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immed after ruling hockey stick dk money? politics by extortion?

montana amicus brief said 2 claims demo BS bullock whitehouse w/ mccain

11-1179-Senators-Whitehouse-and-McCain-Cert-Amicus

sep by other reps

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kickass

How Citizens United Altered the Climate Debate

07.25.14

HOW CITIZENS UNITED ALTERED THE CLIMATE DEBATE

As delivered on the Senate floor

Thank you, Madam President, this is my seventy-fifth “Time to Wake Up” speech,something of a minor benchmark, I suppose. I come here urging my colleagues to wake up to the threat of climate change. I do this every week that we are in session, hoping that someday spark will hit tinder. But even as the evidence of climate change deepens, the dialogue here in Washington remains one-sided.

Climate change was once a bipartisan concern. In recent years, something changed. I think I know what changed, and I will get to that. But first, let’s reminisce about the bipartisanship.

If we take a look back, in this body we have Republican colleagues who once openly acknowledged the existence of carbon-driven climate change, and, and who called for real legislative action to cut carbon emissions. Imagine that. It wasn’t that long ago.

We have a former Republican presidential nominee,amongst us, who campaigned for the presidency on addressing climate change.

We have Republicans who have spoken favorably about charging a fee on carbon, including an original Republican cosponsor of a bipartisan Senate carbon fee bill.

We have a Republican colleague who cosponsored carbon fee legislation in the House, and another who voted for the Waxman-Markey “cap and trade” bill when he was in the House.

For years,for years there was a steady, healthy heartbeat of Republican support for major U.S. legislation to address carbon pollution. Let me be specific.

In 2003, Senator John McCain was the lead cosponsor of Democrat Joe Lieberman’s Climate Stewardship Act, which would have created a market-based emissions cap and trading program to reduce carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping pollutants from the biggest U.S. sources.

Here is what Senator McCain said at the time: I’ll quote him, “While we cannot say with 100 percent confidence what will happen in the future, we do know the emission of greenhouse gases is not healthy for the environment. As many of the top scientists through the world have stated, the sooner we start to reduce these emissions, the better off we will be in the future.”

His Climate Stewardship Act actually got a vote. Imagine that!

And when it did not prevail, Senator McCain reintroduced the measure himself in the following Congress. Republican Senators Olympia Snowe of Maine and Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island—my predecessor—were among that bill’s cosponsors.

Other Republicans got behind other cap-and-trade proposals: Senator Tom Carper’s “Clean Air Planning Act”, at one time or another, counted Senator Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, Senator Lyndsey Graham of South Carolina and Senator Susan Collins of Maine among its supporters.

In 2007, Republican Senator Olympia Snowe was a lead cosponsor of then-Senator Kerry’s “Global Warming Reduction Act.” Senators Murkowski and Stevens from Alaska, and Senator Specter of Pennsylvania, then a Republican, were original cosponsors of the Bingaman “Low Carbon Economy Act.” And that same year, Senator Alexander introduced the “Clean Air/Climate Change Act.” Each of these bills sought to reduce carbon emissions through a cap-and-trade mechanism. Said Senator Alexander, and I’ll quote him, “It is also time to acknowledge that climate change is real, human activity is a big part of the problem, and it is up to us to act.”- 2007

That bipartisan heartbeat remained strong in 2009. Senator Mark Kirk of Illinois, while he served in the House of Representatives, was one of eight Republicans to vote for the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade proposal.

In that same year, 2009, Senator Jeff Flake of Arizona, then representing Arizona in the House, was an original cosponsor of the “Raise Wages, Cut Carbon Act,” to reduce payroll taxes for employers and employees in exchange for equal revenue from a carbon tax. On the House Floor, then-Representative Flake argued the virtues of this approach. Here’s what he said:

If we want to be honest about helping the environment, then just impose a carbon tax and make it revenue neutral, give commensurate tax relief on the other side. Myself and another Republican colleague have introduced that legislation to do just that. Let’s have an honest debate about whether or not we want to help the environment by actually having something that is revenue neutral where you tax consumption as opposed to income.

Was a good idea then, and it is still a good idea now. Those words were echoed that year in the Senate by Senator Collins, a lead cosponsor of the “Carbon Limits and Energy for America’s Renewal Act,” Senator Cantwell’s carbon fee bill. “In the United States alone,” said Senator Collins, “emissions of the primary greenhouse gas carbon dioxide have risen more than 20 percent since 1990. Clearly climate change is a daunting environmental challenge,she said, but we must develop solutions that do not impose a heavy burden on our economy, particularly during these difficult economic times.”

2009, Think of it—there was once, not too long ago, clear and forceful acknowledgement, from leading Republican voices, of the real danger posed by climate change, and of Congress’s responsibility to act.

[Heartbeat Graph]

So what happened? Why did this heartbeat of Republican climate action suddenly flatline?

Madam President, I believe we lost the ability to address climate change in a bipartisan way because of the evils of the Supreme Court’s Citizens Uniteddecision. Our present failure to address climate change is a symptom of things gone awry in our democracy due to Citizens United.That decision did not enhance speech in our democracy; it has allowed bullying, wealthy special interests to suppress real debate.

I’ve spoken before on the Senate Floor about the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision—one of the most disgraceful decisions by any Supreme Court; destined ultimately, I believe, to follow cases like Lochner v. New Yorkonto the ash heap of judicial infamy.

But we’re stuck with it for now.

In a nutshell, the Citizens United decision says this: corporations are people; money is speech; so there can be no limit to corporate money influencing American elections. If that doesn’t seem right, it’s because it’s not.

Phony and improper fact-finding by the five conservative activists on the Supreme Court concluded that corporate spending could not ever corrupt elections, just couldn’t do it.By some magic, it’s pure. That’s a bad enough finding on its face, but they also didn’t get that limitless, untraceable political money doesn’t have to be spent to damage our democracy. Unlimited corporate spending in politics can corrupt, not just through floods of anonymous attack advertisements; it can corrupt, secretly and more dangerously, through the mere threat of that spending, through private threats and promises. The presiding officer was the Attorney General of her state, and she well knows how much mischief can be done in backrooms by threats and promises, that’s what Attorney Generals see when they go out and investigate.

And as we’re evaluating the effect of Citizens United on our climate change debate, let’s remember one thing; a lot of this special interest money has been spent against Republicans. I’ve had Republican friends tell me, “what are you complaining about?” They’re spending more against us, than against you. There have been times when that has been true. When the Koch Brothers’ polluter money can come in and bombard you in a small primary election, that’s pretty scary. And when the paid-for right-wing attack machine can be cranked up against you in your Republican primary, that’s pretty scary, too. And what the polluters can do with political spending, they can threaten or promise to do, in ways that the public will never see or know—but the candidate will know. The candidate will know, for sure.

So, I wrote a “friend of the Court” brief to the Supreme Court with Senator McCain to highlight for the justices some of the failings and pitfalls of their shameful Citizens United decision. “The dominating influence of super PACs,” we wrote, “makes it all the easier for those seeking legislative favors and results to discreetly threaten such expenditures if Members of Congress do not accede to their demands.” I think we were right.

So how does this bear on climate change?

All that bipartisan activity I talked about preceded Citizens United. After that, polluter attacks funded by Citizens United money, and the threat of those polluter attacks,perhaps promises not to make those attacks, if you behave cast a dark shadow over Republicans who might work with Democrats on curbing carbon pollution. Tens, perhaps even hundreds of millions of dark-money dollars are being spent by polluters and their front organizations, and God only knows what private threats and promises have been made.

The timing is telling. Before Citizens United, there was an active heartbeat of Republican activity on climate change. Since then, the evidence has only become stronger. But after Citizens United uncorked all that big, dark money, and allowed it to cast its bullying shadow of intimidation over our democracy, Republicans—other than those few who parrot the polluter party line that climate change is just a big old hoax— they have all walked back from any major climate legislation.

We have Senators here who represent historic native villages, now washing into the sea and needing relocation because of climate change and sea-level rise. We have Senators who represent great American coastal cities, now overwashed by high tides because of climate change. We have Senators representing states swept by drought and wildfire. We have Senators whose home-state forests—by the hundreds of square miles—are being killed by the marauding pine beetle. We have Senators whose home states’ glaciers are disappearing before their very eyes. We have Senators whose states are having to raise offshore bridges and highways before rising seas. We have Senators whose emblematic home state species are dying off, like the New Hampshire moose, for instance swarmed by ticks, by the tens of thousands that snows no longer kill.

Yet almost none will work on a major climate bill. It’s not safe to, ever since Citizens United allowed the bullying, polluting special interests to bombard our elections, and threaten and promise to bombard our elections, with their attack ads.

Well, despite all the dark money, despite the threats and intimidation, I still believe this can be a courageous time. We simply need conscientious Republicans and Democrats to work together, in good faith, on a common platform of facts and common sense, to protect the American people and the American economy from the looming effects of climate change in our atmosphere, on our lands, in our oceans. We simply need to shed the shackles of corrupting influence and rise to our duty.

In courageous times, Americans have done far more than that. It’s not asking much to ask this generation to stand up to a pack polluters, just because they have big checkbooks. In previous generations, Americans have put at risk their very lives, fortunes and sacred honor—to serve the higher interests of this great republic. We know it can be done, because it’s been done.

We do not have to be the generation that failed at our duty. We are headed down a road to infamy now, but it doesn’t have to be that way. We can leave a legacy that will echo down the corridors of history, so that those who follow us will be proud of our efforts. But sitting here, doing nothing, yielding to the special-interest bullies and their Citizens United money, pretending the problem isn’t real, that won’t accomplish that.

As I have said before seventy-four times, and as I say tonight for the seventy-fifth time, it is time for us to wake up.

I yield the floor. I thank the presiding officer.

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https://lawandcrime.com/judiciary/senate-dems-investigating-former-federalist-society-leaders-influence-over-trump-admins-judicial-nominees/

Senate Judiciary Committee Democrats are seeking information on the role former Federalist Society leader Leonard Leo played in in choosing the jurists President Donald Trump has nominated to lifetime appointments as federal judges. In letters sent to Attorney General William Barr and White House counsel Pat Cipollone on Wednesday, the senators said they were specifically looking into the potential conflicts of interest presented by Leo’s advising the president on judicial selections while leading a group that is anonymously funded, “likely from entities that have interests before the federal courts.”

“Mr. Leo’s prominent role in the Trump Administration’s judicial selection and nominations process while maintaining a financial interest in advocacy efforts related to this process has raised questions regarding his potential status as a federal employee and compliance with accompanying laws and regulations,” the letter to Barr stated.

The senators emphasized that by advising the Trump administration on its selection of federal judges, Leo’s conduct raised significant questions as to whether he was performing the duties of a federal government employee without proper authority, thereby violating federal ethics law.

“By outward appearances, Mr. Leo may have engaged in the performance of a federal function that must be conducted by government employees authorized to act on behalf of the United States by leading the Administration’s efforts to identify and select judicial nominees, and press for their confirmation,” they wrote. “As a federal employee, Mr. Leo would have been responsible for complying with federal records retention and financial disclosure requirements, as well as the criminal financial conflict of interest statute.”

Led by Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), the Democratic senators who signed the letters were attempting to shed light on the process that has allowed the Trump White House and GOP-led Senate to confirm an unprecedented number of judges (nearly 200) in just over three years.

The senators assert that knowing the specifics of Leo’s involvement in the selection process is vital to ensuring the process remains untainted.

“Mr. Leo’s personal financial interest in advocacy efforts related to the judicial selection and nominations process raises serious concerns regarding potential conflicts of interest and the independence of the federal judiciary, given Mr. Leo’s leadership role in the Trump Administration’s work on the issue,” they wrote, before listing a number of questions relating to Leo’s role in the selection process.

As previously reported by Law&Crime, Leo stepped away from the Federalist Society earlier this year to helm a massive effort aimed at securing Trump’s re-election by highlighting the 45th president’s record on appointing conservative judges.

See below for the full letter sent to AG Barr:

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House Oversight Committee, which last week heard testimony on the oil industry’s efforts to suppress climate science, continued to probe the industry’s deception and influence with a hearing on the Trump administration’s proposed rollbacks of clean car standards — rollbacks that stand to benefit Big Oil at the expense of consumers and the environment.

At Tuesday’s hearing of the Oversight Committee’s Environment subcommittee, the oil industry’s importance in affecting the weaker standards for vehicle fuel economy and greenhouse gas emissions was front and center as Republicans led an ultimately unsuccessful effort to adjourn the hearing before witness testimony even began.

