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Home > Dark Money: Jane Mayer on How the Koch Bros. & Billionaire Allies
Funded the Rise of the Far Right
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Dark Money: Jane Mayer on How the Koch Bros. & Billionaire Allies Funded the
Rise of the Far Right
By Amy Goodman [1] / Democracy Now! [2]
January 20, 2016
Democrats and Republicans are expected to spend about $1 billion getting
their 2016 nominee elected. Theres a third group that will spend almost as
much. Its not a political party, and it doesnt have any candidates. Its
the right-wing political network backed by the billionaire Koch brothers,
Charles and David Koch, expected to spend nearly $900 million in 2016. The
Kochs 2016 plans come as part of an effort to funnel hundreds of millions
of dollars to conservative candidates and causes over the last four decades.
The story of the Koch brothers and an allied group of billionaire donors is
told in a new book by New Yorker reporter Jane Mayer, "Dark Money: The
Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right."
Mayer traces how the Kochs and other billionaires have leveraged their
business empires to shape the political system in the mold of their
right-wing agenda.
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TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: I wanted to go back to the beginning of your book. You start
the book with the inauguration of President Obama in January of 2009 and all
the attention and the enthusiasm that that generated across the world and in
the United States. But then you also say that that very month there was a
secret meeting that was convened by the Kochs of billionaires and
multimillionaires with a completely different agenda. If you could talk
about that?
JANE MAYER: Yeah, well, Im glad you ask, because the book is not just about
the Kochs. And the Kochs, on their own, probably would not be able to have
the kind of influence they have. But what theyve done is kind of a magic
trick. Theyve attracted around themtheyve purposefully built what they
call an unprecedented networkits a pipeline, they talk about it, toowhere
theyve gathered about 400 other extraordinarily wealthy conservatives with
them to create a kind of a billionaire caucus almost. And thats the group
that met, just as Obama was being inaugurated. Soon after that, they met to
figure out: How can we obstruct this? They regarded it as a catastrophe that
Obama had been elected, and they wanted to see if they could stop change
from taking place in the country and keep the order the way it had been for
them during the Bush years, and maybe even push it further to the right.
So this is notits an organization that I think people need to understand
is not just about elections. Theyve been playing a long game that started
40 years ago, when Charles Koch really got involved in politics in the
beginning. And they wanted to change not just who rules the country, but how
the country thinks. Theyre very antigovernment. They areand they have
pushed this kind of antigovernment line for 40 years through many different
channels. And its kind of a war of ideas as much as anything else.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, you also talk about the secrecy with which they
operate. You quote Fred Koch, the family patriarch, as saying, "The whale
that spouts is the one that gets harpooned."
JANE MAYER: Yes. And soand Ive talked tomany operatives who have worked
for the Kochs are interviewed in this book. And one of them told me, theyre
not just under the radar, they are underground. And they, for many years,
just were almost invisible. They used tothe Kochs, themselves, used to call
Koch Industries the biggest company that youve never heard of. Its the
second-largest private company in America. It has $115 billion of business a
year. And most people didnt know what it was. Many Americans use their
products, they dont realizeDixie cups, Stainmaster carpet, Lycra,
Georgia-Pacific lumber, theres Quilted Northern toilet paper. There are so
many products that theyve flooded the American market with, yet most people
dont realize that that is coming from these two brothers who own most of
the company and are pouring the money into far-right-wing politics.
AMY GOODMAN: Were going to keep talking about this with Jane Mayer, staff
writer for The New Yorker, author of the new book, Dark Money: The Hidden
History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right. Stay with
us.
[break]
AMY GOODMAN: Our guest for the hour is Jane Mayer, staff writer for The New
Yorker, author of the new book, Dark Money: The Hidden History of the
Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right. If you think about whats
happening in this country, the rise of inequality, why climate change action
doesnt happen in a more systemic waymany different issuesJane Mayer talks
about some of the reasons, the power blocs behind the major obstaclesthe
bloc. Start with where youre getting your information.
