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Environmental Justice, Wisconsin Style

Posted by Stemster on Friday, August 08, 2008 10:41:18 AM

I am outraged again this morning by what our green cancer (Environmentalist) groups have cost the people of Wisconsin.
The long and short of it is that the WI Sierra Club and a group called Clean Wisconsin harassed the power company, WE Energies, for 8 years over a coal fired power plant to be built along Lake Michigan. The end result was an increase in the cost of the plant of 940 million dollars, on paper, but the cost is really much much higher. Once you include defending the company from them for eight years, the cost probably triples.

The plant will be built, but only after adding $835 million in emissions control equipment to the plan. But the greens were still not happy. Yesterday the paper said that they finally agreed to settle on a 'final' issue (Stop the harassment) in exchange for a $105 million dollar slush fund to spend on their pet projects. Another article in the paper indicated that flush with success, the Clean Wisconsin group has already lined up to oppose another coal/biomass hybrid power plan near Madison, WI.

This stupidity has to stop, and the best way to fight fire is with fire.
Unfortunately I am not a rate payer of those utilities, or I would already be on the way to the courthouse with a ripe new class action suit and restraining order against the two groups. In my opinion, they conspired to create an eight year ongoing level of harassment that ended up costing rate payers literally billions of dollars for their obstruction of a perfectly legal, desirable, and fully permitted power plant.

My class action suit would show the actual costs created by the green harassment, and seek both actual and punitive damages to be paid to the power company and rate payers. It would not be difficult to show an ongoing level of harassment or economic damages incurred by these people against the power companies engaging in a fully legal activity.

Then it would get a little more fun.

The next part would be prosecuting them under federal law, specifically the Hobbs Act.
From the US DOJ Criminal Resource Manual Section 2403-Hobbs Act..(Link)

In order to prove a violation of Hobbs Act extortion by the wrongful use of actual or threatened force, violence, or fear, the following questions must be answered affirmatively:
1. Did the defendant induce or attempt to induce the victim to give up property or property rights?
The answer to this one is yes, absolutely. Not only did they bilk them out of over a billion dollars, they directly attacked " the right of commercial victims to conduct their businesses, AND, the right to make business decisions and to solicit business free from wrongful coercion." when they forced them to make changes in future plants, support future green sponsored legislation, and so on.
"Property" has been held to be "any valuable right considered as a source of wealth." United States v. Tropiano, 418 F.2d 1069, 1075 (2d Cir. 1969) (the right to solicit garbage collection customers). "Property" includes. See United States v. Zemek, 634 F.3d 1159, 1174 (9th Cir. 1980) (the right to make business decisions and to solicit business free from wrongful coercion) and cited cases). It also includes the statutory right of union members to democratically participate in union affairs. See United States v. Debs, 949 F.2d 199, 201 (6th Cir. 1991) (the right to support candidates for union office); United States v. Teamsters Local 560, 550 F. Supp. 511, 513-14 (D.N.J. 1982), aff'd, 780 F.2d 267 (3rd Cir. 1985) (rights guaranteed union members by the Labor-Management Reporting and Disclosure Act, 29 U.S.C. § 411).
 
