Strange, Luther
15 tags!
MERRI OK
SEE STEVE MARSHALL RAGA PFAS TEAM RED
AM 1ST ACTION MCMAHON
SACKLER PRUITT
html populations bak 9/20
w/ pal ken paxton on claude walker exxon hitEBELL
vs judge roy moore for sessions sen seat
runoff
bannon backs moore
http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/bannons-oligarch-cage-match-worries-gop
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[### Annie Donaldson Talley
The Federalist Society
https://fedsoc.org › bio › annie-donaldson-talley](https://fedsoc.org/bio/annie-donaldson-talley)
Annie Donaldson Talley is Partner at Luther Strange and Associates. She recently departed the White House after serving as Deputy Assistant to the President ...
Missing: son | Show results with: son
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2018 3M
political-chemicals-cleanup-3m-1012445
By Annie Snider11/23/2018
Chemical industry giant 3M is waging an aggressive campaign to stave off new regulations and potentially billions of dollars in damages stemming from a contamination crisis that has fouled tens of millions of Americans’ drinking water.
The Minnesota-based company is putting its lobbying muscle to work in Washington and courting the support of state attorneys general as it faces potentially massive financial liability for toxic pollution linked to two of its nonstick and water repellent chemicals, which have turned up in the water supplies of more than 1,500 U.S. communities.
A key component of 3M’s campaign to fend off government action is a new industry advocacy group that began weighing into the debate this summer, arguing that the chemicals don’t pose a health threat — a conclusion that numerous government agencies and independent studies have disputed. The industry group’s efforts to raise doubts about the science have caused alarm among public health watchdogs who call them reminiscent of the tobacco industry’s old playbook.
3M’s combative posture contrasts with a more conciliatory approach taken by other giant companies that have been implicated in the pollution crisis, as well as the industry’s primary lobbying group, the American Chemistry Council. Those organizations have supported federal efforts to evaluate and regulate the chemicals, banking on the Trump administration to deliver industry-friendly rules.
But as the chemicals’ original and biggest manufacturer, 3M faces a different scale of risk.
A glimpse at the scope of its potential liability emerged in February, when 3M reached an $850 million settlement with Minnesota for damage the company’s chemicals caused to the state’s drinking water. New York state soon filed its own lawsuit, and outgoing Republican Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder asked his state’s attorney general to pursue litigation as well. Meanwhile, dozens of other personal injury, class-action and property damage lawsuits are piling up against the company across the country. Altogether, industry experts say the company’s liability could reach the tens of billions of dollars.
Joshua Aguilar, an equity analyst with Morningstar, said analysts view the Minnesota settlement as a one-off event, at least for now, but that the litigation from other states and class-action suits could threaten the company’s value.
“If you have different jurisdictions where this becomes serious, you have to settle one, you have to settle another, it becomes a contagion effect,” he said.
The chemicals, known as PFOA and PFOS, have been used for five decades in products ranging from firefighting foam to Teflon to 3M’s signature Scotchgard. They take years to break down in the environment, giving them the nickname “forever chemicals.” They also accumulate in human bodies, where they have been linked to kidney and testicular cancer, immune disorders and other ailments — and have been found in more than 99 percent of Americans’ blood.
Communities from New York to Michigan to Colorado have been in an uproar as more contaminations have come to light. Earlier this year, POLITICO reported that the Trump administration sought to block a federal study finding they pose a danger at lower levels than the EPA previously deemed safe — a conclusion one White House said warned could be “a public relations nightmare.” That study, published by an agency of the CDC, finally came out this summer.
3M did not respond to multiple questions from POLITICO about its political activity and lobbying around the chemicals, which are part of a broader category of substances known as PFAS. But it acknowledged its membership in the new advocacy group, the Responsible Science Policy Coalition, as well as being a member of other business-oriented organizations such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the National Association of Manufacturers, the Business Roundtable and the American Chemistry Council.
“3M is a technology and manufacturing company committed to scientific research and environmental stewardship,” company spokesperson Fanna Haile-Selassie said in a statement. She noted that the company, which lobbies on a wide variety of topics from taxes to health care, “voluntarily discloses its political activities and the public policy reasons behind them.”
An industry source with knowledge of the Responsible Science Policy Coalition said 3M is its main backer.
3M’s political action committee poured money into state-level campaigns this year including to attorney general candidates in Michigan, Ohio, California and Alabama — all states with major PFAS contaminations. The company also made its first contributions since at least 2013, totaling more than $36,000, to the Republican Attorneys General Association and its Democratic counterpart. Those groups, in turn, donate millions to their parties’ candidates for state attorney general without disclosing which contributions were directed by which corporate donors.
Some attorneys general have proven receptive to the company’s message.
In Alabama, where the chemicals made by 3M’s manufacturing plant in Decatur have contaminated the Tennessee River, a drinking water source for 4.7 million people, the freshly reelected attorney general has refused to join a drinking water utility’s lawsuit against the company. GOP Attorney General Steve Marshall received $2,000 from 3M’s political action campaign, and RAGA gave $735,000 during his bruising primary — a contribution that both Republicans and Democrats in the state argue violates Alabama’s ban on contributions between political action committees. Records do not indicate whether 3M directed any of its RAGA donations to him.
The northern Alabama water utility that supplies some of the state’s poorest communities with water drawn from just downstream of the 3M plant has sued the company over the contamination. The water utility’s manager formally requested Marshall’s help in the litigation an Oct. 12 letter, and said that Marshall’s predecessor, former Alabama Attorney General Luther Strange, had been collaborating with the water utility on the issue before Strange was appointed to the state’s open U.S. Senate seat in February 2017. But Marshall told a Huntsville television station last month that he is trying to determine whether his office has a role in the contamination case, WHNT-TV reported.
“I’m not the environmental watchdog,” he told the station. “My job is to make sure that we enforce the laws and do things that are appropriate for the people of this state.”
