Tag Archives: lies

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 Research that is not peer-reviewed — not evaluated by other experts in the same or a similar field — will not be eligible to be considered by federal agencies or courts.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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I’ll Be Liveblogging the Debate Tonight

Mother Jones

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I know what many of you are thinking. “Is Kevin going to liveblog the debate tonight? If he doesn’t, will I actually have to watch this dumpster fire?”

No worries. I’m a dedicated professional, and that means I’ll watch the debate so you don’t have to. And unlike certain other professionals I could name, I’ll try to fact check in real time. This is actually harder than you’d think, and Donald Trump’s firehose of lies wrapped in ignorance inside a fog of gibberish doesn’t make it any easier. But I’ll try.

The debate starts at 9 pm Eastern. I’ll start up a few minutes before then.

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I’ll Be Liveblogging the Debate Tonight

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Can Donald Trump Make It Through an Entire 90-Minute Debate?

Mother Jones

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The New York Times tells us today how the two candidates are prepping for Monday’s debate. You can probably guess how Hillary Clinton is going about it: methodically, studiously, and seriously. Donald Trump, of course, has no use for actual prep, but nonetheless his team is trying to prepare him for the devious curveballs Clinton is likely to throw at him:

His advisers will try to throw him off balance, and measure his response to possible Clinton jabs like “You’re lying, Donald.”

Clever! Who would ever have guessed she might say something like that to a guy who tells about a dozen lies every day? Then there’s this:

He has paid only cursory attention to briefing materials….Mr. Trump can get bored with both debate preparations and debates themselves….His advisers see it as a waste of time to try to fill his head with facts and figures….Some Trump advisers are concerned that he underestimates the difficulty of standing still, talking pointedly and listening sharply for 90 minutes.

Vulnerabilities

Tendency to lie on some issues (like his challenge to President Obama’s citizenship) or use incorrect information or advance conspiracy theories — all of which opens him to counterattack from Mrs. Clinton or rebukes from the moderator. Advisers are urging him to focus on big-picture themes rather than risk mangling facts. If Mrs. Clinton says he is lying, his advisers want him to focus on her trustworthiness and issues like her State Department email and accusations of favors for donors.

Basically, then, Trump’s team is just hoping that he can remain in one place for 90 minutes; not get too obviously bored; tell only a bare minimum of lies; avoid facts and figures since he’ll just screw them up; and pay attention to what Clinton says. Jonathan Chait comments:

There are two ways to read today’s New York Times report from Donald Trump’s debate preparations, or lack thereof. One is that Trump’s advisers are deliberately setting expectations at rock bottom, so the media will proclaim him the winner if he can merely remain upright for the entire time. A second possibility is that they have come to the horrifying realization that their candidate is delusional, uninformed, lazy, and utterly unsuited to the presidency, and they’re hoping without evidence that these traits can somehow be hidden from the viewing public.

Or maybe both!

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Can Donald Trump Make It Through an Entire 90-Minute Debate?

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Hillary Clinton Continues to Not Be a Shady Character

Mother Jones

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Reporters sure are desperate to demonstrate some kind of shadiness on Hillary Clinton’s part. Here’s a headline in the LA Times today:

House Democrats mistakenly release transcript confirming big payout to Clinton friend Sidney Blumenthal

Sounds shady! I clicked immediately, wanting to know who gave Blumenthal a big payout. The answer, it turns out, is Media Matters, for which he works. This is in no way shady and in no way connected to Hillary Clinton anyway. And here’s an AP headline from this weekend:

Clinton’s State Dept. calendar missing scores of entries

This also sound shady! But no. It turns out that on Hillary Clinton’s official State Department schedule, she sometimes had private meetings and didn’t list the participants. “No known federal laws were violated,” the article says.

Sheesh. Is this the best they can do? I know that we’re all desperate for balance given the tsunami of lies and sleaze coming from the Trump campaign, but surely there’s something a little more concrete we can lay at Hillary’s feet? This is lame.

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Hillary Clinton Continues to Not Be a Shady Character

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Sadiq Khan Makes an Impassioned Call to Reject Brexit

Mother Jones

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In the final stretch leading up to Thursday’s landmark referendum that will decide Britain’s fate as a member of the European Union, London mayor Sadiq Khan on Tuesday made a rousing speech urging voters to reject Brexit—a campaign he condemned as “project hate” against immigrants.

Khan’s sharp rhetoric was a part of BBC’s Great Debate on Tuesday, in which leading members of both sides in the campaign to determine Britain’s future in the EU made last-minute appeals to voters about whether or not Britain should retain its membership. Pro-Brexit leader and former London mayor Boris Johnson also participated in the televised debate, where he continued his calls for Britain to leave and “take back control” of its economy and its destiny. Johnson also said that if Britain were to vote in favor Britain’s departure on Thursday, it could mark the beginning of a new “independence day” for the country.

Khan and Scottish Tory Leader Ruth Davidson slammed Johnson for spreading “lies” about the cost of EU membership and using Turkey’s potential membership to fuel fears concerning terrorism and Britain’s security. They argued that contrary to those who want to leave the EU, the cost of membership does not outweigh its benefits.

Johnson, along with the the far-right political party United Kingdom Independence Party, have been criticized for employing scare-mongering tactics to convince Britons to withdraw its EU membership. UKIP leader Nigel Farage insists that his party is not racist.

