nationalization federalize

see DPA

belated 4/5/20

apparently DPA this get invoked routinely, just tells co how many to make (that we then BUY at set/agreed upon rate?!)

but free mkt libtard agenda 21 federal overreach BS anti-commie

==

see GOV bak 420

see felony disenfranchise

promoted primary 3/19 look at tags, mercer , koch, horowitz ; beat gillam in blue wave for GOV

an 5 23 no lnx

fossil fuel executives have funded a massive, 50-year-long campaign to lie to the American people, cloud the science, and buy off Republican politicians. Untold millions will die and suffer as a result, but will their ever be one iota of accountability?

If somebody had set your house on fire, killing your child and pets, and then your city demanded that you give that somebody hundreds of dollars a year for the next decade, how would you feel?

That’s pretty much the situation of families across America who’ve lost their homes, family members, and livelihoods to wildfires, floods, extreme heat and cold, mile-wide tornadoes, bomb cyclones, heat domes, hurricanes, and drought caused by today’s climate emergency, but nonetheless have to pay taxes that subsidize the fossil fuel industry executives who helped caused it all.

For over 50 years, the top executives of that industry have known their products would produce this exact result: a crisis that is killing an average of around 7,500 Americans a year (and over a million worldwide) and promises to kill hundreds of millions within a decade or two.

But instead of doing anything of consequence to mitigate the damage of their operations, they instead funded a massive, 50-year-long campaign to lie to the American people, cloud the science, and buy off Republican politicians.

President Biden, as part of his negotiations with Kevin McCarthy, has proposed reducing the budget deficit by $31 billion through cutting about five percent of the subsidies you and I give to the fossil fuel industry every year through our tax dollars. McCarthy, in the pocket of Big Oil, has said he won’t even consider the proposal.

Famed climate scientist James Hansen is working on a paper outlining the dimensions of the disaster facing humanity at the hands of the fossil fuel industry, and it’s shocking. My friend and colleague Thomas Neuburger did a deep dive into it this week in his excellent God’s Spies Substack newsletter that’s well worth the read.

In essence, Hansen is proposing that the world will soon see both a collapse of the Gulf Stream that keeps Europe’s climate capable of growing crops and a worldwide 60-meter rise in sea levels. Possibly in our children’s or grandchildren’s lifetimes. As Thomas dryly notes in God’s Spies: “For Americans, 60 meters is about 200 feet.”

Deaths worldwide both directly from such an outcome — and from the wars that will result in the destruction of entire civilizations — will be measured in billions; here in America it’ll certainly be in the millions, and probably the tens of millions. Not to mention it speeding up the ongoing species collapse often referred as the Sixth Mass Extinction.

This is what the fossil fuel industry has brought to us, and to this day is aggressively trying to continue to sell to us. Fully aware of what they are doing.

Last week, the World Meteorological Organization published an in-depth reportwith the top-line conclusion summarizing the damage these fossil fuel executives have already inflicted on our planet and our lives, all while funding climate denial and paying off politicians worldwide:

“Between 1970 and 2021, there were 11,778 reported disasters [worldwide] attributed to weather, climate, and water extremes. They caused 2,087,229 deaths and US$ 4.3 trillion in economic losses.”

The week before that, One Earth published a peer-reviewed analysis of the cost of all this damage, quantifying it by the 21 largest fossil fuel companies around the world. They concluded that those decision-making executives of the fossil fuel industry have inflicted over $5.4 trillion in identifiable economic damages on the rest of us which, instead of paying for, they have greedily converted to their own profit.

The report notes:

The “costs of anthropogenic climate change are chiefly borne by states that compensate their own citizens harmed by climate impacts or contribute to international adaptation finance, by insurance companies with regard to their insureds, and by uncompensated victims of climate change.”

In other words, the fossil fuel companies produced the global warming and cancer-causing emissions, but when people are damaged by them or the weather they are changing, government and insurance companies pay the cost.

The fossil fuel companies and their executives pay nothing, and never have. If they can keep the GOP in their pocket, they hope they never will.

Therefore, Earth One is calling for specific reparations, paid for by those companies:

“We argue that other agents bear substantial responsibility for the cost of redressing climate harm: the companies that engage in the exploration, production, refining, and distribution of oil, gas, and coal.

“The recent progress in climate attribution science makes it evident that these companies have played a major role in the accumulation and escalation of such costs by providing gigatonnes of carbon fuels to the global economy while willfully ignoring foreseeable climate harm.

“All the while they successfully shaped the public narrative on climate change through disinformation, misleading ‘advertorials,’ lobbying, and political donations to delay action directly or through trade associations and other surrogates.” (emphasis mine)

So, what can we do?

I see two possibilities, the first involving the law, and the second using the marketplace and, if that doesn’t work fast enough, the Fifth Amendment’s eminent domain provision.

