The Sierra Club just rolled out a new campaign calling Wichita-based Koch Industries "the biggest, scariest company you've never heard of." The environmental nonprofit's website features a series of "Dislike" buttons, each attached to an ugly Koch-related fact that visitors can post directly to their Facebook pages.
The Sierra Club's public push against David and Charles Koch's $35 billion empire comes at a peak time: The Wichita Eagle reports that nine new Republicans on the U.S. House Energy and Commerce Committee signed a Koch-funded pledge to battle President Barack Obama's plan to regulate emissions of greenhouse gases.
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The Koch brothers just became the largest oil and gas industry donors to the Commerce and Energy Committee, ahead of biggies like Exxon-Mobile, according to the Eagle. Twenty-two Republicans on the committee scarfed up $279,500 in Koch bucks, and five Democrats split up another $32,000.
Naturally, Rep. Mike Pompeo of Wichita is on the committee and willing to do Koch's bidding. (We've previously reported on Pompeo's relationship with Koch Industries. If Koch were a crocodile, Pompeo would be one of those little birds that cleans its teeth.)
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But even Pompeo can't out-whore the Energy and Commerce Committee's chairman, Republican Rep. Fred Upton of Michigan. Upton, who accepted $20,000 from Koch employees in 2010, is leading the charge to declaw the Environmental Protection Agency, hoping to get those pesky regulators off his boys' backs.
It's all setting up to be a nightmare for the Sierra Club and like-minded environmental watchdogs. What will clicking "Dislike" do to keep the regulatory walls from tumbling down? Probably nothing. Unless ...
Mark Zuckerberg is no Koch bro, but his company, Facebook, is worth an estimated $23 billion -- without ever having to strike oil. Does anyone know if Zuckerberg is a "fan" of polar bears?
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