In The News
House Inspector General Suggests Complainants Make Complaint Someone Else’s Problem
Following up on this item noting two complaints were filed with offices of jurisdiction over potential misuses of congressional resources, the House Inspector General informed independent journalist Rob Schilling that it would be preferable if another office did the work. As the complaint noted, however Dear Inspector General Ptasienski, We write pursuant to Res. 423, the House Administration Reform Resolution…
Complaints Filed with Congressional Watchdogs Over Use of Donor-Provided Consultants as Congressional Investigative Staff
Last week, Government Accountability & Oversight joined award-winning independent journalist Rob Schilling in filing two complaints with congressional ethics watchdogs over the use by congressional offices of donor-provided professional staff to perform official business. This practice of using privately funded staff to perform official business to advance the “climate” agenda has exploded throughout the country, at the state level, since…
EMails: Facebook Sics its “Independent Fact Checker” on Disfavored Speech
Facebook, Google, WaPo All Seek to Cancel Climate Realism Facebook alerts activist “fact-checkers” to “insanely viral” Stossel video Taxpayer-financed institutions assisting Readers may have noticed a recent flurry of headlines such as “Google, YouTube, and the Climate Inquisition” and “Washington Post Wants Facebook to Shut Down PJ Media and Others for ‘Climate Denial’”. You might even have received a notice…
New Records Suit Against MN AG Ellison Raises Further Questions About Office’s Coordination With Outside Lobbyists
What’s in an Email Address? In Minnesota, the Answer Could be Quite Telling Last week, Energy Policy Advocates filed a lawsuit in Minnesota’s Fifth District Court (Lyon County) over the Minnesota Office of the Attorney General’s failure to provide public records which would shed light on why a University of Minnesota law professor was given an official email account from…
Hell Hath Frozen Over: Court Docs Suggest Repeat of Obama/Copenhagen, Biden EPA Plans to Spring Unprecedented “Back Door” Climate Rule, One Obama’s EPA Chief Called “Not Advisable”, in Glasgow
Surely — Again — Glasgow “Timing is a coincidence”: Biden EPA Replaying Obama EPA Trick for a “GHG NAAQS”? Sue-and-Settle also reappearing to avoid rulemaking, legislation So, this is fascinating, as well as potentially huge — and rather scandalous, as environmental policy scandals go. The Biden Administration appears set to subtly affirm in October a “‘Back Door’ Climate Plan” —…
More on Biden Climate-cars: Secretly Negotiated Between “Certain Automakers” and Their “Partners”?
Today’s Wall Street Journal editorial “The Electric Vehicle Welfare State: Car makers back the Biden climate agenda in return for subsidies and higher consumer prices” notes, among other things: Yep: h/t Elvin Bishop, how long has this been going on? Courtesy of Energy Policy Advocates: Nope. Longer. A little more about this from when it first got, well, rolling, did manage…
Records Obtained by Watchdog Energy Policy Advocates Show Top Interior Lawyer Sought Ethics Waiver Pertaining to Work Performed for Bloomberg Activist Group
Documents obtained by watchdog Energy Policy Advocates reveal DOI developed “non-standard language” in order to grant Haaland’s Senior Counselor an unusual ethics waiver Today, federal watchdog groups Energy Policy Advocates (EPA) and Protect the Public’s Trust (PPT) announced the first batch of publicly released documents obtained via EPA’s Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) litigation with the US Department of the…
CLIMATE LITIGATION BOMBSHELL: New Paper Exposes AG “Climate” Suit as Illicit Product of Private Lobbying, Misrepresentation, Paid ‘Cutouts’
Today the public interest law firm Government Accountability & Oversight, P.C., published a paper on behalf of its client the government-transparency group Energy Policy Advocates, titled “Private Funders, Public Institutions: ‘Climate’ Litigation and a Crisis of Integrity”. Minnesota’s “climate” lawsuit and its replica filed the next day in Washington, D.C., like all of these suits, represent transparent attempts to manufacture state jurisdiction for a litigation campaign…
Supremely Good Timing
You likely have heard that the Supreme Court reached the right decision today in BP plc et al. v. City of Baltimore. That opinion concerns a mildly weedy procedural mater (whether the 4th Cir. erred in holding that it lacked the power to consider all of the defendants’ grounds for removal), but a critical one given the circumstances, and an opinion which should help in removing these cases to federal court where they…
Banking Committee Rs to Biden: Cool it on Fossil Fuel Finance Freeze-Out