JANE MAYER: Well, I interviewed hundreds of people for this. And thereI
have many new documents also. I mean, one of the things that was interesting
to me, I mean, I went into this kind of wondering why does the government
seem so dysfunctional. As you said, why cant something be done about global
warming in Congress? All of the scientific community is going one way,
Congress is going the other. American public opinion supports doing
something about global warming, the Congress wont do anything. Whats
holding it up? Money, the fossil fuel interests and others. And you can see
it in here.
Theres aand it begins long ago. In about 1976, there was a plan laid by
Charles Koch to build what he called a radical movement to change the way
that America voted and thought. And he said we need to, quote-unquote,
"destroy" the statist paradigm and start a movement. And he modeled it on
the John Birch Society. He loved the secrecy of the John Birch Society. And
theres a paper that is quoted in here that he wrote in 1976 about how he
was going to found a movement and launch it. So, this has been a long,
long-running project. And hes built it up. Hes an engineer. Hes
extraordinarily wealthy. And he has worked with a number of very smart
people to build this network that tries to sort of push, push, push the
country in his direction.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And you also talk, when it comesabout climate change, the
direct interest that Koch Industries has in climate denial, because you say
JANE MAYER: Oh, certainly.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: You talk aboutcan you talk about their refinery, the Pine
Bend refinery in Minnesota, and its importance in terms of polluting the
planet?
JANE MAYER: Sure. Their fortune is built on fossil fuels. I mean, they are
refiners, and they have tremendous numbers of pipelines, and they own a huge
amount of the tar sands that are up in Canada. And so, if America moved off
fossil fuels, it would be catastrophic for their business. Its a direct
interest that theyve got in this. And so, one of the things I do is try to
follow the money in the denial of climate change, and an awful lot of it
goes back to the Kochs and their circle. They have a number of other fossil
fuel companies that are part of their network, their group, this group of
400 or so. The members are secret, but theres one guest list that actually
was left behind somewhere, so weve been able to see a little bit of who the
members areat least at one point. And it includes many well-known players
and a number of fossil fuel interests.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: I wanted to ask you about the hedge fund people that
apparently are involved, as well.
JANE MAYER: Yeah.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Stephen Schwarzman of Blackstone, Steve Cohen of SAC.
JANE MAYER: Steven Cohen of SAC Capital, yes.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: SAC Capital.
JANE MAYER: Uh-huh, uh-huh. No, there are a number of very well-known
finance figures who are extraordinarily wealthy. And one of the things that
this group has worked hard to do is to keep sort of tax breaks for
billionaires, really, for hedge funds. One is the carried interest loophole,
its called, and they wanted to keep it open. There was talk in Congress
that the Democrats might try to close it. And so this brought a flood of
money from the finance community into this group to shutto keep that
loophole open for them. It means that hedge fund managers pay taxes at 15
percent, which is lower than almostyou know, any decently paid American
pays more in taxes than many of these people.
AMY GOODMAN: So, lets talk about how they built their power. You got a hold
of a several-hundred-page history called "Stealth: The History of Charles
Kochs Political Activities." Where did this document come from? And tell us
about the four brothersits not just two, Charles and David.
JANE MAYER: Well, this is the thing. Its an amazing family feud that took
place inside this family. There are four brothers, as you say. Two of them
formed one team, two formed the other team. They were in court for 20 years
against each other, fighting over who was going to get to run the company
and have more access to the family fortune. And one of the brothers, who was
estrangedhis name is Bill Kochcommissioned a history. He hired a
historian, who had actually been hired previously by Koch Industries to do
its own history. So, it was a historian who worked at George Mason
University, and he did a history for Bill Koch of what the other brother,
Charles, was doing politically. Its called "Stealth" because he describes a
secret plan by Charles to try to manipulate American politics. Its
fascinating. Its full of new details, including this paper that I mentioned
that Charles wrote in 1976 that no ones seen before.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And part of the documents you uncovered was a sealedor at
least information on a sealed deposition that involved the battle between
the brothers, an attempt by Charles and David to blackmail their own
oldestthe eldest brother, Frederick, and to out him as gay, according to
the deposition. Could you talk about that?
