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One-line summary: The headline grabbed my eye, but the first comment under the article is where the real money quotes are
We all know that multiple state attorney’s general have launched an attack on free speech in their probing of Exxon, BP and think tanks like Epstein’s. This was unusual in that it was as scary to me as to everyone else here. I’m always in the position of telling everyone here that this or that is not the kind of threat to freedom that they are calling it, and out of habit, I found myself looking for a way to spin the subpoena that way, and I couldn’t. It’s the genuine article, an attack on the principle of free speech, and I didn’t see anyone outside of here calling it that way, Until now.
I was happy to see the news in the WSJ that 2 have withdrawn, and will likely suffer some political consequences.
But the really interesting part was the first comment under the article. It looks like the comment isn’t actually first, just happened to be at the top when I looked at the article, so I will paste the whole thing in here:
Annette Smith 2 days ago This is what happened to me with Vermont’s AG — criminal investigation for being an advocate for people fighting big wind and solarhttp://www.seattletimes.com/business/in-vermont-thorn-in-side-of-powerful-faces-criminal-probe/
It was dropped after I hired a criminal defense attorney
A recent commentary referenced it in discussing the topic of this editorial
http://www.vermontbiz.com/news/roper-time-sue-climate-alarmists
The AG was on the radio the other day and was asked about it, kinda blamed me for going to the press, whaddyaknow, I shoudda kept quiet.
http://digital.vpr.net/post/attorney-general-bill-sorrell-gmo-law-vw-settlement-price-discrimination
Here’s a commentary about what AG Sorrell said on the radio in today’s Montpelier paper
http://timesargus.com/article/20160709/OPINION01/160709652/1020/OPINION
Annette Smith is one of their own ideologically, but she opposes wind farms and solar arrays, for the same general reasons that environmentalists oppose everything being built, check out how the Seattle Times describes her.
Smith, 59, uses a small solar installation to power her home in Danby, where she milks a cow by hand and defies Vermont winters by growing citrus — limes and grapefruit — in a greenhouse. But she has been an outspoken critic of what she sees as the negative effects of large-scale wind and solar projects: wildlife deaths and noise pollution from wind turbines, visual blight from sprawling solar arrays.
The environmentalist movement doesn’t just contain the seeds of its own destruction, it demands its own destruction.
Coming back to the free speech issue, The Vermont Biz article has this:
In response to a lawsuit by sixteen Democratic and one Independent attorneys general (Vermont’s Bill Sorrell among them) claiming that Exxon Mobil committed “fraud” in regard to that company’s non-alarmist position on climate change, a group of thirteen Republican AGs made a salient counterpoint in an open letter to all Attorneys General: “If minimization is fraud, exaggeration is fraud.” What’s sauce for the goose could turn out to be sauce for the gander.
If Exxon and/or think tanks that question the alarmist talking points on climate change can be sued for making statements that minimize the burning of fossil fuel’s influence on global temperatures or extreme weather events, then organizations that have raised money, sold products and services, or applied for government grants with claims such as, “Act now, or the polar ice caps will be gone by 2014!” can also be investigated and prosecuted.
This is a very dangerous trend, wherein elected officials are essentially criminalizing the thoughts and actions of their political opponents. It is also rife with some very ugly corporate cronyism.
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