First, the law:

Article 16 of the 1992 Rio Declaration explicitly calls for fossil fuel producers to pay for the damage their products and extraction processes produce. Thus, Earth One argues, Saudi Aramco (as the largest example) has cost the world so much that they should pay $43 billion a year in reparations for the next 25 years. While that seems like a lot of money, Saudi Aramco’s revenue in 2022 was $604 billion, spinning off $161 billion in pure profit.

Most of it’s executives and stockholders are already morbidly rich; this will put nobody in the poorhouse.

But isn’t the impact of this industry on our planet so consequential that — instead of just reducing their most senior executives’ income/revenue from billions to hundreds of millions — we should actually be holding the decision makers to account?

The legislature of New York State is considering a superfund bill that would move financially in this direction against domestic fossil fuel producers; other states will probably soon follow, although none are yet law.

None, though, yet target decision making senior executives as was done after World War II with the senior executives of the manufacturer of Zyklon B and the bosses and owners of the companies that ran medical experiments in concentration camps.

The discussion isn’t limited to the United States. The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) reported this week:

“As fires blaze in Alberta, Saskatchewan and B.C., new research has drawn a direct and measurable link between carbon emissions traced back to the world’s major fossil fuel producers and the increase in extreme wildfires across western Canada and the United States.”

They based that reporting on a new peer-reviewed study published the week before in Environmental Research Letters that, the CBC noted:

“[F]ound that 37 per cent of the total burned forest area in Western Canada and the United States between 1986-2021 can be traced back to 88 major fossil fuel producers and cement manufacturers.”

But these companies have not stopped buying off politicians, making it clear that extracting money from the ones causing all this damage and death worldwide may not be enough to provoke real change from the billionaire and multi-millionaire investors and executives making the decisions. Instead, we must motivate those executives themselves.

Another remedy, therefore, comes from the Nuremberg principles that were created in 1950 by the United Nations after World War II. While their original goal was to prosecute Nazis and deter future genocidal actions by dictatorial regimes, they could arguably apply to today’s intentional mass murder at the hands of the world’s fossil fuel executives.

More specifically, the International Criminal Court (ICC) at the Hague was created by the Rome Statute on July 17, 1998. It goes beyond the “war crimes” and “crimes of aggression” defined by the Nuremberg principles and specifies both those two along with “the crime of genocide” and “crimes against humanity.”

That last category is clarified as including:

“[I]nhumane acts of a similar character intentionally causing great suffering, or serious injury to body or to mental or physical health.”

The United States has never signed onto the ICC, but actions against fossil fuel executives based in the US can be brought by other signatory nations. If the effort were started outside the United States, for example, Royal Dutch Shell is based in the Netherlands, a full signatory to the Rome Statute.

As of three years ago, two US states had launched fraud investigations into ExxonMobil, although the one lawsuit by New York failed to bring a conviction (it was based on a charge that they had committed fraud against their investors).

Multiple US cities have sued fossil fuel companies for climate change damages, although there has not yet been a “breakthrough” case that could establish a precedent for others. But as damages continue to pile up and our weather becomes increasingly violent, expect more to come.

Fossil fuel companies have been following a business model since their early years in the 19th century of internalizing profits while externalizing (dumping on the public) their costs and damages.

Which brings us to a second possible solution to this crisis: nationalize the companies themselves, so their profits can be used to remedy their harms.

If ever there was an industry that merited nationalization, the fossil fuel industry is it. They manipulate prices to both enhance profits and swing elections, bribe their way through the halls of Congress, and pump out a steady stream of lies about climate change. All while pouring hundreds of billions into the money bins of their morbidly rich CEOs, shareholders, and senior executives.

America has a long and proud history of taking on companies that put profits over the public good during a time of crisis. And we could acquire controlling interest of the nation’s three largest fossil fuel players — ExxonMobil, Chevron, and ConocoPhillips — for, according to Robert Pollin writing at The American Prospect, fewer than a half-trillion dollars.

For less than a quarter of the cost of Trump’s billionaire tax cuts we could rapidly move a long way toward saving our nation and the world from climate destruction.

All the American government would have to do is to go into the public marketplace and start purchasing the stock of each of these companies at a premium to buy majority shares in each of them. Again, the cost would be less than 1/4th of Donald Trump‘s tax cut. It could probably be done in a matter of months, possibly even weeks.

But is it even possible? Turns out that history says an emphatic, “Yes!”

During the crisis of World War I, President Woodrow Wilson nationalized the country’s railroads, phone companies, and telegraph operators. He did the same with the nation’s radio networks and radio stations. All were returned to private ownership after the war, but that temporary nationalization helped get America through the crisis.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt did the same during World War II, nationalizing airplane manufacturers, gun manufacturers, over 3,300 mines, the nation’s railroads, dozens of oil companies, Western Electric Co., Hughes Tool Co., Goodyear Tire and Rubber, and even one of the nation’s largest retail outlets, Montgomery Ward. He also nationalized 17 foreign companies doing business in the US.