JANE MAYER: Its true. It wasthis is really, you know, a painful scene in
this, and I thinkbut gives you an idea of just how rough these guys play.
Youve got three brothers trying to set up the fourth, who they thought was
gay. And they basically hold a kangaroo court. They invite him in under
false pretexts. He walks into the room. The three of them are facing him in
chairs, and hes supposed to sit across from them. And they accuse him of
being gay. They say, "Were going to tell our father youre gay, unless you
give us your shares in the company." The brother that was accused, his
names Frederick. Hes the oldest. He stood up and said, "I never want to
hear about this again," and he walked out of the room. But all of this is
described in a deposition thats remained sealed during all these years.
Gives you just a glimpse, I think, of maybe how ruthless these players are.
AMY GOODMAN: How did you get a hold of it? And what happened with the
company then, with Bill and Frederick?
JANE MAYER: Well, I cant say how I got a hold of it, but I can say that it
is absolutely unrefuted, that this is the real thing. And the company
wasfor 20 years, there was fighting between these two sets of brothers, the
two against two. And in the end, Charles and David triumphed, and they run
the company, own the company, for the most part. There are a few other
shares that a few scattered other people have, but basically they own
virtually the whole company. And the two that were left out got decent-sized
inheritances and went off on their own ways.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Now, this is the only other part of your book that the Kochs
directly challenged. Theyre claiming that this information on this court
battle wasespecially the information in the deposition, was eventually
rejected by a jury, that they triumphed and that it was actually false
allegations.
JANE MAYER: Which? The allegation that they blackmailed the brother?
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Right.
JANE MAYER: No. Well, it says thatit says in the book that Charles denied
it, but this is a deposition sworn to be true by Bill Koch, who was in the
room at the time. So, I thinktake it for what it is. Facts are facts.
AMY GOODMAN: I want to turn to Charles Koch in his own words. Speaking at
the Wichita Metro Chamber 2015 annual meeting, Koch was asked to explain
what "good profit" is. His latest book is called Good Profit: How Creating
Value for Others Built One of the Worlds Most Successful Companies. This is
a part of what he said.
CHARLES KOCH: Good profit is creating superior value in society by helping
your customers improve their lives. And a business does that byas I say, by
creating superior value for its customers and by more efficiently using
resources and driving creative destruction, and, while youre doing it, do
the best job of keeping people safe and protecting the environment. And if
you do a superior job of all those, believe me, you will be profitable. And
if you dont, you wont last. Thats our philosophy.
AMY GOODMAN: So thats Charles Koch speaking in his own words. And I wanted
to talk about the company and the environmentalism. In 2012, the EPA said
that Koch Industries was the largest or the single biggest producer of toxic
waste in the United States. In 2014, according to the Toxic Release
Inventory, Koch Industries had consistently appeared among the top five U.S.
producers of toxic waste.
JANE MAYER: Yeah, and theres a University of Massachusetts in Amherst
study, too, that says that theyre one of only three companies that has been
among the top producers of air pollution, water pollution and climate
pollution. They have a huge history of environmental violations. And they
say theyve worked hard to improve on that. And I think they probably are
better than they were way back in the '90s maybe, but at that point they had
some of the largest environmental judgments against them that had ever been
brought in the U.S. So they have a checkered history on this subject. And I
was there in Wichita when Charles Koch gave that speech, and it certainly
caught my ear when he mentioned that one of the things you need to do is
have a good environmental record. I'm glad he thinks thats important.
AMY GOODMAN: So talk about climate change, as we just talked about it
before, but go further with what they have done around this issue, the
groups that have been set up, the money that has been funneled in to either
obfuscate or deny human-induced climate change.