During the more than half hour delay, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez raised a question to her Republican colleagues:

https://www.desmogblog.com/2019/10/30/oil-house-oversight-hearing-clean-car-standards

many lnx vid

This About the Oil Industry?’ House Oversight Hearing Explores Big Oil’s Role in Weakening Clean Car Standards

Read time: 6 mins

By Dana Drugmand • Wednesday, October 30, 2019 - 12:24

The House Oversight Committee, which last week heard testimony on the oil industry’s efforts to suppress climate science, continued to probe the industry’s deception and influence with a hearing on the Trump administration’s proposed rollbacks of clean car standards — rollbacks that stand to benefit Big Oil at the expense of consumers and the environment.

At Tuesday’s hearing of the Oversight Committee’s Environment subcommittee, the oil industry’s importance in affecting the weaker standards for vehicle fuel economy and greenhouse gas emissions was front and center as Republicans led an ultimately unsuccessful effort to adjourn the hearing before witness testimony even began.

During the more than half hour delay, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez raised a question to her Republican colleagues:

“We’re here to talk about the very pressing issue of cutting our carbon emissions and saving our planet, and we have an entire political party that is trying to get out of their job, adjourn this hearing. I just want to know what the reason for such a disrespect of our process may be. Do we have a reason for why this hearing is trying to be adjourned?”

“I have one, I have a real easy one,” Rep. Kelly Armstrong of North Dakota replied. “The oil industry is the second largest industry in my state…”

“Wait, so is this about the oil industry?” Ocasio-Cortez interjected, to which Armstrong immediately denied. “No, it’s about the economy of North Dakota and my constituents,” he responded.

But Armstrong’s initial inclination to bring up the oil industry set the stage for witnesses to reveal who really benefits from weakened fuel economy and emissions standards, as well as how the industry manipulated the rulemaking process that produced the proposed rollbacks.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on the delay in the House Oversight's Environment subcommittee.

Rollbacks: More Pollution, Higher Costs, More Oil

At issue is a proposal by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to scale back Obama-era clean car rules including fuel efficiency standards and greenhouse gas emission standards.

The Trump administration’s new Safer Affordable Fuel-Efficient (SAFE) Vehicles rule would freeze both types of standards at 2020 levels. It would also revoke California’s authority under the Clean Air Act to set its own, more stringent standards, currently adopted by 13 other states and the District of Columbia.

The consequences of this proposal are stark.

If the rollbacks survive legal challenges, emissions are expected to rise — one analysis by Rhodium Group projects vehicles will emit an extra 32 million to 114 million metric tons of carbon pollution by 2035. As the Rhodium Group’s Dr. Emily Wimberger testified, the rollbacks along with the revocation of California’s waiver could result in an overall emissions increase of over a gigaton, or 1 billion tons. By 2035, U.S. consumers would be spending an additional $193 billion to $246 billion dollars at the pump, and oil consumption would increase by as much as 881,000 barrels per day.

The Oil Money Behind the Rollbacks

Senator Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island testified to the oil industry’s interest in rolling back clean car standards and its role in influencing the regulatory process, which has led to the proposed policy changes. Whitehouse noted that the Obama-era auto standards would save consumers $1.7 trillion but that those consumer savings translate to lost oil industry revenue.

“So the oil industry mobilized the network of front groups and trade associations that it uses to block climate action,” he said, calling out groups like FreedomWorks, Americans for Tax Reform, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, and the American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers (AFPM). AFPM is a major lobbying group for oil refiners.

As Whitehouse explained, many of these groups “masquerade as public interest groups but serve as mouthpieces for the fossil fuel industry.”

“To maintain the masquerade, these groups don’t disclose their funders, but all are tied into the network run by fossil fuel interests with a trillion-dollar incentive to undo the fuel economy standards,” he continued.

Rep. Rashida Tlaib poses questions to Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse.

He then revealed the known fossil fuel funding behind some of these groups that sent letters to Trump administration officials and the president himself urging the vehicle standards be weakened. According to Whitehouse, 11 groups that signed a March 2018 letter to then-EPA head Scott Pruitt had received at least $49 million from fossil fuel interests.

A dozen groups that sent a separate letter a month later to Pruitt and Secretary of Transportation Elaine Chao reportedly had raked in a minimum of $196 million in fossil fuel money. Two groups that sent a letter the following month to President Trump were linked to a minimum of $7.7 million from fossil fuel interests.

Whitehouse noted the industry influence didn’t stop with letter writing. AFPM sponsored a campaign on Facebook to effectively flood the Federal Register with thousands of identical comments supporting the rollbacks. The effort deployed a front group called Energy4US, and was coordinated by the Consumer Energy Alliance for AFPM, ultimately producing more than one-quarter of all of the comments that the Department of Transportation received on the proposed rule. AFPM also drafted official commentary for the record and recruited Republican governors to sign on to the letter.

Marathon Petroleum,the nation’s largest oil refiner, worked to build support for the weakened standards in state legislatures and circulated a letter filled with industry talking points to legislators in Congress, according to a New York Times investigation published last December.

The Sole Beneficiary of Weakened Fuel Economy Rules

Given this evidence, the Trump administration’s proposed rollbacks of clean car standards appear to trace back to the one stakeholder that stands to benefit from less-efficient vehicles.

“Without a doubt it’s the industry that refines the fuel that would be burned in less efficient vehicles,” Whitehouse said, again noting the $1.7 trillion incentive for the oil industry to push for the weaker standards.

Other witnesses agreed that the rollbacks seem to benefit no one apart from the oil industry, and would lead to loss of global market competitiveness, more premature deaths, greater global warming emissions, higher consumer costs, and other harmful impacts.

“There are no economic reasons to justify the proposed rollbacks,” said Dr. Antonio Bento, professor of economics and public policy at the University of Southern California.

Former California Governor Jerry Brown said the entire purpose of the rollbacks is “to sell more gas-guzzlers,” against the resolve of Californians to aggressively act on climate change.

Brown noted the state is facing “real terror” with the wildfires currently raging. “California’s burning while the [climate] deniers make a joke out of the standards that protect us all,” he said.

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https://www.alternet.org/2019/10/another-betrayal-trump-promised-to-bring-offshore-profits-home-but-hes-doing-the-opposite/

an 1019

'Another betrayal’: Trump promised to bring offshore profits home — but he’s doing the opposite

Igor Derysh / Salon

The Trump administration is considering a rule change that would make it easier for American companies to stash money offshore to avoid U.S. taxes, despite the president’s repeated campaign promises…

no lnx

‘Another betrayal’: Trump promised to bring offshore profits home — but he’s doing the opposite

Written by Igor Derysh / Salon October 11, 2019

The Trump administration is considering a rule change that would make it easier for American companies to stash money offshore to avoid U.S. taxes, despite the president’s repeated campaign promises to bring offshore cash back home.

The Treasury Department is looking to weaken or eliminate Obama-era regulations aimed at preventing companies from moving their income to their overseas branches to lower their U.S. tax bill, Bloomberg reports. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, a former Goldman Sachs executive, instead wants to replace the existing rules with “something more business friendly.”

The move would be a boon to large corporations, who already saw their taxes permanently slashed by the Republicans’ 2017 tax cuts, which overwhelmingly benefited companies at the expense of individual taxpayers.

Prior to the 2016 rule, companies were able to move money to their offshore branches that they could then lend to their American branches, while deducting the interest from the tax bill. The Obama-era rule allowed the IRS to consider these inter-company loans as equity, which eliminated a key incentive for companies to move profits overseas.

Democrats slammed the administration for trying to weaken rules that allow tax avoidance when it should be creating tougher ones.

“One of the Trump administration’s top priorities has been making it as easy as possible for the wealthiest Americans and corporations to cheat and avoid taxes,” Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon, the top Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, said in a statement. “Rules preventing the offshoring of corporate profits should be strengthened — not weakened.”

Critics of the rule say it is no longer necessary because the tax cuts made these inter-company loans less attractive, according to Bloomberg.

Mark Mazur, Obama’s former assistant secretary for tax policy at Treasury when the rule was created, disputed that claim.

“On the face, they do slightly different things and so it’s hard to believe that the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act took care of every one of those dimensions,“ he told Bloomberg.

On its face, Republican criticism of the rule simply doesn’t align with reality.Trump had earlier claimed that the 2017 tax cuts would bring back $4 trillion in offshore profits that had been stashed overseas. Through the end of 2018, his claim fell about $3.3 trillion short, Bloomberg reported earlier this year.

The tax law slashed the rate on repatriated profits from 35 percent to a onetime 15.5 percent tax rate on cash and an 8 percent tax on non-cash assets. Trump claimed that the change would bring back $4 trillion in offshore profits, even though banks estimated that only about $1.5 trillion to $2.5 trillion was held offshore by U.S. companies. Corporations brought back less than $670 billion from the time the tax law was enacted until the end of 2018.

Researchers also rejected Trump’s claim that the repatriated profits would boost investment in the U.S.

“Policy changes have a relatively small impact on hiring and investment decisions if firms have relatively easy access to credit markets,” said a 2018 report from researchers at the University of Richmond and Claremont McKenna College.

Instead, companies have been using their tax savings for stock buybacks, in which companies buy back their own stock to return more money to shareholders.

A report from Citigroup found that companies in the S&P 500 spent more than $800 billion on stock buybacks in 2018, far more than the total amount spent on investing in new equipment or the total amount of repatriated cash.

Last year, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., and Rep. Lloyd Doggett, D-Texas, introduced a bill that would close loopholes in the tax law to equalize tax rates on domestic and foreign profits.

“President Trump promised the American people he’d end the march of jobs and profits overseas,” Whitehouse said in a statement at the time. “Instead, he’s doled out massive new tax breaks that reward offshoring.”

Democrats again called out Trump for trying to help major corporations rather than workers.

“Another betrayal by President Trump — choosing corporations over American workers,” wrote Sen.Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio. “Shameful.”

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sci mag 2015

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2015/10/climate-scientist-requesting-federal-investigation-feels-heat-house-republicans

Climate scientist requesting federal investigation feels heat from House Republicans

By Warren CornwallOct. 5, 2015 , 3:30 PM

A scientist who helped organize a call for a federal investigation of the fossil fuel industry—for allegedly orchestrating a cover-up of climate change dangers—has himself become the target of a congressional probe.

Last week, Representative Lamar Smith (R–TX), the chairman of the science panel of the House of Representatives, announced plans to investigate a nonprofit research group led by climate scientist Jagadish Shukla of George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia. He is the lead signer of a letter to White House officials that urges the use of an antiracketeering law to crack down on energy firms that have funded efforts to raise doubts about climate science.

In a 1 October letter, Smith asked Shukla, who is director of the independent Institute of Global Environment and Society (IGES) in Rockville, Maryland, to preserve all of the “email, electronic documents, and data” that the institute has created since 2009. Smith’s panel soon may be asking for those documents, the letter suggests.

The flap has its origins in calls from some climate advocates for the federal government to investigate industry-funded groups that have challenged climate science.  Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D–RI) discussed the idea this past May in an opinion piece for The Washington Post. He noted that federal prosecutors had used the federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO)—originally developed to combat organized crime and corrupt unions—to sue the tobacco industry for covering up the health effects of smoking. And he suggested they could do the same to investigate fossil fuel firms that he charged were “funding a massive and sophisticated campaign to mislead the American people about the environmental harm caused by carbon pollution.”

Last month, 20 climate scientists, led by Shukla, picked up on the idea of using RICO. In a 1 September letter to President Barack Obama, Attorney General Loretta Lynch, and White House science adviser John Holdren, they wrote that “if corporations in the fossil fuel industry and their supporters are guilty of the misdeeds that have been documented in book and journal articles, it is imperative that these misdeeds be stopped as soon as possible.”

Other signers of the RICO letter include climate researchers from George Mason as well as the University of Washington, Seattle; Rutgers University in New Jersey; the University of Maryland, College Park; and Columbia University.

Shukla, a professor at George Mason, is an expert in the seasonal variability of climate, as well as how land surfaces influence climate. He helped found IGES, which has housed research projects funded with grants from the National Science Foundation, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and NASA, according to the group’s website.

The RICO letter was “inadvertently” posted on the IGES website, according to a statement posted on the institute’s domain (which also notes that “[a]ll projects by IGES  were  completed  in  July  2015,  and  the  IGES  web  site  is  in  the process  of  being  decommissioned”).  The letter eventually came to the attention of outsiders, including science policy specialistRoger Pielke, Jr., of the University of Colorado, Boulder. Pielke, an active voice in debates over climate science and policy, called attention to the letter on Twitter, and also raised questions about IGES’s finances. Soon, journalists, including several associated with conservative news outlets, were writing about the letter and IGES. TheDaily Caller,for example, noted that “climate scientists asking Obama to prosecute skeptics got millions from U.S. taxpayers,” in a 21 September story.