After FDR died, President Harry Truman continued seizing companies that were using the war as an excuse to jack up profits to the detriment of the nation. He nationalized meatpacking facilities across the country, the Monongahela Railroad Company, the nation’s steel mills, and hundreds of railroad companies.

Like with Wilson’s nationalizations, nearly all were returned to the private sector after the war was over, although it took until 1965 before all were privatized. Many had had their boards of directors and senior management replaced with people who’d put the interests of the nation ahead of their greed for profits.

In the 1970s, in the wake of the collapse of the Penn Central Railroad, President Richard Nixon oversaw the nationalization and transfer of 20 railroads into the newly created National Rail Passenger Corporation, now known as Amtrak.

In 1974 Congress created another nationalized entity to deal with freight rail, the Consolidated Rail Corporation (Conrail), which absorbed dozens of failing rail companies. Conrail was government held until 1987, when it was privatized in the then-largest IPO in American history.

In 1984, when the Continental Illinois National Bank and Trust Company was in a crisis, President Ronald Reagan’s administration oversaw the FDIC, nationalizing it by acquiring an 80 percent ownership share in the company; it wasn’t re-privatized until 1991, and was bought by Bank of America in 1994.

Also in the 1980s, after Reagan recklessly deregulated the Savings & Loan industry, banksters made off with billions leaving the wreckage of crushed S&Ls all across the nation.

When the government agency that insured them, FSLIC, went bankrupt itself in 1987, Reagan and Congress created an umbrella agency — the Resolution Trust Corporation (RTC) — to nationalize 747 of America’s S&Ls with assets of over $400 billion. Their assets were sold back into the private market in 1995 as the RTC shut itself down, having averted a 1929-style banking crisis through temporary nationalization.

When George W. Bush was handed the White House by 5 Republican appointees on the Supreme Court, the nation’s airline security system was entirely in private hands.

They failed miserably on 9/11, so Bush didn’t even bother with the normal acquisition process that would protect the hundreds of small contractors running security at airports across the nation: he simply nationalized the entire system and created a government agency, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) to take over airport and airline security.

President Bush also partially nationalized the nation’s airlines, creating the Air Transportation Stabilization Board that traded around $10 billion in loans to airlines in crisis (air traffic collapsed after 9/11) in exchange for company stock. We (through our government) ended up holding 7.64 million shares in US Airways, 18.7 million shares of America West Airlines, 3.45 million shares in Frontier Airlines, 1.47 million shares in American TransAir, and 2.38 million shares in World Airways.

Congress had deregulated the nation’s banks in 1999 when Republicans pushed through an end to the Glass-Steagall Act and Bill Clinton signed it into law. The resulting banking system crash in 2008 forced the Bush administration to nationalize the country’s two largest mortgage lenders (they held about 40% of all US mortgages), Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae.

The Bush administration then additionally nationalized a 77.9% share in AIG, a 36% share of Citigroup, and a 73.5% share of GMAC, forcing out GM’s CEO Rick Wagoner, who’d been a particularly terrible manager of that company and was actively lobbying against what Bush thought were America’s interests.

As President Barack Obama came into office in 2009, GM and Chrysler were on the brink of collapse. His administration created a new company, NGMCO, Inc., that nationalized the assets of GM and was 60.8% owned by the federal government.

GM was finally fully re-privatized by the Obama administration in 2013. Chrysler went through a similar process, although both the UAW and the Canadian government were part owners when it was temporarily nationalized.

Thomas M. Hanna, Director of Research at The Democracy Collaborative and author of Our Common Wealth: The Return of Public Ownership in the United States, compiled most of the data above in a brilliant paper titled “A History of Nationalization in the United States 1917-2009.”

Toward its end, he summarizes brilliantly the case for nationalizing — perhaps only temporarily — America’s largest oil and gas companies:

“In such times of political and economic crisis, policymakers of all ideological persuasions in the United States have never been hesitant to use one of the most powerful tools at their disposal: nationalization of private enterprises and assets.

“This included the Democrat Woodrow Wilson, who nationalized railroads, and the telephone, telegraph, and radio industries (among others), and the Republican Ronald Reagan, who nationalized a major national bank; the Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt, who nationalized dozens of mining and manufacturing facilities, and the Republican George W. Bush, who nationalized airport security and various major financial institutions; the Democrat Barack Obama, who nationalized auto manufacturers, and the Republican Richard Nixon, who nationalized all passenger rail service.”

Today’s climate crisis dwarfs the threat of Nazism in the 1940s, Bin Laden’s 9/11 attack, or the massive bank robberies that took place during the Reagan and Bush administrations.

It literally threatens all life on Earth.

Yet the fossil fuel industry continues to fund climate denial and lobby against any meaningful solutions, as we saw when every Republican in the Senate along with coal baron Joe Manchin killed the $500 billion investment in clean energy the Biden administration proposed in their 2021 Build Back Better legislation.