JANE MAYER: Well, what you have to understand is the Kochs have built kind
of an assembly line to manufacture political change. And it includes think
tanks, which produce papers. It includes advocacy groups, that advocate for
policies. And it includes giving money to candidates. And you put those
three together, and theyve pushed against doing anything about climate
change on all those three fronts at once. So you get papers that look like
theyre real scientific opinions doubting that climate change is real, you
get advocacy groups saying we cant afford to do anything about it, and you
get candidates who have to sign a pledge thattheir largest political group
is Americans for Prosperity. They have a pledge that says that if you want
to get money from thisfrom their donors, you have to sign a pledge saying
that, if elected, you will do nothing about climate change that requires
spending any money on the problem. And 156 members of Congress currently
have signed that pledge. So, it sort of is a recipe for how to tie the hands
of the country from doing anything on this.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, whowhat are some of these think tanks? And also, talk
about their role with ALEC.
JANE MAYER: Well, thats just the other thing thats so interesting, is
theyve created a think tank and helped fund it in almost every state. In
fact, in every state, theres at least one of these think tanks. Its called
the State Policy Network. And theyve worked with the group ALEC, that you
all probably know about, which sort of funnels corporate money into lobbying
in state legislatures.
AMY GOODMAN: The American Legislative Exchange Council.
JANE MAYER: Thats right, yeah. And so, they have kind ofI mean, theres a
reason that they won the name "The Kochtopus." Its kind of tentacles on
many different levels out there and a lot of attention to state
legislatures, where money goes a lot further.
AMY GOODMAN: David Koch actually ran for Congress, is that right, in 1980?
JANE MAYER: He actually ran to become vice president of the United States in
1980. And this isone of the questions I had wasso he ran in 1980 on the
Libertarian ticket, and he got something like 1 percent of the vote. He
spent a huge amount of
AMY GOODMAN: Not Congress. So, for vice president.
JANE MAYER: No, for the vice president. And it was sowhich gives you an
indication: They were so far right, they were running against Ronald Reagan
because they thought he was too liberal. And so, at that time, you havethey
really defined the furthest fringe in America, and even conservatives
denounced their views. William F. Buckley called their views
anarcho-totalitarianism. So, what interested me, as a question, as a
reporter, was: How did this group, these two brothers and the others around
them, get from the furthest fringe to the center of gravity in the
Republican Party? Its pulled their way so far during these 30 years since
then.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: You mentioned this phrase that Buckley used,
"anarcho-totalitarianism." Talk about the Freedom School and how David Koch
was involved with this little-known operationin Colorado, was it?
JANE MAYER: It is. It was in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Even before he ran
as vice president on the Libertarian Party, he was, I guess, a young man in
his thirties and was very attracted to this school called the Freedom School
that was run by a man named [Robert] LeFevre, who had had a very odd
background. He had had a lot of legal brushes. And they taught a kind of a
fanatical libertarianism that was almost anarchism. The head of the school,
this LeFevre, called ithimself an "autarchist," instead of an anarchist.
They wanted to shrink the government to the point where they couldnt tax,
the government couldnt tax. They wanted to get rid of the EPA. They wanted
to get rid of pretty much much of the federal government. And the historical
view of this group was that the robber barons were Americas heroes and that
the Gilded Age really was the golden age. And it was a completely
revisionist view of America. And Charles Koch was so supportive of it, he
became a trustee of the school.
AMY GOODMAN: Were talking to Jane Mayer. When we come back, I want to find
out about her own history in investigating the Kochsdid that lead to an
investigation of her and her reporting?and continue to talk about the size
of the operation. Again, as we said at the beginning of the show, the
Republican and Democratic parties are expected to spend each something like
$1 billion in the 2016 elections. Theres another party thats going to
spend about that muchnot a political party per se, but it is the $900
billion of this$900 million, close to a billion dollars, that were looking
at today. Jane Mayer is staff writer for The New Yorker. Her book is called
Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the
Radical Right. Stay with us.
[break]
AMY GOODMAN: "Talkin John Birch Paranoid Blues" by Bob Dylan, here
onDemocracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. Im Amy
Goodman, with Juan González. Our guest for the hour is Jane Mayer, staff
writer for The New Yorker, author of multiple best-selling books, her most
recent, Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise
of the Radical Right. So that song that Bob Dylan was just singing, talking
about the John Birch Society, where, you know, not only Fred Koch, the
patriarch of the family, Charles and Davids father, but Charles Koch also
was a member of the John Birch Society. The John Birch Society called, what,
General Eisenhower, President Dwight Eisenhower, a communist?
