You probably remember Pre-Crime. From the Spielberg/Cruise movie Minority Report (and series on SyFy channel), based on a Philip K. Dick story, where three pre-cognitive's are able to see crimes before they happen. The murderer gets arrested before ever committing the crime.
We don't have this yet, though if the government ever needed to get rid of political opponents, it would pre-crime would be a handy tool. Not just political opponents... how about anyone dissenting with main stream dogma.
Several states and the Federal government are doing the next best thing. They've come up with a new concept. It's real and it has had immediate impact. The new concept is called "Lookback".
The US Treasury dept issued a new regulation a few days ago. The regulation goes back three years, and says that if a company wasn't a certain size three years ago, they cannot merge with a foreign company. The rule was actually written, tweaked, to have an affect on one single company. And it stopped a massive biotech merger in it's tracks.... the two companies called off the merger today after only a day or two after the new rule was made public.
There are a bunch of states doing something similar, I'll get to that in a second. In the cases of the Federal government and the states, the one goal of changing law retroactively is to collect more money from companies.
America is known the world over for "rule of law". That means the law rules. It can change tomorrow, but you will never get hauled off for doing something 3 years ago that was legal 3 years ago. If it becomes illegal today, that's where the line is drawn. Getting dragged off today for that act, or statement, or opinion that was legal three years ago is the sort of thing that happens in dictatorships and totalitarian states, where people disappear overnight charged with some crime because they had expressed an opinion unpopular with the new government.
But that isn't really happening here. No one is getting dragged off, it's just a couple of big companies not being allowed to merge because the current administration wants them to pay more taxes.
This is still wrong. They created a regulation that was specific to these two companies. Really, so if we can do that, what stops me from passing a law that says Walmart has to pay their employees $2 an hour more than everyone else pays. Why not? Is that "law", or is it "lawless". First world democracy, or third world strong-man?
We've seen this predilection toward unequal treatment before from this administration. The Waiver circus from a few years ago, when some companies were given waivers lessening the blow from ObamaCare regs, while others weren't. How were those decision made? Based on how much money those companies had given to DNC campaign coffers? If McDonalds got a waiver, did Chick-Fill-A also get one? I wonder, but the main stream media was never curious about such questions.
Obviously the IRS scandal stopping any group from getting tax free status if that group supported republicans. Another example of the flaunting of Rule of Law.
If you can "Lookback" 3 years to force companies to pay more taxes, why not 30. That's exactly what California is doing. And 16 other states have or are pursuing related laws.
In California, the law allows the state to treat oil companies who have ever done business in California, as if they are responsible for every ill imaginable over the last 30 years. You see, there is no difference between oil companies and cigarette companies. You've probably guessed how this works.
If 30 years ago, someone who worked for an oil company, ever said something about climate change, then that means they new about it, and sold Californians a product knowing that it would cause floods, droughts, mudslides, earthquakes (yes... I've heard people blame earthquakes on global warming). By the way, back then "Climate Change" was called "Global Cooling". See civilization was ushering in a new Ice Age back then. See: "Earth Day" circa 1970. Take phony data points from the 70's, fudge them, and cooling becomes warming.
What all that means, according to these people, is that the oil companies owe California billions of dollars, and California is going to sue.
16 other states are planning similar strategies.
What will actually happen is states will use kangaroo courts to shake down well run companies, and their insurance companies, for huge amounts of cash to try to make up for how poorly managed those states are. This cash would have meant jobs and taxes in states where the companies reside.
I missed the oceans rising 20 feet in the late 90's... yep that was really supposed to happen. Lately NOAA is having so much trouble getting their temperature monitoring systems based in the middle of the biggest cities in the the world to show rising temps, so they've decided they were doing it wrong and are now adding fudge factoros to the temp readings.
This beach has seen the ocean rise 6 inches. The next beach down the ocean has risen 3 inches. Remember when we called that erosion? No one uses that word anymore.
Junk science being used to extort massive amounts of money is not new. Even in Texas, long ago, we saw the fictitious disease Chemical Aids used to extort money from chemical companies, into the pockets of lawyers. Most famously, one time VP candidate John Edwards used junk science to build a fortune off insurance companies by claiming C-sections caused babies to be delivered with brain defects.
Passing Lookback laws allowing lawyers to go back 30 years and apply junk science against what companies were doing or saying 30 years ago, and suing for that, opens a door to a tidal wave of lawsuits that makes the current legal environment look restrained.
They can't go into the future, the Pre-Crime scenario is a tough sell. But going back in time, 3 years or 30 years, and saying we've decided after the fact that something you did or said was wrong, that truly is the inverse of Pre-Crime. Lookbacks are just as dangerous.
The Pfizer & Allergan merger was completely legal, carefully planned out, and so to stop a company from fleeing the ultra high US corporate tax rates, the Treasury Dept decided it was okay to go back in time 3 years and stop the merger. Because you weren't big enough 3 years ago, you can't do this.
But watching California lookback 30 years and make plans to ravage and feed off of companies that are based in other states, to use courts to steal massive amounts of cash to try to fatten their own treasury at the expense of the home states of these companies, that seems to almost amount to an act of war against those states.
Pre-Crime turned out to be a (spoiler alert) corruptible system. But lookbacks start out corrupt. They are pure criminal shakedowns of companies, pretending to use science as an excuse to make criminal allegations against companies that will end up paying billions... for doing nothing wrong. Paying billions for decades of weather that had nothing to do with oil, global warming or anything else... except the sun, the moon and the earth. These lookback laws have the possibility of taking money out of well run states and transferring that money into the bottomless money pit that is California. Those states, any states with large oil companies based there, could find themselves short on taxes and services as California steals it all away.
Why stop at 30 years. Do we Lookback 100 years and figure out which companies to blame for influenza and malaria. I'm sure we can find companies to blame for World War 1 and 2. Let's Lookback 400 years and figure out which companies to blame for slavery.
If you can Lookback 3 years, you can Lookback 30. And 100. And 400. Rule of Law would prevent all this... but we don't have governments able to see even into the next week to see how retroactive lookbacks have the potential for devastation.
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