2. Did the defendant use or attempt to use the victim's reasonable fear of physical injury or economic harm in order to induce the victim's consent to give up property?
Again, yes, absolutely. They used the threat of requiring expensive equipment and threat of delays in opening the power plant to extort monies from the power company. Either the power company had to settle, or they had to install an additional 200-300 million dollar cooling tower system. In fear of spending 3x the money, and another eight years of legal harassment, they settled.
A defendant need not create the fear of injury or harm which he exploits to induce the victim to give up property. See United States v. Duhon, 565 F.2d 345, 349 and 351 (5th Cir. 1978) (offer by employer to pay union official for labor peace held to be "simply planning for inevitable demand for money" by the union official under the circumstances); United States v. Gigante, 39 F.3d 42, 49 (2d Cir. 1994), vacated on other grounds and superseded in part on denial of reh'g, 94 F.3d 53 (2d Cir. 1996) (causing some businesses to refuse operations with the victim sufficiently induced the victim's consent to give up property, consisting of a right to contract freely with other businesses, as long as there were other businesses beyond defendants' control with whom the victim could do business).
Moreover, attempted extortion may include an attempt to instill fear in a federal agent conducting a covert investigation or a defendant "made of unusually stern stuff." See United States v. Gambino, 566 F.2d 414, 419 (2d Cir. 1977) (argument that FBI agent pretending to be extortion victim could not be placed in fear is not a defense to attempted extortion of the agent); see also United States v. Ward, 914 F.2d 1340, 1347 (9th Cir. 1990) (an attempt to instill fear included a demand for money from a victim who knew that the defendant was only pretending to be a federal undercover agent when he threatened the victim with prosecution unless money was paid).
However, the payment of money in response to a commercial bribe solicitation, that is, under circumstances where the defendant does not threaten the victim with economic harm, but only offers economic assistance in return for payment to which the defendant is not entitled, is not sufficient to prove extortion by fear of economic loss. United States v. Capo, 817 F.2d 947, 951-52 (2d Cir. 1987) (solicitation of money from job applicants by persons having no decision making authority in return for favorable influence with employment counselors was insufficient evidence of inducement by fear); but see United States v. Blanton, 793 F.2d 1553, 1558 (11th Cir. 1986) (inducement by fear was proven by the defendant's solicitation of a labor consulting contract, to help employer stop outside union organizing, when the solicitation was accompanied by defendant's threat to form another union and begin organizing employees if the consulting contract was not accepted).
3. Did the defendant's conduct actually or potentially obstruct, delay, or affect interstate or foreign commerce in any (realistic) way or degree?
Most certainly. The power grid and WE Energies are part of a national energy supply. Any power that WE Energies does not generate from that plant will have to come from other sources. Those sources include interstate companies and sources outside of WI, both regional and Canadian. Likewise, when WE Energies has surplus power generation capacity, it is sold on a national market
The Hobbs Act regulates extortion and robbery, which Congress has determined have a substantial effect on interstate and foreign commerce by reason of their repetition and aggregate effect on the economy. Therefore, the proscribed offenses fall within the category of crimes based on the Commerce Clause whose "de minimis character of individual instances arising under [the] statute is of no consequence." United States v. Bolton, 68 F.3d 396, 399 (10th Cir. 1995) (upholding Hobbs Act convictions for robberies whose proceeds the defendant would have used to purchase products in interstate commerce), quoting, United States v. Lopez, --- U.S. ---, 115 S.Ct. 1624, 1630 (1995); material in brackets added; see also United States v. Atcheson, 94 F.3d 1237, 1243 (9th Cir. 1996) (robbery of out-of-state credit and ATM cards); United States v. Farmer, 73 F.3d 836, 843 (8th Cir. 1996) (robbery of commercial business); United States v. Stillo, 57 F.3d 553, 558 n.2 (7th Cir. 1995).