JANE MAYER: Yes, they thought Dwight Eisenhower was a communist. They saw
communist conspiracies behind all kinds of things. And I have to say that
Im told that Charles Koch didnt buy all the far-fetched conspiracy
theories, and he really went in a slightly different direction. He was more
preoccupied with becoming a kind of a radical economic libertarian, meaning
that he wanted to get the government to just let businesses do what they
wanted to do and let the free market rule America. And so hes fought to
keep taxes really low, get rid of almost all regulations on business. This
is really what hes focused on, not so much on communism.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And you also describe in the book how some of the gatherings
of this caucus of the billionaires have also at times made it uncomfortable
for the established Republican figures, like Senator John Cornyn at one
point. And talk about their ability to empower the radical right in
Congress.
JANE MAYER: Well, I mean, when Obama was elected, there was a dilemma within
the Republican Party. It was: Do we work with him and try to get as much as
we canthe sort of the old-fashioned way of politics, where you make
compromisesor do we just simply go on strike and try to demonize him and
obstruct everything, shut down the government? And there was a big argument,
actually, that took place in front of the Koch donor group very early on.
And the side that won, and won over the hearts of this donor group, was the
side of Jim DeMint, who was then the senator from South Carolina, who said,
"Obstruct, obstruct, obstruct." And from that point onand were talking
AMY GOODMAN: He would later quit, right, and go to become the head of the
Heritage society.
JANE MAYER: Thats right.
AMY GOODMAN: Heritage Foundation.
JANE MAYER: Thats right. But at that point, it was a choice, and this group
put its money in to stop Obama any way you can. And so, part of also what I
try to tell the story of hereand you have to kind of follow the money
through the chaptersbut is that its not just an election force. Itsthis
club has become a force of obstruction against governing, so that when Obama
proposes the healthcare plan, this group funnels money to many, many
different front groups that then, unseen to the American public, pop up and
oppose the healthcare plan and disrupt meetings. I dont know if people
remember those town hall meetings during, I think it was, the summer of
2010, when there was just kind of pandemonium breaking out. And a lot of
that werethere were actually sort of plans laid among this group to pour
money in, get people all riled up and make them think that this was going to
have death squads, things like that, that werethat got people very upset.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And the connection to the tea party?
JANE MAYER: They put a lot of money into the tea party. I started writing
about them in the summer of 2010. And at that point, the spokesmen for the
Kochs were saying they had nothing to do with the tea party. I then went
down to a weekend meeting that the biggest Koch group was holding, Americans
for Prosperity, in Austin, Texas, and there they were giving seminars to tea
party members on how to organize. So they reallyand the people I
interviewed down there evidently hadnt gotten the sound bites, because
there were saying, "Are you kidding? The tea party? Weve been into the tea
party before it was cool."
And so, itsI think whats interesting to me is that, as youve been
saying, there have always been Democrats with a lot of money, Republicans
with a lot of money. The history of the country has been, you know, of
certainly big money players. What youve got here is almost like a third
party that is the money party. Its a conservative, outside pressure group
that is acting as a force field, pulling the Republican Party, particularly,
to the right.
AMY GOODMAN: With three-and-a-half times as many employees as the Republican
National Committee.
JANE MAYER: And a larger budget by two times the budget that the Republican
National Committee had in the 2012 presidential campaign. So youre talking
about really a pretty professionally organized operation. Theres a new
paper [3] that I thought was really interesting by Theda Skocpol, whos a
professor at Harvard. It came out just last week. Its called "The Koch
Effect." And it describes whats been built by them and their allied donors
as akin to a national party.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, Jane, Id like to ask youin July, speaking at the
NAACPannual convention in Philadelphia, President Obama praised the Koch
brothers for their involvement in the campaign to reform the criminal
justice system. This is what he said.