Marshall’s office declined to respond to POLITICO’s queries about the campaign contributions or his stance on the lawsuit.
State attorneys general were also the audience for the first public appearance of the Responsible Science Policy Coalition.
The coalition’s lobbyist warned against acting too fast to regulate the chemicals when he spoke on a panel at the Conference of Western Attorneys General in New Mexico in July.
“So much of what you see in emerging chemicals is people jump forward because of public pressure and things like that, make decisions, but then as more science emerges, we realize, ‘Oh, maybe that wasn’t the right decision,’ and it’s very hard to pull things back once you’ve done them,” lobbyist Jonathan Gledhill told the attorneys general, according to 
posted online by the conference.
Representatives of the coalition have also met with several congressional offices and EPA political appointees in recent months, arguing that “the weight of current scientific evidence does not show that PFOS or PFOA cause adverse health effects in humans at current levels of exposure.” That conclusion flies in the face of findings by leading independent scientific researchers, EPA and the CDC.
The lobby group contends it is simply interested in assuring a sound process.
“The Coalition supports EPA’s ongoing efforts to evaluate and develop appropriate regulations and guidance for PFAS and to collaborate on testing, remediation and research that will help assist federal agencies, states and communities to more comprehensively evaluate PFAS occurrences,” coalition attorney James Votaw said in a statement to POLITICO.
But Michael Halpern, deputy director of the Center for Science and Democracy at the Union of Concerned Scientists, called the strategy a classic industry approach to delaying and undermining regulations.
“The goal is to stave off regulation by questioning the science,” Halpern said. He likened the new industry group to a similarly named organization, the Advancement of Sound Science Coalition, that the tobacco industry used in the early 1990s to attack EPA’s findings on secondhand smoke.
Briefing materials from the Responsible Science Policy Coalition obtained by POLITICO feature charts comparing the average concentration of the chemicals in Americans’ blood with the levels at which the chemicals have been found to harm animals in industry-backed studies. The implication is that humans’ exposure is far below the level that causes harm.
But David Savitz, an epidemiologist at Brown University’s School of Public Health, called the approach “disingenuous.” He said scientists recognize that humans’ bodies aren’t the same as those of lab animals, and they adjust the comparisons to account for those differences.
Moreover, he said, looking at the average person’s exposure is misleading because people living near contaminated hotspots, like manufacturing sites or military bases, have far higher risks.
Indeed, 3M’s own internal documents, which were handed to the Minnesota attorney general’s office as part of the lawsuit that settled in February, show that the company has known since the 1970s that the chemicals were toxic, according to reporting by The Intercept.
The coalition’s efforts to question the chemicals’ harm have set off alarm bells on Capitol Hill, where Sen. Tom Carper of Delaware, the top Democrat on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, pressed Trump administration officials during a recent hearing to dispute the group’s arguments that the chemicals aren’t linked to illnesses.
“What this country needs is responsible regulation to protect the public’s health and the environment, not more efforts to delay solutions and downplay risks,” Carper said in a statement to POLITICO.
3M’s campaign against government regulation has even caused concern from others within industry. DuPont, which faces major liabilities for PFOA, and the industry’s biggest lobbying group, the American Chemistry Council, have backed EPA’s efforts to evaluate and regulate the chemicals, banking on the Trump administration to write the most industry-friendly regulations that they can hope for.
“You are never going to have a more favorable administration than this administration to set standards,” a person in the industry said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal industry discussions. “It doesn’t get any better than this.”
Former EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt committed to taking the first step toward potentially regulating PFOA and PFOS in drinking water and setting cleanup standards. His successor, acting Administrator Andrew Wheeler, has reiterated that pledge.
Asked about agency officials’ meetings with 3M and the new coalition, EPA spokeswoman Molly Block said they have met with a “variety” of individuals and officials about the chemicals. She said the agency will issue a plan that outlines short- and long-term steps for dealing with the chemicals.
Still, a version of the strategy 3M is deploying at the national level has already borne fruit in the company’s home state of Minnesota. There, years before this February’s hefty legal settlement, 3M persuaded lawmakers and regulators to pull back from formally declaring the chemicals hazardous — a designation that could have brought even wider-reaching legal consequences.
But now the company is facing a new challenge, from a novel legal technique aimed at short-circuiting 3M’s efforts to question the science.
As part of a class-action lawsuit brought on behalf of residents near DuPont’s Teflon manufacturing plant in Parkersburg, W.Va., a decade and a half ago, DuPont agreed to do medical monitoring and to convene an independent science panel to evaluate PFOA’s health effects. Those studies produced the lion’s share of evidence about the chemical’s effects on human health. And crucially, the settlement required that the company not only fund the independent research but be bound by its findings.
This February, that science led to a settlement between DuPont and residents affected by its plant’s water contamination, with the company agreeing to pay $670 million to 3,550 residents.
The Cincinnati attorney behind that suit has since filed a new lawsuit, on behalf of an Ohio firefighter, that seeks to create another independent science panel that would look at PFOA, PFOS and other chemicals in the class, whose findings would bind 3M, DuPont, Chemours and other major manufacturers of the chemicals.
“There is tremendous fear, anxiety, and uncertainty across the country as to the serious public health threat posed by PFAS contamination,” the attorney, Robert Bilott, said in a news release announcing the lawsuit in October. “This lawsuit could provide a mechanism for addressing and resolving those concerns through a truly comprehensive and independent, science-based process paid for by those that actually created the problem — and not by the American taxpayers.”
Filed Under:
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https://www.ecowatch.com/koch-brothers-paris-agreement-2430226599.html
Paris Exit Was 'Victory Paid and Carried Out' by Republican Party for the Koch Brothers
nolink
The 22 Republican senators who sent a letter to President Donald Trump last week urging the United States' withdrawal from the Paris climate agreement received more than $10 million dollars in campaign funds from fossil fuel interests.
