Rex Tillerson––ExxonMobil––Climate Science Coverup––Houston––Hurricane Harvey

To The United States Senate and House of Representatives:

As we assess the colossal human and infrastructure costs of Harvey, the destructive power and sheer volume of which shocked even the climate scientists who warned this might happen...

…are you planning to investigate and interview Rex Tillerson about ExxonMobil’s decades of coverup on climate science?

As CEO of ExxonMobil, Tillerson was the head of a massive coverup conspiracy…

…possibly the largest and most consequential coverup in human history…

...a deliberate denial of top climate science by Exxon's own scientists that warned of the dangers of carbon driven climate change to which Exxon was a major driving force.

And now Tillerson is the #3 in this administration that has reversed eight years of climate policy…

...apparently to continue the coverup of climate change science…

...and continue maximizing profits in the oil/gas/coal industry, of which Tillerson’s company was the largest company.

I am hoping we don’t see the slackness and indifference we saw at the time of the Iraq War when VP Cheney’s former company, which Cheney had walked to the precipice of bankruptcy, received a huge set of contracts to manage and follow up the war…

…contracts which turned Halliburton from a basket case into a profitable juggernaut––just before its HQ was transferred to a mideast country where its records could be kept secret.

I am sure Mr. Cheney’s extremely deluxe retirement on Chesapeake Bay was enabled by the war decisions he drove through…

...on a war that was a massive and costly failure for the rest of us.

American taxpayers (by which I mean the regular working people who pay the taxes, not the corporations and higher earners who evade them) have been left on the hook for one massive politically driven disaster which was launched for personal financial reasons, the Iraq War. Thousands of our military personnel have died for that war and many thousands more suffered irreparable wounds from it. But Halliburton reaped huge rewards, from which we can assume VP Cheney’s retirement income and properties have flowed.

American taxpayers will cover the cost of hurricane repair in Texas. (Despite Texas’s own congresspeople opposing any such repair in NY and NJ a few years ago, this repair will happen.)

That hurricane has a forensic trail that leads back to climate science from recent decades, and warnings clearly sent, but there are also warnings clearly hidden and silenced by ExxonMobil.

We also have an entire administration built upon the idea that government is a profit opportunity, a president who rails against that kind of corruption while personally engaging in it on a scale we’ve never seen before.

Will you be asking Rex Tillerson the key questions about what Exxon knew and when Exxon knew it?

Will you follow the money?

Disaster Capitalism is the Republican Plan

Disaster Capitalism = Predatory Capitalism = The Republican Plan.

This is the Republican ideal. It’s their goal. It’s the reason they like government to “get out of the way”. So their friends in the private sector can loot the vulnerable. This isn’t to say private business is all predatory, but lack of oversight and the chaos of unpreparedness tends to declare open season on victims of disaster.

This long read from Naomi Klein is worth sharing

The Right loves unpreparedness because it strips the vulnerable of all defenses and sets them up for profiteers to prey on.The Right, the GOP, and Wall Street see disasters as a profit opportunity. That’s why they see government as the enemy.

The Intercept describes how Houston was intentionally left unprepared

Republicans––not all of Republicans but certainly the leadership and the dominant wing of the party––see problems as an opportunity to exploit the vulnerable for profit.

There are also disasters that unfold more slowly and broadly and don’t need a giant storm to monetize. Our unfair system of housing in this country is a disaster that’s been in place for a hundred years. It was put in place by Jim Crow laws in the South, and by Jim Crow members of Congress who dominated federal rules and regulations. The racists used to dominate the Democratic Party until Humphrey and LBJ drove them out in the 50s and 60s. Those racists were welcomed with open arms by Nixon’s Southern Strategy, and the Republican Party has been White Folks Central ever since… with the occasional person of color included for decoration.

Predatory mortgage contracts designed to fleece people of color have come back because of bigotry in this Republican Congress and Republican dominated state legislatures:

Chuck Collins writes about how unfair housing enriches the few Loan sharking is back, thanks to this Republican president and this Republican congress.