Author Archives: NevaBrowne

Elizabeth Warren’s new plan would jail lying fossil fuel executives

Lying under oath is a crime known as perjury, but corporations lie all the time. (Remember when tobacco companies told us cigarettes were healthy?) On Tuesday, Senator Elizabeth Warren unveiled a plan to fight what she calls “corporate perjury.”

Her proposal, which is part and parcel of her larger anti-corruption push, zeroes in on fossil fuel companies. Specifically, ExxonMobil — a company that is currently mired in lawsuits that allege it knew climate change was real in the 1980s and misled investors and the public about it.

Several candidates have sworn to hold the fossil fuel industry accountable for fraud and corruption. But Warren is the first to release a proposal specifically aimed at stopping corporations from misleading the public and regulators in the future.

The plan is three-pronged. First, Warren aims to create a “corporate perjury” law that will take executives to court for knowingly lying to federal agencies. You might assume such a law already exists, but you’d be wrong. People can be taken to court for lying in court, before Congress, or to their own shareholders, but the information they provide to federal agencies currently constitutes a weird gray area.

Warren’s plan says that “where companies engage in egregious and intentional efforts to mislead agencies in an effort to prevent our government from understanding and acting on facts, they will face criminal liability.” Executives who engage in this type of behavior could have to pay $250,000 in fines or face jail time.

In the second plank of her plan, Warren gets nerdy. Research that is not peer-reviewed — not evaluated by other experts in the same or a similar field — will not be eligible to be considered by federal agencies or courts. The same goes for industry-funded research. That is, it won’t be eligible unless whoever submitted it can prove that it’s free of conflicts of interest. “If any conflicts of interest exist, that research will be excluded from the rulemaking process and will be inadmissible in any subsequent court challenges,” the senator writes.

That would mark a significant departure from the way President Trump operates. On Monday, the New York Times reported that the Trump administration plans to curtail the kind of research the government can use to craft public health regulations, which could have drastic implications both for future rules and regulations that already exist.

The last piece of Warren’s plan hopes to reacquaint the public with the federal rule-making process. She would create a national Office of the Public Advocate to guide people through the process of weighing in on new regulations. By involving the public in this process more explicitly, Warren says, federal agencies will “make informed decisions about the human consequences of their proposals, rather than largely relying on industry talking points.”

Warren’s new corporate perjury plan is in keeping with her broader goal of holding Big Oil accountable for the consequences of their actions. At the first-ever Presidential Forum on Environmental Justice last week, she explained how she feels about corporate executives who pollute. (Editor’s note: Grist was one of the forum’s media sponsors.) “If they do harm to people, they need to be held responsible,” she said. “You shouldn’t be able to walk away from the injuries you create.” That apparently goes for the lies fossil fuel companies tell, as well.

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Elizabeth Warren’s new plan would jail lying fossil fuel executives

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The Trump Files: Donald Once Turned Down a Million-Dollar Bet on "Trump: The Game"

Mother Jones

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Until the election, we’re bringing you “The Trump Files,” a daily dose of telling episodes, strange-but-true stories, or curious scenes from the life of GOP nominee Donald Trump.

“It’s a much more sophisticated game than Monopoly,” Donald Trump said when his new board game, “Trump: The Game,” debuted in 1989. (Note: It’s not.) So sophisticated, in fact, that Trump admitted that even he sometimes lost. “I’ve done very well at the game…but on occasion, I got clipped,” he said at the game’s announcement in February.

Bob Stupak, a Las Vegas casino owner, was apparently listening. A month later, he challenged Trump to a head-to-head “Trump: The Game” battle for a $1 million prize, announcing it via a full-page ad he ran in the New York Post and the Press of Atlantic City.

Stupak told his local NBC station, KSNV, that he was generously giving Trump a chance to profit off the Stupak name. Stupak had recently earned fame for winning a $1 million bet on that year’s Super Bowl. “I’m not looking to ride on Donald Trump,” he said. “I’m giving him an opportunity to ride on my reputation. I’m the one who makes the large wagers, or has a history of doing it. And also to give him an opportunity to try to promote his new game.”