The two-page letter was signed by a number of Republican heavyweights from coal/gas/oil-rich states, including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma and Ted Cruz of Texas.
The Guardian calculated that the 22 senators received a total of $10,694,284 from oil, gas and coal money in just five years. (See the breakdown below.
However, that sum does not even come close to the amount of undisclosed funds coming from the deep pockets of Charles and David Koch's coal, oil and gas conglomerate, Koch Industries, and other outside groups.
As the Guardian explains:
"Visible donations to Republicans from those industries exceeded donations to Democrats in the 2016 election cycle by a ratio of 15-to-1, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. And that does not include so-called dark money passed from oil interests such as Koch industries to general slush funds to re-elect Republicans such as the Senate leadership fund.
"At least $90m in untraceable money has been funneled to Republican candidates from oil, gas and coal interests in the past three election cycles, according to Federal Election Commission disclosures analyzed by the Center for Responsive Politics."
Jeffrey Sachs, professor of economics and director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University, shared recently his views on Trump's climate walkout.In an interview with Bloomberg Surveillance, Sachs referenced the senators' letter and specifically cast blame on the billionaire oil barons for pulling the strings of Republican party leaders such as McConnell and House Speaker Paul Ryan, who both supported exiting the Paris accord.
"This is the victory paid and carried out for 20 years by two people, David and Charles Koch," Sachs said. "They have bought and purchased the top of the Republican party. Trump is a tool in this."
Notably, most of the Republican signatories of the letter do not support the belief that human activity contributes to climate change.
During an appearance on MSNBC, Democratic Sen. Edward J. Markey of Massachusetts explained why he thinks his Republican colleagues do not believe in the science of climate change.
"This Conservative party in the United States is funded by the Koch brothers [and] it's funded by the coal industry," Markey said. "[They] insist that Scott Pruitt—the Attorney General of Oklahoma that actually sued the EPA 19 times on clean air, clean water, soot, mercury issues—becomes the head of the EPA in our country."
The 22 Republican signatories' funding from Big Oil, Gas and Coal in the past three election cycles (2012, 2014 and 2016):
James Inhofe, Oklahoma
Oil & gas: $465,950 + Coal: $63,600 = $529,550
John Barrasso, Wyoming
Oil & gas: $458,466 + Coal: $127,356 = $585,822
Mitch McConnell, Kentucky
Oil & gas: $1,180,384 + Coal: $361,700 = $1,542,084
John Cornyn, Texas
Oil & gas: $1,101,456 + Coal: $33,050 = $1,134,506
Roy Blunt, Missouri
Oil & gas: $353,864 + Coal: $96,000 = $449,864
Roger Wicker, Mississippi
Oil & gas: $198,816 + Coal: $25,376 = $224,192
Michael Enzi, Wyoming
Oil & gas: $211,083 + Coal: $63,300 = $274,383
Mike Crapo, Idaho
Oil & gas: $110,250 + Coal: $26,756 = $137,006
Jim Risch, Idaho
Oil & gas: $123,850 + Coal: $25,680 = $149,530
Thad Cochran, Mississippi
Oil & gas: $276,905 + Coal: $15,000 = $291,905
Mike Rounds, South Dakota
Oil & gas: $201,900 + Coal: none = $201,900
Rand Paul, Kentucky
Oil & gas: $170,215 + Coal: $82,571 = $252,786
John Boozman, Arkansas
Oil & gas: $147,930 + Coal: $2,000 = $149,930
Richard Shelby, Alabama
Oil & gas: $60,150 + $2,500 = $62,650
Luther Strange, Alabama (Appointed in 2017, running in 2017 special election)
Total: NA
Orrin Hatch, Utah
Oil & gas: $446,250 + Coal: $25,000 = $471,250
Mike Lee, Utah
Oil & gas: $231,520 + Coal: $21,895 = $253,415
Ted Cruz, Texas
Oil & gas: $2,465,910 + Coal: $103,900 = $2,569,810
David Perdue, Georgia
Oil & gas: $184,250 + Coal: $0 = $184,250
Thom Tillis, North Carolina
Oil & gas: $263,400 + Coal: $0 = $263,400
Tim Scott, South Carolina
Oil & gas: $490,076 + Coal: $58,200 = $548,276
Pat Roberts, Kansas
Oil & gas: $388,950 + Coal: $28,825 = $417,775
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https://www.nationalreview.com/2016/05/climate-change-attorneys-general/
no lnx
POLITICS & POLICY
The Climate-Change Gang
By SCOTT PRUITT
& LUTHER STRANGE
May 17, 2016
The Obama administration lawlessly rewards its supporters and punishes its enemies.
The United States was born out of a revolution against, in the words of the Declaration of Independence, an “arbitrary government” that put men on trial “for pretended offences”and “abolish[ed] the Free System of English laws.” Brave men and women stood up to that oppressive government, and this, the greatest democracy of them all, one that is governed by the rule of law and not by men, is the product.
Some of our states have forgotten this founding principle and are acting less like Jefferson and Adams and more like George III. A group of Democratic attorneys general has announced it intends to criminally investigate oil and gas companies that have disputed the science behind man-made global warming. Backed bygreen-energy interests and environmentalist lobbying groups, the coalition has promised to use intrusive investigations, costly litigation, and criminal prosecutions to silence critics of its climate-change agenda. Pretended offenses, indeed.
We won’t be joining this coalition, and we hope that those attorneys general who have joined will disavow it. Healthy debate is the lifeblood of American democracy, and global warming has inspired one of the major policy debates of our time. That debate is far from settled. Scientists continue to disagree about the degree and extent of global warming and its connection to the actions of mankind. That debate should be encouraged — in classrooms, public forums, and the halls of Congress. It should not be silenced with threats of prosecution. Dissent is not a crime.