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: [This is a cause thats] bringing people in both
houses of Congress together. Its created some unlikely bedfellows. Youve
got Van Jones and Newt Gingrich. Youve got Americans for Tax Reform and the
ACLU. Youve got theNAACP and the Koch brothers. No, youve got to give them
credit. Youve got to call it like you see it.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, a day after President Obamas speech in July, we
interviewed Mark Holden [4], senior vice president and general counsel for
Koch Industries, on why the Koch brothers were getting involved in a
coalition to reform the criminal justice system.
MARK HOLDEN: Charles Koch and David Koch are classical liberals who believe
in expansive individual liberties in the Bill of Rights and limited
government. And so, if your goals are to honor the Bill of Rights and to
remove obstacles to opportunity, especially for the poor and the
disadvantaged, you have to be in the criminal justice arena.
And to answer your question, you know, as Van pointed out, what worked 20 or
30 years ago doesnt work today. And we have to have the intellectual
honesty and courage and humility to correct that. In our businesses, we do
that all the time when things arent working. And I think, to Vans point,
what were seeing happen in the states is really a template for what should
happen at the federal level, and making sure that everything we do enhances
public safety and that it honors the Bill of Rights and treats everybody in
the system as individuals with dignity and respect, particularly victims,
law enforcement, the incarcerated, the accused and their families.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: That was Mark Holden, a senior counsel for the Koch
Industries. This whole issue of them getting involved in criminal justice
reform?
JANE MAYER: Well, I mean, Mark Holden is a very eloquent advocate for
criminal justice reform. And the Kochs have long cared about criminal
justice reform. But what people may not realize is that theyve pushed a
different kind of reform than most liberals have. What they would like to do
is get rid of many crimes that have to do with pollution, that have to do
with corporate crimes, tax crimes. They want to weaken prosecution of
companies like their own.
Now, there is a tiny overlap. If you did a Venn diagram of where the far
right and everybody else overlaps, they would like to see sentencing reform
for drug offenders at this point, whichnonviolent drug offenders, which
youveyou know, its an important issue. Its good theyre talking about
it. Its not something theyve cared about until 2014. And I have a new
piece [5] out in The New Yorker which notes that in 2014 they launched a
huge public relations campaign to change their image. Theyre involved in
what David Axelrod described as one of the biggest rebranding efforts
anybodys ever launched. And I see this as certainly part of it.
And the reason I do isyoull see, if you read this bookthere are tapes.
There are tapes that were leaked out from one of their meetings, where they
describe how they need to change their image. After they did not win the
presidency in 2012, despite the money they put behind Mitt Romney, they went
back to the drawing board, and they tried to figure out what they were doing
wrong. And they did a huge number of polls. And they came to the conclusion
that the public thought they were greedy and didnt trust them. And so, they
speak in this tape about how we need to prove that we have good intent and
we care about other people. And at that point, they launched a number of
programs that have to do with doing good works for the poor. So, I see this
as quite related to that.
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Home > Dark Money: Jane Mayer on How the Koch Bros. & Billionaire Allies
Funded the Rise of the Far Right
Dark Money: Jane Mayer on How the Koch Bros. & Billionaire Allies Funded the
Rise of the Far Right
By Amy Goodman [1] / Democracy Now! [2]
January 20, 2016
Democrats and Republicans are expected to spend about $1 billion getting
their 2016 nominee elected. Theres a third group that will spend almost as
much. Its not a political party, and it doesnt have any candidates. Its
the right-wing political network backed by the billionaire Koch brothers,
Charles and David Koch, expected to spend nearly $900 million in 2016. The
Kochs 2016 plans come as part of an effort to funnel hundreds of millions
of dollars to conservative candidates and causes over the last four decades.
The story of the Koch brothers and an allied group of billionaire donors is
told in a new book by New Yorker reporter Jane Mayer, "Dark Money: The
Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right."
Mayer traces how the Kochs and other billionaires have leveraged their
business empires to shape the political system in the mold of their
right-wing agenda.
