The Democratic War on Freedom
The Left Stalinist tactics were on full display when Loretta Lynch confirmed in the summer of 2016 she was referring complaints to the Justice Department against oil companies for potential criminal prosecution. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, a leading Democratic climate alarmist, had one goal to jail oil company executives who disagree with his theories on how humans are destroying mankind and bankrupt the fossil fuel companies. As Power Line’s John Hinderaker noted, “The Obama Administration’s idea of a crime is not, apparently, violating federal laws and regulations and State Department procedures in a manner that exposes thousands of classified documents to our enemies. No, that isn’t the sort of conduct that is likely to draw an indictment from Loretta Lynch’s Department of Justice. Obama’s DOJ is more interested in trying to jail scientists who point out the rather obvious flaws in the government’s desperate effort to convince Americans that global warming is our greatest threat.”14
The Obama administration and Democratic Senators were not just politicizing science but they were enforcing their scientific worldview. They looked to the justice department and government bureaucracies to destroy fossil fuels and criminalize scientific difference. As John Hinderaker observed:
“The Soviets did that, in order to shore up the hopeless but government-favored theories of Lysenko. Until now, such conduct would have been unthinkable in an American administration. But Barack Obama, to his everlasting shame, is willing to emulate Josef Stalin by threatening criminal prosecution of those who disagree with the equally hopeless theories of Michael Mann et al. American history has come to a very sad pass.”15
While many view Donald Trump being a fascist, just remember which political party had used legal action against opponents, including using the IRS to go after conservative groups; having local Democrat prosecutors use Gestapo tactics to go after Scott Walker’s supporters in Wisconsin, and, now, threatening to use racketeering laws against climate realists who don’t agree with the conventional wisdom that human activities is the key reason for climate change. So who are the fascists, the Stalinists?
Meanwhile, the skeptics’ worldview keeps being proven correct. I need to remind the reader that scientists whether they are skeptics or alarmist, there is a general consensus that climate is changing. The skeptic worldview notes the historical record that climate change has been occurring since the planet was formed and there are skeptics who don’t discount human involvement but tempers it with the effects of nature and that human activity may not all that damaging. Some scientists are crediting the rise of carbon dioxide levels with enhancing plant life and aiding in increased agricultural output. The alarmists view humans as the cause of
14 John Hinderaker, “The Obama Administration’s Idea of a Crime…” Power Line, March 10, 2016. 15 Hinderaker, “The Obama Administration’s Idea of a Crime…”
modern day climate change and don’t even acknowledge or consider that natural events play a role.
The alarmists attempt to manipulate science is being challenged and in a Trump’s administration, climate skeptics and climate realists will get the hearing they earned. The government announcement last year that they have proven the pause in climate temperature since 1998 didn’t exist was deflated by another study that proved what climate realists have stated all along; we are in the midst of pause in climate temperature change. From Nature, “But in June last year, a study in Science claimed that the hiatus was just an artefact DO YOU MEAN ARTIFACT? which vanishes when biases in temperature data are corrected…Now a prominent group of researchers is countering that claim, arguing in Nature Climate Change that even after correcting these biases the slowdown was real…“There is this mismatch between what the climate models are producing and what the observations are showing,” says lead author John Fyfe, a climate modeler at the Canadian Centre for Climate Modelling and Analysis in Victoria, British Columbia. “We can’t ignore it16.” It should be pointed out that many of these researchers were considered climate alarmists and it showed that science is not settled which makes the efforts of Senator Whitehouse and others even more alarming since their own science is under siege.
The government is going after fossil fuel companies while the EPA is doing its best to destroy the coal industry and those high paying jobs that go with them. Power Line’s John Hinderaker wrote:
“Actually, the oil companies have mostly been bystanders in the climate debate. But the Democrats are trying to deflect attention away from the fact that their global warming theory is crumbling in the face of the facts. The oil companies make convenient scapegoats…. What is outrageous about this is not the debate–no matter however flimsy, dishonest and self-interested the government-funded alarmists may be–but rather the Democrats’ attempt to shut the debate off by trying to imprison those who won’t toe their line. This is the most blatant violation of the First Amendment that we have seen in a very long time.”17
The Democratic Party has become the enemy of scientific research and free speech, as they are attempting to stop the exchange of ideas and ensure that their ideas are what triumph.
