenue from petty fines and fees. “The cities have their own courts to process citations, and the evidence shows these courts, which are structurally dependent on the cities, operate as well-oiled machines,” the study reports. “[C]ases almost always end in a guilty finding, resulting in fines and fees revenue for the cities.” There are lots of fines for “traffic tickets…for non-speeding violations, such as expired tags, lane violations, illegal U-turns, parking violations and window tinting, among numerous others,” as well as “trivial infractions…dominated almost entirely by offenses like being in a park after closing, violating leash laws and not walking on sidewalks.”

Taxation by citation also leads to “lower levels of trust and higher levels of ill will toward city government on the part of residents. Such ill will may have fueled the massive riots in Ferguson, Missouri in 2014.

It turns out that “from July 2010 through June 2014, Ferguson, a city of about 21,000 residents, issued 90,000 citations for municipal ordinance violations. And in the final 12 months of that period, police and code inspectors wrote almost 50% more citations than they did in the first 12. Significantly, the additional citations were largely for non-serious code offenses—not offenses like assault, driving while intoxicated and theft; the number of citations for more serious crimes like those generally held steady.

Oct 26

Younger Brits are refusing to watch government BBC TV

Alarm bells are going off in the offices of the British Broadcasting Company (BBC) as younger viewers have abandoned the mainstream, government controlled network in droves.

An internal report finds that the BBC is facing the threat of extinction unless it can win back young viewers. The growth of alternative news and entertainment choices is destroying the government network.

The BBC is facing the prospect of a “lost generation” of viewers. For the first time, fewer than half of people aged 16-24 watched the BBC in an average week. By contrast, Netflix reached almost 2/3 of 15-24 year olds.

Unlike their parents and grandparents, young people do not have a “close association” with BBC “news” programming and consider it to be just one of many news services.

Oct 26

Californians are buying small generators by the thousands

THE MARKET ALWAYS WINS

Governments everywhere seek subjects that are impoverished, weak, ill, fearful and dependent on government “services.”

But the current and future blackouts caused by California’s government-licensed power monopoly appear to have one major positive impact: thousands of Californians are seeking self help by purchasing small gas generators.

Bloomberg reported on October 5 that a “decade of darkness” in California is offering a huge opportunity for the sale of generators that keep the lights on when the power grid goes down.”

The bottom line for Generac: $100 million to $200 million of annual revenue, perhaps as soon as 2022,

Electrification was an enormous trend during the Progressive Era and the New Deal. Governments everywhere sought to build a government-controlled power grid which those in government manage and control.

Now, as California’s government-sanctioned power supply has been rendered utterly untrustworthy, more Californians are seeking ways to independently power their homes and businesses.

Oct 25

Why did ExxonMobil choose a bench trial rather than a jury trial?

New York. October 25. New York Supreme Court. Antigovernment News Bureau. The downsized “Exxon knew” trial currently occurring in New York Supreme Court in lower Manhattan provides a look into several larger-scale litigation choices by ExxonMobil attorneys. Exxon is being sued by the State of New York for accounting discrepancies in the company’s reports and documents.

In essence, the claim against ExxonMobil is that the company published different projections of the burden of future carbon regulations at different times in different documents. In some cases, these costs-per-ton-of-carbon-by-2040 projections are represented in colors on Exxon maps. The New York Attorney General alleges that these different numbers constitute securities fraud. Exxon counters by stating the numbers represent different things for different purposes; sometimes they represent demand projections; sometimes they represent cost projections.

It is almost certain that no investor in the world made any investment decision based on the color coding of maps in Exxon’s climate change reports. Indeed, the State of New York doesn’t appear to be able to produce any witness who claims to have bought, held, or sold Exxon stock based on the color-coded maps. This case may be one of the weakest ever brought before the courts of New York (and that’s saying something).

In fact, it is well known that the State of New York originally sought to develop a case along the lines of the “Merchants of Doubt” theory that Exxon had secretly funded “climate denial” movements to delay and thwart the progress of consensus science and thereby to reap billions in fraudulent profits. A 3-year investigation involving 4 million pages of documents apparently killed that notion. (*Note that just days ago the Massachusetts Attorney General’s office announced that it was launching another “Exxon knew”-type investigation; stay tuned!)