Hobbs Act violations may be supported by proof of a direct effect on the channels or instrumentalities of interstate or foreign commerce, as for example, where the threatened conduct would result in the interruption of the interstate movement of goods or labor. See United States v. Taylor, 92 F.3d 1313, 1333 (2d Cir. 1996) (extortion of money, unwanted labor, and subcontracts on construction projects by threatened shutdowns and labor unrest); United States v. Hanigan, 681 F.2d 1127, 1130-31 (9th Cir. 1982) (robbery of three undocumented alien farm workers while they were traveling from Mexico to the United States in search of work); United States v. Capo, 791 F.2d 1054, 1067-68 (2d Cir. 1986), vacated on other grounds, 817 F.2d 947 (2d Cir. 1987) (scheme to extort local job applicants had a potential effect on interstate applicants who might otherwise be hired).
Indirect effects on such commerce are also sufficient, as for example, where the obtaining of property and resulting depletion of the victim's assets decreases the victim's ability to make future expenditures for items in interstate commerce.
Taylor, supra (depletion of contractors' assets). However, the Seventh Circuit has distinguished Hobbs Act cases involving depletion of a business' assets from those involving the depletion of an individual employee's assets which, the court has ruled, are not as likely to satisfy the jurisdictional requirement of the Hobbs Act. United States v. Mattson, 671 F.2d 1020 (7th Cir. 1982); United States v. Boulahanis, 677 F.2d 586, 590 (7th Cir. 1982). Other circuits have agreed where the extortion or robbery of an individual has only an "attenuated" or "speculative" effect on some entity or group of individuals engaged in interstate commerce thereby diminishing the "realistic probability" that such commerce will be affected. See United States v. Collins, 40 F.3d 95, 100 (5th Cir. 1994) (conviction for robbery of a computer company employee reversed on grounds that theft of victim's automobile with cellular phone had an insufficient effect on his employer's business); United States v. Quigley, 53 F.3d 909 (8th Cir. 1995) (upholding the acquittal, following guilty verdict, of defendants who beat and robbed two individuals in route to buy beer at a liquor store).
4. Was the defendant's actual or threatened use of force, violence or fear wrongful?
This is an easy one. The green groups used the threat of ongoing legal harassment to take not only the 835 million in pollution control upgrades, but a 105 million dollar slush fund for their pet projects. The Supreme Court also made a broadly worded statement that "wrongful" has meaning in the Act only if it limits the statute's coverage to those instances where the obtaining of the property would itself be "wrongful" because the alleged extortionist has no lawful claim to that property. The green groups have no legally cognizable interest, ie owning the lake or the atmosphere. At that point, taking the power company resources, especially the 105 million dollar slush fund, and right to do business, is easily demonstrated as wrongful under this section.
Generally, the extortionate obtaining of property by the wrongful use of actual or threatened force or violence in a commercial dispute requires proof of a defendant's intent to induce the victim to give up property. No additional proof is required that the defendant was not entitled to such property or that he knew he had no claim to the property which he sought to obtain. See United States v. Agnes, 581 F.Supp. 462 (E.D. Pa. 1984), aff'd, 753 F.2d 293, 297-300 (3d Cir. 1985) (rejecting claim of right defense to defendant's use of violence to withdraw property from a business partnership).
However, the Supreme Court has recognized a claim-of-right defense to Hobbs Act extortion in labor-management disputes.
In a 1973 decision, the Court reversed the conviction of union-member defendants who had used violence against an employer's property, during an otherwise legitimate economic labor strike, in order "to achieve legitimate union objectives, such as higher wages in return for genuine services which the employer seeks." United States v. Enmons, 410 U.S. 396, 400 (1973). The Court reasoned that the legislative history of the Hobbs Act disclosed that Congress had been concerned with attempts by union officials to extort wages for unwanted and fictitious labor, to which employees were not entitled, as contrasted with the policing of legitimate labor strikes in general. Therefore, the Court concluded that the union members' use of violence during the strike was not "wrongful" for purposes of Hobbs Act extortion. The Supreme Court also made a broadly worded statement that "wrongful" has meaning in the Act only if it limits the statute's coverage to those instances where the obtaining of the property would itself be "wrongful" because the alleged extortionist has no lawful claim to that property.