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: I wanted to go back to the beginning of your book. You start
the book with the inauguration of President Obama in January of 2009 and all
the attention and the enthusiasm that that generated across the world and in
the United States. But then you also say that that very month there was a
secret meeting that was convened by the Kochs of billionaires and
multimillionaires with a completely different agenda. If you could talk
about that?
JANE MAYER: Yeah, well, Im glad you ask, because the book is not just about
the Kochs. And the Kochs, on their own, probably would not be able to have
the kind of influence they have. But what theyve done is kind of a magic
trick. Theyve attracted around themtheyve purposefully built what they
call an unprecedented networkits a pipeline, they talk about it, toowhere
theyve gathered about 400 other extraordinarily wealthy conservatives with
them to create a kind of a billionaire caucus almost. And thats the group
that met, just as Obama was being inaugurated. Soon after that, they met to
figure out: How can we obstruct this? They regarded it as a catastrophe that
Obama had been elected, and they wanted to see if they could stop change
from taking place in the country and keep the order the way it had been for
them during the Bush years, and maybe even push it further to the right.
So this is notits an organization that I think people need to understand
is not just about elections. Theyve been playing a long game that started
40 years ago, when Charles Koch really got involved in politics in the
beginning. And they wanted to change not just who rules the country, but how
the country thinks. Theyre very antigovernment. They areand they have
pushed this kind of antigovernment line for 40 years through many different
channels. And its kind of a war of ideas as much as anything else.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, you also talk about the secrecy with which they
operate. You quote Fred Koch, the family patriarch, as saying, "The whale
that spouts is the one that gets harpooned."
JANE MAYER: Yes. And soand Ive talked tomany operatives who have worked
for the Kochs are interviewed in this book. And one of them told me, theyre
not just under the radar, they are underground. And they, for many years,
just were almost invisible. They used tothe Kochs, themselves, used to call
Koch Industries the biggest company that youve never heard of. Its the
second-largest private company in America. It has $115 billion of business a
year. And most people didnt know what it was. Many Americans use their
products, they dont realizeDixie cups, Stainmaster carpet, Lycra,
Georgia-Pacific lumber, theres Quilted Northern toilet paper. There are so
many products that theyve flooded the American market with, yet most people
dont realize that that is coming from these two brothers who own most of
the company and are pouring the money into far-right-wing politics.
AMY GOODMAN: Were going to keep talking about this with Jane Mayer, staff
writer for The New Yorker, author of the new book, Dark Money: The Hidden
History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right. Stay with
us.
[break]
AMY GOODMAN: Our guest for the hour is Jane Mayer, staff writer for The New
Yorker, author of the new book, Dark Money: The Hidden History of the
Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right. If you think about whats
happening in this country, the rise of inequality, why climate change action
doesnt happen in a more systemic waymany different issuesJane Mayer talks
about some of the reasons, the power blocs behind the major obstaclesthe
bloc. Start with where youre getting your information.
JANE MAYER: Well, I interviewed hundreds of people for this. And thereI
have many new documents also. I mean, one of the things that was interesting
to me, I mean, I went into this kind of wondering why does the government
seem so dysfunctional. As you said, why cant something be done about global
warming in Congress? All of the scientific community is going one way,
Congress is going the other. American public opinion supports doing
something about global warming, the Congress wont do anything. Whats
holding it up? Money, the fossil fuel interests and others. And you can see
it in here.
Theres aand it begins long ago. In about 1976, there was a plan laid by
Charles Koch to build what he called a radical movement to change the way
that America voted and thought. And he said we need to, quote-unquote,
"destroy" the statist paradigm and start a movement. And he modeled it on
the John Birch Society. He loved the secrecy of the John Birch Society. And
theres a paper that is quoted in here that he wrote in 1976 about how he
was going to found a movement and launch it. So, this has been a long,
long-running project. And hes built it up. Hes an engineer. Hes
extraordinarily wealthy. And he has worked with a number of very smart
people to build this network that tries to sort of push, push, push the
country in his direction.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And you also talk, when it comesabout climate change, the
direct interest that Koch Industries has in climate denial, because you say
JANE MAYER: Oh, certainly.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: You talk aboutcan you talk about their refinery, the Pine
Bend refinery in Minnesota, and its importance in terms of polluting the
planet?