Recently the New York Times detailed a whole story on Trump’s media attack. While much of the criticism in the article is valid including Trump’s own veiled threat against press freedom of speech, the New York Times has been missing in action when similar attacks by the left on political free speech and the tactics that have been used to silence Trump and others.
In California, there were legislators attempting to criminalize anyone who disagree with the notion that humans are the root cause of present climate change. Senate Bill 1161 or the
16 Jeff Tolleson, “Global Warming ‘Hiatus’ Debate Flares Up Again,” Nature, February 24, 2016. 17 John Hinderaker, “The Great Free Speech Issue of Our Time,” Power Line, March 3, 2016.
California Climate Science Truth Accountability Act of 2016, would have allowed prosecutors to sue fossil fuel companies and think tanks who by their estimate, “deceived or misled the public on the risk of climate change.”18 The bill never made it out of committee, and was not considered by the California Senate.
This is part of a broader effort to punish fossil fuels companies and think tanks to ensure uniform opinion on climate change and brook no dissent. It is as if the left seems to ignore the First Amendment or even understand the scientific process where the truth can be elusive. For every answer, sometimes more questions are raised. The left over the years has used the government including the IRS to attack conservative groups with the goal of intimidation.
It has been recognized that we have seen a hiatus in temperature rise over the past two decades but some climate alarmists extremists are now using their usual cherry picking of data to prove the hiatus never happened and could be eliminated by looking at the data in a new way. The problem is that climate alarmist in Britain have stated that climate realists are right, the hiatus is real. So the “settled science” is not really settled as alarmists can’t even agree on what is going on with their own computer models.
There have been a thousand studies over the past three years alone challenging the climate alarmists’ worldview, and showing that the science of climate change is far from being fully understood. This may explain why many alarmists and their allies in Congress and the media wants the debate shut down.
A report from Insurance Journal noted that dealing with global warming is over a $1.5 trillion a year global business. In 2011, money spent fighting global warming—consulting, renewables, green buildings, hybrid vehicles– increased 15% after a decade of solid growth. That doesn’t include the billions of government research dollars directed to researchers, many of whom allied themselves with alarmists. .
The companies owned by the Koch brothers have revenues that are a tenth of that spent on green technology. To keep those government contracts going, green technology companies have been major contributors to the Democratic Party. It’s far from clear that these grants are helpful or do much more than subsidize activists.
Some climate scientists have called for federal funds to be cut off because the field is too ideological. MIT scientist Richard Lindzen noted, “Even in 1990 no one at MIT called themselves a ‘climate scientist,’ and then all of a sudden everyone was. They only entered it because of the bucks; they realized it was a gravy train. You have to get it back to the people who only care about the science… They should probably cut the funding by 80 to 90 percent until the field cleans up, Climate science has been set back two generations, and they have destroyed its intellectual foundations.”
18 Ben Boychuk, “State to Climate Change Skeptics: Shut Up, Already,” Sacramento Bee, July 9, 2016.
Twenty scientists, led by Jagadish Shukla of George Mason University signed a petition to have the government prosecute “climate skeptics and deniers” with the RICO act. The petition was withdrawn, but Shukla continues to be investigated as to how he could run a green research institute part-time while simultaneously being a full-time professor at George Mason, a possible violation of Virginia state law that prohibits professors from moonlighting on the job19.
The witch-hunt led by environmentalists is part of the larger witch-hunt by the left in their effort to silence or intimidate conservatives. Consider the case of Donald Trump’s rallies, where the goal of rioters was to stop Trump from speaking and to intimidate his supporters with the threat of violence. The rioters’ view since Trump was a fascist, it was okay to break the law and threaten his supporters. While Trump was my 17th favorite candidate out of the 17th that ran in 2016, but he has as much right to speak without intimidation as you or I. The left is already stifling free speech whether it is keeping conservative speakers from speaking at college campuses including the threat of violence using the IRS to target conservative groups, using goon squads to intimidate Republican candidate supporters or threatening those they disagree with jail time. .
