Political Quotes

“Madam President, investigative author Jane Mayer has written an important piece of journalism--her new book, ``Dark Money''--about the secret but massive influence-buying rightwing billionaires led by the infamous Koch brothers. Jane Mayer's book catalogs the rise and the expansion into a vast array of front groups of this operation and the role in it of two of America's more shameless villains: Charles and David Koch. Some have called this beast they have created the Kochtopus because it has so many tentacles. The Presiding Officer may be wondering why I am talking about secret influence-buying in my climate speech. The reason is that the story of dark money and the story of climate change denial are the same story-- two sides of the same coin, as it were. Two strategies of that Koch-led, influence-buying operation particularly bear on climate change. Indeed, they are probably the major reason we don't have a comprehensive climate bill in Congress and instead have this present little mouse of a bipartisan energy efficiency bill. ``Oh, there goes Whitehouse,'' I am sure some listeners are saying, ``off his rocker, trying to connect the Koch brothers to this climate change.'' Well, it is not just something I am saying; it is what the Koch brothers' own operatives say when they are crowing about their influence-buying success. I will get to that later, but first the two strategies. One strategy is to mimic real science with phony science. Real science wants to find the truth.…”