Tag Archives: Eric Schneiderman

The First Amendment Is In Danger

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The First Amendment protects the right of free speech. It reads:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Evidently some of our state attorneys general are not aware of this law.

On Friday, The Blaze reported:

It only took a week before the warnings from free speech advocates to come to fruition about the 17 state attorneys general launching investigations into climate change skeptics, as the probe has expanded beyond an energy company to a think tank.

The Competitive Enterprise Institute, a free market think tank in Washington, moved to quash a subpoena from the U.S. Virgin Islands Attorney General Claude Walker.

The Virgin Islands subpoenaed 10 years worth of communications, emails, statements, drafts, and other documents regarding CEI’s research on climate change and energy policy. This included private donor information. The demand is for information from 1997 to 2007.

“CEI will vigorously fight to quash this subpoena,” CEI General Counsel Sam Kazman said in a statement. “It is an affront to our First Amendment rights of free speech and association for Attorney General Walker to bring such intimidating demands against a nonprofit group.”

The subpoena itself is part of several states’ investigations into whether Exxon-Mobil violated any laws in showing skepticism about climate change. Several other states, led by New York state Attorney General Erich Schneiderman, are using the racketeering statutes – commonly used to go after organized crime – to investigate companies government officials say might have misled the public about global warming.

States are investigating whether Exxon-Mobil violated laws by showing skepticism about climate change. What? Showing skepticism about something is now a crime?

On Monday, The Daily Signal reported:

Speaking at a press conference on March 29, New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman said, “The bottom line is simple: Climate change is real.” He went on to say that if companies are committing fraud by “lying” about the dangers of climate change, they will “pursue them to the fullest extent of the law.”

The coalition of 17 inquisitors are calling themselves “AGs United for Clean Power.” The coalition consists of 15 state attorneys general (California, Connecticut, Illinois, Iowa, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia, and Washington State), as well as the attorneys general of the District of Columbia and the Virgin Islands. Sixteen of the seventeen members are Democrats, while the attorney general for the Virgin Islands, Claude Walker, is an independent.

The inquisitors are threatening legal action and huge fines against anyone who declines to believe in an unproven scientific theory.

In the Middle Ages, I believe that those who stated that the earth was round were treated the way that climate change skeptics are being treated by these attorneys general.

The Daily Signal further reports:

The officials on hand during the announcement talked only about targeting large companies. But Anthony Sadar, a certified consulting meteorologist and author of “In Global Warming We Trust: Too Big to Fail,” fears it could expand to individuals.

“RICO, to my knowledge, is meant to target organized crime, drug traffickers and illegal gambling, not energy companies,” Sadar told TheBlaze. “If it can be used to make big industries cave, then they could go after others that view long-range global climate projections with some skepticism.”

Attorney and author Chris Horner, a senior fellow at CEI, agrees.

“It is clear that, with most opposition already chilled and most support for opponents already scared off, the itch this effort is trying to scratch is the desire to coerce a massive fund to underwrite the global warming industry,” Horner told TheBlaze.

“That explains the call for civil RICO. Still, if they manage to get an investigation rolling into political speech as racketeering, nothing inherently limits it from turning into a criminal pursuit; any state or federal department of justice official who joined in in such a scheme would have already abandoned any normal restraining impulses,” Horner said. “Similarly, there is nothing inherently limiting these investigations to corporations or groups.”

It is my fondest hope that the companies investigated will sue the state attorneys general involved in this into the next galaxy. This is a total affront to free speech. It also sounds very much like a totalitarian government bringing in the thought police. This is a total misuse of the RICO statutes. There needs to be a huge pushback against the states that are involved in this.

When watching this situation, we need to remember that climate change could very quickly become a billion dollar industry. To some extent it already has. Government subsidies finance alternative energy companies, and the United Nations wants to redistribute the wealth of prosperous countries in the name of past sins that may have impacted the climate. Oddly enough, the wealth would move from free countries to countries where the  money would go to tyrants leading the country and not to the poorer people who might actually need it.