Squeals of “socialism!” and “Venezuela!” aside, we know how to nationalize industries that are working against our nation’s interests and have done it before, repeatedly.

And this time it’s not just about saving our banks or fighting a war. This time, it’s literally about saving the world.

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an 11 22

no lnx

The United States should buy out the fossil fuel industry to save the planet

Thom Hartmann and Common Dreams November 05, 2022

Back on October 13th, I wrote an article here titled When Will the Victims of Oil Companies' Lies Get Their Day In Court? detailing how Big Oil has been deceiving Americans—and, thus, killing Americans and our climate—for more than a half-century. Their model, "Doubt is our product," was borrowed from the tobacco industry and weaponized against us.

Suing the big oil companies like we did the tobacco companies is a good start, but we need more to get our climate-destroying emissions under control.

And the industry is doing everything they can to make sure we never hold them accountable. Taxpayers for Common Sense documents how the industry fielded over 700 lobbyists just last year, spending almost $120 million to buy legislators across Washington, DC.

They're also not just lobbying intensely at the federal level, but have gotten they're toadies appointed to boards that oversee state climate policy, as is happening in New York State right now.

They're even making their pitch to voters. As InfluenceMap, which tracks online advertising spending, noted:

This research found 25,147 ads from just 25 oil and gas sector organizations on Facebook's US platforms in 2020, which have been seen over 431 million times. This indicates the industry is now using social media to directly reach a vast audience and influence public opinions on climate change and the energy mix. These ads had a spend of $9,597,376.

And the ads weren't backing up actual efforts the industry is taking to clean up their act, most likely because such efforts are insignificant relative to the industry's profits, which were over $90 billion last year and have already surpassed $100 billion this year.

'Crucially,' InfluenceMap writes, 'many of these ads either contained misleading content or present information that was misaligned from the science of climate change according to both the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's and the International Energy Agency's reports on reaching net zero by 2050.'

On top of that, if the oil and gas industry were to take seriously the pledges they've made and the prescriptions of the IPCC to avoid climate disaster, they'll end up with hundreds of billions of dollars' worth of "stranded assets": oil and natural gas that simply has to be left in the ground and thus taken off the companies' books.

That process could trigger the largest bankruptcy in the history of the world, which is probably why they're doing everything they can, PR-wise, to prevent the kind of accountability that may force them to change their behavior.

So, instead of trying to regulate or engage in a protracted and expensive PR battle with these companies, or bail them out when they go down in flames, why don't we just buy them now?

The entire market capitalization of ExxonMobil, the largest US oil company, is a mere $451 billion, and we could purchase a controlling interest in the company for a fraction of that. Even if we splurged and bought 51% of shares in the open market (far more than necessary), that would only be a $230 billion expense.

Remember, we poured $6 trillion into keeping our economy afloat during the Covid pandemic year of 2020.

Just the stimulus checks that showed up in our mailboxes totaled $804 billion, we passed out an additional $567 billion in unemployment checks, and gave over a trillion dollars to American corporations, most of which will never be paid back (particularly the millions the Trump family and their buddies got).

We put $331 billion into our healthcare system to deal with the crisis, and delivered $254 billion to states and cities. Our schools and colleges got another $231 billion, and just the airline industry itself took home $73 billion. Rent subsidies, childcare support, and nutrition assistance added up to $166 billion.

Covid was bad, but we're talking here about the survival of human civilization over the short term and the death of most life on Earth over longer time horizons if we don't stop the fossil fuel companies from interfering with our nation's and international efforts to transition to renewable energy.

And interfere they are.

Every single member of the Republican Party, so far as I can find, is in the bag for them: all are either blocking any actions to deal with greenhouse gasses, denying even the existence of global warming, or both.

"Conservative" radio and TV networks, shows, and hosts are also recipients of the industry's largess to the point that they also deny the crisis our nation and world are experiencing right now.

So we can pick up ExxonMobil for roughly what we spent just keeping our schools viable for a year and a half. The second largest oil/gas company operating in the US, Chevron, has a market capitalization of $342 billion, Shell is $195 billion, and Conoco Phillips is $161 billion.

Acquiring controlling interest in the entire bunch of them could cost less than we spent just on unemployment checks during the Covid crisis.

And if ever there was an industry that merited our buying it out and eventually retiring it to pasture—nationalization, essentially—the fossil fuel industry is it.

They manipulate prices to both enhance profits and swing elections, bribe their way through the halls of Congress, and pump out a steady stream of lies about climate change. All while pouring hundreds of billions into the money bins of their morbidly rich CEOs, shareholders, and senior executives.

America has a long and proud history of taking on companies that put profits over the public good during a time of crisis. For less than a quarter of the cost of Trump's billionaire tax cuts we could move a long way toward saving our nation and the world from climate destruction.

But is it even possible? Does our federal government actually know how to run nationalized companies? Is there a precedent for anything even remotely like saving our nation and the world through this sort of process?

