We Threaten Their Fossil Fuel-Funded Charade

Sheldon Whitehouse Blocked Unblock Follow Following Jul 24, 2016

You may have seen a letter from a bunch of wholesome-sounding think tanks about my colleagues’ and my effort to expose their web of denial blocking U.S. action on climate change.

As you can imagine, the monkeys get agitated when we point out the leashes that connect them to the organ grinder. In their letter, they accuse us of keeping a Nixon-style “enemies list”; they brand our spotlighting as “threats”; and they call us “tyrants”, comparing our action on the Senate floor to King George’s attempt to curtail the Founding Fathers. Oh, please.

With respect to their being our “enemies list”, what binds them together is not us, it’s their own web of funding, staff, and false messages. Those common links are evident to academics, investigative journalists, authors, and public interest groups who expose their scheming. These front groups, including ones named after founding fathers Madison, Franklin and Jefferson, are also part the Koch brothers-backed State Policy Network, a national clearing house of climate denial nonsense.

Collectively, the groups that signed this letter received over $92 million from the Koch family, the identity-laundering Donors Trust and Donors Capital, and ExxonMobil. The whole point of Donors Trust and Donors Capital is to obscure the origins of funding so nobody knows who is behind the web. But from what we can see, it’s clear that these front groups prove our point: they are paid hirelings of fossil fuel billionaires who seek to sabotage America’s climate action from the shadows.

And as far as “tyrants” goes, guess who is running a massive, secretive political operation reported to be bigger and better than the Republican National Committee — in effect a third party of their own? Who threatens disobedient politicians with

“political peril” if they get out of line on climate? Yep, the organ grinder Koch brothers’ enterprise.

We know why these front groups are agitated. It’s a life or death proposition for them. They have to maintain the illusion of independence and legitimacy. The Koch brothers won’t have much use for them once they’re outed. And if the organ grinder fires the monkeys, what are they then to do? Hence the shrieky tone — we threaten their fossil fuel-funded charade.

Click here see how a group of my colleagues and I responded to these “web of denial” front groups.