Senator: Use RICO Laws to Prosecute Global Warming Skeptics.  This is what I would expect from Senator Sheldon Whitehouse a Socialist Democrat from Rhode Island.  I would suggest Whitehouse put some “proof” on the table of the global warming pudding before he makes such an extreme statement.  I did not realize he had been enhanced in the world of scientific behavior credentials.

What is the RICO law?

Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations ActThe Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, commonly referred to as the RICO Act or simply RICO, is a United States federal law that provides for extended criminal penalties and a civil cause of action for acts performed as part of an ongoing criminal organization (it could be any crime).

This just shows you what an a$$hole this guy is and what mentality he owns!

1:45 PM, Jun 2, 2015 • By MARK HEMINGWAY

Writing in the Washington Post, Sheldon Whitehouse, a Democratic Senator from Rhode Island, offered a curious suggestion for dealing with global warming skeptics:

In 2006, Judge Gladys Kessler of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia decided that the tobacco companies’ fraudulent campaign amounted to a racketeering enterprise. According to the court: “Defendants coordinated significant aspects of their public relations, scientific, legal, and marketing activity in furtherance of a shared objective — to . . . maximize industry profits by preserving and expanding the market for cigarettes through a scheme to deceive the public.”

The parallels between what the tobacco industry did and what the fossil fuel industry is doing now are striking. … The coordinated tactics of the climate denial network, Brulle’s report states, “span a wide range of activities, including political lobbying, contributions to political candidates, and a large number of communication and media efforts that aim at undermining climate science.” Compare that again to the findings in the tobacco case.

The tobacco industry was proved to have conducted research that showed the direct opposite of what the industry stated publicly — namely, that tobacco use had serious health effects. Civil discovery would reveal whether and to what extent the fossil fuel industry has crossed this same line. We do know that it has funded research that — to its benefit — directly contradicts the vast majority of peer-reviewed climate science. One scientist who consistently published papers downplaying the role of carbon emissions in climate change, Willie Soon, reportedly received more than half of his funding from oil and electric utility interests: more than $1.2 million.

To be clear: I don’t know whether the fossil fuel industry and its allies engaged in the same kind of racketeering activity as the tobacco industry. We don’t have enough information to make that conclusion. Perhaps it’s all smoke and no fire. But there’s an awful lot of smoke.

That’s right — a sitting U.S. Senator is suggesting using RICO laws should be applied to global warming skeptics. Courts have been defining RICO down for some time and in ways that aren’t particularly helpful. In 1994, the Supreme Court ruled RICO statutes could be applied to pro-life activists on the grounds that interstate commerce can be affected even when the organization being targeted doesn’t have economic motives.

Obviously, there’s a lot of money hanging in the balance with regard to energy policy. But when does coordinating “a wide range of activities, including political lobbying, contributions to political candidates, and a large number of communication and media efforts” go from basic First Amendment expression to racketeering? The tobacco analogy is inappropriate in regards to how direct the link between smoking and cancer is. Even among those who do agree that global warming is a problem, there’s a tremendously wide variety of opinions about the practical effects. Who gets to decide whether someone is “downplaying the role of carbon emissions in climate change” relative to the consensus? If message coordination and lobbying on controversial scientific and political issues can be declared racketeering because the people funding such efforts have a financial interest in a predetermined outcome, we’re just going to have to outlaw everything that goes on in Washington, D.C.

Unless, of course, we’re just going to scrap any pretense of political neutrality on questions of free speech. Top men like Sheldon Whitehouse can make sure we don’t hear anything that we don’t need to hear about scientific research and legally punish anyone who publicly disagrees. Otherwise, the natives get restless and start opposing whatever economic restrictions seem necessary to save us from ourselves. And as we all know, everything about the global warming debate is guided by altruism. No one’s looking to get rich by artificially inflating the cost of fossil fuels and benefiting from green energy subsidies, right? (As I write this, four of top ten Google results for “Solyndra” are about how the Department of Energy’s “scandalous” loan program that funded the notorious bankruptcy is actually turning a profit — which is not true and a dramatic example of how badly the media covers the issues surrounding green energy.)

Have the people in the U.S. waked up to the scandals of Solyndra, GMC, Fast and Furious, Benghazi, and many more?  This guy is trying to put his words on the gas pedal of spending more money on something that none of us are qualified to spew about.  So Mr. Whitehouse go back to your job and see if you can come up with a better idea for America like jobs and immigration.

kommonsentsjane