The environmental stupidity really needs to stop. There is no excuse for causing WE Energies to spend over a billion extra dollars to deal with these phony environmental groups. In the end, the results were very expensive and very questionable. The proposed plant was already up to state and federal standards, and permitted by all agencies required. Along come some bored rich people wanting to save the planet and the people of southern Wisconsin are out over a billion dollars.

People should be absolutely livid about this. I know that I am. While my electric bill won't directly go up as a result of it, it will eventually. Now emboldened with their victory and 105 million dollar pet projects slush fund, they will soon be coming after my power company. They will have this in their pocket as precedent, and will be that much harder to fight off.

Congratulations DuMasses, you just cost people over a billion dollars for negligible change. Hurrah for you.

Now you should pay the bill.

Stemster
 
 
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The truth about environmentalism and $4-$8 gas

Posted by Stemster on Saturday, August 02, 2008 12:54:27 AM

 

Welcome! I have not posted in a while, but I have been writing. The result today is a double article. Dive in!

What do polar bears, seals, walruses, and sage grouse have in common?

Give up?
 
They are all tools that the environmental movement is trying to fraudulently get listed as endangered to prevent any domestic gas and oil production.
 
This is nothing new, but it has become very blatant. Since the American people are feeling the pain of 30 years of failed environmentalist driven energy policy as it manifests itself in the form of $4+ gas and other rising energy costs, they want action, and more specifically, domestic energy development. This brings crisis to the environmental groups who are against any energy usage at all, and that calls for desperate measures.
 
For 30 years now environmentalists have been able to stop housing development, stop energy development, stop people from logging or using forests, and stop people from using their own land as they see fit. They do this by creatively suing the government under the ESA, supposedly on the behalf of some listed critter, bug, or plant.
 
In recent months this has accelerated to a grand scale. First came the polar bear. They decided that even though there was no evidence at all of declining populations of polar bears, they would try to get them fraudulently listed under the ESA as endangered.

Why?
 
It would be the muscle behind enforcing the great global warming hoax. Their claim is that global warming is reducing sea ice, and polar bears are endangered because of it. Never mind that polar bears can easily swim 40 miles, or that we had record high amounts of arctic sea ice last year. Never mind that the earth has been much warmer in the history of the polar bear, and they survived it to flourish today. Never mind that there is no accurate count or ongoing census of polar bear populations that even vaguely indicates a decline of the species. Never mind that there is NO global warming and has not been for 10+ years.
 
The polar bear is just an excuse.
 
Had they been successful, it would have brought our country to its knees as the army of environmental lawyers could sue to stop and control virtually any energy usage that is carbon based. That means no gas, no natural gas, no ethanol, no coal/electric power, nothing other than solar, wind, or nukes. Any carbon emissions would be grounds for a lawsuit based of the fraudulent premise that it would cause global warming and harm the polar bear. That includes humans exhaling, but not enviro-lawyers flying to Washington to sue the government, or algore's globe trotting ways.
 
Ambitious, aren't they? They virtually wanted to put the entire US energy policy at the whim of Sierra Club/Earth First!/NRDC/Greenpeace lawyers.
 
As it turned out, they settled for a threatened listing after much caterwauling. They couldn't let on that it had nothing to do with bears, so they had to settle for a threatened listing. There are probably several lawsuits pending for review to try to change that, there is a lot at stake.
 
So a couple of weeks later, people are talking about drilling ANWAR and other places in the arctic because they don't like $4 gas. Alarm bells go off at the evil lawyer-monkey caves of the enviro corporations, and they need to do something fast. The answer? Walruses and seals. They are sure that they can fraudulently get walruses & seals listed as endangered, and since they roam most of the Arctic, that would shut down any gas or oil production, including what we have now. That one is still pending.
 
The latest outrageous attempt by the evil green flying lawyer-monkeys to prevent energy development in the USA is the greater sage grouse. Environmentalist paid scientists claim that sage grouse breeding areas are threatened by oil and gas exploration in Wyoming, Montana, Colorado, Utah and other Western states. Now, keep in mind that there is still a hunting season for these birds. There probably wouldn't be if the birds were scarce.
 
So what is the problem? They just made a big breakthrough in oil shale development and extraction technology where they can get the oil goo out of the rocks in a very economical and environmentally sound way. It just so happens that those states hold the biggest oil reserve in the USA, and possibly the world. Estimates are that there are between 1.5 and 3 TRILLION barrels of recoverable oil in those rocks. That is enough to make the US energy independent for generations. The grouse are not actually in any danger of being extinct, but their listing would shut down a lot of future and current gas/oil energy development.
 
Being against the human race in general, and adamantly against human prosperity brought on by energy usage, the green groups are desperate to stop any new energy sources. They are very well armed with legal teams that twist the ESA for their own purposes, and with 30 years of experience, they are very good at it. The polar bear, the seals and walruses, and now the greater sage grouse are just the latest examples of the frauds perpetrated by the lawyers from environmental groups as they twist the ESA to cripple America. The difference is, these are blatant enough and close enough together that their malignant extremist plan is now obvious to the great unwashed masses.
 