Turns out that history says an emphatic, "Yes!"

During the crisis of World War I, President Woodrow Wilson nationalized the country's railroads, phone companies, and telegraph operators. He did the same with the nation's radio networks and radio stations. All were returned to private ownership after the war, but that temporary nationalization helped get America through the crisis.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt did the same during World War II, nationalizing airplane manufacturers, gun manufacturers, over 3,300 mines, the nation's railroads, dozens of oil companies, Western Electric Co., Hughes Tool Co., Goodyear Tire and Rubber, and even one of the nation's largest retail outlets, Montgomery Ward. He also nationalized 17 foreign companies doing business in the US.

After FDR died, President Harry Truman continued seizing companies that were using the war as an excuse to jack up profits to the detriment of the nation. He nationalized meatpacking facilities across the country, the Monongahela Railroad Company, the nation's steel mills, and hundreds of railroad companies.

Like with Wilson's nationalizations, nearly all were returned to the private sector after the war was over,although it took until 1965 before all were re-privatized. Many had had their boards of directors and senior management replaced with people who would put the interests of the nation ahead of their greed for profits.

In the 1970s, in the wake of the collapse of the Penn Central Railroad, President Richard Nixon oversaw the voluntary nationalization and transfer of 20 railroads into the newly created National Rail Passenger Corporation, now known as Amtrak.

In 1984, when the Continental Illinois National Bank and Trust Company was in a crisis, President Ronald Reagan's administration oversaw the FDIC nationalizing it by acquiring an 80 percent ownership share in the company; it wasn't re-privatized until 1991, and was bought by Bank of America in 1994.

Also in the 1980s, after Reagan recklessly deregulated the Savings & Loan industry, banksters made off with billions leaving the wreckage of crushed S&Ls all across the nation.

Their assets were sold back into the private market in 1995 as the RTC shut itself down, having averted a 1929-style banking crisis through temporary nationalization.

When George W. Bush was handed the White House by 5 Republican appointees on the Supreme Court, the nation's airline security system was entirely in private hands.

The airlines' minimum-wage security screeners failed miserably on 9/11, so Bush didn't even bother with the normal acquisition process that would protect the hundreds of small contractors running security at airports across the nation.

Instead, Bush simply nationalized the entire system and created a government agency, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), to take over airport and airline security.

President Bush also partially nationalized the nation's airlines, creating the Air Transportation Stabilization Board that traded around $10 billion in loans to airlines in crisis (air traffic collapsed after 9/11) in exchange for company stock.

We (through our government) ended up holding 7.64 million shares in US Airways, 18.7 million shares of America West Airlines, 3.45 million shares in Frontier Airlines, 1.47 million shares in American TransAir, and 2.38 million shares in World Airways.

Congress had deregulated the nation's banks in 1999 when Newt Gingrich's Republicans pushed through an end to the Glass-Steagall Act and Bill Clinton signed it into law.

The resulting banking system crash in 2008 forced the Bush administration to nationalize the country's two largest mortgage lenders (they held about 40% of all US mortgages), Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae.

The Bush administration then additionally nationalized a 77.9% share in AIG, a 36% share of Citigroup, and a 73.5% share of GMAC, forcing out GM's CEO Rick Wagoner, who'd been a particularly terrible manager of that company and was actively lobbying against what Bush thought were America's interests.

Thomas M. Hanna, Director of Research at The Democracy Collaborative and author of Our Common Wealth: The Return of Public Ownership in the United States, compiled most of the data above in a brilliant paper titled "A History of Nationalization in the United States 1917-2009."

Toward its end, he summarizes brilliantly the case for nationalizing—perhaps only temporarily—America's largest oil and gas companies:

In such times of political and economic crisis, policymakers of all ideological persuasions in the United States have never been hesitant to use one of the most powerful tools at their disposal: nationalization of private enterprises and assets.

"This included the Democrat Woodrow Wilson, who nationalized railroads, and the telephone, telegraph, and radio industries (among others), and the Republican Ronald Reagan, who nationalized a major national bank; the Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt, who nationalized dozens of mining and manufacturing facilities, and the Republican George W. Bush, who nationalized airport security and various major financial institutions; the Democrat Barack Obama, who nationalized auto manufacturers, and the Republican Richard Nixon, who nationalized all passenger rail service.

Today's climate crisis dwarfs the threat of Nazism in the 1940s, Bin Laden's 9/11 attack, the massive bank robberies that took place during the Reagan and Bush administrations, or even the Covid crisis. It literally threatens all life on Earth.

Yet the fossil fuel industry continues to fund climate denial and to lobby against any meaningful solutions, as we saw when every Republican in the Senate along with Joe Manchin killed the $500 billion investment in clean energy the Biden administration proposed in their Build Back Better legislation.

Squeals of "socialism!" and "Venezuela!" aside, we know how to nationalize industries that are working against our nation's interests and we have done it before, repeatedly.