Smith cites that story and others in his letter,which notes that “IGES appears to be almost fully funded by taxpayer money while simultaneously participating in partisan political activity by requesting a RICO investigation of companies and organizations that disagree with the Obama administration on climate change.” Smith notes his letter was prompted, in part, by the removal of the RICO letter from IGES’s website. Smith gives Shukla until 8 October to confirm that he is conforming to the letter’s request, as well as provide his committee with a list of IGES’s current and former employees.

Shukla could not be reached for an interview, but in an email to ScienceInsider expressed surprise at the storm the RICO letter has caused. “We can not believe the viciousness of attacks because we signed a letter as our civic duty with the ultimate goal of repairing our planet,” he wrote.

It’s not clear what exactly Smith’s committee will be investigating. A committee spokeswoman, Laura Crist, declined to say whether the panel was looking at whether public funds were misused for political purposes, or whether IGES might have violated its nonprofit status with political activity. [OMFG vs c4's?!]

The committee’s ranking Democrat, Representative Eddie Bernice Johnson (D–TX), said in a statement to ScienceInsider that, “since the letter contains no specific allegations, I am puzzled as to the Chairman’s intent in writing it. To be clear about my own position, I would resist any attempt to stifle the constitutionally protected right of any citizen, including the nation’s scientists, to engage in free speech without interference.”

The RICO letter has also drawn the attention of Christopher Horner, an attorney and senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a Washington, D.C.–based libertarian think tank that has criticized climate change research. Horner recently filed public records requests with several public universities that employ authors of the RICO letter. In a letter to the University of Texas, Austin, Horner asks for any emails over a roughly 4-month period from or to Robert Dickinson, one of the letter’s signers, containing the words “‘RICO’, racketeer, racketeering, DOJ, prosecute or prosecution.”

Horner has previously tangled with scientists over records requests for their emails. He was at the center of an unsuccessful effort several years ago to obtain the correspondence of climate scientist Michael Mann during his time at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville.

Horner says he filed the requests to see how the scientists, as employees at public universities, were involved. “If they believe this is part of their job, we will not dispute that, but instead would like to see how the institutions were used in this innovative application of public education resources,” he wrote in an email.

Dickinson, a climate modeler who studies how land surfaces interact with climate, says the RICO letter isn’t seeking to squelch individuals who question the science of climate change. His intended target is corporations.

“I heard energy industry scientists talking about global warming 30 years ago. And they disappeared and the lobbyists popped up,” Dickinson says. “I don’t know if anything can be done. But it seemed to me that there's been an obvious cover-up.”

The Department of Justice did not respond to a request for comment. The RICO letter scientists did get a letter back from Holdren, who wrote that although such legal matters were up to the Justice Department, “the Administration shares the concern expressed in the letter about the seriousness of the threat posed by climate change.”

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 Dana Drugmand

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which historically has worked to block climate policy and undermine international action, has proposed sweeping new rules to help fossil fuel companies fend off liability lawsuits seeking to hold them accountable for costly climate impacts.

The Chamber’s Institute for Legal Reform released a pair of reports in March that sharply criticize public nuisance and municipal lawsuits against large corporations including fossil fuel producers. One of the reports contains a list of “solutions” that include barring local governments from bringing liability suits, restricting which industries can be targeted in suits and restricting state courts’ authority to hear certain claims or their ability to order certain remedies. That report was written by three former state attorneys with long histories of defending fossil fuel interests.

“The Chamber’s real concern with municipal climate litigation is to protect its polluter funders from having to cough up the real documents and truthful testimony required by court proceedings,” Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, who previously served as Rhode Island’s attorney general, told Climate Liability News.

“Municipalities are independent corporate entities that have every right to sue in their own names. Municipal litigation in no way prevents states from pursuing legal action, nor does it usurp state authority.”

The Chamber’s argument is that the fossil fuel industry should be insulated from litigation because climate change is a political issue best handled by the legislative and executive branches of government. Fossil fuel companies have already used that argument to convince two federal judges to dismiss suits against them by the cities of San Francisco, Oakland and New York, although those dismissals are being appealed.

Patrick Parenteau, a professor at Vermont Law School, said the Chamber’s proposals are little more than a red herring as public nuisance cases do not threaten the authority of the other branches of government. “Indeed, municipalities have been forced to turn to the courts for relief due to the failure of the other branches to take decisive corrective action and in the case of the Trump administration, to take actions designed to propel the country off the climate cliff,” Parenteau said. “Courts are understandably cautious about not overstepping their authorities but they are also constitutionally bound to adjudicate the rights and responsibilities of the parties that come before them.

“In our system of justice, it is up to a jury to decide questions of causation, damage, and liability,” he added. “Of course that is the last thing that the oil companies or the Chamber of Commerce want to see happen, and why they are so intent on throwing these cases out of court or shielding them from liability.”

According to Catherine M. Sharkey, a New York University law professor and an expert in torts, products liability and administrative law, the claims in these climate suits are nothing extraordinary. In her amicus brief supporting New York City in its appeal, she wrote, “nuisance liability plays a potentially positive and economically justified role in forcing actors to internalize the harms that their activities cause.”

The Chamber has written friend-of-the-court briefs supporting the companies in that litigation. The pair of reports released in March attempt to extend those arguments to forestall future suits.

One report, titled “Waking the Litigation Monster: The Misuse of Public Nuisance,” reviews the history of public nuisance as a tort, arguing that it was improperly expanded beyond its narrow origin to address hazards resulting from industrial activities like chemical dumping and asbestos use and the sale of dangerous products such as tobacco and lead paint.

The report claims that “public nuisance is not needed to fill gaps” that the political branches already occupy. But as Karen Sokol, associate professor of law at Loyola University College of Law in New Orleans, wrote in an op-ed for the Center for Progressive reform, the courts do have a role because the political branches have failed to address the climate crisis.

“State tort law is urgently needed to address the myriad climate change harms exacerbated by the federal government’s inaction,” she wrote. “This is the gap-filling role that state tort law has been serving for this country’s citizens for decades.”

The other report, “Mitigating Municipality Litigation: Scope and Solutions,”  proposes ways to prevent more of these suits from being filed.

“The feeding frenzy of municipal lawsuits not only stands in the way of justice by making it harder to resolve cases, but also undermines states’ authority,” Harold Kim, chief operating officer of the Chamber’s Institute for Legal Reform, said in a press release.

The Chamber’s report outlines strategies for states to quash municipal lawsuits, including:

• Eliminate the power of local governments to bring suits altogether, or substantially limit it by requiring state approval of municipal suits. Another possibility is to prohibit the hiring of outside counsel by municipalities.
• Limit the defendants that can be sued; in other words, provide immunity for certain industries or companies.
• Limit what constitutes a public nuisance.
• Deprive municipal plaintiffs a forum to sue by restricting state courts’ authority to hear certain claims or their ability to order certain remedies.

Parenteau called these recommendations “preposterous” and said the reports serve as “just more right wing arm-waving to divert attention from the very real environmental and economic damage that climate change is doing to communities all across the country.”

“Innocent people don’t need immunity,” he said.

Who is Behind The Reports? 

To produce the report outlining ways to stop municipal suits, the Chamber turned to a roster of players with a history of defending fossil fuel companies and promoting industry interests.

They  include former Washington State Attorney General Rob McKenna, former Maine Attorney General Drew Ketterer, and former West Virginia Solicitor General Elbert Lin.

McKenna, who served two terms as AG from 2005-13, now works with the firm Orrick Herrington & Sutcliffe, where he co-chairs its public policy group and represents corporate clients such as Microsoft and Chevron. He is listed as an attorney for Chevron in the King County, Wash., climate suit against several oil companies, and last year appeared in ads opposing Washington’s carbon fee ballot initiative.

Ketterer was the attorney general of Maine from 1995-2001 and is a founding partner of Ketterer & Ketterer law firm. According to the firm’s website, the firm “represents national and multi-national corporations that are regulated or sued by state Attorneys General in all 50 states. The law firm formerly or currently represents for-profit colleges, the firearms industry, pharmaceutical companies, automobile manufacturers and petroleum companies.” Ketterer also wrote an op-ed for a Maine newspaper last year opposing climate liability suits.

Lin was Solicitor General in West Virginia from 2013-17, when he led West Virginia’s legal challenge (along with other states) to the Obama administration’s Clean Power Plan. He is currently at a law firm based in Richmond, Va.

The “Waking the Litigation Monster” report was prepared by Joshua K. Payne and Jess R. Nix, attorneys with the Alabama-based law firm Spotswood Samson & Sansbury. The firm specializes in representing large corporate clients such as energy companies and financial firms.

The Chamber’s Institute for Legal Reform (ILR) touts itself as “the most influential legal reform organization in the country.” Founded in 1998, its purpose is to mitigate liability risks to businesses. ILR advocates for legal reforms through research, communications campaigns and aggressive lobbying. The organization, which does not disclose its funders, spent an average of $25.44 million annually on lobbying between 2015-18, according to data from OpenSecrets. According to Chamber Watch, a watchdog site run by the organization Public Citizen, the “ILR’s primary mission is to lobby to make it harder to for consumers, workers, and small businesses to go to court to hold corporations accountable for wrongdoing.”

The Chamber’s History of Opposing Climate Action 

The Chamber of Commerce, which represents more than 3 million corporations but does not disclose its members, has a long history of fighting against consumer and environmental protections and regulations. The Chamber was a founding member of the Global Climate Coalition, an industry front group that actively worked to undermineclimate science and to influence the UN’s climate negotiations. The Global Climate Coalition disbanded in 2002, but the Chamber continued to circulate climate denial talking points and lobby against climate policies. The Chamber successfully opposed the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill in 2008, and more recently has challenged the Clean Power Plan in court and funded a study vastly overstating the potential costs of the Paris Agreement, which President Trump cited in justifying his decision to withdraw the U.S. from the global climate accord. That study was debunked by numerous climate experts.

Just as Big Oil has toned down its outright denial of climate change, the Chamber has also shifted its public stance. The Chamber’s website acknowledges that humans contribute to climate change and that “inaction is not an option.” However, the Chamber continues to lobby against climate legislation while arguing that courts should leave the issue to those branches.

“The Chamber has consistently used deception, campaign spending, and bullying to fight any serious climate policy in the political branches,” said David Arkush, managing director of Public Citizen’s climate program. “It’s beyond disingenuous to argue that the political branches should solve a problem when you’re fighting hard to make sure they don’t.”

Whitehouse called out the Chamber’s behavior in an amicus brief supporting a set of California cities and counties suing fossil fuel producers. The suits are currently under appeal in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.

“The fossil fuel industry and its ally the U.S. Chamber have used political pressures to block executive and legislative action on climate change. They then turn around and argue in court that climate change is an issue to be addressed by the political branches of government they have blocked,” he said. “In fact, it’s the job of courts and juries to provide a forum where the politically mighty stand as equals with those they have harmed. It’s no surprise that the Chamber as the agent of the polluters would prefer the forum they have rigged.”

Whitehouse’s brief concludes with the request that the court recognize the Chamber’s arguments as “rent-seeking, self-interested pleas to complete inaction.”

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https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/21/opinion/to-slow-global-warming-we-need-nuclear-power.html

If  20 fire marshals came around and told us our houses were about to burn down, we’d buy some fire insurance. So when the leading science academies in 20 developed countries, along with several major American corporations and the national security community, all tell us that burning fossil fuels is causing dangerous changes to the climate, we think it’s time for the United States to get serious about clean energy. It also means supporting safely operating nuclear power plants that produce carbon-free electricity.

Already, 60 percent of our carbon-free electricity comes from the 99 nuclear reactors that dot the nation’s map, from Avila Beach, Calif., to Seabrook, N.H. These reactors provide low-cost, reliable electricity for the United States, which uses nearly 20 percent of the world’s electricity. But over the next decade, at least eight of these reactors are scheduled to shut down. That will push up carbon emissions from the American electricity sector by nearly 3 percent, according to the United States Energy Information Administration.

In California, the closing of the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station in 2012 contributed to a 24 percent increase in carbon emissions from the electricity sector, according to data from the California Environmental Protection Agency Air Resources Board. Carbon emissions from the electricity sector in New England rose 5 percent in 2015, the first year-to-year increase since 2010, largely because of the closing of the Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Station in December 2014, according to ISO New England, the region’s grid operator.

In roughly two decades, the United States could lose about half its reactors. That’s because, by 2038, 50 reactors will be at least 60 years old, and will face having to close, representing nearly half of the nuclear generating capacity in the United States. Without them, or enough new reactors to replace them, it will be much harder to reduce carbon emissions that contribute to climate change.