RELATED: Obama’s Latest Executive Action: Spend Hundreds of Billions to Not Help the Environment]
Sadly, this isn’t the first time we’ve seen this tactic of advancing the climate-change agenda by any means necessary. President Obama’s Clean Power Plan is a particularly noteworthy example. This EPA regulation, one of the most ambitious ever proposed, will shutter coal-fired power plants, significantly increase the price of electricity for American consumers, and enact by executive fiat the very same cap-and-trade system for carbon emissions that Congress has rejected.
The Clean Power Plan was promulgated without any consultation with Congress.No bills were debated, no votes were taken, and the representatives of the American people had no opportunity to object or offer their own suggestions. The checks and balances built into our system of government were simply ignored as inconvenient impediments to the president’s agenda.
The Clean Power Plan was promulgated without any consultation with Congress. No bills were debated, no votes were taken.
But in our states, we believe in and govern with respect for the rule of law, rather than by ambition to use the power of our governments to stifle political opponents. That is why we are part of a very different kind of coalition, a coalition of 29 states seeking to vindicate the rule of law by challenging the legality of the Clean Power Plan in our courts. The 29 states and state attorneys general who are part of this effort respect our proper role, which is neither to pick winners and losers in the energy sectornor to silence those with whom we disagree. Rather, our job is to hold the EPA accountableto the laws that created it and to fulfill our statutory duties to ensure that consumers in our states have access to reliable, affordable energy. We will continue to pursue those goals and to present our arguments in the courts and in the public square, treating our opponents with the respect they deserve.
RELATED: Obama’s ‘Clean Power Plan’ Punishes Workers, Consumers, and States That Voted for Romney]
It’s unfortunate that this respect is not always returned. In their press conference, the group of state attorneys general called themselves an “unprecedented coalition.” On this point, they are correct. Rarely in our nation’s history has the police power of the state been so eagerly used to intimidate citizens [corporations?] into silence.
But even more troubling are internal e-mails and other documents that indicate that this coercion was orchestrated not by the attorneys general themselves, but by green-energy advocacy groups using these officials as puppets to further their extreme agendas. This should frighten us all. Outside groups should not be able to use the power of the government as a sword to go after their political opponents.
We do not doubt the sincerity of the beliefs of our fellow attorneys general about climate change and the role human activity plays in it. [why/how could you? thy can and shd doubt yours?] But we call upon them to press those beliefs through debate [like in a courtroom?], not through governmental intimidation of those who disagree with them. Few things could be more un-American.
— Scott Pruitt is the attorney general of Oklahoma. Luther Strange is the attorney general of Alabama.
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feb 2018
https://blog.ucsusa.org/elliott-negin/exxonmobils-climate-disinformation-campaign-is-still-alive-and-well/
In a recent blog post, ExxonMobil executive Suzanne McCarronreiterated her company’s claim that it fully accepts the reality of climate change and that it wants to do something about it....“I want to use this opportunity to be 100 percent clear about where we stand on climate change,” she wrote. “We believe the risk of climate change is real and we are committed to being part of the solution. So why is the company still a part of—in fact, a major part of—the problem?An exchange between Oklahoma Sen. James Inhofe and Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Scott Pruitt during a recent is a case in point, providing a window into how ExxonMobil’s undue influence continues to block climate action.
During the January 30 hearing, which was held by the Senate Environment and Public Works (EPW) Committee, Sen. Cory Booker inadvertently provoked Inhofe by raising the issue of environmental justice.The New Jersey Democrat cited the threat climate change-induced flooding poses to three dozen Superfund sites in his state and asked Pruitt if he was “taking into account the environmental burdens disproportionately impacting communities of color, indigenous communities and low-income communities.”
Inhofe seized the opportunity to contradict Booker, claiming that minority and low-income communities are disproportionately harmed by environmental protections, specifically citing the Obama administration’s Clean Power Plan, which would have dramatically reduced carbon emissions from coal-fired power plants if Pruitt hadn’t repealed it.
Booker, Inhofe said, was implying that Pruitt was trying to “punish” vulnerable Americans. “I wanted to just remind you,” Inhofe told the committee, “that we had a guy I remember so well, Harry Alford. He was the president of the National Black Chamber of Commerce. He provided some of the most powerful testimony that I have ever heard when it comes to the effects of the Clean Power Plan and some of the other regulations … on black and Hispanic poverty, including job losses and increased energy costs.
“[Alford] was very emphatic as to who was paying the price on these,” the Oklahoma Republican continued, “and I think sometimes that the previous administration forgot that there are already people out there who are paying all they can pay just to try to eat and keep their house warm.”
ExxonMobil’s Echo Chamber
Inhofe’s source for his assertion? A discredited, ExxonMobil-funded study by an Exxon-funded advocacy group that was based on discredited studies by other ExxonMobil-funded organizations.
Inhofe rested his argument on previous congressional testimony by Harry Alford, president of the National Black Chamber of Commerce (NBCC), a shoestring, mom-and-pop operation that is unapologetic about taking fossil fuel industry money. “Of course we do and it is only natural,” Alford wrote on NBCC’s website. “The legacy of Blacks in this nation has been tied to the miraculous history of fossil fuel…. [F]ossil fuels have been our economic friend.”
One of NBCC’s closest economic friends is ExxonMobil, which has donated more than $1.14 million to the group since 2001.
What did the company get for that money?
In 2015, NBCC commissioned a report that claimed the Clean Power Plan would “inflict severe and disproportionate economic burdens on poor families, especially minorities.”
In fact, unchecked climate change would more than likely hurt those communities most, and investments in energy efficiency under the plan would ultimately lower electricity bills across the country.
