“Standing in the way of progress”: Obama calls out Koch brothers over anti-solar hypocrisy (BOG) [View all]

The big-spending, libertarian Koch brothers are all about the free market — until free market-driven innovation directly threatens their interests.

The hypocrisy is so transparent, even President Obama is directly calling them out on it.

“Now, it’s one thing if you’re consistent in being free market,” Obama said at a solar industry summit in Las Vegas Monday night. “It’s another thing when you’re free market until it’s solar that’s working and people want to buy and suddenly you’re not for it any more.”

It’s a scenario that fits the activities of the Koch brothers, and the various lobbying groups they back, to a T — as Obama acknowledged in his speech: “When 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 to prevent new clean energy businesses from succeeding, that’s s problem,”

“That’s not the American way. That’s not progress. That’s not innovation. That’s rent seeking. That’s standing in the way of progress,” he continued.

It was, reportedly, the first time Obama’s singled out the Kochs by name for their anti-solar campaigning. And it was about time, seeing as how the Kochs, and the absurd amount of money they’re pumping into the political system, have the ability to completely undermine Obama’s (mostly) aggressive work to fight climate change....

http://www.salon.com/2015/08/25/standing_in_the_way_of_progress_obama_calls_out_the_koch_brothers_over_their_anti_solar_hypocrisy/ via Salon