Do I have any issues with a Tom Steyer using any of his legitimately earned billions of dollars to donate to political causes, candidates, campaigns, and super PACS in which he believes? Absolutely not. Do I have a problem with Tom Steyer smearing other billionaires for doing so, funding a perniciously targeted misinformation campaign full of flat-out falsehoods against the Keystone XL pipeline, and pretending that he has some sort of imagined moral high ground in this arena? Yes, yes I do. Via Politico:

Liberal billionaire Tom Steyer insisted Tuesday that he’s not the left’s version of the Koch brothers. …

Charles and David Koch’s priorities “line up perfectly with their pocketbooks — and that’s not true for us,” Steyer said.

A Koch spokesman objected to Steyer’s characterization.

“That assertion is false and disingenuous, and people can see through that. Koch opposes all mandates and subsidies, even when they exist for businesses in which we operate. In doing so, we act against our self-interest. We have been consistent in this position for over 40 years,” spokesman Robert Tappan said in an email. …

But Steyer countered that there are major differences between himself and the Koch brothers, and he argued that his operation is “completely open” and transparent. “I think they have not been huge embracers of transparency,” he said of the Kochs.

“I think they’re in a very, very different position than me and from the people that I work with. And the fact that we’re on opposite sides of the table on a lot of issues — that is true. But the way that we’re approaching them is very, very different,” he said.

This isn’t the first time Steyer has disclaimed similarities to the Koch brothers, and while I’m sure it must be such a trial to suffer the slings and arrows of comparisons to that dreadfully indecent and un-American duo, the gentleman needs to check himself before he wrecks himself and ends up in the old-men-yelling-at-clouds detachment. I would direct you to some of my old posts here, here, here, and here if you’d like a refresher on just how egregious Steyer’s anti-Keystone XL pipeline crusade really is, but for Steyer to claim that he has never in his life rent-sought and that all of his motivations come only from the pureness of his public-welfare-promoting heart is some mind-boggling hypocrisy. For more on that particular point, I can’t do it any better than John Hinderaker at Powerline, who has some excellent suggestions for the many ways in which Steyer might improve his own transparency record and come clean about the role of the dirty energy he claims to abhor in having earned him his billions.