How did NBCC arrive at its upside-down assessment? The Union of Concerned Scientists took a close look at the report and found it was based on several flawed fossil fuel industry-friendly studies. Two of those bogus studies were produced by ExxonMobil grantees: the Heritage Foundation, which received $340,000 from ExxonMobil between 2007 and 2013, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which received $3 million between 2014 and 2016.
The Chamber study, which came out just days before the EPA released a draft of the Clean Power Plan, was debunked not only by the EPA, but also by PolitiFact.com and The Washington Post. Among its many faults, the Chamber study—which was co-sponsored by the American Petroleum Institute—wildly inflated the cost of the plan and failed to consider the benefits of cutting carbon emissions.
ExxonMobil Spreads its Money Around
But there’s more than just the fact that ExxonMobil financed deliberately flawed studies to try to derail the Clean Power Plan. The company also is a major supporter of a number of Senate EPW Committee members, including Inhofe, who are adamant climate science deniers.
Inhofe has deep ties to the oil and gas industry, which has donated $1.85 million to his campaign war chest over his long career in Congress, more than twice than any other industry.Three oil and gas companies are among the senator’s top 10 corporate contributors: Koch Industries, Devon Energy and …ExxonMobil.
Six of the other 10 Republicans on the EPW Committee also are on ExxonMobil’s donation list, including Wyoming Sen. John Barrasso, the current committee chairman. Roughly half of the $119,500 ExxonMobil contributed to the seven senators over the last decade went to Barrasso and Inhofe, the committee’s previous chairman.
Then there’s ExxonMobil’s link to Pruitt, Oklahoma’s attorney general before President Trump tapped him to run the EPA. From 2012 through 2013, he chaired the Republican Attorneys General Association (RAGA)and afterward served on the organization’s executive committee. From 2014 through 2016, ExxonMobil gave RAGA $160,000 in three annual installments.
Just a few weeks after the company made its 2016 donation of $50,000,Pruitt and then-RAGA Chairman Luther Strange,at the time Alabama’s attorney general, co-authored a National Review column attacking a coalition of state attorneys general investigating ExxonMobil and other fossil fuel companies for misleading investors and the general public about climate change. Parroting ExxonMobil’s argument, Pruitt and Strange charged that the coalition was violating the company’s first amendment right to free speech.
“The debate” over climate change, they wrote “is far from settled. Scientists continue to disagree about the degree and extent of global warming and its connection to the actions of mankind. That debate should be encouraged — in classrooms, public forums, and the halls of Congress. It should not be silenced with threats of prosecution. Dissent is not a crime.”
Inhofe Upstaged
In this case, Inhofe’s counterfactual comment didn’t make it into the ensuing media coverage. Along with nearly everything else that was said during the two-and-a-half hour marathon, it was eclipsed by a bombshell dropped by Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse. The Rhode Island Democrat revealed that during a February 2016 radio interview, Pruitt said Trump would be “more abusive to the Constitution than Barack Obama, and that’s saying a lot.” Whitehouse read Pruitt’s remark aloud and asked him if he recalled making it.
“I don’t,” Pruitt responded, “and I don’t echo that today at all.”
“I guess not,” Whitehouse replied.
Not surprisingly, that embarrassing nugget was the story. There was no way that Inhofe’s rambling, ExxonMobil-sponsored falsehood could compete in the media with red meat like that. But overshadowed or not, Inhofe provided yet another incontrovertible piece of evidence that—despite ExxonMobil’s statements to the contrary—the company is still very much engaged behind the scenes in trying to stymie any government attempt to seriously address climate change.
Posted in: Climate Change, Energy, Science and Democracy, Scientific Integrity
Tags: disinformation
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Does Exxon Mobil have a constitutional right to sow doubt about climate science? That’s the subject of a high-stakes legal battle playing out between dozens of state attorneys general, members of Congress, corporate executives, and activists.
Last fall, investigations by Inside Climate News and the Los Angeles Times revealed that the oil giant has decades of internal documents showing that its own scientists and executives knew fossil fuels contributed to climate change. Publicly, the company argued that the threats posed by global warming were far from certain, presumably as part of an effort to fight off regulation[doc]
...March 2000 Exxon Mobil ad about climate science. (Click here for a larger image.) Greenpeace
The revelations have sparked a barrage of legal actions. The attorney generals of Massachusetts, California, and New York launched investigations of Exxon, while Democratic AGs from other states have expressed their support. Some have drawn parallels to the tobacco industry’s deception on the dangers of smoking. Exxon has countered that the investigations are unconstitutional and has filed motions asking courts to block the subpoenas. “This…is about freedom of political speech,” the company recently argued in the Massachusetts case.
In March, US Virgin Islands Attorney General Claude Walker served the company with a subpoenaseeking records that he claimed might prove that Exxon had defrauded consumers and the government by “misrepresenting its knowledge” that its fossil fuels contribute to climate change. Walker specifically pointed to a state racketeering statute that prohibits obtaining money by false pretenses. He demanded any documents detailing Exxon’s knowledge of climate change and its strategies to address it, including research studies, publications, statements, and communications with outside groups. Exxon responded by filing a lawsuit against Walker to block the subpoena. Exxon prevailed on Wednesday, when Walker agreed to withdraw the subpoena.
Exxon received some unusual assistance in its victory in the Virgin Islands case. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, a tea-party-aligned Republican, went so far as to formally intervene—that is, he asked the court to allow the state of Texas to become a party to the case. Exxon, he wrote, had a First Amendment right to withhold the documents Walker was seeking. The brief was also signed by Alabama Attorney General Luther Strange (R). (Paxton and Strange also objected to Walker’s use of a private law firm to help conduct the investigation.)
In a press conference in May, Paxton had called Walker’s investigation “a fishing expedition of the worst kind” and said it represented “an effort to punish Exxon for daring to hold opinions on climate change that differ from theirs.”
“This is about the criminalization of speech and the criminalization of thought,” he said.
