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.

Oct 22

Opening statements in the whittled-down “Exxon Knew” trial


By Roger Roots

For Lysander Spooner University, Antigovernment News, and Justice Travelers

Lower Manhattan, New York, New York. Oct. 22. It was supposed to be the trial of the century.

But a New York Daily News article published on October 21 was entitled “The incredible collapsing ‘#ExxonKnew’ climate change lie”

The “Exxon Knew” case began with much fanfare after 2012 when a group of 20 Democratic state attorneys general conspired at a secret meeting in La Jolla,California to bring about the demise of the largest oil company in the world.

There were startling headlines. ExxonMobil had concealed the science of global warming from the public, it was said. There were supposedly whistleblowers and recently-unearthed company memos from the 1970s or ‘80s revealing Exxon’s (or Mobil’s) attempted coverup. A book, and then a movie entitled “Merchants of Doubt” told how the fossil fuel giants were secretly funding “climate denial” research to confuse the public about the supposedly well-settled science of catastrophic climate change.

Subpoenas flew and teams of investigators poured over ExxonMobil’s memos and emails for 3 years. Exxon turned over 4 million documents. It became known that the New York Attorney General’s investigation was being funded by environmentalist interests and even Michael Bloomberg and the Rockefeller Foundation.

But by 2018, when the “Exxon Knew” litigation began in earnest, the story had been exposed as mostly a work of science fiction. ExxonMobil has never spent more than the paltriest sums on skeptical science. In fact the oil giant has spent billions promoting and supporting the “consensus” theory. Exxon’s websites have made clear for years that the company “believes” in the climate change religion. ExxonMobil advocates carbon regulations and even supports the Paris Accords.

(Interestingly, ExxonMobil’s refusal to defend itself from the alleged consensus science begs the question of whether ExxonMobil has violated its fiduciary duty to its shareholders to fully investigate the weaknesses behind climate alarmism. The company may well face shareholder lawsuits in the future over its failure to challenge the climate doomsday narrative.)

By 2019 the “Exxon knew” allegations had fizzled into mere claims that Exxon used sloppy accounting in its own appraisals of its oil and gas reserves in light of likely future CO2 regulations.

TRIAL BY JUDGE NOT JURY, IN STATE RATHER THAN FEDERAL COURT

The setting for this whittled-down trial is the old New York Supreme Court building in lower Manhattan. (In New York, trial courts are “supreme” courts and what most Americans would call a state supreme court is known as the Court of Appeals.) The judge, Barry Ostrager, is trying the case himself, as both Exxon and the State have opted to forego a jury trial.

The diminished scope of the “Exxon Knew” case did not seem to deaden the hubbub surrounding the trial on Tuesday afternoon. The courtroom was packed, with more watching a feed from an overflow room on the third floor of the courthouse. Reporters and lawyers were everywhere.

A youngish State attorney led the proceedings in a rapid yet monotone delivery. Exxon kept two—or maybe three—sets of books regarding the future valuation of many of the company’s assets, he stated. While Exxon reassured the public that it was preparing for higher future regulatory costs, the company’s actual operations assumed that climate change regulations would stay constant and low.

This is all that remains of the once-heralded “Exxon Knew” allegations.
ExxonMobil’s lead attorney said Exxon did nothing wrong. “Absolutely nothing.” “For many years, ExxonMobil has recognized that climate change is real and must be addressed.” The mentions of future $80-per-carbon-ton costs were merely cash flow sheets for future projects which did not exist yet. Such figures were never on any balance sheet and no investor ever relied on them.

Trial continues tomorrow with witness testimony.

Oct 21

“I can’t think properly,” mumbles Julian Assange as he fights extradition to U.S.

The great Julian Assange, who has struggled for years to bring government crimes to light through his Wikileaks website, is currently held in England’s Belmarsh prison awaiting extradition to the U.S. to face “conspiracy” to disclose classified information charges.

(His alleged “coconspirator,” Chelsea Manning, is also being held–without sentence or charge–in U.S. jails for “contempt of court” for refusing to testify against Assange before a federal grand jury.)

At an extradition hearing in London on October 21, Assange said he couldn’t understand the proceedings.

Government judges told Assange that his lawyer could explain everything to him.

But Assange continued to ramble.
“I can’t think properly,” he said.

Oct 21

Americans continue to cite government as their greatest problem

A new Gallup poll is out. As governments have grown increasingly large and powerful, Americans have cited government as the biggest problem in their lives for two consecutive years.

Oct 20

Australian government is at war with free press

Australian papers are uniting to produce stories this week with most of their content redacted.

The plan is in response to recent raids and assaults on the press by the Australian government. The government has imposed increasing “national security” restrictions on the press in recent years.

Last year a court order prevented media from reporting that the former Vatican treasurer, Cardinal George Pell, had been found guilty on child sex abuse charges.

Some Australian outlets reported that an unidentified person had been convicted of spreading the news about Pell.

The subject came to a boil again in June when police raided the head office of the ABC in Sydney and the home of a News Corp editor on suspicion of receiving national secrets.

See here.

Oct 17

Bundy paralegal Rick Koerber sentenced to 14 years in federal puppet show hearing

Salt Lake City. October 15. Anti-Government News Bureau. The immense power of the federal justice department was on display as “the Free Capitalist,” Rick Koerber, received his sentence on Tuesday.

Rick Koerber rose to prominence throughout the early 2000s as a libertarian radio host and investment guru. Rick educated thousands around the American west. But when the real estate market collapsed in 2008, Rick’s investment business—and his investors—lost millions.

Rick called investors, kept them informed and spent a year liquidating assets to make the investors as close to whole as possible.

But Rick’s enemies in the government tried to bring criminal charges against him repeatedly. Several grand juries looked into Rick’s investment business and refused to indict him. The State of Utah investigated and concluded no crime was committed.

Prosecutors committed prosecutorial misconduct and several judges pronounced the claims against Rick dismissed with prejudice. But when federal prosecutors saw Rick working as a paralegal for the Bundy defense team in Oregon in 2016, they renewed their attempts to convict Rick of investment fraud.

After three trials, a jury convicted Rick Koerber in 2018. Now a federal judge brought in from New York sentenced Rick to more than 14 years in federal prison.

“Fraud” allegations are about deceiving victims. Prosecutors admitted they sent letters to all purported victims of Rick’s investment business, but that no purported victim showed up to speak for the prosecution. There were several who showed to speak for the defense, however. They had lost money but wanted to inform the court that Rick had treated them honestly.

Faculty from Lysander Spooner University were in the audience to support Rick, who had been a keynote speaker at LSU’s “The Struggle for Freedom” symposium in downtown Las Vegas on December 16, 2017. We watched as each ‘victim’ tried to tell the court they had not actually been victimized at all. The judge, Frederick Block of the Eastern District of New York, stopped and silenced each of them. Block told each ‘victim’ they could not speak at all unless they said they were a victim.

Finally, one witness, Jason Vaughn, stepped to the podium and said he was indeed a victim—OF THE PROSECUTION!. The judge immediately silenced him and marshals dragged him from the courtroom in front of shocked observers. Judge Block then halted all further discussion by victims, scolding defense lawyers that it was “insulting.”

After silencing all voices of the public and turning the hearing into a stage presentation about fictional “Ponzi schemes,” Judge Block sentenced Rick Koerber to more than 14 years in federal prison. The judge denied requests to release Koerber pending the outcome of his appeal.

We stand in support of Rick Koerber and demand justice for him.