Nov 12

UPDATE: New York ExxonMobil Trial Sputters to an End

New York Attorney General Drops Half Its Fraud Case In Closing Arguments
Lower Manhattan. November 7, 2019.

The downsized “Exxon knew” trial in New York City has ended. The parties await a verdict from Judge Barry Ostrager in the New York Supreme Court. A 3-year investigation by the New York Attorney General into some 4 million pages of Exxon documents—with millions of dollars of funding by Michael Bloomberg and the Rockefeller trusts—has ended in a whimper.

At one time it was supposed to be the biggest trial in American history—involving claims that Exxon (and/or Mobil) covered up knowledge by the fossil fuel industry that CO2 would cause apocalyptic climate change back in the 1970s or 1980s—or some time. But the government investigation fizzled. ExxonMobil has consistently tracked and gone public with a position on climate change which closely tracks that of the government establishment. (Contrary to popular belief, ExxonMobil has never spent more than a pittance on ‘climate skeptical’ research; and in fact the oil giant now spends millions promoting the unfounded doomsday theories of the government.)

By 2018, the NY AG was reduced to filing a suit alleging merely that ExxonMobil had knowingly given inaccurate future projections regarding the future cost of carbon regulations.

Even THAT case has turned out to be unfounded. When the NY AG made closing arguments on Thursday, November 7, after a three-week trial, its counsel admitted the State could not prove two of four of the civil allegations in its complaint.

According to Law360.com:

Moments after government counsel began laying out its closing argument, Justice Ostrager interrupted to clarify that the attorney general was formally stipulating that two claims, one for common law fraud and another for equitable fraud, would be dismissed with prejudice in the final minutes of New York’s carefully-watched case against the oil giant.

Thus what remains of the case were negligent-inaccuracy claims under New York’s Martin Act. The Martin Act, unlike common law fraud, does not require any actual proof of fraudulent intent. Thus, the NY AG is no longer arguing that the oil giant deliberately defrauded anyone.

What remained of the multi-million-dollar investigation are two claims that some of Exxon’s internal documents gave price-per-ton-of-carbon-in-2040 figures that differed from its figures published in some glossy public reports. ExxonMobil argues the differing figures represent different projections: the published numbers are estimates of DEMAND in 2040 while the internal numbers are estimates of future COSTS and taxes.

Thus, the issues in the trial “revolve around relatively narrow questions of New York securities law,” in the words of Inside Climate News.

Nov 07

Federal Prisoner Schaeffer Cox—Wrongly Convicted in 2011 Conspiracy Case—Resentenced to 15 Years

Tacoma, WA. November 5, 2019. Antigovernment News Bureau.

Francis Schaeffer Cox, the charismatic young founder of the Alaska Peacemakers Militia, was resentenced to 188 months (some 15 and ½ years) imprisonment—a significant reduction from his previous sentence of 26 years imprisonment. Cox was convicted in 2012 of a variety of firearm and explosive offenses and conspiracy to murder federal officials. The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals overturned Cox’s solicitation-of-murder-of-federal-officials conviction because that charge pertained to allegations that Schaeffer asked friends to protect him from a federal assassination team that never existed.

A number of the gun possession charges involved pieces of guns or explosives which were not functional or which were provided by paid undercover informants. And in some cases, Mr. Cox never actually possessed or even touched the devices.

The conspiracy-to-murder-federal-officials conviction (which was strangely upheld by the 9th Circuit) involved essentially two facts: (1) that Cox was in a militia organization, and (2) that Cox was in speculative discussions with undercover informants in which it was suggested that if the government collapsed into Stalinesque martial law Cox’s friends would use self defense.

Cox has already served nine years in federal prison, mostly at supermax-level “Communication Management Units” (CMUs) at either Marion, Illinois or Terre Haute, Indiana.

Cox’s sentencing hearing lasted two days and included testimony by a renowned psychologist named Mark Cunningham who told Judge Robert J. Bryan that Mr. Cox was prone to exaggeration and hyperbole but was not mentally ill and not dangerous.

Cox has consistently insisted on his innocence. Prosecutors argued that Cox deserved the highest possible sentence because Cox maintains a website (managed by supporters on the outside) which describes Cox as wrongfully convicted.

Nov 07

Venezuelan death troops kill hundreds more

Socialism is always sold as a path to harmony, equality and tranquility. In reality it is starvation, misery, torture and mass murder.

Venezuelan government troops continue mass executions and slaughters throughout the once prosperous country.

Since 2018, the non-governmental human rights group Cofavic has recorded 831 “executions” carried out by FAES [Special Action Forces] members, based on information from relatives and its own observations on the ground.

Many of those targeted participated in protests against President Maduro.

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.