Personally I think that they should be pursued under the RICO (Racketeering In Corrupt Organizations) act for manipulating energy prices and harming the US economy while fraudulently holding a tax exemption as an 'educational' organization. Oops, that won't work at all. The major environmental groups have -get this- *diplomatic immunity* for working with the UN on various environmental causes like the UN Man & Biosphere program. It came to be under Clinton in '96.
 
So, the Sierra Club brings in probably over 100 million a year, but they don't own much land. They spend all of the money on lawyers that specialize in suing the government. In the same breath, they can't be sued because they have diplomatic immunity? Wow. I guess that is a pretty strong position to come from.

 These people-haters are now turning their full barrage of lawyers onto the seals, walruses, polar bears, and grouse to get them to use as future weapons against oil and energy usage.
 

This brings us to our next post, which asks why...



 

 

Enviros love expensive gas. It is an often repeated goal of theirs to have gas in the 8-10 dollar range. Why?
 
There are a couple of answers. The one most often cited is that they want people to consume less, be more efficient, and to develop alternative energy sources. I think that it includes those goals for a lot of the people involved with the environmental movement, but not the big organizations.
 
One issue that I have with that is that any alternative energy source comes with a price tag. There is a reason that we are still using oil 30 years after the Arab oil embargo farce of the late 70s. Most of the alternative energy schemes don't work as well as burning oil.

 Ethanol is a loosing deal in a dozen directions. It wrecks your car, it takes more energy to produce than it provides, it runs food costs up, it would take most of the country planted in corn to provide for our needs, it causes air quality issues, it takes huge amounts of water to make, and it is so corrosive that they will not ship it through pipelines. That is the short list.

Solar is often held up as a great savior. Solar is neat, but unreliable. There are dark periods at night, cloudy days, and huge issues with storage of enough power to be meaningful on a large scale. There is also the issue that photovoltaic cells have hit somewhat of a glass ceiling. They are still working on the next generation. Until they realize higher efficiency at a lower cost and address storage issues, solar is not practical for widespread use, or use as locomotion for our cars and trucks.

Hydrogen presents its own problems. A big problem is that like ethanol, it takes a lot of energy to produce. You would need a nuke plant to feed a hydrogen rendering station, and on a national scale, it would take a lot of infrastructure to supply our energy needs. I also think that there would be PR problems selling it. Two words come to mind..Hindenberg, and BOOM>. No one wants to transport their kids riding on a huge hydrogen bomb. Another passing thought, with water as exhaust, wouldn't the roads get wet and slippery in traffic, and horribly icy in winter?
 
Hybrid and electric cars are coming along, but they have a long way to go. At the moment, they are hugely expensive to repair or maintain. If the battery or electric motor goes out, it is many thousands of dollars to repair. Some current estimates show that a hybrid car costs 4x as much to own over the life of a car VS a traditional car. Being a prole my dropping 3- 6 grand on a battery or motor ain't gonna happen. Since the US is 95:5 non-wealthy to wealthy, only a certain socioeconomic class will own these cars.
 
There is a secondary problem in that if these do see widespread distribution, there will be a significant demand thrown on the nation's electrical grid. That is the same electrical grid that environmentalists oppose any upgrades to. They are against hydro, coal, clean coal, nuclear, and natural gas power plants as well as electrical transmission lines. So.. where are these idiots going to plug in their new electric cars?
 
A distraction here.. Recently they had a local enviro stooge on the news. After 5 years of delays and a 200 million dollar cost over run on a 300 million dollar power line project, they finally opened the 300 mile transmission line. The news had this enviro-dolt green group leader on TV crying about how the cost over runs would raise everyone's electric bills. Yes dummy, we will see an increase due to the cost over runs that you personally cost us with endless environmental lawsuits and harassment. You cost rate payers 5 years and 200 million dollars on a basic power line project, and completely missed that you and your little green buddies are the malignancy that we will all pay for. Please don't breed.
 
Ok, so they want expensive gas to make their untenable alternate energy schemes look good. That is a start.