This time it's not just about saving our banks, keeping our schools intact, or fighting a war. This time, it's about saving the world.

Buy out the fossil fuel industry!

some lnx

...he entire market capitalization of ExxonMobil, the largest US oil company, is a mere $451 billion, and we could purchase a controlling interest in the company for a fraction of that. Even if we splurged and bought 51% of shares in the open market (far more than necessary), that would only be a $230 billion expense.

Remember, we poured $6 trillion into keeping our economy afloat during the Covid pandemic year of 2020.

...

america has a long and proud history of taking on companies that put profits over the public good during a time of crisis. For less than a quarter of the cost of Trump's billionaire tax cuts we could move a long way toward saving our nation and the world from climate destruction.

Turns out that history says an emphatic, "Yes!"

During the crisis of World War I, President Woodrow Wilson nationalized the country's railroads, phone companies, and telegraph operators. He did the same with the nation's radio networks and radio stations. All were returned✎ EditSign to private ownership after the war, but that temporary nationalization helped get America through the crisis.

After FDR died, President Harry Truman continued seizing companies that were using the war as an excuse to jack up profits to the detriment of the nation. He nationalized meatpacking facilities across the country, the Monongahela Railroad Company, the nation's steel mills, and hundreds of railroad companies.

Like with Wilson's nationalizations, nearly all were returned to the private sector after the war was over, although it took until 1965 before all were re-privatized. Many had had their boards of directors and senior management replaced with people who would put the interests of the nation ahead of their greed for profits....

And the ads weren't backing up actual efforts the industry is taking to clean up their act, most likely because such efforts are insignificant relative to the industry's profits, which were over $90 billion last year and have already surpassed $100 billion this year.

https://influencemap.org/report/Climate-Change-and-Digital-Advertising-a40c8116160668aa2d865da2f5abe91b#1

... A breakdown of the different messaging categories and their frequency can be found below

Categories	Explanation	Number of ads (and percentage of sample), Spend, Impression*	Examples of key narratives
Community & Economy	Includes narratives about the role of the oil and gas industry in local communities and the broader economy.	Number (%): 5542 (22%) Spend: $2,575,779 Impressions: 134,626,737	Entity/Industry helps the economy
Entity/Industry provides jobs	Entity/Industry provides jobs	Entity/Industry provides jobs	Entity/Industry provides jobs
Entity/Industry helps community through philanthropic efforts	Entity/Industry helps community through philanthropic efforts	Entity/Industry helps community through philanthropic efforts	Entity/Industry helps community through philanthropic efforts
Climate Solutions	Includes narratives promoting the ‘green/clean’ climate efforts of the industry and is designed to capture narratives suggesting the oil and gas industry is ‘part of the solution’ on climate change.	Number (%): 12140 (48%) Spend: $1,893,080 Impressions: 122,248,437	Entity/Industry supports reducing greenhouse gas emissions
Entity/Industry supporting transitioning the energy mix	Entity/Industry supporting transitioning the energy mix	Entity/Industry supporting transitioning the energy mix	Entity/Industry supporting transitioning the energy mix
Entity/Industry supports the use of gas as, a clean/green/low-carbon energy source or a climate solution.	Entity/Industry supports the use of gas as, a clean/green/low-carbon energy source or a climate solution.	Entity/Industry supports the use of gas as, a clean/green/low-carbon energy source or a climate solution.	Entity/Industry supports the use of gas as, a clean/green/low-carbon energy source or a climate solution.
Pragmatic Energy Mix	Includes narratives which promote the benefits of oil and gas as energy sources to the functioning of people’s everyday lives.	Number (%): 7749 (31%) Spend: $4,354,825 Impressions: 174,545,645	Oil & gas are affordable
Oil & gas are reliable	Oil & gas are reliable	Oil & gas are reliable	Oil & gas are reliable
Other narratives promoting the benefits and/or uses of using oil and gas	Other narratives promoting the benefits and/or uses of using oil and gas	Other narratives promoting the benefits and/or uses of using oil and gas	Other narratives promoting the benefits and/or uses of using oil and gas
Patriotic Energy Mix	Includes narratives tying the production of domestic oil and gas to energy independence and energy leadership for the US.	Number (%): 2904 (12%) Spend: $1,482,998 Impressions: 55,474,052	Energy Independence
Energy Leadership	Energy Leadership	Energy Leadership	Energy Leadership

4 22 an

If you want to trigger a conservative, just suggest nationalizing the US gas and oil industry. “Venezuela!” they’ll scream hysterically, perhaps adding a few, “Iran!” squeals. (Somehow, they always forget to yell about Norway…)

Within minutes they’ll be croaking about that time back in 2008 when Maxine Waters — a Black woman with power and therefore the most terrifying thing Republicans can imagine — threatened oil industry CEOs who were giving Congress deliberately deceptive and incomplete answers with “socializing… taking over and the government running all your companies.”

