More from Miami on the Florida property insurance market’s dangers.
miamiherald.com/news/politics-… There’s considerable reason to believe that Florida is the leading edge of a general coastal property insurance problem nationwide, and considerable reason to believe that the coastal-risk insurance problem has an emerging wildfire-risk insurance twin out West.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, its board of directors, and its climate obstruction — quite a tale: 🧵
eenews.net/articles/clima… “For years, the [Chamber] disputed the reality of human-caused climate change and has more recently opposed meaningful efforts to address the problem.” 

“When asked for comment, the Chamber argued it’s following the wishes of corporate donors.”

Leo runs what is in essence a domestic covert operation funded by creepy billionaires who want to impose their unwelcome ideology through unrepresentative courts. 🧵
politico.com/news/2024/03/2… The spending for the covert op is somewhere above $580 million. Probably a lot above. They are not kidding around.

“Misguided”? The model for many of these suits was litigation the U.S. Department of Justice brought and won against the tobacco industry for fraudulently misleading people about the dangerous effects of its product.   I emphasize:  and won. 🧵
thehill.com/opinion/energy… “Misguided”? DOJ won a court order saying to the industry, in essence, “thou shalt lie no more.”  With its fraud strategy foreclosed, the industry had to change its ways. Federal tobacco policy shifted, as without lies, tobacco lobbying practices collapsed.

America is dealing with a lot of problems caused by unchecked corporate power. I’ve got a bipartisan bill to help with that. 🧵 While working people pay their fair share in taxes, giant corporations skirt their responsibilities by exploiting tax loopholes. Since the 1950s, the corporate share of national tax revenue has fallen from around 25% to just 6%.

Here’s how climate crashes into the economy: first, coastal properties/wildfire-risk properties become uninsurable; then, without insurance there aren’t mortgages for buyers; then, property values crash because no mortgages and cash-only becomes the market.bloomberg.com/features/2024-… Here’s the variant: states set up insurers of last resort to stem the uninsurability problem, but the risk doesn’t change.

I've long argued America and other rule-of-law nations are in a clash of civilizations against kleptocracies and international criminal networks, whose leaders amass fortunes in illicit money. 🧵 From Putin's oligarchs to fentanyl traffickers to corrupt dictators to Chinese money laundering networks, a world of evil exists outside the rule of law, where the money is made.

It is the business model of the fossil fuel industry to push the costs of its pollution and mess onto the public, allowing it to underprice cheap clean energy. 
propublica.org/article/the-ri… It’s not just bad economics; it’s a lethal prescription costing us trillions of dollars (per Deloitte and IMF, not greenies).

Judicial fact-finding. What could possibly be more boring?

Right, a law review article. Well, not so fast.

This captured Supreme Court specializes in phony fact-finding, a new thing for the Court. My new law review article examines that. 🧵 Start with a simple principle: appellate courts don’t find facts; trial courts find facts. So the Supreme Court’s fact-finding is weird, even if they weren’t making up false facts.

Why is it the general rule that trial courts find facts?

Trump seems to be counting on the three justices he “chose” for appointment to the Supreme Court to get him out of trouble. But did Trump really choose them? Or was Trump the chump, in someone else’s game? Let’s have a look. The justices were supposedly appointed from a “Federalist Society list” that Trump announced, saying that was the “gold standard.” But the Federalist Society has never shown the public, or admitted the existence of, any record of any report, or agenda item, or vote, on any list.

And if you’re wondering what happened in the wee hours this morning, in this the last of three clotures, we decided to “call the question” when they ran out of speakers.

https://twitter.com/SenWhitehouse/status/1756837885326578068

In the previous two clotures, as a show of respect and for maximum comity, we let them have the whole thirty hours without needing to be constantly speaking.

Remember this was Thomas’s third questionable case: the January 6 investigation case; the Arizona election interference case; and now the Colorado insurrection case.

washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/… His wife’s documented role in the insurrection suggests he should have recused in all three.

If you’re sitting around wondering what is happening in the Senate, (a) you need to get a life, and (b) here’s a handy-dandy overview. We begin with the rule that spending measures have to originate in the House, so to start a bill like our Ukraine funding measure in the Senate you need to bring a House-passed measure to the Senate Floor. The first step is to proceed to that House-passed measure.

In Loper arguments, Kavanaugh suggested the danger of the Chevron precedent is “aggressive assertions of unilateral executive power.” Excuse me? Congressional Review Act? Appropriations process? Legislative committee oversight? Even impeachment? Oh, and judicial review under APA. nytimes.com/2024/01/18/opi…

Climate change drives Florida Republicans to “Socialist Model” as its property insurance market circles the drain? Wow. Look out.

newsweek.com/florida-consid… Florida insurance prices sky-high and climbing; insurers leaving and going bust; state-backed insurer may not have enough reserves for major storm. Ingredients are in place for an insurance meltdown.

Let’s take a look at some of the tweaks the Supreme Court made to the lower courts’ code of conduct. Swapping out “judge” for “justice” makes perfect sense, but a few of these edits ought to raise eyebrows.

Here’s the “no ratting out your colleagues” switch: Note here the addition of “knowingly.”

The question is enforcement: where do you file a complaint; who reviews it; how does fact finding occur; who compares what happened to what’s allowed? 

That’s where the rubber hits the road. 🧵 For instance, justices are supposed to recuse from cases where they have a personal interest, but Thomas has never been asked about his wife’s 1/6 role or what he knew.

“As Mr. Trump criticized the court, Mr. Leo with the Federalist Society is said to have told associates he was disappointed that the former president’s rhetoric made his judicial appointment record look ‘transactional,’ aimed at advancing Mr. Trump’s personal interests….” Let’s consider “transactional”: Kochs hated Trump, Trump hated Kochs; then came Trump’s public “Federalist Society list” for the Supreme Court; then came peace between House of Koch and House of Trump. Is that a transaction?  
nytimes.com/2023/11/01/us/…

The number one goal of the right-wing fossil-fuel billionaires who captured the Court is to break the public’s power to regulate things like pollution.

newyorker.com/news/daily-com… The Court has obediently followed their lead, importing ideas cooked up in billionaire-funded doctrine factories into U.S. law.

They get their directions from flotillas of billionaire-funded right-wing “amici” who file coordinated briefs at the Court.

Here’s the right-wing billionaire “care-and-feeding-of-FedSoc-justices” count so far: 1. Harlan Crow to Clarence Thomas: “Undisclosed yacht and jet travel 1.0” in 2011 followed by “undisclosed yacht and jet travel 2.0” earlier this year; multiple vacations and gifts to Thomas family.

The U.S. is far behind the E.U. on reducing plastics contamination because U.S. fossil fuel interests hold such sway with the Republican Party, so fossil fuel (including plastics) interests can come arrogantly to U.S. politics like they own the place — because they do. It’s sad. theguardian.com/commentisfree/…