A significant question is why Exxon’s lawyers opted to waive their right to trial by jury. The case is being heard by a single elderly judge, Barry Ostrager. It may be that ExxonMobil views New York City as hostile terrain and concluded that any jury pool of New Yorkers might be biased against the corporation. But polls show that the climate crusade is mostly a movement of wealthy elites in academia and government, and that the religion dies whenever and wherever it is subjected to a popular vote or an open forum.

Fully a third of Americans report thinking that manmade global warming may be a total hoax. The comment threads that follow online climate change news stories are often filled with skeptical comments which often refute the articles above. Some newspapers have discontinued commenting altogether rather than face embarrassment by skeptics. The LA Times even bans climate skeptical letters to the editor altogether.

Wherever the theory of catastrophic climate change has been subjected to a debate, it has fared poorly. Consequently most promoters of the climate doomsday theory avoid any and all debate in open forums.
Climate skeptic sites such as Wattsupwiththat.com receive the most traffic of any climate-related websites, and have been known to win “best blog” and “best science blog” awards in popular votes. After Wattsupwiththat.com was awarded “best science blog” for 5 years between 2008 and 2013, the Guardian Environment Blog discontinued the science category in 2014.

All of this suggests that a trial by jury may prove more favorable to fossil fuel concerns than a bench trial. In any case, the State of New York failed to land many hard blows against Exxon during the first week.

Trial continues Monday. Stay tuned!

Oct 23

Day 2 of downsized “Exxon knew” trial: prosecution strikes out with early early witnesses

by Roger Roots,
Antigovernment News and Justice Travelers

Lower Manhattan, New York, Oct. 23.

Day 2 of the downsized “Exxon Knew” trial in lower Manhattan was much ado about meetings, phone calls, glossy reports and discussions among Exxon and some of its institutional investors.

ExxonMobil has long been a king of the New York Stock Exchange. As such it attracts huge institutional investors, such as the New York State pension funds, the Church of England and the California State pension funds. Some of these institutional investors love the steady growth, profits and dividends provided by Exxon but simultaneously claim to believe the world is speeding toward imminent calamity due to the burning of Exxon-provided fossil fuels.

As a direct result of shareholder demands, ExxonMobil has issued a few glossy reports about its positions on and preparations for climate change regulations.

These reports are now being used against ExxonMobil at a trial in the New York Supreme Court in lower Manhattan.

THE MAP

At issue in the trial are maps of the world found in some of Exxon’s glossy climate change reports. The maps show some countries in red, others in yellow, and others in green to designate projections of costs-per-ton of carbon production in the year 2040.

This is all speculation about future politics. No one in the world would make investment decisions based on such maps. But the New York Attorney General’s office is alleging Exxon committed securities fraud by them. (It doesn’t help ExxonMobil that the company at times offered different costs per ton of carbon by 2040 at different times or for different purposes.

Wednesday’s government witnesses included two representatives of institutional investor funds. The government led with Natasha Lamb of Arjuna Capital. Lamb claimed to be a concerned fund manager interested in making socially conscious investment decisions. Much of her testimony concerned what she “understood” from various exchanges with ExxonMobil representatives rather than what she directly read or heard from them.

On cross-examination, Lamb was exposed as a militant climate-change activist posing as a fund manager interested in investing in Exxon. She admitted she wrote anti-Exxon editorials and believed wholeheartedly in the “Merchants of Doubt” theory that Exxon had fiendishly concealed the dangers of climate change from the public. (Note that the downsized nature of the current “Exxon knew” trial stands as something of a repudiation of that very thesis, as the NY AG was unable to develop such a complaint after a 3-year investigation of ExxonMobil that produced some 4 million pages of corporate disclosures.) Natasha Lamb admitted that no statement by Exxon led her to make any investment decisions regarding Exxon stock.

The next witness was an assistant comptroller in the New York City pension fund office. Like Natasha Lamb before him, he claimed to be confused or tricked by ExxonMobil’s cost-per-ton projections. But he admitted on cross-examination that he never even saw Exxon’s colored map until preparing for this trial and that nothing said by ExxonMobil changed his assessment of ExxonMobil stock.

The government’s case is so apparently weak that by day’s end Wednesday, the government was seeking to introduce an email by Exxon’s lawyers during the midst of the 3-year investigation as proof of the meaning of the per-ton prices on the maps. The email exchange occurred at a time when ExxonMobil was being led to believe the investigation was about concealment of climate change science. Judge Barry Ostrager grumpily said he would consider whether to admit the email into evidence at a later time.

Trial continues on Thursday.