Immediately, Fox “News” was all over it, as were dozens of rightwing sites.

In that, they’ve completely ignored (or never knew) the long American history of taking over industries during a time of national crisis.

And, as we re-enter a cold war with Russia and face unprecedented human death and property damage from climate change, it’s hard to claim we’re not in the midst of a national crisis that has fossil fuels at its foundation.

We’re at least 40 years behind where we should be in dealing with the fossil fuel/global warming crisis because giant oil companies have run massive disinformation campaigns while funding the political careers of hacks in Congress willing to lie to the public for them.

President Jimmy Carter, for example, declared a national crisis in 1979 and proposed legislation to create “this nation's first solar bank, which will help us achieve the crucial goal of 20 percent of our energy coming from solar power by the year 2000.”

FDR had sold bonds to the public to fund a government corporation that would develop synthetic rubber for fighter jet tires back in the day, and Carter wanted to do the same to end our dependence on fossil fuels:

'Just as a similar synthetic rubber corporation helped us win World War II,' Carter said, 'so will we mobilize American determination and ability to win the energy war.'

In that same July 15, 1979 speech, he proposed the government issue bonds that would fund:

[T]he creation of an energy security corporation to lead this effort to replace 2-1/2 million barrels of imported oil per day by 1990. The corporation will issue up to $5 billion in energy bonds, and I especially want them to be in small denominations so that average Americans can invest directly in America’s energy security.

It all came crashing down 42 years ago this coming January when the fossil fuel industry’s candidate, Ronald Reagan, replaced Carter, killed the solar bank and the bond program, and even took Carter’s solar panels off the roof of the White House.

If ever there was an industry that merited nationalization, the fossil fuel industry is it. They manipulate prices to both enhance profits and swing elections, bribe their way through the halls of Congress, and pump out a steady stream of lies about climate change. All while pouring hundreds of billions into the money bins of their morbidly rich CEOs, shareholders, and senior executives.

America has a long and proud history of taking on companies that put profits over the public good during a time of crisis. And we could acquire controlling interest of the nation’s three largest fossil fuel players — ExxonMobil, Chevron, and ConocoPhillips — for, according to Robert Pollin writing atThe American Prospect, fewer than a half-trillion dollars.

For less than a quarter of the cost of Trump’s billionaire tax cuts we could rapidly move a long way toward saving our nation and the world from climate destruction. But is it even possible? Turns out that history says an emphatic, “Yes!”

After FDR died, President Harry Truman continued seizing companies that were using the war as an excuse to jack up profits to the detriment of the nation. He nationalized meatpacking facilities across the country, the Monongahela Railroad Company, the nation’s steel mills, and hundreds of railroad companies.

Like with Wilson’s nationalizations, nearly all were returned to the private sector after the war was over, although it took until 1965 before all were privatized. Many had had their boards of directors and senior management replaced with people who’d put the interests of the nation ahead of their greed for profits.

In 1974 Congress created another nationalized entity to deal with freight rail, the Consolidated Rail Corporation (Conrail), which absorbed dozens of failing rail companies.Conrail was government-held until 1987, when it was privatized in the then-largest IPO in American history.

In 1984, when the Continental Illinois National Bank and Trust Company was in a crisis, President Ronald Reagan’s administration oversaw the FDIC nationalizing it by acquiring an 80 percent ownership share in the company; it wasn’t re-privatized until 1991, and was bought by Bank of America in 1994.

Also in the 1980s, after Reagan recklessly deregulated the Savings & Loan industry, bankers made off with billions leaving the wreckage of crushed S&Ls all across the nation.

When the government agency that insured them, FSLIC, went bankrupt itself in 1987, Reagan and Congress created an umbrella agency — the Resolution Trust Corporation (RTC) — to nationalize 747 of America’s S&Ls with assets of over $400 billion. Their assets were sold back into the private market in 1995 as the RTC shut itself down, havingaverted a 1929-style banking crisis through temporary nationalization.

When George W. Bush was handed the White House by five Republican appointees on the Supreme Court, the nation’s airline security system was entirely in private hands.

GM was finally fully re-privatized by the Obama administration in 2013. Chrysler went through a similar process, although both the UAW and the Canadian government were part owners when it was temporarily nationalized.

Toward its end, he summarizes brilliantly the case for nationalizing — perhaps only temporarily — America’s largest oil and gas companies:

In such times of political and economic crisis, policymakers of all ideological persuasions in the United States have never been hesitant to use one of the most powerful tools at their disposal: nationalization of private enterprises and assets.

This included the Democrat Woodrow Wilson, who nationalized railroads, and the telephone, telegraph, and radio industries (among others), and the Republican Ronald Reagan, who nationalized a major national bank; the Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt, who nationalized dozens of mining and manufacturing facilities, and the Republican George W. Bush, who nationalized airport security and various major financial institutions; the Democrat Barack Obama, who nationalized auto manufacturers, and the Republican Richard Nixon, who nationalized all passenger rail service.

