Where there's Koch there's fire

The Koch brothers and their buddies are trying to kill a carbon-tax ballot initiative in Washington state.

Oddly, that puts them on the same side as Van Jones, Naomi Klein, and some other environmental and social justice activists.

I-732 has split the environmental community, as we reported last week. Some climate activists and scientists like James Hansen support it as a way to make polluters pay and start fighting climate change. Others, like Jones and Klein, oppose it, arguing, among other things, that it’s a “corporate giveaway” because it would lower a manufacturing tax.

Many corporations don’t seem to appreciate the gift, though. Koch Industries has donated $50,000 to the No on 732 campaign. In total, manufacturers, utilities, oil industry groups, and other big business interests have pumped more than $1.3 million into a campaign to defeat the measure, much of it in the last few weeks.

Never thought we’d see Naomi Klein and the Koch brothers on the same side of anything — but, hey, stranger things have happened the epic election cycle of 2016.