For anyone new to reading this blog, one of the most informative sites on the internet for valid information on climate change is wattsupwiththat. I strongly recommend checking that site periodically to see the next stunt attempted by those who will profit greatly if they can convince the rest of us that we cause climate change.

This Is Ridiculoous

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I realize that there is a small group of people in America who oppose the Second Amendment. Some of them understand it, but don’t understand the reasoning behind it, and some simply have no idea why it is there. Occasionally it is somewhat amusing to watch the gyrations of the people who oppose guns.Today Hot Air posted a really good example of people going over the edge on the subject.

The article reports:

Three dozen online retailers will no longer be able to sell realistic-looking toy guns, Attorney General Eric Schneiderman announced Tuesday.

Schneiderman reached a settlement with 30 online toy gun retailers who sell their products through Amazon.com. The third-party retailers have sold over 5,000 imitation toy guns in New York, and they are illegal because they did not meet state safety standards, he said.

“When toy guns are mistaken for real guns, there can be tragic consequences,” Schneiderman said in a statement. “New York state law prohibits the sale of imitation weapons that closely resemble real guns.”

…We may not be able to put the actual criminals in jail at a reasonable rate, but by golly we’re going to stick it to those toy retailers. The 30 or so retailers are paying fines which total more than $27K. (That’s on top of his move back in August when he nailed Amazon, Kmart, Sears, Wal-Mart and ACTA for $300K, so if nothing else the state coffers are getting fatter.) If these scofflaws want to peddle their dangerous wares in the Empire State in the future they will have to be colored “white or bright red, orange, yellow, green, blue, pink or purple.”

I realize that occasionally mistakes are made, but I refuse to believe that toy guns are a major part of any gun problem. However, you notice that this new law will provide money for the state. The law serves two purposes–it pleases a certain political group and it provides money for the state. Unfortunately, it does nothing to deal with criminals with guns.

Unfortunately, Government Money Usually Has Strings Attached

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Somewhere along the line, many people in America have gotten the idea that government money is ‘free money.’ It has not occurred to many Americans that the government has no money except money it takes from people who earned it. It also has not occurred to many Americans that government money usually has strings attached–taking government money generally gives the government permission to get involved in whatever you are doing with the money. This is true at all levels of government–from local to federal.

A recent example of this appeared in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal. The headline states, “New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman Is Investigating Cooper Union.” Under that headline, the article states, “Probe focuses on financial decisions that led to school’s move to charge tuition.”

In the interest of full disclosure, I need to mention that one of my daughters graduated from Cooper Union with a degree in electrical engineering, so this article is very interesting to me. When she attended the school, it was tuition-free and she did get some help with her New York City living expenses.

So what did Cooper Union do that gives the State of New York the right to examine their decision to charge tuition? There are two actions that implicitly grant that right to the State of New York. The school owns the land in New York City that the Chrysler Building sits on.

The article explains:

As part of a long-running agreement between the school and the state, the school doesn’t pay property taxes on the Chrysler land and an amount equivalent to the Chrysler building’s property taxes are paid to Cooper Union rather than the city.

The agreement is partly due to the school’s status as a nonprofit and what its officials have argued is a force for social good.

Evidently these two conditions supposedly allow the State of New York to investigate the finances of a private college.

I think the telling paragraph in the article is:

Cooper Union’s financial portfolio is heavily invested in real-estate assets, public financial statements show. As it faced financial difficulties, the school declined to sell its land under the Chrysler building.

If Cooper Union sells that land, the property taxes from that land would be paid to New York City and not to Cooper Union. New York City is facing severe financial problems because of constant overspending and overtaxing–businesses and people are moving out of the city because they cannot afford to live there. I hope that this investigation does not force Cooper Union into selling the land under the Chrysler building–that is a permanent fix to a temporary problem. They are better off charging tuition until they get their books balanced. The State of New York really has no reason to investigate this other than to go after the land the has allowed the school to continue to operate. This is another example of government money with strings attached that are the size of the cables that hold up the Throgs Neck Bridge.