Today’s climate crisis dwarfs the threat of Nazism in the 1940s, Bin Laden’s 9/11 attack, or the massive bank robberies that took place during the Reagan and Bush administrations. It literally threatens all life on Earth.

Yet the fossil fuel industry continues to fund climate denial and lobby against any meaningful solutions, as we saw when every Republican in the Senate along with Joe Manchin killed the $500 billion investment in clean energy the Biden administration proposed in their Build Back Better legislation.

Squeals of “socialism!” and “Venezuela!” aside, we know how to nationalize industries that are working against our nation’s interests and have done it before, repeatedly.

This time it’s not just about saving our banks or fighting a war. This time, it’s about saving the world.

Nationalize the fossil fuel industry!

no lnx an 420

Trump continues to base policy on what he hears on Fox News

Written by Nancy LeTourneau / The Washington Monthly April 4, 2020

On Thursday night, Donald Trump finally invoked the Defense Production Act. He made the announcement on Twitter, of course.

We hit 3M hard today after seeing what they were doing with their Masks. “P Act” all the way. Big surprise to many in government as to what they were doing – will have a big price to pay!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 3, 2020

According to a report from Kevin Breuninger, the president issued an order on Thursday night directing Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf to “use any and all authority available under the Act to acquire, from any appropriate subsidiary or affiliate of 3M Company, the number of N-95 respirators that the Administrator determines to be appropriate.”

Here is the response from 3M’s CEO.

“The narrative that we aren’t doing everything we can as a company is just not true,” 3M CEO Mike Roman says, after President Trump criticized the manufacturing giant and invoked the DPA to force 3M to step up production of respirator masks. https://t.co/Lfa4xPqVwo pic.twitter.com/3cxA2FUDiu

— CNBC (@CNBC) April 3, 2020

In commenting on this, Kevin Drum identified the problem with Trump’s selective use of this authority.

The White House didn’t explain this, and it’s a little unnerving to see Trump using the DPA in such a gleefully punitive way. It’s supposed to be a technocratic tool for coordinating production, not a way for a president to score political points on Twitter.

All of this raises the question of what 3M did that earned the ire of the president.As it turns out, this segment of Tucker Carlson’s show aired on Fox News not long before Trump fired off his tweet.

Tucker Carlson & @JaredEMoskowitz Calling Out @3M Selling Masks to Foreign Governments Instead of to Americans

Jared: “I can’t & other emergency management directors can’t get this life-saving PPE because a company decided to make a Globalist decision and not put America First.” pic.twitter.com/wPoFQnm6ej

— The Columbia Bugle ???? (@ColumbiaBugle) April 3, 2020

Carlson’s guest, Jared Moskowitz, works for Republican Governor Ron DeSantis as his director of the Florida Division of Emergency Management. He railed about not being able to get face masks from 3M.

It is difficult to sort out the truth from the lies in that segment. Some of the issues Moskowitz is pointing to surfaced after we learned that the federal government, probably under the direction of Jared Kushner, has turned the supply chain for these critical supplies over to the private sector. Josh Marshall documented the issues that raises.

First is that there’s no clear mechanism to allocate these supplies on the basis of need based on a coherent national plan or framework. Secondly, it opens the door to massive profiteering. Even if companies aren’t technically gouging, that’s what bidding is. And you really can’t call this a legitimate private sector market if every state is having to bid with private companies to secure medical supplies during a historic national health emergency. The private sector rationale is also undermined if the US military has taken over a significant part of the fulfillment process.

The man who turned around the Bush administration’s botched response to Katrina, Lt. General Russel Honore, explained why that is a recipe for disaster.

After hearing the White House say critical supplies are going to commercial distributors who are then selling them to the states which are begging for help, I called @ltgrusselhonore who commanded federal troops after Hurricane Katrina to get his reaction. Watch this: pic.twitter.com/x7u3qoQ0v6

— David Begnaud (@DavidBegnaud) April 3, 2020

Regardless of any complicity on the part of 3M, none of the issues Moskowitz complained about would be happening if this administration was taking charge of the supply chain rather than turning it over to the private sector. Those are the facts.

But beyond all of that, what we see is that once again the President of the United States took retributive action based on a segment he watched on Fox News. If you think his son-in-law, who has now been put in charge of managing this effort, will do any better, take a look at this.

Well, this is concerning.

Kushner says Trump finally acted on addressing supplies shortages after hearing about them “just this morning” from “friends of his in New York.”

Not the governor. Not the hospitals. Friends.

This is how Trump runs your country. pic.twitter.com/vlwDR86WWs

— DNC War Room (@DNCWarRoom) April 2, 2020

What we have is a president who, during a national emergency, is directing policy based on what he hears on Fox News and from his “friends.” Of course, that’s what he’s always done. In the past, it was bad news. But it is now unconscionable.