The left’s interference with Trump rallies during the 2016 primary season resulted in violence in San Jose. After the San Jose riot, the Democratic mayor failed to blame the rioters, but instead blamed the Trump campaign. Nor has this been the first violence at a Trump rally. A week earlier, 18 people were injured and 35 people arrested at a San Diego rally and in another violent incident in Costa Mesa two months before that, crowds smashed the windows of a police car and tried to flip it over. During the Illinois primary, hooligans shut down a Trump rally. Democratic activists Robert Creamer and Scott Foval admitted that they trained operatives to cause incite violence at Trump’s rallies and there is solid evidence that members of the Democratic National Committee not only knew this was occurring but supported it. These efforts were part of an effort to intimidate Republican and conservatives voters repeated over the previous eight years.
In Wisconsin, the left’s efforts to silence the right resulted in a partisan witch-hunt against supporters of Republican Gov. Scott Walker. While supposedly enforcing campaign regulations, Milwaukee County Democratic prosecutor John Chisholm s used campaign finance laws in a cynical war against conservative organizations in the state. Local law enforcement used flood lights in their victims’ front yards, and armed officers seized documents, computers, cell phones and other devices.
Chisholm was conducting a “John Doe investigation” and which the targets of the investigation were barred from talking about it. Eric O’ Keefe, director of the Wisconsin Club for Growth, violated the gag order and openly spoke out against the war waged against him by the Democrats and decided he would stand in his way of the Democratic manipulation of Wisconsin campaign laws. Judge Rudolph Randa, hearing O’ Keefe’s horror stories, halted the Democratic
19 Maxim Lott, “Climate Spin: Behind-The-Scenes Emails Show Profs Evading Questions,” Fox News, June 1, 2016.
corruption. In 2015, the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled that Chisholm had no case and O’ Keefe and other conservatives were innocent.
Just read how Judge Rudolph Randa described the “John Doe investigation”, “Early in the morning of October 3, 2013, armed officers raided the homes of R.J. Johnson, WCFG (Wisconsin Club for Growth) advisor Deborah Jordahl, and several other targets across the state. ECF No. 5-15, O‘Keefe Declaration, ¶ 46. Sheriff Deputy Vehicles used bright floodlights to illuminate the targets’ homes. Deputies executed the search warrants, seizing business papers, computer equipment, phones, and other devices, while their targets were restrained under police supervision and denied the ability to contact their attorneys. Among the materials seized were many of the Club‘s records that were in the possession of Ms. Jordahl and Mr. Johnson. The warrants indicate that they were executed at the request of GAB investigator Dean Nickel.
On the same day, the Club‘s accountants and directors, including O‘Keefe, received subpoenas demanding that they turn over more or less all of the Club‘s records from March 1, 2009 to the present. The subpoenas indicated that their recipients were subject to a Secrecy Order, and that their contents and existence could not be disclosed other than to counsel, under penalty of perjury. The subpoenas’ list of advocacy groups indicates that all or nearly all right-of-center groups and individuals in Wisconsin who engaged in issue advocacy from 2010 to the present are targets of the investigation…The defendants are pursuing criminal charges through a secret John Doe investigation against the plaintiffs for exercising issue advocacy speech rights that on their face are not subject to the regulations or statutes the defendants seek to enforce. This legitimate exercise of O‘Keefe‘s rights as an individual, and WCFG‘s rights as a 501(c)(4) corporation, to speak on the issues has been characterized by the defendants as political activity covered by Chapter 11 of the Wisconsin Statutes, rendering the plaintiffs a subcommittee of the Friends of Scott Walker and requiring that money spent on such speech be reported as an in-kind campaign contribution. This interpretation is simply wrong.” 20
This was a blatant attempt by Democrats to shut down conservative organizations in Wisconsin. It is yet another example of the left war against free speech.
20 John Hinderaker, “The Latest Scott Walker Smear, Debunked,” Power Line, June 19, 2014
The Donelson Files 