Unfortunately, some of our federal policies to encourage clean energy, such as the Clean Energy Incentive Program within President Obama’s Clean Power Plan, do not explicitly include or incentivize nuclear power. Likewise, some states have chosen to adopt policies, such as renewable portfolio standards, that do not include or incentivize nuclear power.

At the same time, our energy markets do not currently account for the value of carbon-free power, a failure that puts nuclear power at an unfair and economically inefficient disadvantage to fossil fuels like coal and natural gas.

We come from different political parties, but we agree on the overall goal of leveling the playing field for nuclear power, and the need to find a bipartisan solution to achieve it. This matters because the investments we make today, in new plants and transmission infrastructure, will be around for decades. Every time new fossil energy replaces nuclear, we’re locking ourselves in to a more carbon-heavy energy mix for years to come.

Some states and utilities are working to reduce carbon emissions with the understanding that nuclear power can be part of the solution. In the Southeast, there are four new reactors under construction that will provide 4,470 megawatts of carbon-free electricity — enough for 3.3 million homes. New York established a clean-energy standard in August that might help the state’s reactors stay open, including one that had been announced as closing. Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s office explained that “maintaining zero-emission nuclear power is a critical element to achieving New York’s ambitious climate goals.” And the private sector is pitching in, too: According to Energy Secretary Ernest J. Moniz, there are dozens of entrepreneurs focusing on ways to improve and expand the nuclear power industry.

The federal government should support these efforts.

For one thing, we should extend existing reactor licenses from 60 to 80 years, in cases where the Nuclear Regulatory Commission says it is safe to do so.

We should also invest more in research to develop advanced nuclear reactors, including small modular reactors and accident-tolerant fuels. Advanced reactor designs may substantially reduce the threat of a meltdown. Many new, modular designs are much smaller than their predecessors, meaning they can be built in factories at lower cost and plugged into the grid as needed.

Some of these new reactor technologies could actually use waste from traditional reactors as fuel, helping to alleviate a major challenge facing the industry. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission licensing framework, developed to support the last generation of reactors, should be updated to encourage and promote new investment in the next wave of advanced nuclear technology. And finally, we need to resolve the stalemate over where to store used nuclear reactor fuel.

If we want to clean the air and reduce carbon emissions to deal with climate change, we need a stronger, not weaker, nuclear energy sector. Congress, federal agencies and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission must work with utilities to preserve our existing reactors in the safest possible way, and to develop the next generation of reactors that will provide cheaper, reliable, carbon-free electricity.

Senator Lamar Alexander, Republican of Tennessee, is the chairman of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Energy and Water Development. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse is a Democrat from Rhode Island.

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https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2018/08/exclusive-senators-are-demanding-information-about-giulianis-opioid-lobbying/

many docs

More than a decade ago, OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma approached Rudy Giuliani, then fresh off a stint as the lauded mayor of New York City, asking for help: The little-known pharmaceutical company needed a trusted lawyer to help fight growing public relations and legal battles. It was 2002, and Purdue was facing its first lawsuits accusing the company of underplaying the addictive effects of its signature drug. By the time Purdue sought Giuliani’s guidance, he was reportedly helping raise money for a museum dedicated to the Drug Enforcement Administration and his consulting firm, Giuliani Partners, was consulting the Justice Department on reorganizing its major drug investigations.

Recent developments cast a new light on the arrangement: Today, Giuliani serves as President Donald Trump’s lawyer, and Purdue Pharma is largely viewed as responsible for helping sow the seeds of the current overdose epidemic, which killed roughly 72,000 Americans last year. Purdue employed Giuliani Partners for years, clad with its founder’s shiny post-9/11 reputation and political connections. When a federal investigation in the mid-2000s threatened company executives with theprospect of felonies and jail time, the firm helped Purdue’s top brass get off with misdemeanor “misbranding” convictions and community service in 2007. Purdue Pharma’s parent company, Purdue Frederick, pleaded guilty to a misbranding felony that cost it $600 million, but Giuliani helped strike a deal that enabled Purdue Pharma to continue selling its blockbuster painkiller OxyContin. “Among Mr. Giuliani’s missions was the job of convincing public officials that they could trust Purdue because they could trust him,” as the New York Times put it that year. 

On Wednesday, Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.) and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) sent letters to the Department of Justice and the Drug Enforcement Administration requesting information on the respective agencies’ contact with Giuliani Partners. The letters, shared with Mother Jones, draw heavily on a recent New York Times investigationfinding that federal prosecutors knew about OxyContin’s widespread abuse and originally recommended that Purdue executives be charged with felonies, including conspiracy to defraud the United States.But top Justice Department officials in the George W. Bush administration pushed back—deciding instead to settle the case in 2007 rather than take it to trial.The letters also cite investigations suggesting that Giuliani used his political connections to influence the relatively lenient outcome of the federal suit, as well as the lax approach the Drug Enforcement Administration took in curbing misuse of the drug.

In addition to asking for documentation of communications between the federal agencies and Giuliani Partners, the letters ask pointed questions about Giuliani himself, such as “What steps were taken to ensure that Giuliani’s other relationships with DOJ and its components did not improperly influence plea negotiations?”

In recent years, dozens of states and municipalities have filed lawsuits against opioid makers and distributors including Purdue, alleging that the overdose epidemic has caused a strain on public resources. Last week, Trump asked Attorney General Jeff Sessions to bring a separate, “major lawsuit” against opioid companies. 

“Given that Mr. Giuliani has emerged as one of the President’s closest advisors, it’s important that we determine whether his past work on behalf of Purdue, a company that misled prescribers and patients alike about the addictive nature of its drug OxyContin, will influence this administration’s actions in terms of holding Purdue accountable for the devastating impact of its aggressive marketing of this drug,” wrote Ricki Eshman, Hassan’s press secretary.

Read the full letters below:...

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icn

Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt, facing a complaint that he had violated the law restricting political activity by federal officials, will not attend an Oklahoma GOP fundraising gala where he was slated to be keynote speaker, an administration official told InsideClimate News on Thursday.

The decision came after Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., filed a complaint with the U.S. Office of Special Counsel over an invitation for a $100-a-plate May 5 Oklahoma Republican Party gala that promoted the chance to see Pruitt as it solicited  "sponsorships" of $2,000 to $5,000.

"You do not want to miss Pruitt at this year's OKGOP Gala, as he discusses his plans to slash regulations, bring back jobs to Oklahoma, and decrease the size of the EPA!" the invitation said. "Make sure to purchase your Gala tickets so you don't miss out on Administrator Pruitt's future plans and how he will continue to Drain the Swamp! This is a once in a lifetime opportunity, so buy your tickets before they sell out."

EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt received top billing on the gala's promotional materials.

EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt received top billing on the GOP fundraiser's promotional materials.

Whitehouse argued it was a violation of the Hatch Act, the 1939 law that prevents federal officials from using their office for political purposes. He said the "unmistakable impression" from the invitation was that by purchasing a ticket or sponsorship, the attendee would have special access to a federal employee discussing planned and pending official actions. "Anything short of prohibiting his attendance will not change, in the public's perception, that the OKGOP's Gala is a 'pay-to-play' event with a federal Cabinet official," Whitehouse's complaint said.

The administration official said the decision for Pruitt not to attend the event on Tuesday night was made after realizing that the flyer for the event had been distributed by the Oklahoma GOP without an opportunity for Pruitt's office to review it. Pruitt's office worked with EPA's ethics office to ensure that attendance at the event would comply with the law, and one of the rules had been that EPA be able to review the invitation in advance, the official said....

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https://www.c-span.org/video/?423902-2/words-senator-sheldon-whitehouse

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Led by Senators Sheldon Whitehouse (RI), Ed Markey (MA), Brian Schatz (HI), and Barbara Boxer (CA), our Climate Champions are introducing new legislation TODAY to STOP Koch brother-backed climate denial “research” from interfering with action on climate change. 

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http://www.whitehouse.senate.gov/download/?id=14B7203D-50FE-4BA9-82FC-B76756B70503&download=1

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Nineteen U.S. Senators who understand the need to clear the PR pollution that continues to block overdue climate policy spoke out on the Senate floor Monday in support of the Senate Web of Denial Resolution calling out the destructive forces of fossil fuel industry-funded climate denial.

Championed by Senators Whitehouse, Markey, Schatz, Boxer, Merkley, Warren, Sanders and Franken, the resolution condemns what they are calling the #WebOfDenial—"interconnected groups—funded by the Koch brothers, major fossil fuel companies like ExxonMobil and Peabody Coal, identity-scrubbing groups like Donors Trust and Donors Capital and their allies—developed and executed a massive campaign to deceive the public about climate change to halt climate action and protect their bottom lines."

Joined in the House of Representatives by CongressmanTed Lieu (D- CA), these champions forclimate action and accountability in the Senate are calling out the use of think tanks and denier-for-hire front groups to create doubt about climate science.

According to a press release issued Monday morning, the resolution condemns the "efforts of corporations and groups to mislead the public about the harmful effects of tobacco, lead and climate. The resolution also urges fossil fuel corporations and their allies to cooperate with investigations into their climate-related activities."

As DeSmog Blog, ExxonSecrets, Climate Investigations Center and others have documented repeatedly over the past decade, the oil and coal industries and their friends have spent hundreds of millions of dollars on an immoral and potentially fraudulent campaign to deceive the public about the scientific consensus on manmade global warming and the need for urgent action to curtail fossil fuel pollution.

Just last week, DeSmog Blog published the latest round of Exxon's funding of climate denial groups still peddling doubt, bringing the total known funding from Exxon to nearly $34 million over two decades. Add to that the nearly $90 million pumped into the denial machine by the Koch Family Foundations, as well as the largesse emanating from the dark money ATM, Donors Trust and Donors Capital Fund.

Think tanks and front groups involved in climate denial include the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), U.S.Chamber of Commerce, Heritage Foundation, Competitive Enterprise Institute, the Kochs' Americans for Prosperity, the Heartland Institute and many more.

Champions in the U.S. Congress are now putting the denial machine on notice with this resolution and a series of speeches that took place last night from 4:45 -6:45 p.m. EDT, and will also take place today from 5 - 7:30 p.m. EDT on the Senate floor.

Here are updates to this post from the speeches last night:

7:35pm EDT: Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse spoke last tonight and highlighted many of the points made by his colleagues throughout the day during the #WebOfDenial speeches. Whitehouse praised the peer-reviewed research into climate denial by Robert Brulle, Justin Farrell, Riley Dunlap, Aaron McCright, Constantine Boussalis and Travis Coan.

He thanked the many authors of books about climate denial, including Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway and noted that the film version of their book Merchants of Doubt is showing tonight on the Hill.

And Sen. Whitehouse called out many groups and outlets that have worked to expose climate denial and industry misinformation, including Greenpeace's ExxonSecrets and PolluterWatch, set up by Kert Davies who has gone on to found the Climate Investigations Center, also named. He thanked the journalists at Inside Climate News and their must-read "The Road Not Taken" series. He thanked David Brock's group American Bridge and Climate Nexusfor its work to expose the Wall Street Journal's peddling climate denial on its editorial page (and the Partnership for Responsible Growth for correcting the record in the Wall Street Journal). He thanked ProPublica, the Union of Concerned Scientists and more.

He highlighted author Jeff Nesbit and his new book Poisoned Tea, Jane Mayer and her book Dark Money, Steve Coll and his book Private Empire on ExxonMobil as well as his role as Dean at the Columbia School of Journalism.

Sen. Whitehouse also heaped much-appreciated praise on us at DeSmogBlog, mentioning our Time Magazine "Best Blogs" accolades as well as highlighting our news coverage and our Disinformation Database. (In turn, we thank the Senator for his leadership on this issue and his colleagues for speaking about the subject of climate denial which we've focused on for the past decade.)

In closing, Sen. Whitehouse said:

"The scholarship of all these academics, all these organizations and all these authors—the detectives who are exposing the web of denial—have shined a bright light into its dark corners and illuminated its concerted effort to dupe the American public and sabotage climate action in America, all to protect the fossil fuel industry that funds it. It's sickening, but it's big. The denial web is designed to be big and sophisticated enough that when you see its many parts, you're fooled into thinking it's not the same beast. But it is. Like the mythological Hydra, many heads, same beast. …

Welcome to the Web of Denial. And thank you to those who are working to expose it. It is a filthy thing in our democracy."

7:10pm EDT: #WebOfDenial is Trending on Twitter.