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Sadiq Khan Makes an Impassioned Call to Reject Brexit

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This Is the Only Funny April Fools’ Prank That Has Ever Been Pulled

Mother Jones

It’s April Fools’ Day! Or is it? It is. But how could you know? I’m just some schmuck stating a fact. On most days you could believe me—but on this day, April 1, according to tradition, anything stated as fact must be viewed with suspicion. Because it’s April Fools’, and on April Fools’ otherwise normal, sane, decent, jazzy, fun, neat, and cool people lie. For no real reason, really. Rarely are the lies funny. Mostly they’re just “haha, I tricked you into believing something that could be true but isn’t. GULLIBLE IS WRITTEN IN THE SKY, DIPSHIT.”

The internet is so awful on April Fools’. It makes me want to put a knife in my head. The information superhighway is filled with hoaxes and bullshit on a normal day! On April Fools’ Day, it’s extra unreliable. Sometimes the “pranks” aren’t even pranks. Here is the front page of Amazon today:

“Whoa, what happened to Amazon? This new design is crazy! It looks like it’s from like olden days or something! Oh, snap! It’s an April Fools’ Day prank! This corporate web portal just S-E-R-V-E-D me good.” Except, not really, because it says in big bright words “Amazon.com has gone retro—April Fools.” It’s explaining it’s own awful prank. It’s supposed to be what? Cute? Is that what April Fools’ Day is now? An opportunity for #brands to be #cute? It’s ironic because in reality April Fools’ is about misleading people and #brands spend every day doing that.

To be totally real, April Fools’ essentially exists to allow boring unfunny people to let loose one day a year by lying to their friends and colleagues.

Want an April Fools’ joke? Here’s an April Fools’ joke:

Man runs into apartment. A beautiful woman with a very sad way about her is there. He says, “honey, baby doll, light of my life, I love you!” “Leave me alone,” she says. “No, honey, you don’t understand. I did it.” “Did what?” “I left her! I left my wife!” He shows her his left hand. There is no ring on his ring finger. She’s overjoyed. She jumps into his arms, wraps her legs around him, kisses him hard and long, and they fall back onto her bed and make passionate love. Then the guy gets out of bed, puts the ring back on his finger and says, “April Fools’!”

Resolved: April Fools’ is evil. (And OVER.)

However there was once a funny April Fools’ prank. It happened once and only once and it will be told about in stories for generations to come:

Greg Stekelman

In 2012, this image made the rounds on the internet purporting to show how the BBC “won April Fools” with a great prank. (For some reason many news organizations prank their readers on April 1.) But it was not the case. It was actually a joke created by writer Greg Stekelman.

As he put it in a comment on this Gothamist post, “It seems ironic that an article about April Fools you didn’t take the time to check whether the article was actually from the BBC. I thought it would be fun to do an April Fools’ story that was so implausible that no one would think it was real. Oh well.”

So on April 1 let us think of Greg Stekelman, the man who told the only funny April Fools’ joke ever.

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This Is the Only Funny April Fools’ Prank That Has Ever Been Pulled

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ISIS is a Test of Leadership. Real Leadership.

Mother Jones

From Ron Fournier, writing about President Obama and the threat of ISIS:

A columnist should never admit uncertainty, but here’s mine: I’m not ready to side with the hawks or the doves.

It’s conventional wisdom that columnists should always be self-assured. But can someone explain why? I know that sounds naive, but seriously. Why? Why should opinion mongers be expected to have firm, considered, immediate views on every possible subject? I get that nobody wants to read someone who dithers about everything, but shouldn’t we be equally suspicious of those who somehow manage to cobble together unflinching insta-opinions about everything under the sun?

In any case, Fournier is making the—obvious?—point that there’s nothing wrong with Obama taking time to figure out what to do about ISIS. That’s doubly true since he’s working in the shadow of the lies and incompetence that brought us the Iraq war:

President Obama is a living reflection of this psychological context. Uncertain and contradictory, Obama is grasping for the right mix of hawk and dove to rally Americans, unite the world, and confront ISIS without locking the United States into another unholy mess.

God bless him. It’s a hellish task. Obama’s lack of clarity so far has drawn criticism from the across the political spectrum, including from me (here and here). Two loyal readers remind me by email, and for different reasons, that Obama needs time to get this right.

Yes indeed. Sometimes you have to make a fast decision, even if you have limited knowledge. That’s life. But other times you don’t, and you’d be foolish to lock yourself into a decision when you have time to collect more intelligence. This is the true lesson of leadership: Make decisions as fast as possible, but no faster. That’s what Obama is doing.

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ISIS is a Test of Leadership. Real Leadership.

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The Examined Life: How We Lose and Find Ourselves – Stephen Grosz

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The Examined Life: How We Lose and Find Ourselves
Stephen Grosz

Genre: Psychology

Price: $11.99

Publish Date: May 28, 2013

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Seller: W. W. Norton


An extraordinary book for anyone eager to understand the hidden motives that shape our lives. We are all storytellers—we create stories to make sense of our lives. But it is not enough to tell tales. There must be someone to listen. In his work as a practicing psychoanalyst, Stephen Grosz has spent the last twenty-five years uncovering the hidden feelings behind our most baffling behavior. The Examined Life distils more than 50,000 hours of conversation into pure psychological insight without the jargon. This extraordinary book is about one ordinary process: talking, listening, and understanding. Its aphoristic and elegant stories teach us a new kind of attentiveness. They also unveil a delicate self-portrait of the analyst at work and show how lessons learned in the consulting room can reveal as much to the analyst as to the patient. These are stories about our everyday lives: they are about the people we love and the lies we tell, the changes we bear and the grief. Ultimately, they show us not only how we lose ourselves but also how we might find ourselves.

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The Examined Life: How We Lose and Find Ourselves – Stephen Grosz

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