MVP of the Senate, Whitehouse, Busts Out Koch's Anti-Woke Fossil Fuel Industry Scheme

[ancianita]

Last edited Thu Mar 2, 2023, 08:20 AM - Edit history (1)

Almost complete transcription...

"... what is happening out there and why this has happened.

The Republicans would like us to believe that some bizarre viral epidemic of "wokeism" has spread into America's great financial companies, into the investment advisers, into the banks, into all kinds of fiduciaries, and that that needs to somehow be excised.

That is not what has happened. That is preposterous magical thinking.

What has happened is that the long forecast dangers of climate change that scientists have been telling us about for years have now gotten so real and so immediate that they have hit the due diligence horizon ...When you owe somebody else a fiduciary duty... then you have to tell them the truth ... about risks and the risks associated with climate change, the risks caused by the fossil fuel industry's relentless emissions... now so real and immediate that they can't be denied by big institutions that have no real interest in climate change but are absolutely obliged to tell the truth as fiduciaries.
And so that fiduciary threshold has been crossed.

And the fossil fuel industry, which is used to bullying to get its way is now pushing this completely fake anti-ESG effort in order to try to undo what the free market and what real life and facts and fiduciary obligations are causing other industries to deal with.

One telltale clue here is that when they're done talking about "woke capitalism" and when they're done talking about anti-ESG stuff, when you actually look at what the objection is, what the specific thing is that they're pushing back against -- in the ESG, it's always the E.

It's never the S. It's never the G. It's not social stuff. It's not governance stuff. It's environmental stuff. And within that E for environmental stuff, it's E for emissions. That is always the 'graviman' of the complaint. So that tells you a lot about who's behind this, and who is pitching it tells you a lot about who is behind it because you have fossil fuel organizations like the Attorney Generals' association that is cranking up and turning out Republican attorney generals to push this theory. You've got the Republican state treasurers, often funded by the fossil fuel industry, and a group called the 'State Financial Officers Foundation, which has glommed the state treasurers together to try to push on this. You get state boards like the Texas Railroad Commission, again, heavily, heavily involved with the fossil fuel industry that are pushing all of this.

When you look at what it is, you can see that it's target is always fossil fuel emissions, and you can see that its proponents are always fossil fuel funded. That tells you why we are where we are.

The rule that the fossil fuel industry pushed through during the Trump administration, an administration that essentially did everything the fossil fuel industry wanted it to do, would have restricted the ability of investment professionals to deliver the products that customers actually want and prevent them from looking at environmental risk and social issues or governance. Again, this is really about the environmental piece.

The Biden rule just undoes that. Nobody has to do ESG stuff. That's dictated by customer demand. If you want to, and your customers are demanding that, and if you want to protect them from climate risk, well, there you go, you have to do it.

Another clue about the mischief here is who some of the propagators of this theory have been. One is the Heritage Foundation. The Heritage Foundation is a notorious climate denial group. It has received millions of dollars from the Koch brothers [actually, only Charles Koch himself] political enterprise, from Koch foundations and has plenty of fossil fuel ties. The Texas Public Policy Foundation, another group which is a front group for the oil and gas industry.

I've already mentioned RAGA [Republican Attorneys General Association], which is heavily fossil fuel funded, includes Scott Pruitt, who you may remember from EPA disgrace. They had such control over RAGA that they were able to get him, as the attorney general, to write a letter with the identical text from a fossil fuel company, send it in to the EPA under his own letterhead, under his own signature as attorney general, even though the entire text was written by a fossil fuel company.

So that's the kind of relationship with RAGA, which by the way also helped turn people out for the Jan 6 insurrection -- really, really high quality operation there.

The last group I'll mention is the Marble Freedom Trust. The Marble Freedom Trust is the 501 (c) (4) pop-up operation that magically appeared in Utah to be the recipient of a $1.6 BILLION slush fund gifted to it by a far right billionaire that put it into the hands of a guy named Leonard Leo, who I talked about here on the floor before who is the orchestrator of the scheme capture of the Supreme Court [puchased for $580 Million] and put it into special interest hands...

And the guy who delivered that money into the Marble Freedom Trust was also famous for his support for the Heartland Institute, which is really just an epic climate denial crowd, to the point where one of their more notorious acts was to put up a billboard equating climate scientists to the Unabomber. That is the quality of the debate about climate change that the Heartland Institute brought, and the billionaire who's teed up Marble Freedom Trust was the prime backer of all that, and indeed had his CFO go on the board of Heartland Institute and try to keep the thing afloat so that it could be moderately well managed....

So that's where we're at. These guys are deep into this anti-ESG push.

The dark money operation that I talk about on the floor all the time is behind this ESG thing, just the way it's behind the capture of the court, just the way it's behind the whole climate denial operation that's stymied progress on climate in this building...

So let us vote NO on H.J. Resolution 30. And let's do more than that, let's call this out as a phony op... a scheme run by the fossil fuel industry... that is not something we want to encourage in this country. We have enough of the public not being listened to ... let's put an end to it... "

[ariadne0614]

1. I hear echoes of "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington."

This is a perfect example of why democracy is crucial for preventing the power of oligarchs to corrupt the decision-making process by silencing the truth tellers. If the fascists (Republican Party bosses) ever get complete control of our government, true public servants like Sheldon Whitehouse will be silenced.

[ancianita]

3. I like the way you think.

Yes, indeed. He is part and parcel of what democracy can do to limit autocracy and quasi-mafia rule. The more he addresses the public on YouTube, the smarter the population gets about who/what will secure or endanger their freedoms.

[Timeflyer]

2. He is so awesome--smart, brave, and eloquent.

[ancianita]

4. He does the work of representing the people. He's not performative, like those trifling bag men

of Koch oligarchs on the other side of the aisle.