 They also want expensive gas for more reasons that that. One is to reduce usage, and therefore pollution. That is problematic in a few ways. First of all, we are already using considerably less gas per capita than we used to only a decade or two ago. One article that I saw claimed that between population growth, mass transit, price hikes, and increased efficiency, energy use per capita is down almost 50% since the 70s. We have more efficient lights, refrigerators, air conditioning, and the cars are more efficient too. My '74 Gremlin got about 14 MPG, my 13 year old '95 mini van gets 25 MPG, and many small cars are above 30 or 40 MPG.

At this point a lot of the easy answers have been used, and now we have the hard part of increasing efficiency to deal with. To illustrate my point, can you really make the Geo Metro any smaller? Here in the land of 400+ pound bears, 150 pound deer, and 110,000 pound logging trucks going 60mph common on the road, I can only pray that they do not. The trade off between high gas mileage and safety is here and now. The easy stuff has been done. From here on any efficiency improvements will be very costly, and the currency is human lives.
 
Here is the real crux of the biscuit. The real reason that environmentalists want expensive gas is that it will stop urban sprawl and country living as the price of gas forces people to move to the cities where they can easily be controlled. This fits well with the goals of the Wildlands Project, and that makes the watermelons happy.
 
The Wildlands Project is a 50-100 year goal/conspiracy of the major environmental groups and the UN to "Rewild" and make off limits to humans, some 93-95% of the US landmass and resources. Read that again. If you are an American, it should anger you at length. The Wildlands Project is a 50-100 year goal/conspiracy of the major environmental groups and the UN to "Rewild" and make off limits to humans, some 93-95% of the US landmass and resources.
 
About half of the US would be core wilderness where no human ever goes, another 40-45% would be barrier zones with almost no human trespass.
 
When the hell did we agree to that?
 
Here is a map of the Wildlands project as seen on the UN web site. People get to occupy the green areas.

Here is a bigger version of the image. There is not much human habitat there for 300 million people, is there?
 
Here are a few links about the Wildlands project.

 http://www.discerningtoday.org/wildlands_map_of_us.htm

 http://www.mtmultipleuse.org/wilderness/twp_map.htm

 *** http://www.outdoorwire.com/access/education/nm_twp/nm_twp_pt3.htm ***

 http://www.bitterroot.com/grizzly/coffman.htm

 It is a truly evil plot, and it is very real. That is why the green slime is always closing down public lands to the public, using endangered species to stop development, setting up roadless areas, forcing wolves, grizzlies, and cougars on us, stopping logging on public lands, and slowly closing rural America off to humans. They want to take over the country and its resources, and then control its population.

 The $8-10 gas that enviros lust after is a big part of this, as it pushes all sorts of rural and suburban people and businesses out of the countryside and into carefully planned 'sustainable' cities *where they can be controlled through scarcity of resources*. You can not build your own house from your own trees, kill dinner, grow food and fiber for clothes, or get your own water source in the city. I can do all of that and more on my piece of heaven here in the northern forest. By controlling those essential needs in the city, the powers at hand can easily control the people.

The $8-$10 gas that environmentalists seek is a key part of the Wildlands Project. It is the key catalyst to get people to move from the country to the cities where they can be more easily controlled. It is a very grand attempt to take control over the country and the population without a shot being fired or an up or down vote by the people.

 If some group of brown shirts marched into my town and said that they are taking over, they would swiftly be introduced to a well ordered and very well armed militia. It would not go well for them at all. Since most of us drive gas guzzling 4x4 trucks to deal with the snow, mud, terrain, hunting and cutting firewood, and other semi-frontier lifestyle challenges, high gas prices are our soft underbelly. With expensive gas, people are now voluntarily selling their homes and weekend retreats in favor of city life. They are voluntarily surrendering to a plot that they never saw coming.

 So, why do environmentalists like expensive gas? It makes their untenable alternative energy schemes look good, and it helps them conquer the suburban and country folk and herd them into cities without having an armed revolution. Once they are in the cities, they are easily controlled.

 The fun part is, you actually have a say in this. If you want 8-10 dollar gas, 95% of the US off limits, and all of the neat stuff that the UN & environmental groups have in mind for you, just keep voting for those democrats.


The Stemster

 

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