7pm EDT: Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-OR) spoke about the overlap of tobacco industry attacks on science and the "fossil industrial complex" that has similarly attacked climate science to evade accountability. He also discussed the Heritage Foundation, Art Pope, Cato Institute and the forged letter scandal orchestrated by Bonner and Associates for the Hawthorn Group and its coal industry client ACCCE. Merkley highlighted the work of Justin Farrell from Yale and the money flows from Donors Trust and the Koch Brothers. "A powerful, moneyed interest has spun a web of deceit. We know that these groups are backed by special interests. All we have to do is follow the money," Merkley said.

He mentioned the more than $30 million from ExxonMobil and the denial funding from Peabody Energy revealed in its bankruptcy fillings. Merkley saved special mention for the Koch Brothers: "But as much as the fossil fuel companies have contributed to these efforts over the years, the titles of the mastermind and the kingpins of climate science denial—those titles rest with Charles and David Koch."

6:25pm EDT: Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY) spoke about the Mercatus Center, which he said "should be called the Koch Center" due to its massive Koch funding. He discussed the connections to the tobacco industry's attacks on tobacco science and the overlap with the Koch-funded Mercatus Center.

5:55pm EDT: Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA) spoke about the Virginia Institute for Public Policy and the CO2 Coalition and the Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation and mentioned DeSmogBlog's research in his #WebOfDenial speech. He also talked about the funding from Donors Capital Fund and Donors Trust to denier organizations.

5:40pm EDT: Sen. Elizabeth Warren spoke about the Science and Public Policy Institute (SPPI),Willie Soon and Christopher Monckton's Hitler Youth outrage and claims to have a cure for AIDS and other "completely made up" Monckton-isms.

5:25pm EDT: Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse spoke about the #WebOfDenial and the $700 billion in global subsidies to the fossil fuel industry, annually. He highlighted the work of Drexel University professor Robert Brulle to expose the climate change counter movement and what the Senators are calling the climate #WebOfDenial.

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5:15pm EDT: Sen. Tom Udall spoke about the front groups Greening Earth Society and the Information Council on the Environment (ICE) and the web of denial.

5:10pm EDT: Sen. Christopher Coons spoke about the historical denial efforts of The Advancement of Sound Science Coalition (TASSC)

5pm EDT: Sen. Cardin spoke about the attacks on climate science by the defunct group Annapolis Center for Science-Based Public Policy which received funding from ExxonMobil and the tobacco industry. He was introduced by Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, who was thanked for leading this effort. Whitehouse delivered his 144th statement on the need for climate action and discussed the influence of the web of denial blocking action.

Update 4:30pm EDT: Senator Reid kicked off the action on #WebOfDenial, railing against the Koch Brothers and Exxon for dishing out millions to fund climate denial organizations. Reid named Heartland Institute, Cato Institute and Americans For Prosperity, among others. You can watch the action on C-SPAN2.

"It's inspiring to see Senators join the movement to hold the likes of Exxon accountable for their decades of deception," Jamie Henn, 350.org communications director, said. "Big Oil robbed us of a generation's worth of climate action and to this day are still sowing doubt and misinformation — prioritizing profit at the expense of our climate and communities. The last 14 consecutive months have been the hottest on record, making it ever more pressing for our elected officials to bring this extensive web of climate denial to light."

Last week, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse delivered his 143rd speech about climate change and focused on the issue of climate denial and the front groups involved in peddling doubt. Watch here:

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http://citizensclimatelobby.org/whitehouse-schatz-bill-opens-serious-discussion-to-price-carbon/

JUNE 10, 2015 —  The revenue-neutral carbon fee bill introduced by senators Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) and Brian Schatz (D-HI) on Wednesday should open up a serious dialogue in Congress about climate change solutions, Citizens’ Climate Lobby said today.

Sen. Brian Schatz (left) and Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse unveil their bill at the American Enterprise Institute.

The Whitehouse-Schatz bill, The American Opportunity Carbon Fee Act, would assess a fee on the carbon content of fossil fuels, starting at $45 per ton of carbon dioxide, and increasing 2 percent above inflation each year. Revenue from the fee would be returned to households and corporations in a variety of ways. About $2 trillion in revenue is expected to be raised over 10 years. A portion of the revenue would be used to reduce the corporate tax rate from 35% to 29%. The remainder would be returned to households through payroll tax refunds, social security and disability programs, and per capita block grants given to states.

“This is not a problem that will be solved by one party,” said Mark Reynolds, Executive Director of Citizens’ Climate Lobby (CCL). “All sides need to come together, and Sen. Whitehouse is proposing a solution that invites Republicans to come to the table. We don’t have to choose between the economy and the environment. There are solutions that benefit both.”

Whitehouse and Schatz unveiled their bill today at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank that has previously broached the discussion of carbon pricing in the context of broader tax reform.

“There’s much to like in this legislation,” said Danny Richter, Legislative Director for CCL. “It’s a market-based solution that’s revenue neutral, which should be enticing for Republican lawmakers. While the price starts out strong at $45 per ton, we’d like to see a more aggressive rate of increase, which would send a stronger signal to the marketplace.”

CCL has been lobbying for a proposal known as Carbon Fee and Dividend, a steadily-rising fee on carbon-based fuels with all revenue given back to households.

“In less than two weeks, we’ll have 800 volunteers blanketing Capitol Hill to lobby for our proposal,” said Reynolds. “The Whitehouse-Schatz bill will certainly prime the pump for those discussions, and we’ll be looking to find Republicans who will step up for this type of legislation.

“Regarding the revenue return, we prefer giving all the money back as a dividend. As one of our board members, former Secretary of State George Shultz, says, this is ‘the most transparent, hardest to rig treatment of the revenue.’ ”

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Senators Issue Report on U.S. Chamber of Commerce Lobbying

Whitehouse, Warren, Boxer, Sanders, Brown, Merkley, Blumenthal, Markey investigation finds that Chamber Board do not stand with the Chamber on tobacco, climate lobbying

http://www.whitehouse.senate.gov/download/?id=7c225de8-0d47-4c02-bc4e-5a3e932cc9f1&download=1

Tuesday, June 14, 2016

Washington, D.C. – Tonight, a group of Senators led by Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) and Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), and joined by Barbara Boxer (D-CA), Bernie Sanders (I-VT), Sherrod Brown (D-OH), Jeff Merkley (D-OR), Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), and Edward Markey (D-MA) released findings of an investigation into the lobbying activities of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce—the purported voice of America’s business community and the largest lobbying force in the country.  In their report, the Senators examine whether the Chamber actually represents the views of its Board of Directors and their companies on two major public health issues: tobacco use and climate change.

Through extensive research and correspondence with Board members, the Senators’ investigation reveals a dramatic split between the Chamber’s lobbying positions on tobacco and climate change and the actions and views of its members.  The report shows that not one of the 108 Board members questioned during the course of the investigation openly endorses the Chamber’s lobbying activities on these issues, and that roughly half – if not more – of the companies represented on the Chamber’s Board have adopted anti-tobacco and pro-climate positions that contrast sharply with the Chamber’s activities.  In addition, Board members revealed that they have had no knowledge of or input into the Chamber’s lobbying activities on tobacco or climate issues, betraying a critical lack of transparency in the Chamber’s internal operations.

In a letter accompanying the report to be sent to Board members, the Senators write, “We found a corporate America far more concerned about public health and the environment than the Chamber’s efforts would suggest.  We identified dozens of companies investing heavily to get their employees to stop smoking because they realize a healthy workforce is a productive one.  We identified companies from all corners of the economy working to reduce their carbon footprints and affirmatively supporting the Obama Administration’s Clean Power Plan and its international efforts at the COP21 climate negotiations in Paris.

“Chamber members, many of whom act commendably on their own, undermine their own efforts by affiliating with an organization that actively and aggressively undermines efforts to reduce tobacco use and tries to prevent action to address climate change.  By lending tacit support to an organization that has spearheaded a decades-long effort against policies to address both problems, member companies become de facto promoters of tobacco and adversaries of climate action.”

The report can be accessed HERE.

The cover letter to Chamber Board members accompanying the report is included below.

June 15, 2016

Dear Chamber Board Member,

Last year, following a New York Timesinvestigation into the United States Chamber of Commerce’s efforts to promote tobacco use abroad and to undermine President Obama’s Clean Power Plan, we wrote to you and other members of the Board of Directors asking whether your companies support the Chamber in these endeavors.  Enclosed is a new report summarizing our findings.  The report raises serious questions about the Chamber’s credibility and its actions on tobacco and climate policy, and indicates that the Chamber does not accurately represent the positions, input, and knowledge of its membership.

The Chamber is the largest lobbying organization in the country.  In Washington, when the Chamber speaks, many elected officials listen.  Presumably, your company is a member of the Chamber because it values the influence that the Chamber has with policymakers in Washington and believes the Chamber represents its interests.

When it comes to two of the most significant public health issues of our day—tobacco use and climate change—we found the Chamber’s activities to be starkly out of step with the stated interests or actions of its board member corporations.  Based on the responses to our letters and our own additional research, we found no Chamber Board members willing to wholeheartedly support the Chamber’s efforts on tobacco and climate change.  In fact, our research shows that nearly half of the Chamber’s Board member companies have adopted policies that are inconsistent with the Chamber’s efforts on these issues.

Our methodology was straightforward.  First, we asked the 108 companies with representatives on the Chamber’s Board whether they support the Chamber’s efforts on climate and tobacco.  Then, we augmented the responses we received with research of publicly available information company positions on tobacco and climate change, comparing those with the Chamber’s activities.

We found a corporate America far more concerned about public health and the environment than the Chamber’s efforts would suggest.  We identified dozens of companies investing heavily to get their employees to stop smoking because they realize a healthy workforce is a productive one.  We identified companies from all corners of the economy working to reduce their carbon footprints and affirmatively supporting the Obama Administration’s Clean Power Plan and its international efforts at the COP21 climate negotiations in Paris.

Chamber members, many of whom act commendably on their own, undermine their own efforts by affiliating with an organization that actively and aggressively undermines efforts to reduce tobacco use and tries to prevent action to address climate change.  By lending tacit support to an organization that has spearheaded a decades-long effort against policies to address both problems, member companies become de facto promoters of tobacco and adversaries of climate action.

We were disappointed that so many Board members declined to respond to our letters.  Many who did respond either claimed ignorance of the Chamber’s efforts, or sought to align their membership with other issues on which the Chamber lobbies.  Iconic American companies, such as Apple and CVS, left the Chamberwhen it became clear that membership was working against their corporate goals.  When these companies promote their environmental and public health initiatives, we can have confidence that they mean what they say.

We hope this report will cause you to take a close look at the Chamber’s positions on tobacco and climate, and at the effects in Congress of your continued affiliation with the Chamber on these issues.  It claims to be a membership-driven, representative organization, but our research suggests it is neither.

Sincerely,

cc: Tom Donahue, President and CEO, U.S. Chamber of Commerce

http://www.whitehouse.senate.gov/news/release/senators-issue-report-on-us-chamber-of-commerce-lobbying

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senCoCrept16

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce: Out of Step with the American People and Its Members

The United States Chamber of Commerce is the largest

lobbying organization in the country. OpenSecrets, a

nonprofit, nonpartisan research group that tracks the

effects of money and lobbying, showed that in 2015

alone, the Chamber spent roughly $85 million on

lobbying efforts, more than twice the amount spent by

the second-highest organization (the National Association

of Realtors). 10 During the 2013-2014 election cycle,

the Chamber spent $35 million on political expenditures

(through super PACs, 501(c) organizations, and/

or political party committees) that were “outside” or

independent of candidates’ campaign committees. 11

The Chamber has used its considerable resources to

fight legislation and government action on tobacco

and climate change at home and abroad. A series of

2015 New York Times articles exposed the Chamber’s

aggressive activities helping the tobacco industry to fight

international antismoking laws, regulations, and policies,

12 and described the organization’s systematic efforts to

undermine the Environmental Protection Agency’s work to

address climate change and carbon pollution. 13

...

it represents the “interests of more than three million

businesses of all sizes, sectors, and regions” when it

interacts with Congress, 15 its positions and actions

on tobacco and climate do not appear to reflect or

communicate the positions of many of its member

companies. The following analysis shows that

approximately half of the companies on the Chamber’s

Board of Directors have publicly taken positions on

tobacco and climate change that are in conflict with

the Chamber’s actions and positions. This calls into

question the Chamber’s allegedly transparent decisionmaking

process, and suggests that the Chamber does

not accurately represent the positions of its member

companies.

Moreover, the Chamber’s lobbying is at odds with its own

public positions. The organization strongly professes that

it is anti-tobacco, saying that it “is not in the business of

promoting cigarette smoking at home or abroad, period.”

