Koch Brothers Video Smears Electric Cars. Can You Spot The Lies?

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Not content to push America toward fascism and line their pockets with cash from fossil fuel enterprises that negatively affect the health of millions, the deadly duo of Charles and David Koch have reached down from the executive suite to order up a video designed to paint electric cars as evil, death-dealing machines. It must be fun to have so much money that you can subvert entire governments with devious schemes to make even more money.

Watch this latest video from the Koch-funded front group Fueling U.S. Forward, which has as its motto, “Discover the value and potential of fossil fuels.” Feel free to jot down the lies you can find as you go through this professionally prepared experiment in thought control. Feel free to share your list with others in the comments section.

The brainiacs behind this hatchet job are just a small piece of the vast Koch Industries empire, which has created a dizzying array of think tanks, institutes, research organizations, and shell corporations designed to do one thing and one thing only — make Charles and David Koch richer by stomping out any and all opposition to their business empire. Several of those organizations have played a major role in the attack on climate science over the past 20 years.

Thanks to their willingness to make graft legal, they have subverted much of the federal, state, and local governments in America so that they are stocked with pliable politicians anxious to do the Koch brothers’ bidding. Thanks to them and other like-minded individuals, we have Citizens United; extremists like James Inhofe, Scott Pruitt, and Kris Kobach; and a US Congress falling all over itself to repeal the Affordable Care Act so that the uber wealthy can get a multi-billion-dollar tax cut — even if it means tens of millions of Americans will lose their health coverage.

Emboldened by their success at buying all three branches of government, the Koch-sponsored interests don’t even bother to disguise their nefarious plans to make the government work for them any more. Last month they told members of Congress in no uncertain terms that the “piggy bank” of funds for political donations was closed until legislators repealed the hated ACA.

Morality, humanitarian concerns, and compassion have no place in the Kochosphere. They are Ebenezer Scrooge writ large — greedy, grasping overlords who revel in the misery of others so long as they benefit financially.

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A complete catalog of the Koch brothers network and their dastardly deeds would be larger than the Encyclopedia Britannica. Fortunately, someone has done all the hard work of compiling some of that information for us. Jane Meyer, a writer for The New Yorker has published a book entitled Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right“Few had waged a more relentless or more effective assault on Americans’ belief in government,” Mayer writes.

Media Matters has done an extensive review of Mayer’s book, delving deeply into such topics as how the Kochs buy and control the media to advance their personal agenda. Readers will find disturbing parallels between the machinations of the Koch brothers and the media circus that surrounds the administration of #FakePresident Trump.

To fully understand how trash like the video from Fueling U.S. Forward gets made and distributed, it is necessary to understand the forces at work that created it. Sadly, in today’s world, where discussion is limited to sentences no more than 142 character long, in-depth thinking is difficult. That’s why even though Americans give Congress an approval rating of around 10%, incumbents get reelected 97% of the time.

The power of change is still in the ballot box, but unless people are willing to take the time to understand the issues and actually go vote, that power may soon be lost forever. The Koch brothers are counting on voter apathy and voters’ willingness to believe the last thing they hear. That’s all they need to make their dreams come true.


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Steve Hanley

Steve writes about the interface between technology and sustainability from his home in Florida or anywhere else The Force may lead him. He is proud to be "woke" and doesn't really give a damn why the glass broke. He believes passionately in what Socrates said 3000 years ago: "The secret to change is to focus all of your energy not on fighting the old but on building the new." You can follow him on Substack and LinkedIn but not on Fakebook or any social media platforms controlled by narcissistic yahoos.

Steve Hanley has 5455 posts and counting. See all posts by Steve Hanley