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Opinion: Sorrell joins the ‘global warmists’

Is anyone surprised that Vermont’s Attorney General William Sorrell has joined forces with left-wing Democrat attorneys general to shake down Exxon Mobil for daring to express their skepticism about anthropomorphic global warming?
Led by New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, a growing group of A.G.’s are launching a full-out attack on the oil industry. For their point man, and possible fall guy in the event, the whole initiative goes sideways, they deployed Attorney General of the U.S. Virgin Islands Claude Earl Walker to subpoena the Competitive Enterprise Institute for 10 years worth of communications with and about Exxon Mobil. The CEI is a think tank dedicated to advancing the principles of limited government, free enterprise and individual liberty. Their stated mission is to promote freedom and fairness by “making good policy good politics.” They are also deeply skeptical of the global warmist’s alarm theories. Interestingly, in 2015 CEI published a list of the “Nation’s Worst Attorneys General” and Sorrell and Schneiderman were listed at numbers 5 and 6 respectively.  
“5. William Sorrell, Vermont — repeated flouting of state election laws; channeling contingency-fee lawsuits to campaign supporters; backing clearly illegal speech restrictions that were destined to be ultimately overturned; pioneering the imposition of retroactive Medicaid liability on tobacco companies.”
6. Eric Schneiderman, New York — seeking campaign contributions from those who stood to gain or lose from his prosecutions; using payouts from his lawsuits as slush funds for his office; ignoring state corruption to the point where federal prosecutors had to step in.”
Last month Top Cop Sorrell met with the attorneys general from 17 states and territories to fire the first shot in a “lawfare” scheme to drag their political opponents into court and squeeze them for reparations for man-caused climate change — a deeply flawed concept that Exxon challenges, thus placing a target on themselves for daring to contradict popular, though questionable, science.
It’s a chilling abuse of power and an indication of just how out of control and corrupt our justice system has become. In the past several years we have seen stunning abuses of prosecutorial power, the most notable of which took place in Wisconsin when a prosecutor with an axe to grind aimed legal hellfire at Gov. Scott Walker and his supporters under an obscure Wisconsin “John Doe Investigation” statute that completely strips citizens of their civil rights.
Our justice system does little to prevent corrupt prosecutors from taking political revenge on perceived enemies. Conversely, it does nothing to compel the justice system to take up a case in which political abuse of the legal system aids cronies and harms opponents, as was the case with the IRS’s admitted suppression of political speech for political gain aimed at Tea Party groups prior to the 2012 presidential election. Sorrell’s willingness to join Schneiderman et al. to go after Exxon would indicate that he approves of, and is willing to participate in, the Obama administration’s culture of abuse power and their inclination to trample the First Amendment for political profit.
In a press release, Sorrell defended his position to investigate and possibly prosecute Exxon Mobil by stating that the A.G.’s are “defending federal rules controlling climate change emissions from large industrial facilities, and pushing for federal controls on emissions of the potent greenhouse gas methane from the oil and natural gas industry. The states committed to explore ways to work together to fight climate change, including possible investigations into whether fossil fuel companies misled investors and the public on the impact of climate change on their businesses.”
Actually, what Sorrell and his associates are doing should concern every American. They are chilling free speech, and criminalizing policy disputes by asserting that fossil fuel companies do not have the right to challenge the theories that are fueling politicized global warming theory. They are announcing that those who disagree do not have the right to defend themselves from theories that are unproven and based on sketchy science.
Further, they will punish the industry by extracting money in lawsuits and settlements to fund their attempts to further undermine all energy sectors (look at coal) that aren’t in line with the view of global alarmists, some of whom, by the way, have said that climate change is purely political and redistributive. The latest but not the first admission was by none other than former United Nations climate official Ottmar Edenhofer as reported in Investors Business Daily.
“One has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy. This has almost nothing to do with the environmental policy anymore, with problems such as deforestation or the ozone hole,” said Edenhofer, who co-chaired the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change working group on Mitigation of Climate Change from 2008 to 2015.
“We redistribute de facto the world’s wealth by climate policy,” said Edenhofer.
You won’t see that on the front page of The New York Times but it’s something skeptics have known for quite some time — that climate change is the biggest hoax ever perpetrated on mankind, and the globalist, socialist redistributors will stop at nothing to achieve their goal of grabbing wealth from rich capitalist nations with the ultimate objective of destroying capitalism forever. And Vermont’s attorney general has stepped up to join this disgraceful, arguably traitorous effort.
Alice Dubenetsky
Starksboro

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