16 It also claims to support the environment, saying that

it “has in its public documents, Hill letters and testimony,

supported efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions

in the atmosphere,” and calling for a “comprehensive

climate change law.” 17 Plainly, there is a broad gap

between the Chamber’s stated policies, its Board

members’ positions, and its actual lobbying activities.

...

When the Chamber weighs in, many in Washington, D.C.,

listen. The Chamber is the largest lobbying organization

in the country and claims to represent the “interests of

more than three million businesses of all sizes, sectors, and

regions” when it interacts with Congress. OpenSecrets, a

nonprofit, nonpartisan research group that tracks the effects

of money and lobbying, showed that in 2015 alone, the

Chamber spent roughly $85 million on lobbying efforts,

more than twice the amount spent by the second-highest

organization (National Association of Realtors). 33 During

the 2013-2014 election cycle, the Chamber spent $35

million on political expenditures (through super PACs,

501(c) organizations, and/or political party committees) that

were “outside” or independent of candidates’ campaign

committees. 34

The Chamber has aggressively lobbied—in the United States

and abroad—in support of tobacco and climate policies that

are directly at odds with science, public health, and public

opinion. In June 2015, The New York Times reported that

“the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and its foreign affiliates

have become the hammer for the tobacco industry, engaging

in a worldwide effort to fight antismoking laws of all kinds.”

35 The Chamber’s efforts span the globe, from fighting

tobacco advertising bans in Uruguay to opposing graphic

health warnings on tobacco labels in Burkina Faso. 36 The

Chamber has lobbied to ensure tobacco companies are

able to sue under future intern...TPP]

The Chamber has lobbied to ensure tobacco companies are

able to sue under future international treaties, including the

Trans-Pacific Partnership. 37

The Chamber has attacked U.S. climate policies with similar

zeal. According to The New York Times,

in early 2014, a group of 30 corporate

lawyers, coal lobbyists, and Republican

political strategists gathered at the

Chamber’s headquarters to devise legal

strategies to dismantle the President’s Clean

Power Plan—before President Obama had

even introduced a draft proposal of it. 38

The Chamber has also been vocal about

its opposition to climate action when

testifying before Congress. For instance,

the Chamber has testified in opposition

to the Paris Agreement, 39 despite the fact

that many of its Board member companies

have pledged to support the goals of the

Agreement. 40 Additionally, nearly all of

Chamber campaign contributions—94%—

have reportedly gone to climate change

denier candidates

...

• Ceres Climate Declaration—A voluntary declaration

signed by more than 1,000 companies and individuals,

who acknowledge that “[t]ackling climate change is one

America’s greatest economic opportunities of the 21st

century.” 44

• Ceres Company Network—A voluntary network of

companies that agree to improve their environmental

and social performance; publicly report on their

sustainability strategies; engage with Ceres Coalition

investors, sustainability experts, and other stakeholders;

and continuously improve on their sustainability

performance and disclosure. 45

• National Climate Coalition—A multi-industry coalition

whose members support congressional action to

regulate greenhouse gases, as well as the role of

the Environmental Protection Agency in regulating

greenhouse gases. 46

• Paris Pledge for Action—A voluntary pledge by

businesses, cities, civil society groups, investors,

regions, trade unions and other signatories, which

promise to “ensure that the ambition set out by the

Paris Agreement is met or exceeded to limit global

temperature rise to less than 2 degrees Celsius.” 47

• U.S. Climate Action Partnership—An alliance (now

inactive) of more than 30 companies and organizations

that called upon U.S. government leaders to take

measures to slow, stop, and reverse the growth of

greenhouse gas emissions. 48

• Climate Disclosure Leadership Index (CDLI)—A

global index of corporations and businesses that

have voluntarily disclosed their efforts to manage

greenhouse gas emissions and climate change risks

and opportunities. The CDLI is compiled by the CDP

(formerly the Carbon Disclosure Project). 49

• Dow Jones Sustainability Index (DJSI)—An index

assessing the sustainability practices and performance

of nearly two thousand companies across a variety of

sectors. 50

• Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Climate

Leadership Award—A national award program that

recognizes and incentivizes exemplary corporate,

organizational, and individual leadership in response to

climate change. 51

• EPA SmartWay Excellence Award—An award honoring

SafeWay Transport Partnership company members for

their notable actions to reduce emissions...

Findings

Based on the responses to the Tobacco and Climate Letters

and public positions and policies of Board members, the

report finds that:

• Approximately half of the companies on the U.S.

Chamber of Commerce’s Board of Directors have antitobacco

and/or pro-climate positions.

• None of the respondents to the Tobacco and Climate

Letters expressed explicit support for the Chamber’s

activities, and numerous Chamber Board members

distanced themselves from Chamber activities on

tobacco or climate.

• The Chamber’s decision-making process lacks

transparency, even with respect to its Board members.

A number of Board members were unaware of key

Chamber policymaking and lobbying decisions on

tobacco and climate.

Tobacco Findings

Almost half of the Chamber Board members (49 of 108,

...

Climate Change Findings

Almost half of the Chamber Board members (52 of 108,

48%) have taken public positions supporting efforts to

reduce carbon emissions and address climate change,

including eight of the companies that responded to the

Senate inquiry on Chamber climate policies (see Appendix

V). The remaining Board member companies appear to have

no public position on climate change as a public health or

environmental issue.

These 52 companies that support efforts to address climate

change, have undertaken their own initiatives to reduce

carbon emissions, support the EPA’s work on climate

change, or have publicly committed to support of the Paris

Agreement.

...

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce: Out of Step with the American People and Its Members

13

VI. Conclusion

The Chamber claims that it “reflects the grassroots views

of the entire business community when the organization

testifies before Congress or regulatory agencies, disseminates

reports or statements to the media, or sends comments

or letters to Capitol Hill and to policymakers.” 87 It states

that “everyone involved in the process must help develop

positions that benefit the entire business community, rather

than any given narrow interest . . . The process must be open

and above board.” 88

But this investigation finds these claims to be plainly

untrue. Despite its claims of a representative policy-making

process, the Chamber does not speak for many of its Board

members on two of the most pressing public health issues

of our time. The discrepancy between how the Chamber

and its Board members act on tobacco and climate is stark.

Bloomberg columnist Barry Ritholtz contends that it is easy

for the Chamber to ignore its numerous member companies

that oppose its stance because one third of its revenue

comes from just 19 companies, many of them in the energy

industry. 89

Indeed, based on the responses of Chamber Board member

companies, the Chamber seems to act at will, without

broadly consulting its leading members about fundamental

policy positions on which it spends millions of dollars in

collected dues.

Some American business icons have demonstrated

leadership by disaffiliating themselves from the Chamber

over fundamental policy disagreements. Apple, Exelon,

and Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E), have left the Chamber

over its destructive climate policies. 90 Nike left the Board

for similar reasons, 91 and other members—Intel, Johnson &

Johnson, and Microsoft—publicly disagree with and distance

themselves from the Chamber’s climate position. 92 And CVS

Health withdrew its membership from the Chamber last year

due to the group’s tobacco lobbying. 93

Many Chamber members do good work to address the risks

of tobacco and climate change. But too many of these

members quietly disapprove of the Chamber’s positions

without taking action. As long as these Board members

lend their tacit support to an organization that spearheads

systematic efforts against policies to limit tobacco and

climate change, it is difficult to accept their claims that they

are anti-tobacco or good on climate.

We encourage Chamber Board members to stop looking

the other way where there is disagreement, and defending

their Chamber membership as supporting free speech. This

positioning makes it appear as though they’re trying to have

it both ways and damages their credibility and efforts in

support of positive action. 94 These companies should take

responsibility for the positions and actions of the Chamber,

and use their leverage as an opportunity to shift the tenor of

a powerful lobbying force away from harming public health

and towards positions that help reduce tobacco use and

address the risks of climate change.

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:{:{:{http://www.desmogblog.com/2016/02/03/senators-introduce-merchants-doubt-amendment-energy-bill-call-fossil-fuel-industry-end-denial-and-deception

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Democratic U.S. Senators Sheldon Whitehouse (RI), Ed Markey (MA) and Brian Schatz (HI)introduced an amendment into the energy bill yesterday intended to express Congress’s disapproval of the use of industry-funded think tanks and misinformation tactics aimed at sowing doubt about climate change science.

The amendment evokes the history of notorious anti-science efforts by the tobacco and lead industries to avoid accountability for the damage caused by their products, focusing similar ire on the fossil fuel industry’s decades-long climate cover-up.

Although it doesn’t name specific companies, the amendment is surely inspired by recent revelations about ExxonMobil’s early and advanced knowledge of the role of fossil fuels in driving climate change — which was followed by the company’s subsequent, unconscionable climate science denial efforts.

Just as tobacco and lead companies sowed doubt about the dangers of their products through the use of front groups and third-party experts, so did ExxonMobil — through its funding of a sophisticated network of denialists — work to deceive the public about climate science and the need for political action to end the fossil fuel era.

The most recent and damning #ExxonKnew revelations were published late in 2015 in investigative articles by both InsideClimate News and the Los Angeles Times in collaboration with the Columbia School of Journalism.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) joined the amendment as a co-sponsor once it was introduced.

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We strongly endorse Senator Whitehouse’s call for a RICO investigation. The methods of these organizations are quite similar to those used earlier by the tobacco industry. A RICO investigation (1999 to 2006) played an important role in stopping the tobacco industry from continuing to deceive the American people about the dangers of smoking. shukula GMU plus 20

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http://insideclimatenews.org/news/29102015/senators-press-Exxon-answers-funding-climate-denial-donors-trust-sheldon-whitehouse-elizabeth-warren

investigative articles published recently by InsideClimate News, the Los Angeles Times, and others.

The letter was also signed by three other Democratic senators: Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, and Elizabeth Warren and Ed Markey, both of Massachusetts.

They are questioning Exxon's contributions to Donors Trust and the Donors Capital Fund, which provide a conduit between well-heeled contributors and various conservative public policy organizations, including many at the forefront of climate science denial.

Several years ago, facing complaints from shareholders, scientific organizations, and others, Exxon said it would cut its contributions to climate denial groups.

But the senators challenged statements by Exxon spokesman Ken Cohen that the company has conducted "climate science … in an open and transparent way."

http://www.alternet.org/environment/sen-sheldon-whitehouse-wsj-caters-fossil-fuel-interestsagain

In recent weeks the right-wing attack machine has been up in arms regarding a letter sent by a group of 20 climate scientists to President Barack Obama, Attorney General Loretta Lynch, and White House science adviser John Holdren requesting that the Department of Justice (DOJ) investigate fossil-fuel companies that appear to have lied about the effects of their products on our world's climate. This week, the Wall Street Journal joined the fray, writing that "[a]dvocates of climate regulation are urging the Obama Administration to investigate people who don't share their views... they want the feds to use a law created to prosecute the mafia against lawful businesses and scientists."

As the Wall Street Journal and others have noted, and as the scientists' letter acknowledges, I myself raised the possibility of an investigation along these lines in a Washington Post op-ed earlier this year. The connection prompted the Journal to quote Georgia Tech's Judith Curry - a prominent climate denier - attacking both me and the scientists. "The demand by Senator Whitehouse and the 20 climate scientists for legal persecution of people whose research on science and policy they disagree with represents a new low in the politicization of science," she said....

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http://ecowatch.com/2015/05/19/whitehouse-time-to-wake-up/

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http://ecowatch.com/2015/03/13/whitehouse-calls-out-alec-climate-deniers/

This week, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) took a swing at ALEC’s role in helping the fossil fuel lobby deny the science of climate change, during his weekly “Time to Wake Up” speech in the Senate. This comes at an interesting time, as climate denier Willie Soon has been exposed for promising “deliverables” in the form of Congressional influence to coal utility giant Southern Company, to billionaire Charles Koch and to ExxonMobil that paid for Dr. Soon’s climate denial “research.”

With climate deniers on the defense, Sen. Whitehouse has reminded us that Exxon, BP, Shell, Chevron and their lobbying organization, the American Petroleum Institute, have funded scientists like Willie Soon and front groups like ALEC to peddle climate misinformation to the public. Here’s a transcript of highlights from this climate call-out, which earned a favorable fact-check from PolitiFact.

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Democrats' climate probe brings ‘witch hunt’ accusations

Arizona Rep. Raúl Grijalva is on a mission to expose climate skeptics. Some say he's going too far.

By ALEX GUILLÉN

2/27/15 5:51 AM EST

Updated 2/28/15 6:28 AM EST

Now conservatives are the ones complaining about being the victims in a politically motivated “war on science.”

In a turnabout from years of debate about intrusion into scientific research, Democratic lawmakers launched investigations this week into the funding sources of several scientists whose work is popular with skeptics of manmade climate change. And that’s bringing a furious counterattack from congressional Republicans and right-wing pundits — including some who cheered on a past probe by former Republican Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli into a leading scientist whose research pointed to man-made causes of climate change.