Two days later, Republican members of the House Science Committee sent letters to Walker and 16 Democratic attorneys general requesting documents related to the various Exxon investigations. They followed up with additional letters in June.
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2012? pryor? luther?
But it was over climate change that Cuccinelli would make his greatest mark.
He put Virginia out in front—along with Texas and Alabama—as one of the first states to sue the Obama administration over the Environmental Protection Agency's endangerment finding on greenhouse gases.
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https://www.politico.com/story/2018/02/25/luther-strange-alabama-washington-agency-423408
Strange makes play to return to D.C.
The former Alabama senator is assessing whether he can land a federal agency job, people familiar with his plans say...Strange, who had been appointed to the seat vacated by Attorney General Jeff Sessions but was defeated by Roy Moore in the Republican primary in September, has been on the hunt for a job in Washington over the past few weeks, according to three people familiar with his plans. ...He’s been sounding out professional contacts and weighing whether he can get a job at a federal agency or set up his own consulting shop. Those close to him say he’s increasingly likely to land at a law firm, where he’ll split his time between Alabama and D.C.Strange has been interviewing with several firms in Washington over the past couple of weeks, including Venable, according to two people familiar with the issue.While he is not expected to land a job in the administration in the near future, some White House aides have nonetheless been eyeing him for a position, believing that, as a former senator and former Alabama attorney general, he’d have little difficulty getting confirmed."Somebody like Luther Strange, with all of his years of experience and a little bit of experience in the Senate — and somebody who frankly has been extremely loyal to the Trump agenda for the entirety of histime in the Senate — he is exactly the kind of person you would be looking to recruit for an executive branch position,” said Republican strategist Scott Jennings, who was part of the political personnel process as special assistant to President George W. Bush..President Donald Trump endorsed Strange in the Alabama primary against the advice of his former chief strategist, Steve Bannon. As it became clear that Strange would lose to Moore, Trumpfrom the candidate. And after Strange lost, a furious Trump deleted his previous tweets backing StrangeBut in the end, Moore went on to lose December’s special election to Democrat Doug Jones, prompting Trump to defend his original decision to back Strange.">“The reason I originally endorsed Luther Strange (and his numbers went up mightily), is that I said Roy Moore will not be able to win the General Election,” Trump wrote on Twitter at the time. “I was right! Roy worked hard but the deck was stacked against him!”[pedophile]Strange still has strong relationships with people in the White House, particularly outgoing deputy chief of staff Rick Dearborn and director of White House messaging strategy Cliff Sims, both of whom have deep ties to Alabama, as well as White House counselDon McGahn. He is also close to Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt, who, like Strange, is a former state attorney general. [RAGA?]Strange was at the White House last month, according to a person who saw him there. It’s unclear what, if any, position Strange might eventually get in the administration, but lobbyists and some in the White House have long been buzzing about the possibility that he could benominated to lead the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.Strange was mentioned on short lists for the agency job after Richard Cordray, a Democrat, left the organization to run for governor of Ohio. Mick Mulvaney, director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, took the helm of the consumer watchdog agency in an acting capacity last year. But Republicans close to Strange suspect that when Mulvaney leaves the post, possibly in the event that he is picked to replace John Kelly as White House chief of staff, Strange will again be in the running for the job.In addition to CFPB director, Strange has been talked about as a possible head of the Export-Import Bank. Strange’s former chief of staff is now a senior aide at the bank. But people close to Strange have cautioned him against accepting that job because senators are deeply divided over the future of the agency and could block any White House nominee to it as a result.
A White House spokeswoman declined to comment, adding, “We have no personnel announcements.”
Meanwhile, Strange has also stayed close to friends at the Republican Attorneys General Association, which he used to lead, and was expected to attend the group’s 2018 winter national meeting in Washington on Sunday and Monday....Donald Trump
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bonner cohen bs
http://news.heartland.org/newspaper-article/2016/05/18/green-activists-and-state-ags-collude-against-climate-dissenters
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/conservative-groups-pour-money-into-races-for-state-attorneys-general/2016/09/23/7a57030c-7e86-11e6-8d13-d7c704ef9fd9_story.html?utm_term=.c83a00e2b380
The Republican state attorneys general have attacked Democratic AGs over an investigation into whether ExxonMobil knew about the threat of climate change as early as the 1970s and whether the oil giant violated securities law by misleading the public and investors about the potential consequences.
The New York and Massachusetts attorneys general have issued broad subpoenas in the matter, but Exxon, which says it has already provided New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman about 1 million documents, has complained that Schneiderman is violating the company’s freedom of speech.
Republicans have accused Schneiderman of colluding with environmental groups and liberal nonprofits to come up with a plan to use the same strategy against the oil industry that was used against the tobacco industry.
The flap was at the top of the agenda when RAGA held its summer meeting at the Broadmoor hotel in Colorado Springs on July 11. The first panel, attended by hundreds of corporate executives, was titled “Climate Change Debate — How Speech Is Being Stifled.”
The meeting did not include any scientific experts on climate change. Instead the panel included a longtime denier of climate change, Myron Ebell of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, and Chet M. Thompson, president of the American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers, whose plants are major emitters of greenhouse gases. The AFPM gave RAGA $50,900 last year and has given $135,000 so far in 2016.
“We’ve got reality on our side,” Ebell said. He called the investigation of Exxon an “inquisition.” Ebell’s group received about $2 million from Exxon in the 2000s before the company switched direction and stopped funding the small group.
Challenging the overwhelming consensus among scientists that climate change is real, Ebell said that “the first thing they try to do is try to change reality. They try to change the facts.” He added, “The next thing they try to do is exaggerate the impacts.”
“This is not about climate change, and it’s not about fraud,” Alabama Attorney General Luther Strange interjected, according to a recording of the event provided by the Center for Media and Democracy. “It’s about if elected officials should be able to turn the prosecutorial power of their states against their political opponents in contradiction of our First Amendment and our basic speech rights in this country.”
