All in the name of fighting global warming, the land of many farmers in the Midwest is being threatened with eminent domain — and now, it is revealed that some of the companies that stand to gain financially at the expense of these farmers and American taxpayers are foreign companies that have pleaded guilty to illegal practices, including wire fraud.
The fraud involved a plan to receive contracts from the U.S. Army via payments to a contracting official in the U.S. Department of Justice, followed by submission of false claims to the U.S. government.
This all involves a “carbon capture” pipeline that will run through Iowa, destroying farmland and financially devastating the farmers who own the land. The scheme is a plan to bury CO2 deep underground, supposedly mitigating the effects of climate change.
According to the U.S. Department of Justice, SK Inc., a South Korean-based energy company, had to pay $60.6 million in criminal fines and $2.6 million in restitution to the U.S. Army. The company was then placed on probation, and could not apply for any federal government contracts for three years.
Another subsidiary of SK — SK Energy Company, Ltd. — and two other companies, GS Caltext Corporation and Hanjin Transportation Company, Ltd., both also based in South Korea, also pled guilty to criminal charges over a bid-rigging scheme that involved contracts to supply fuel to bases of American armed forces in South Korea, including the Army, the Navy, the Air Force, and the Marine Corps. Caltex and Hanjin paid fines of about $82 million, while SK Energy paid $154 million in civil penalties.
Other companies involved in the effort stand to make millions of dollars on the projected pipelines include Summit Carbon Solutions, Navigator, and Wolf Carbon Solutions, which is partnering with Archer Daniels Midland. Navigator is also joining into a partnership with BlackRock, known for its leftist progressive stances on social issues. BlackRock is a corporate member of the globalist Council on Foreign Relations (CFR).
This is not surprising. While there are many people who have been duped into the whole idea of global climate change — caused by human industrial activity, principally the oil and gas industries — the leaders of this effort to convince Americans (and the populations in other nations) that drastic measures are necessary to “save the planet” always offer solutions leading to more control by a global elite over the world’s population.
Property-rights advocate Tom DeWeese, who has been challenging the “sustainable development” movement for years through speaking and writing books such as Sustainable: The War on Free Enterprise, Private Property and Individuals, has had very strong words about what he believes are the movement’s actual nefarious purposes. “The action plan to inventory and control all land, all water, all minerals, all plants, all animals, all construction, all means of production, all information, all energy, and human beings in the world” is how DeWeese has defined sustainable development.
“Every time you hear the words ‘sustainable’ or ‘carbon footprint,’ someone is pushing for more government power,” DeWeese has said for years.
Those academics who do not buy into the whole “climate change” alarmism — and there are many — can expect to be fired from their jobs, lose grants, and be silenced. But there is money to be made, and lots of it, for academics — and companies — who agree to play along with the schemes.
One method is through tax credits. This is money given to companies that do the government’s bidding on projects such as this proposed pipeline. Some call this “crony capitalism,” while others call it “crony socialism.” But whatever it is called, it has been used by many state governments as well as the federal government to use taxpayer dollars to reward companies receiving the tax credits.
Companies fortunate enough to benefit from these government subsidies often turn to eminent domain to take over property belonging to average Americans. Eminent domain is when a government can take private land. Under the U.S. Constitution’s Fifth Amendment, eminent domain is limited in two ways.
First, the taking must be for a public use, such as a government building or a road. Secondly, those having their land taken must receive just compensation. Unfortunately, not only does the federal government often abuse this power, so do many states and their local governments. They often redefine public use as just a public purpose. Thus, while the public cannot actually use these pipelines, they argue that they do serve a public purpose.
Under normal circumstances, a company wanting to obtain someone’s private property would have to pay the property owner an amount of money that would cause the property owner to be willing to sell. In some cases, the property owner might not be willing to sell at any price, and the company would have to move onto someone else. But backed by the power of the government, many companies are able to take property at a price below what they would ordinarily have to pay.
This is because the market price for property is influenced by demand. If a wealthy would-be buyer now wants the property, the market price has risen. That is why so many companies turn to eminent domain — not just to get the property, but to get it cheaper. This is the very injustice that the Fifth Amendment was intended to prevent.
One can readily see that this could very well lead to bribery of public officials, for example.
At the very least, handing over contracts to companies with such troubling pasts should raise eyebrows, but it should not be surprising that this is not a major concern for the global elites who use the unfounded fear of global warming to bring the resources of the earth — and the human beings who presently use them — under their control.
In the Bible, when King Ahab wanted Naboth’s vineyard, and Naboth would not sell, Ahab’s evil wife, Jezebel, advised him to simply kill Naboth and take the land. Today, she could have argued that it was all in the name of “sustainable development.”