Arizona Rep. Raúl Grijalva, the top Democrat on the House Natural Resources Committee, sparked the latest dispute by asking universities to turn over documents about grants, congressional testimony and other activities involving seven scientists who have testified at congressional climate hearings. Grijalva was following up on a New York Times story reporting that Wei-Hock “Willie” Soon, a researcher at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, had gotten $1.25 million in undisclosed money from fossil fuel companies.

Three Democratic senators then took up the case, asking more than 100 energy companies and trade groups to provide details on their research spending.

Supporters of Soon’s research say it casts doubt on human activity being a major driver of global warming. That made the Times story a public relations coup for the green activists who originally uncovered the documents on his funding. But Grijalva’s broadened inquiry prompted conservatives to accuse him of staging an ideological witch hunt, and even one green-minded science group expressed qualms he may have gone too far. Eleven Republican senators rebuked both Democratic probes on Friday as “wholly inappropriate.”

Still, Democrats are undeterred, saying the two cases are in no way comparable. They note that a strong majority of climate scientists say climate change is real, is primarily driven by human-caused greenhouse gas pollution and poses a threat to civilization.

“Republicans went after amazing scientists doing honest and great work on climate change,” said a spokesman for Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), who helped lead the Senate Democrats’ information request to the energy trade groups. Spokesman Eben Burnham-Snyder added, “What’s different here are some clear indications that the very same companies and trade groups who have been sowing doubt on climate change and stopping any sort of legislative action in Congress, also may have been participating in these ‘denial for hire’ operations where they would pay very specifically for results.”

Grijalva was unavailable to comment on the flap Thursday.

But critics of his document request were quick to liken it to McCarthyism — or worse.

“Are You Now or Have You Ever Been a Climate Skeptic?” asked a headline on the conservative blog Power Line, which appeared atop a post written by one of the researchers Grijalva is probing,Steven F. Haywardof Pepperdine University. The climate skeptic blog Junk Science alleged that Grijalva’s probe “closes in on 1933 Germany, and the Soviet Union.”

But Power Line had a different take on Cuccinelli’s climate probe five years ago, after the then-attorney general ordered the University of Virginia to turn over 11 years of emails and a raft of other documents involving former UVA scientist Michael Mann. Cuccinelli said he wanted to know whether Mann had manipulated data as part of his research, which included a now-famous “hockey stick” graphic showing a sharp increase in global temperatures linked to human activity.

“Cuccinelli’s subpoena has been greeted with howls and protests from warmists and others who view inquiry into a scientist’s work as an infringement of academic freedom — the freedom, that is, to make stuff up, hide or falsify data, and thereby impose trillions of dollars of costs on consumers, all while being supported by taxpayers,”Power Line’s John Hinderaker wrote in May 2010.

Similarly, JunkScience’s Steve Milloy wrote in The Washington Times five years ago that greens’ claims that Cuccinelli was threatening academic freedom were “so much rot.”

“A thorough investigation by someone not in cahoots with the climate mob is the only way to answer legitimate questions related to the expenditure of taxpayer money,” Milloy wrote at the time.

Much like Markey’s spokesman, Hinderaker said Thursday that the Cuccinelli and Grijalva probes are “completely different.”

“The Cuccinelli [document demand] related to the substance of work done by Michael Mann,” Hinderaker wrote in an email to POLITICO. He added: “The Grijalva ‘investigation’ is merely an attempt to smear scientists and others by claiming that they received funding from various private sources; it does not relate to the substance of anything they have written … As you know if you have read my posts, I believe that it is government money, not private money, that is corrupt, because government is the main party in interest in the global warming controversy.”

Cuccinelli’s probe fizzled after the Virginia Supreme Court ruled he did not have the power to demand the university records.

Unlike Cuccinelli, who sought the documents under Virginia’s Fraud Against Taxpayers Act, Grijalva and the other Democratic lawmakers don’t have subpoena power to back up their requests. But the Democrats are citing a motivation similar to what Cuccinelli had offered: protecting taxpayers from policy influenced by bad science.

“Companies with a direct financial interest in climate and air quality standards are funding environmental research that influences state and federal regulations and shapes public understanding of climate science,” Grijalva wrote in letters Tuesday to seven universities, including the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Colorado and Georgia Tech. “These conflicts should be clear to stakeholders, including policymakers who use scientific information to make decisions.”

Grijalva requested information dating back to 2007, including all drafts of the scientists’ testimony before government bodies, the researchers’ sources of external funding, their financial disclosure forms and “communications” regarding their testimony and funding sources.

Markey and Democratic Sens. Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island and Barbara Boxer of California followed up the next day by asking more than 100 energy companies and trade groups, including the American Petroleum Institute and the National Mining Association, to disclose details on their research funding over the past 10 years.

“This investigation will help to determine who is funding these denial-for-hire operations and whether those who are funded by these fossil fuel interests are keeping their funders’ identities secret from the public and legislators,” Markey said in a statement.

The mining association responded to POLITICO that it “has not financed scientific research on climate change,” although it has commissioned studies on topics including “the serious and far reaching economic consequences of proposed policies ostensibly advanced to address climate change.” API said it is looking into the matter.

Grijalva’s investigation and the Democratic senators’ questions got a rebuttal Friday from all 11 Republicans on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, who wrote to the same universities, energy groups and companies to tell them the inquiry was out of line. “We ask you to not be afraid of political repercussions or public attacks regardless of how you respond,” the Republicans wrote.

The scientists themselves were quick to denounce Grijalva’s probe.

“I know with complete certainty that this investigation is a politically motivated ‘witch hunt’ designed to intimidate me (and others) and to smear my name,” Roger Pielke Jr., a professor at the University of Colorado’s Center for Science and Technology Policy Research, wrote on his blog Tuesday under a photo of former Sen. Joe McCarthy.

“I have no funding, declared or undeclared, with any fossil fuel company or interest. I never have,” he added, a statement the university backed up.

Pielke rejects the label of climate skeptic but has questioned the notion that greenhouse gas emissions are connected to the increasing costs of natural disasters. He notes that he supports EPA’s climate regulations and has advocated a small tax on carbon emissions. Still, his views have made him a target for liberals, leading him to quickly part ways last year with the website FiveThirtyEight just a few months after its relaunch.

“Incessant attacks and smears are effective,” Pielke lamented this week.

Other researchers Grijalva is targeting include David Legates of the University of Delaware, John Christy of the University of Alabama in Huntsville, Judith Curry of Georgia Tech and Richard Lindzen of MIT. Many of them reject the notion that they are climate change skeptics, although their work has drawn the attention of the skeptic camp. Christy, for example, testified before Congress that climate models overstate the atmosphere’s sensitivity to greenhouse gases, while Curry has maintained that forecasting the climate is more uncertain that many scientists admit.

Curry took to her own blog to blast Grijalva’s request.

“I don’t think anything good will come of this,” she wrote. “I anticipate that Grijalva will not find any kind of an undisclosed fossil fuel smoking gun from any of the 7 individuals under investigation.”

Hayward, from Pepperdine, wrote on Power Line that he has received “no grants, honoraria, consulting fees, good karma baubles, or even Christmas cards from any fossil fuel interest, though I’d be proud and open about it if I did.” He also questioned the wisdom of judging scientists’ work based on who pays for the research.

“Is the good congressman really telling us that he is incapable of assessing factual claims and judgments about the wisdom of policy on the merits alone?” he wrote. “That doesn’t speak well of his probity.”

Even some groups that support acting on climate change have expressed worries that Grijalva’s questions may intrude on academic freedom. Michael Halpern of the Union of Concerned Scientists wrote in a blog post that Grijalva’s questions about funding are appropriate, but said his request for drafts of congressional testimony amounts to an investigation into private communications.

“Just as I have supported universities’ efforts to protect communications among academics that constitute the research process, so, too, I see justification in protecting drafts of congressional testimony,” Halpern wrote.

The American Meteorological Society jumped into the fray Friday, writing to Grijalva that “publicly singling out specific researchers based on perspectives they have expressed … sends a chilling message to all academic researchers.”

Mann, the former University of Virginia scientist, told National Journal that Grijalva’s letter “does come across as sort of heavy handed and overly aggressive.”

Meanwhile, some climate-skeptic groups chose to mimic Grijalva’s probe by filing a similar request for information about University of Delaware climate scientist John Byrne.

“The sole distinctions are, first, that we far more narrowly tailor our request in comparison to Rep. Grijalva’s; second, our request is made pursuant to statutory authority,” wrote the Free Market Environmental Law Clinic, the Energy & Environment Legal Institute and the Caesar Rodney Institute.

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Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2015/02/climate-change-study-funding-raul-grijalva-115568.html#ixzz3TXnLkCMi}:

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1/15

The U.S. Senate on Wednesday voted 98-1 to approve a resolution stating that “it is the sense of the Senate that climate change is real and not a hoax.” Then, about 15 minutes later, the Senate rejected a second resolution that said climate change is real and caused by humans.

The first resolution was approved — and co-sponsored — by one of the most outspoken climate deniers in the Senate, Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK), a man who literally wrote a book about how climate change is the “greatest hoax ever perpetrated.” The only Senator to vote against the resolution was Sen. Roger Wicker (R-MS).

Sounds too good to be true, right? That’s because it is. At the last minute, right before a vote was taken, Inhofe took the floor to state that he would be co-sponsoring and approving the amendment on the grounds that yes, climate change is real, but human-caused climate change is not. “Man cannot change climate,” Inhofe said. “The hoax is that there are some people that are so arrogant to think that they are so powerful that they can change climate.”

The resolution was originally put forth by Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI)as an amendment to the bill to approve the Keystone XL pipeline. It was widely seen as a way to troll Republicans — a way for Democrats to say “Fine, if you want to approve the Keystone XL pipeline, you have to go on record about whether you think global warming is real.”

But Jim Inhofe out-trolled Sheldon Whitehouse. Jim Inhofe out-trolled us all.

Fortunately, the effort to get every Senator on the record about their stance on human-caused climate change was not all for naught. Shortly after the vote on Whitehouse’s resolution, the Senate also took up an amendment from Sen. Brian Schatz (D-HI), which stated that climate change is real and that humans contribute to it. That amendment failed, however, following a short speech from Sen. Lisa Murkoswki (R-AK) saying that the amendment’s inclusion of the word “significantly” — as in, humans “significantly” contribute to global warming — should warrant a “no” vote. Schatz’s amendment failed 50-49 (it needed 60 votes to pass), but it does mean that a slim majority of the U.S. Senate acknowledges that climate science is a real and valid thing.

Among the votes against Schatz’ amendment acknowledging that climate change is realwere Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) and Sen. Rob Portman (R-OH). Republicans who voted to say that climate change is real and significantly caused by humans included Sens. Lamar Alexander (R-TN), Kelly Ayotte (R-NH), Susan Collins (R-ME), Mark Kirk (R-IL), and Lindsey Graham (R-SC).

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Sen. Whitehouse Proposes :(style="background-color:#ffffffff"):}::{Carbon Tax:(style="background-color:#ffff66ff"):}::{ to Repay Citizens for Pollution Costs

"By making carbon pollution free, we subsidize fossil fuel companies to the tune of...

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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/11/al-gore-sheldon-whitehouse_n_3423165.html?ir=Green

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Ryan is merely the latest Republican in Congress to calculate that disparaging the Administration’s efforts to confront climate change will play well in election year politics. With a split Congress unable to move basic legislation, let alone anything that would require actual cooperation across the aisle, the Obama Administration has focused on mitigation and adaptation efforts at the executive level through their Climate Action Plan.

This week Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK) blocked a Senate resolution simply stating that climate change is real before receiving a highly informative rebuttal from Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI). Earlier this summer another potential Republican presidential candidate, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), said he doesn’t agree with the notion that “there are actions we can take today that would actually have an impact on what’s happening in our climate.”

This climate defeatist tact is a part of the Republican’s overall strategy this year — yesterday the House voted to sue President Obama for overstepping his legal authority, i.e. trying to get stuff done. The strategy also runs counter to international efforts to mitigate and adapt to climate change. Investment in clean energy globally is at its highest point in several years and major economies like India and China are looking ramp up even further in the near term. China is also setting up pilot carbon reduction plans and Mexico recently hinted at possibly considering a carbon scheme of their own.

However, fossil fuel invested politicians in Canada and Australia have also managed to regress the conversation from how to make progress to how to maintain the status quo. In the meantime, greenhouse gas emissions continue to climb at an alarming rate and the world continues to see record high temperatures.