Strange, who becomes RAGA chairman in November, told the group that he had “never received a penny from Exxon in any campaign I’ve run.” The oil giant, however, gave $50,000 to RAGA in 2015 and another $50,000 this year, according to filings by RAGA to the Treasury.
Environmental groups say the RAGA meeting in July was no different from their own efforts; the Republican attorneys general plotted strategy with like-minded groups. The environmentalists say that they are exercising the free speech RAGA claims to be protecting and that they also have the right to petition government officials and to consult experts. Their meetings were not secret, they add.
“This is much more like collusion,” said Nick Surgey, research director at the Center for Media and Democracy. “These corporations have leverage because they pay into RAGA. And most of their money goes to elections.”
Much of RAGA’s strategy will revolve around television ads in states where the group hopes to make a difference.
The group has booked $3.8 million in broadcast and cable TV advertising time for the final five weeks of the state attorney general campaign in North Carolina, where the Republican nominee, state Sen. Buck Newton, is in a tough race against Democratic state Sen. Josh Stein.
The association has already spent, through its Mountaineers Are Always Free PAC, nearly $2 million on four rounds of ads in West Virginia, where it is highlighting the fight against the Clean Power Plan, which would hurt the state’s coal industry. And it has sent $2 million to Josh Hawley’s campaign for attorney general in Missouri, which allows direct contributions. RAGA plans further spending in those states as well as in Pennsylvania and Indiana.
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#1:
AG INDIVIDUAL SUM: $2,871,208
An examination of industry donations to the Republican Attorneys General who have joined the lawsuit
against the Clean Power Plan. Republican Attorneys General who were appointed or do not have
campaign contribution records are excluded.
1. Alabama – Luther Strange
$314,788
- Arizona - Mark Brnovich
$11,000
- Arkansas – Leslie Rutledge
$32,875
- Colorado – Cynthia Coffman
$22,828
- Florida – Pam Bondi
$26,350
- Georgia – Sam Olens
$43,925
- Indiana – Greg Zoeller
$28,200
8. Kansas – Derek Schmidt
$129,737
9. Louisiana – Buddy Caldwell
$98,642
10. Michigan – Bill Schuette
$172,241
- Montana – Tim Fox
$35,241
- Nebraska – Doug Peterson
$4,053
13. North Dakota - Wayne Stenehjem
$87,801
- Nevada – Adam Paul Laxalt
$27,300
15. Ohio – Mike DeWine
$335,763
16. Oklahoma - Scott Pruitt
$305,996
- South Carolina – Alan Wilson
$39,050
- South Dakota – Marty Jackley
$10,826
19. Texas – Ken Paxton
$1,067,817
- Utah – Sean Reyes
$2,800
21. West Virginia – Patrick Morrissey
$53,500
- Wisconsin – Brad Schimel
$20,475
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http://blogs.denverpost.com/thespot/2014/07/30/colorado-attorney-general-raga-cynthia-coffman/111212/
The Republican Attorneys General Association is under fire in Colorado and Alabama for earlier donations to political-action committees. In Colorado, the money was used to hammer former Congressman Tom Tancredo in the governor’s primary.
The $2.6 million investment for Coffman is more than four times the amount spent by any candidate ever running for attorney general in Colorado, Quick said, and is believed to be the first time outside money has played a role in the race.
:{:{“I don’t think Colorado voters are going to like a group from the outside trying to buy the attorney general’s office,” said Quick, the former Adams County district attorney. “There may be a real estate boom right now but the attorney general’s office isn’t up for sale.”[he was wrong]}:
}:
Scott Will, the political director for RAGA, has refused to tell The Denver Post why the organization, whose stated mission is to elect Republicans for attorney general, played in Colorado’s four-way GOP June 24 gubernatorial primary. Will did comment on the money for Coffman.
“RAGA is investing heavily in this race because Colorado voters are rejecting the Obama agendaand making it clear that they want leaders like Cynthia Coffman who will rein in the federal government,” he said.
RAGA in June funneled $155,000 to a super PAC with ties to Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign. The money paid for automated calls and a radio ad attacking Tancredo, and a TV spot that highlighted another gubernatorial candidate, Bob Beauprez, at Tancredo’s expense. Beauprez beat Tancredo and two other GOP rivals in the June 24 primary. Days later, the Republican Governors Association contributed $175,000 to RAGA.
Tancredo has demanded that New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, chairman of RGA, provide a full explanation and release communications between his group and RAGA.
In Alabama, the RAGA donation to a PAC intended to benefit Luther Strange, the Republican attorney general seeking re-election, has been called illegal because of state campaign finance laws. Luther returned the $50,000 PAC donation after reporters asked questions, but a complaint has been filed with the Alabama Ethics Commission.
Luther’s RAGA donation is paltry compared to the $2.6 million for Coffman.
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Republican operative Jessica Medeiros Garrison has become known in recent weeks for her connections to Luther Strange, including an extramarital affair with the Alabama attorney general. But in a strictly political sense, Garrison's strongest ties might be to another Republican, one of national significance.
We are talking about U.S. Circuit Judge William H. "Bill" Pryor, who entered the spotlight in 2003 when he became President George W. Bush's controversial nominee to the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals. Pryor drew such strong opposition from Democrats, primarily because of his stance against abortion rights, that Bush was forced to make a recess appointment in February 2004. Among the issues at Pryor's confirmation hearing was his decision to schedule a family vacation to Disney World so as not to coincide with the park's "Gay Days" festivities.
