Yes, I know that the Koch Brothers have a history, albeit distant, of supporting the Libertarian Party.
Yes, I know that the Koch Brothers are voraciously anti-regulation when it suits them.
Yes, I know that many people here call them libertarians.
But they are not libertarians.
Why?
Because a libertarian doesn't do this.
For the last few months, the Kochs and other big polluters have been spending heavily to fight incentives for renewable energy, which have been adopted by most states. They particularly dislike state laws that allow homeowners with solar panels to sell power they don’t need back to electric utilities. So they’ve been pushing legislatures to impose a surtax on this increasingly popular practice, hoping to make installing solar panels on houses less attractive.
The Kochs are fighting desperately to suppress solar energy production because they have billions of dollars of carbon wealth sitting underground that can only become cash money when someone digs it up and sets it on fire.
The next time you hear some gasbag stenographer suggest that the Kochs want less government, remember this. They do not want less government. They want to buy government and monetize it. They want to weaponize government to their advantage. If libertarianism has an opposite, it looks something like this.
There are lots of things you can call the Kochs if you are looking for something that's both pejorative and true -- e.g., "robber barons" or "corporatist swindlers" or "astroturfers" or "douchewizards."
But libertarians they are most certainly not.
As you were.