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We need to face up to the fact that there is only one leg on which climate denial stands: money.  The polluters give and spend money to create false doubt.  The polluters give and spend money to buy political influence.  The polluters give and spend money to keep polluting.  That’s it.  That’s it.  Not truth, not science, not economics, not safety, not policy, and certainly not religion, nor morality.  Nothing supports climate denial.  Nothing except money.  But in Congress, in this temple, money rules; so here I stand, in one of the last places on Earth that is still a haven to climate denial.

In our arrogance, we here in Congress think that we can somehow ignore or trump Earth’s natural laws, laws of chemistry, laws of physics, laws of science, with our own political lawmaking, with our own political influence.  But we’re fools to think that.  The laws of chemistry and the laws of physics neither know, nor care, what we say or do here.  So we need to wake up.  We need to walk not in the counsel of the wicked, nor sit in the seat of scoffers, but with due humility awaken to our duty and get to work. Because here on Earth, God’s work must truly be our own.

Finally, here’s Chris Hayes’s take on the speech.

Does God Hate Climate Change?

May 10, 2013 |

During a 17-minute long speech on the senate floor Wednesday, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (R-HI) cited an interesting source to urge his colleagues to get serious about climate change: the Bible.

“I was recently at a Senate meeting where I heard a member of our Senate community say, ‘God won’t allow us to ruin our planet,’” Whitehouse said.

Sen. Whitehouse, an Episcopalian, chastised other lawmakers for using religion to abdicate responsibility when it comes to protecting our planet. The Hawaii senator dismissed the notion that “God … won’t allow us to ruin our planet” as completely removed from reality.

“The statement that refers to God is couched in religious terms, but is it really an expression of religious inquiry? I think not. It is less an expression of religious thinking than it is of magical thinking,” Whitehouse explained. “The statement that God won’t allow us to ruin our planet sweeps aside ethics, responsibilities, consequences, duties, even awareness.” 

The senator also referred to Biblical passages to challenge his colleagues’ religious rhetoric. For example, he pointed to Galatians 6:7, which reads, “Do not be deceived: God is not mocked, for whatever one sows, that will he also reap.” To put this in plain English, Whitehouse remarked, “We are here to do God's work. He's not here to do ours.”

 Whitehouse continued, reminding lawmakers that science and religion are not mutually exclusive, explaining, "If we believe in an all-powerful God, then we must then believe that God gave us this earth, and we must in turn believe that God gave us its laws of gravity, of chemistry, of physics.” Of course, this should go without saying. But as the Huffington Post’s Michael McAuliff points out, too many members of Congress still use religious hysteria to advance their agenda, at the cost of science and logic:

Rep. Paul Broun (R-Ga.) recently called evolution a lie from the pit of hell [3], and … the Science Committee is weighing ways to exert political control [4] on the National Science Foundation. Rep. John Shimkus (R-Ill.) has quoted scripture [5] to deny that climate change will destroy the earth. 

With so much ignorance in Congress hiding behind the mask of religion, a stronghold in American politics, it’s understandable why Whitehouse would feel the need to argue on the divine playing field—especially with our planet at stake. But at least one atheist writer disagreed with the senator’s strategy. In particular, Staks Rosch, an atheist advocate questioned the idea that, “We are here to do God's work. He's not here to do ours.” Rosch responded [6], “No Senator, you are not here to do God’s work; you are there to do the work of your constituents as outlined in the very secular United State Constitution.”

Rosch’s criticism invokes one of the biggest concerns of the American atheist movement—that religion continues finding ways to creep into our government. Rosch argues that Whitehouse’s speech “crosses the line between church and state,” even if for the right reasons.

So does appealing to religion to advance progressive ideas do more harm or good? Watch Senator Whitehouse’s speech and decide for yourself:

http://www.alternet.org/print/belief/does-god-hate-climate-change

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Reid joins Senators Al Franken, John Kerry, Bernie Sanders, and Sheldon Whitehouse, all of whom have made excellent climate speeches on the Senate floor in the last year. However, today’s speech was done in a much more prominent public forum in front of top journalists, regulatory officials, and policymakers.

Senate Environment and Public Works Chairwoman Barbara Boxer(D-Calif.) yesterday put the new House Energy and Commerce Committee chairman on notice by name, vowing to "use every tool available to me" to prevent a derailing of carbon emissions regulations by Rep. Fred Upton (R-Mich.). Boxer's gloves-off performance drew consternation from House and Senate Republicans alike, but her fellow upper-chamber Democrats echoed her desire to go on offense in protecting EPA.

"I never defend -- I always attack," Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) said in an interview, adding of Republicans: "If they want to repeal EPA [regulations] and stuff like that, I think we ought to go after them. I say, give them rope."

Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.), a longtime Environment and Public Works subpanel chairman, likewise sounded a similar note. "People on the other side can talk about costs" of extending EPA authority over industry," he said. "What's the cost of a life? What's the cost of a disability? ... We're not going to cower in a corner."

Lautenberg also underscored the importance of a proactive message that emphasizes the benefits of EPA's limits on emissions from power plants, oil refineries, chemical facilities and other "stationary sources."

Democrats should "make sure the public understands" the negative consequences of undoing Obama administration rules written to protect public health, Lautenberg said. "We're in great danger, and it fails to reach the public's interest because there's a tendency to look at things on a much more short-term basis," as opposed to the long-term footprint of a changing climate, he added.

Senate Democrats' willingness to take on the new House majority represents a notable shift from the previous Congress, when the president's party spent more time calming internal tensions. But the rise of House Speaker John Boehner's (R-Ohio) regime appears to have lit a fire underneath Senate Democrats, who held a press conference yesterday morning dedicated to accusing lower-chamber Republicans of budget gimmickry in their opening-day rules package.

"They're not going to be able to roll back [EPA regulations] without coming through the Senate," Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) said in an interview. "There is a case to be made that, in the contest between corporate profits and children's lungs, someone should be standing up for children's lungs."

Of course, Senate Democrats face some enthusiasm for an anti-EPA push within their own ranks. A two-year delay in enforcing greenhouse gas emissions limits offered by Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) attracted six co-sponsors in his party, and several more Democratic senators from manufacturing-dependent states may yet cross over to support it when an updated version is offered this year.

nyt  http://www.nytimes.com/gwire/2011/01/07/07greenwire-senate-dems-gear-up-to-battle-house-gop-on-epa-22835.html?scp=5&sq=co2%20epa%20scotus%20supreme&st=cse

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Sheldon Whitehouse is the Junior Senator for the state of Rhode Island. He is a Democrat, and was first elected in 2006. (map)

Record and controversies

General information about important bills and votes for can be found in Congresspedia's articles on legislation. You can add information you find on how Sheldon Whitehouse voted by clicking the "[edit]" link to the right and typing it in. Remember to cite your sources!

Iraq War

For more information see the chart of U.S. Senate votes on the Iraq War.

Environmental record

For more information on environmental legislation, see the Energy and Environment Policy Portal

Cornel Young, Jr. Death

When black Providence police officer Cornel Young Jr. was shot by two fellow officers while he was off-duty in January 2000, Whitehouse was criticized for not appointing an independent prosecutor to investigate the shooting. Later that year, Whitehouse was criticized when 15-year-old Jennifer Rivera, a witness in a murder case, was shot by a relative of the man she was to testify against later that year.[1] After Rivera's shooting, Whitehouse strengthened the state's witness protection program.

Biography

Born in 1955, Whitehouse is the son of Charles Whitehouse, a WWII veteran and a three-time ambassador. Whitehouse is a graduate of Yale University and the University of Virginia Law School. In 1994 President Bill Clinton appointed Whitehouse to be the U.S. Attorney for Rhode Island. As U.S. Attorney Whitehouse prosecuted the first case the new federal "three strikes" law and began the investigation into what became Operation Plunder Dome, a municipal corruption case that sent Providence Mayor Vincent "Buddy" Cianci to jail on conspiracy charges.

In 1998 Whitehouse was elected Rhode Island's Attorney General. As Attorney General he initiated a lawsuit against the lead paint industry that ended in a mistrial; the state later won a second lawsuit against former lead paint manufacturers Sherwin Williams Co., Millennium Holdings and NL Industries that found them responsible for creating a public nuisance. Whitehouse also founded the Rhode Island Quality Institute, "an organization dedicated to improving health care quality in the State of Rhode Island,"[2] and authorized the first Rhode Island State Police wire tap to investigate public corruption.

In 2002 Whitehouse made a run for the Democratic nomination for Governor. He lost to Sen. Myrth York by 900 votes.

2006 Senate race

When Whitehouse entered the race he initially faced a tight primary against Secretary of State Matt Brown. Whitehouse held a clear fundraising edge and Brown soon dropped out of the race after questions about his fundraising practices brought increasing negative attention.

Whitehouse has used Rhode Island's status as the most Democratic state in the nation as a means to ask voters to send a Democrat to the Senate over his opponent, liberal Republican Lincoln Chafee. Despite Chafee's liberal positions on social issues and the war Whitehouse has been able to use President Bush's unpopularity against the incumbent Senator.

Whitehouse favors bringing "the troops home from Iraq in a reasonable time frame".[3] Whitehouse has labeled the American health care system as "both our biggest national problem and our biggest national opportunity."[4]

Polls showed Whitehouse with a lead throughout the race.[5] In the general election, he defeated Chafee 53%-47%. [6]

Money in politics

This section contains links to – and feeds from – money in politics databases. cid=N00027533&cycle=2006

• Revolving door profile for Sheldon Whitehouse from the Center for Responsive Politics' OpenSecrets.org website.
• 2006 privately funded travel profile for Sheldon Whitehouse from the Center for Responsive Politics' OpenSecrets.org website.
• Personal finance profile for Sheldon Whitehouse from the Center for Responsive Politics' OpenSecrets.org website.

Committees and Affiliations

Committees

• Senate Committee on the Budget
• Senate Select Committee on Intelligence
• Senate Special Committee on Aging
• Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works
  • Subcommittee on Public Sector Solutions to Global Warming, Oversight and Children's Health Protection
  • Subcommittee on Transportation Safety, Infrastructure Security and Water Quality

• Senate Committee on the Judiciary
  • Subcommittee on Administrative Oversight and the Courts
  • Subcommittee on Human Rights and the Law

More Background Data

Background information on Lincoln Chafee, whom Sheldon Whitehouse challenged in the 2006 congressional elections:

• Background information on Lincoln Chafee from Project Vote Smart

• Interest group scorecard ratings for Lincoln Chafee from Project Vote Smart

• Voting record for Lincoln Chafee from the Washington Post database

• Information on Lincoln Chafee from Congress Merge

Contact

Washington Office:

Hart Senate Office Building Room 502

Washington, D.C. 20510

202-224-2921 phone

202-228-6362 fax

Web Email

Website

Providence Office:

170 Westminster Street, Suite 1100

Providence, RI 02903

401-453-5294 phone

401-453-5085 fax

Articles and Resources

Resources

• Whitehouse for Senate, official campaign site.
• See how you compare to Sheldon Whitehouse

Local blogs and discussion sites

• 4&20 blackbirds.
• A Chicken Is Not Pillage.
• Intelligent Discontent.
• Left in the West.
• Kmareka
• Matthew - RI

Audio of Whitehouse Introducing His First Congressional Legislation -- 3 Bills on Health Care Reform

Articles

• Jonathan Rockoff, "Minority leaders seek independent inquiry," Providence Journal, February 6, 2000.
• Michael Cote, "Sheldon Whitehouse, Democratic candidate for Senate From Rhode Island," ePluribusMedia, August 12, 2005.
• Jonathan Singer, "MyDD Conversation with RI Sen Candidate Sheldon Whitehouse," MyDD.com, December 19, 2005.
• Peter B. Lord, "3 companies found liable in lead-paint nuisance suit," Providence Journal, February 23, 2006.
• Stephanie A. Salmon, "10 things about Sheldon Whitehouse," U.S. News & World Report, September 13, 2006.
• Michele Smith, "R.I.'s Chafee, Whitehouse Meet in Debate," Associated Press, October 19, 2006.
• Michele Smith, "Corruption Claims in R.I. Senate Race," Associated Press, October 27, 2006.
• Scott MacKay and Timothy C. Barmann, Campaigns go traditional in last days, Providence Journal, November 5, 2006.
• McGough, Michael (June 14, 2007). "Whitehouse takes Gonzales to the woodshed: How the freshman senator built the strongest case against the attorney general.", Los Angeles Times.

Corresponding article on Wikipedia and Cause Caller. (If Cause Caller link does not work, pick from its list of senators and representatives.)

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/06/09/jeff-miller-climate-change_n_5474486.html?view=print&comm_ref=false

calls out rubio

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