Pryor's national profile recently became even stronger when President Obama inexplicably appointed him to a six-year term on the U.S. Sentencing Commission. By statute, the commission must be bipartisan, and at least three of its members must be federal judges. But of all the federal judges in the country, including Republican appointees from Democratic-leaning states, why would Obama choose Bill Pryor? Was it a favor to U.S. Senator Jeff Sessions (R-AL), ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee and a long-time Pryor supporter?
In a recent newspaper interview, Jessica Garrison lists Bill Pryor as her "real-life hero" and calls him a "mentor" who has given her invaluable advice "since I was in college." (More on that interview in an upcoming post.) The relationship apparently started when Garrison worked as an intern in the attorney general's office under Sessions, and Pryor was one of his chief deputies. When Pryor ascended to the AG's position, Garrison worked for him in public relations and legislative affairs.
Many Alabamians probably assume that Pryor is based in Atlanta, home to the Eleventh Circuit. But he lives in Birmingham and is based at the Hugo Black U.S. Courthouse downtown, where he has an office on the ninth floor.
Pryor's profile, however, extends beyond the courthouse door. He is involved with a Birmingham-based ministry that has connections to the downtown law firm where Garrison serves in an "of counsel" position. And Pryor started the Republican Attorneys General Association (RAGA), which now is Garrison's primary employer.
That raises this question: Has Bill Pryor been involved in the maneuvering that apparently started with the Strange/Garrison affair, her divorce from Tuscaloosa city councilman Lee Garrison, and her effort to modify their custody agreement so she could take a job under Strange at the attorney general's office? More specifically, has Pryor been involved in the curious financial payments and peculiar real-estate transactions that are central to the Strange/Garrison saga?
Pryor is known as "the Johnny Appleseed" of the Federalist Society, the ultra-conservative legal group for which he started chapters in New Orleans and Birmingham. He also is known as a deeply religious sort who wears his Catholic faith for all to see.
If Bill Pryor is such a moral guy, why would he come anywhere near the mess that Luther Strange and Jessica Garrison have created? Besides that, what kind of mentor is Bill Pryor if one of his acolytes becomes ensnared in a scandal that involves an extramarital affair and other ugliness?
What about Pryor's ties to a Birmingham "ministry"--and why would he be involved in such an organization, given that he is a federal judge in a democracy that supposedly is based, in part, on a separation of church and state?
The Web site for the Fixed Point Foundationstates that its mission is "to seek innovative ways to defend and proclaim the Gospel and to prepare Christians to do the same." Prominent among Fixed Point's speakers is Bill Pryor, and he has served as a debate moderator for the foundation.
Fixed Point's staffincludes Will Hill Tankersley, a partner at Birmingham's Balch Bingham, as outside general counsel. The Balch firm happens to be where Jessica Garrison landed an "of counsel" position after having to give up her position in the attorney general's office in order to resolve a custody dispute.
To add to the intrigue, Garrison's primary job is with RAGA, which is an affiliate of the D.C.-based Republican State Leadership Committee (RSLC). As we noted in a previous post, Luther Strange has a habit of using RSLC as more or less a money-laundering organization:
We know that Strange takes hypocrisy on gambling issues to monumental dimensions. After all, this is the guy who has tried to shut down non-Indian gaming facilities, such as VictoryLand in Macon County and Center Stage Alabama in Houston County, while taking a $100,000 campaign contribution from the Poarch Creek casinos. This also is the guy who used the Republican State Leadership Committee (RSLC) to help obscure the donation via a PAC-to-PAC transfer.
Federal judges have lifetime appointments, so the public and the press tend to think they are above scrutiny. But perhaps it's time to shine a spotlight on Bill Pryor's ties to the Luther Strange/Jessica Garrison mess.
In the meantime, here is Bill Pryor speaking at a 2007 Federalist Society symposium on morality and the law:
http://legalschnauzer.blogspot.com/2013/08/jessica-garrisons-political-ties-go.html
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wiki
L
uther Johnson Strange, III (born March 1, 1953), is the 49th Attorney General of the U.S. state of Alabama.[1] Strange was a candidate for public office in both 2006 and 2010.[2][3] In 2006, Strange ran for Lieutenant Governor of Alabama and defeated George Wallace, Jr. in the Republican primary. Strange then lost the general election to Democrat Jim Folsom, Jr.. In 2010, Strange defeated incumbent Attorney General Troy King in the Republican primary, before going on to win the general election on November 2, 2010, against Democrat James Anderson.[4]
Personal life
Luther Strange was born in Birmingham, Alabama, and lived in Sylacauga until the age of six, when his family moved to Homewood. Strange is an Eagle Scout.[1]
:{Strange graduated from Shades Valley High School in 1970. He earned his undergraduate degree from :{Tulane:(style="background-color:#ffff66ff"):}: University in New Orleans, Louisiana, and then his Juris Doctor in 1979 from Tulane University Law School. Strange was admitted to the Alabama State Bar in 1981.[5]}:
Prior to being elected Attorney General, Strange was the founder of the law firm Strange LLC., based in Birmingham. Prior to founding his firm, he was a partner with Bradley Arant Boult Cummings LLP.[1]
In December 2011, Strange was honored as a Distinguished Eagle Scout, by the Boy Scouts of America.[6][7]
Strange and his family reside in Mountain Brook, a suburb of Birmingham. He and his wife, Melissa, have two sons.
Career as Attorney General
In March 2014, Strange brought Alabama into a lawsuit filed by Missouri Attorney General Chris Koster against California's egg production standards as embodied in Prop 2. In October 2014, a federal judge dismissed the lawsuit, rejecting the states' challenge to Proposition 2, California's prohibition on the sale of eggs laid by caged hens kept in conditions more restrictive than those approved by California voters in a 2008 ballot initiative. Judge Kimberly Mueller ruled that Alabama and the other states lacked legal standing to sue on behalf of their residents and that the plaintiffs were representing solely the interests of egg farmers, not "a substantial statement of their populations." ^[8][9][10][11][12]
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