Trump, sadly, said no. “It’s always possible to lose, even for someone who’s used to winning,” he told the New York Post.

Read the rest of “The Trump Files”:

Trump Files #1: The Time Andrew Dice Clay Thanked Donald for the Hookers
Trump Files #2: When Donald Tried to Stop Charlie Sheen’s Marriage to Brooke Mueller
Trump Files #3: The Brief Life of the “Trump Chateau for the Indigent”
Trump Files #4: Donald Thinks Asbestos Fears Are a Mob Conspiracy
Trump Files #5: Donald’s Nuclear Negotiating Fantasy
Trump Files #6: Donald Wants a Powerball for Spies
Trump Files #7: Donald Gets An Allowance
Trump Files #8: The Time He Went Bananas on a Water Cooler
Trump Files #9: The Great Geico Boycott
Trump Files #10: Donald Trump, Tax-Hike Crusader
Trump Files #11: Watch Donald Trump Say He Would Have Done Better as a Black Man
Trump Files #12: Donald Can’t Multiply 16 and 7
Trump Files #13: Watch Donald Sing the “Green Acres” Theme Song in Overalls
Trump Files #14: The Time Donald Trump Pulled Over His Limo to Stop a Beating
Trump Files #15: When Donald Wanted to Help the Clintons Buy Their House
Trump Files #16: He Once Forced a Small Business to Pay Him Royalties for Using the Word “Trump”
Trump Files #17: He Dumped Wine on an “Unattractive Reporter”
Trump Files #18: Behold the Hideous Statue He Wanted to Erect In Manhattan
Trump Files #19: When Donald Was “Principal for a Day” and Confronted by a Fifth-Grader
Trump Files #20: In 2012, Trump Begged GOP Presidential Candidates to Be Civil
Trump Files #21: When Donald Couldn’t Tell the Difference Between Gorbachev and an Impersonator
Trump Files #22: His Football Team Treated Its Cheerleaders “Like Hookers”
Trump Files #23: Donald Tried to Shut Down a Bike Race Named “Rump”
Trump Files #24: When Donald Called Out Pat Buchanan for Bigotry
Trump Files #25: Donald’s Most Ridiculous Appearance on Howard Stern’s Show
Trump Files #26: How Donald Tricked New York Into Giving Him His First Huge Deal
Trump Files #27: Donald Told Congress the Reagan Tax Cuts Were Terrible
Trump Files #28: When Donald Destroyed Historic Art to Build Trump Tower
Trump Files #29: Donald Wanted to Build an Insane Castle on Madison Avenue
Trump Files #30: Donald’s Near-Death Experience (That He Invented)
Trump Files #31: When Donald Struck Oil on the Upper West Side
Trump Files #32: When Donald Demanded Other People Pay for His Overpriced Quarterback
Trump Files #33: The Time Donald Sued Someone Who Made Fun of Him for $500 Million
Trump Files #34: Donald Tried to Make His Ghostwriter Pay for His Book Party
Trump Files #35: Watch Donald Shave a Man’s Head on Television
Trump Files #36: How Donald Helped Make It Harder to Get Football Tickets
Trump Files #37: Donald Was Curious About His Baby Daughter’s Breasts
Trump Files #38: When Democrats Courted Donald
Trump Files #39: Watch the Trump Vodka Ad Designed for a Russian Audience
Trump Files #40: Donald’s Cologne Smelled of Jamba Juice and Strip Clubs
Trump Files #41: Donald Sued Other People Named Trump for Using Their Own Name
Trump Files #42: Donald Thinks Asbestos Would Have Saved the Twin Towers
Trump Files #43: Why Donald Threw a Fit Over His “Trump Tree” in Central Park
Trump Files #44: Watch Trump Endorse Slim Shady for President
Trump Files #45: The Easiest 13 Cents He Ever Made
Trump Files #46: The Time Donald Burned a Widow’s Mortgage
Trump Files #47: Donald’s Recurring Sex Dreams
Trump Files #48: Trump’s Epic Insult Fight With Ed Koch
Trump Files #49: Donald Has Some Advice for Citizen Kane

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The Trump Files: Donald Once Turned Down a Million-Dollar Bet on "Trump: The Game"

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