Another fed gov’t campaign to strangle legal businesses’ access to capital From the Senate Banking Committee Republicans, a letter to the Biden White House’s climate-treaty czar John Kerry and the administration criticizing efforts to coerce banks into de-platforming fossil energy companies, and taking aim at a new global warming disclosure mandate on publicly traded companies. Toomey, GOP Banking Members Demand Kerry,…
The Lady Doth Protest Too Much, We Think
New York Attorney General Letitia James’s Office led the development of what the Wall Street Journal editorial board called “Biden’s ‘BackDoor’ Climate Plan,” a clever if likely unlawful way to sneak in the Green New Deal under the auspices of controlling ozone — ditching failed climate messaging on “Polar ice caps and the polar bears [which] have become the climate change…
HAPPY ANNY, MOST CYNICAL EPA MEMO EVER
Timely milestone for one of the most cynical documents obtained during the Obama administration With the signs increasing that the Biden EPA plans to use National Ambient Air Quality Standards (“NAAQS”) to impose its climate agenda without the political peril of congressional votes, GAO wishes an infamous Obama-Biden memo a Happy, Very Timely Anniversary. This particular memo, titled “Strategic Communications…
Dem AGs: Whoa, There on the Infrastructure Projects, Easy Does it on the Economic Recovery
As far back as June 2020 progressive AGs already banded together to make sure promiscuous claims of a so-called COVID “emergency” didn’t unleash projects that were actually “shovel ready”. Could lead to economic recovery. Shut down the economy in the name of a COVID emergency? How dare you question that. Spend trillions for the same reason? Absolutely. Suspend laws in…
More Minnesota Madness: Keeping Records From the Public, and “Red Area” Courts From Scrutinizing OAG
Claiming Inconvenience, Minnesota AG Ellison Seeks to Keep Court in “Rocks and Cows” Country Away from Scrutiny of Bloomberg-funded Attorney Deal AG Office Claims “No Connection” Between Home County of Employer OAG Targeted and Records About OAG Coordination with Outside Groups to Target the Employer Move comes as OAG refuses to release signed Confidentiality Statement that activists on a Zoom…
Biden Cabinet Nominee Open to New Taxes to Pay for “Climate Agenda” — as Gov., Sued Energy Cos. to Obtain “Sustainable Funding Stream” Because Legislature Refused
GAO and ClimateLitigationWatch readers are familiar with the effort by the State of Rhode Island to sue energy companies in state court for causing climate change, hoping to cash in after the administration concluded that the State’s “Assembly [had] very conservative leadership — don’t care about env’t”, leaving the Governor “looking for sustainable funding stream”. So it should be no…
Voila! Minnesota AG Contract With Climate Nuisance Tort Firm Appears
Within hours of Energy Policy Advocates filing suit against the Minnesota Office of Attorney General this morning (noted by GAO at 10:40, here), in part over a missing contract hiring an outside law firm to sue energy companies for climate change, the Minnesota Office of Management and Budget provided the group with the contract in response to an outstanding records…
New Records Suit: Where is MN AG Ellison’s Half-Billion Dollar Contract with ‘Climate Nuisance’ Tort Firm?
The government-transparency group Energy Policy Advocates filed a public records suit in Minnesota today. In July 2020, EPA requested various records pertaining to Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison’s relationship with ‘climate nuisance’ tort law firm Sher Edling, LLP, including a contract which does now apparently exist, which contract a Minnesota good-governance law makes clear required approval but which, apparently, has…
Washington Times Column: “Corrupted climate litigation industry comes to SCOTUS”
GAO Board Member Chris Horner has a piece in today’s Washington Times about the climate litigation industry and next week’s oral argument in the Mayor and City of Baltimore v. BP p.l.c. An Excerpt: Climate litigation industry comes to SCOTUS Supreme Court will decide whether government donors, ideologues and the trial bar should prevail Increasingly, societal institutions have enlisted as…
Washington Times: Despite denials, count on Biden-Harris to direct AG to do their scandalous bidding
From the Washington Times: With a potentially bruising Department of Justice confirmation battles looming, both Joe Biden and Kamala Harris now vigorously deny that they would ever direct their Attorney General to do their political bidding or target specific opponents. This would be unremarkable, had they not promised the opposite with equal vigor – and disturbing specificity – during the…
GAO’s Horner: Send Paris Treaty to Senate, Head Off Further Adventurism
From today’s Washington Times: When Obama made the Paris climate agreement end run Failure to act on its revival guarantees more such adventurism in a Biden-Harris administration Recently, conservatives have called on President Trump to transmit the Paris climate agreement to the Senate as a treaty requiring “advice and consent” before it can in any way bind the United States,…