“It’s beneath the president, the dignity of the president, to be doing that,” says Charles Koch, according to this interview in Politico. Mr. Koch was apparently “flabbergasted” by criticism leveled by the president at the Kochs, to wit: “[Y]ou 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.” Obama claimed that the fossil fuel dudes are trying to rig the market in their favor by pushing for laws that would handicap the clean energy folks—they’re engaging in “rent seeking”, to engage in econo-geek talk.
Maybe I’m wrong, but it seems to be me that it’s “rent seeking” to, well seek subsidies for clean energy, not to oppose them. The Kochs have a pretty clean record, so to speak, in opposing all energy subsidies, and President Obama has a pretty consistent record of favoring them for clean energy only. So Charles is right on the facts, it seems to me.
But why is he outraged that the president would criticize him? “The Kochs” have spent literally hundreds of millions of dollars trying to destroy the president and all his works. The Kochs like to talk, a lot, about free speech. Well, presidents have it too..
Afterwords
Ironically, the great energy success story of the Obama years has, of course, been fracking. Obama is likely to go down in history as “President Oil”.
