It would be a stretch to find a person over the age of seven that has never heard, or cannot grasp the meaning of, the saying “the truth hurts.” Likely because they are pathological liars, Republicans and their various conservative and religious cohort basically cannot understand why any human being, much less a politician, would ever utter the truth when they can lie; especially when the truth can be so brutally hurtful. On Monday while in Nevada, President Barack Obama spoke the truth about the dirty filthy energy industry during an energy speech and it obviously hurt poor beleaguered Charles Koch’s feelings and the White House could not care less and was unafraid to tell Koch he is a liar.
During his Monday speech on renewable energy at the National Clean Energy Summit, President Obama said, “You start seeing massive lobbying efforts backed by fossil fuel interests, or conservative think tanks, or the Koch brothers pushing for new laws to roll back renewable energy standards or prevent new clean energy businesses from succeeding — that’s a problem.” It is difficult to discern if Charles Koch’s feelings were hurt because he personally identifies with fossil fuel interests, conservative think tanks, or “the Koch brothers” even though all three are the Kochs, but he lashed out at the President for daring to tell the truth about the Kochs et al (fossil fuel industry, conservative think tanks).
Koch said that it was a low blow for the President to speak the truth and also that he was absolutely “flabbergasted” that a politician had the temerity to speak honestly about the Kochs. He said, “It’s beneath the president, the dignity of the president, to be doing that.” By doing that Koch means President Obama told an audience what they are very well aware of; not only are the Kochs waging war on clean and renewable energy, they are the “problem” and fund the “massive lobbying efforts to eliminate renewable energy standards and obstruct new clean energy businesses from even starting, much less succeeding.
Apparently, Charles Koch wants Americans to believe the he and his billionaire brother, the fossil fuel industry, Koch-funded ‘belief tanks like Americans for Prosperity and Heritage Action, are rabid supporters of clean and renewable sources of energy and it was “beneath the President” to dare say otherwise. Koch portrayed President Obama’s remarks as an unwarranted personal attack and claimed he could not believe the President would say “so many things about us that were the opposite of the truth. I was really dumbfounded. I didn’t expect that from the president.” No, what Koch did not expect was that the President of the United States would have the temerity to tell exactly the truth about the billionaire oil magnates’ attempts to thwart every possible effort to shift America to clean and renewable energy.
Charles Koch is a typical pathological liar because two years ago the brothers’ state-level legislative arm the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and Americans for Prosperity embarked on a massive campaign and crusade to do exactly what President Obama accused them of; pushing legislation to roll back clean energy standards to kill jobs and keep air and water quality on par with third world developing countries. During his rant over having his billionaire feelings hurt by the President, Koch said Koch said “We are not trying to prevent new clean energy businesses from succeeding. As a matter of fact, we’re investing in quite a number of them, ourselves whether that’s ethanol, renewable fuel oil. We’re investing a tremendous amount in research to make those more efficient and create higher-value products;” products that are not remotely clean or efficient compared to solar and wind and solely related to, as President Obama noted, the fossil fuel industry.
The White House did not back down from the truth about the dirty Koch brothers and White House press secretary Josh Earnest said Koch’s comments do not match with reality; in street language he called Charles Koch a dirty liar. He said, “I’m not sure whether to describe those comments as remarkably rich or utterly predictable. It’s that when the president is advocating the end of tax subsidies that benefit oil and gas companies, that somebody who has made billions of dollars leading an oil and gas company, might not think very highly of that policy proposal.”
Earnest continued in response to questions about the President’s truth hurting the Kochs. He said, “I think what is also interesting is the claim that somehow Koch Industries hasn’t advocated for the continuation of those oil industry tax subsidy policies. The fact is that Koch Industries has spent at least hundreds of thousands of dollars lobbying Congress, these are public disclosures, in support of those kinds of policies, to say nothing of the millions of dollars that they have spent punishing those candidates that didn’t side with them.”
What Earnest did not elaborate on, or even mention, are the millions upon millions of dollars the Koch’s and their fossil fuel cohort spend every year on legislative repeal efforts to put an end to renewable energy standards and thwart the availability and usage of clean and renewable energy like wind and solar by Americans. In fact, during the President’s speech in Nevada he came out in support of consumers battling a giant energy supplier’s efforts to put an abrupt end to Nevada’s nation-leading solar panel industry with valuable assistance from the Koch-funded ALEC.
What bothers Charles Koch the most is that finally there are Democrats who are calling them out by name and alerting the public to their evil machinations to snuff out clean and renewable energy to maintain their dirty monopoly on energy. Charles Koch could not believe that the President of the United States would do something that “flabbergasted” the dirty billionaire like telling the truth about how the Koch brothers are spending heavily on lobbying to roll back clean energy standards to maintain fossil fuels grip on all energy in America.
If Charles did not appreciate the President calling out the Koch brothers by name, he was likely astonished that the White House would dare “hit back” at the Kochs and call them out on their continued lying. Earnest said he was not sure if Koch’s comments were “remarkably rich or utterly predictable,” but he clarified the White House’s position when he said, “Koch’s comments do not match reality.” In other words, he called Charles Koch a liar who is so ensconced in mendacity that it is highly likely that the President’s truth did hurt poor Charles and David Koch.
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