JANE MAYER: Sure. Their fortune is built on fossil fuels. I mean, they are
refiners, and they have tremendous numbers of pipelines, and they own a huge
amount of the tar sands that are up in Canada. And so, if America moved off
fossil fuels, it would be catastrophic for their business. Its a direct
interest that theyve got in this. And so, one of the things I do is try to
follow the money in the denial of climate change, and an awful lot of it
goes back to the Kochs and their circle. They have a number of other fossil
fuel companies that are part of their network, their group, this group of
400 or so. The members are secret, but theres one guest list that actually
was left behind somewhere, so weve been able to see a little bit of who the
members areat least at one point. And it includes many well-known players
and a number of fossil fuel interests.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: I wanted to ask you about the hedge fund people that
apparently are involved, as well.
JANE MAYER: Yeah.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Stephen Schwarzman of Blackstone, Steve Cohen of SAC.
JANE MAYER: Steven Cohen of SAC Capital, yes.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: SAC Capital.
JANE MAYER: Uh-huh, uh-huh. No, there are a number of very well-known
finance figures who are extraordinarily wealthy. And one of the things that
this group has worked hard to do is to keep sort of tax breaks for
billionaires, really, for hedge funds. One is the carried interest loophole,
its called, and they wanted to keep it open. There was talk in Congress
that the Democrats might try to close it. And so this brought a flood of
money from the finance community into this group to shutto keep that
loophole open for them. It means that hedge fund managers pay taxes at 15
percent, which is lower than almostyou know, any decently paid American
pays more in taxes than many of these people.
AMY GOODMAN: So, lets talk about how they built their power. You got a hold
of a several-hundred-page history called "Stealth: The History of Charles
Kochs Political Activities." Where did this document come from? And tell us
about the four brothersits not just two, Charles and David.
JANE MAYER: Well, this is the thing. Its an amazing family feud that took
place inside this family. There are four brothers, as you say. Two of them
formed one team, two formed the other team. They were in court for 20 years
against each other, fighting over who was going to get to run the company
and have more access to the family fortune. And one of the brothers, who was
estrangedhis name is Bill Kochcommissioned a history. He hired a
historian, who had actually been hired previously by Koch Industries to do
its own history. So, it was a historian who worked at George Mason
University, and he did a history for Bill Koch of what the other brother,
Charles, was doing politically. Its called "Stealth" because he describes a
secret plan by Charles to try to manipulate American politics. Its
fascinating. Its full of new details, including this paper that I mentioned
that Charles wrote in 1976 that no ones seen before.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And part of the documents you uncovered was a sealedor at
least information on a sealed deposition that involved the battle between
the brothers, an attempt by Charles and David to blackmail their own
oldestthe eldest brother, Frederick, and to out him as gay, according to
the deposition. Could you talk about that?
JANE MAYER: Its true. It wasthis is really, you know, a painful scene in
this, and I thinkbut gives you an idea of just how rough these guys play.
Youve got three brothers trying to set up the fourth, who they thought was
gay. And they basically hold a kangaroo court. They invite him in under
false pretexts. He walks into the room. The three of them are facing him in
chairs, and hes supposed to sit across from them. And they accuse him of
being gay. They say, "Were going to tell our father youre gay, unless you
give us your shares in the company." The brother that was accused, his
names Frederick. Hes the oldest. He stood up and said, "I never want to
hear about this again," and he walked out of the room. But all of this is
described in a deposition thats remained sealed during all these years.
Gives you just a glimpse, I think, of maybe how ruthless these players are.
AMY GOODMAN: How did you get a hold of it? And what happened with the
company then, with Bill and Frederick?
JANE MAYER: Well, I cant say how I got a hold of it, but I can say that it
is absolutely unrefuted, that this is the real thing. And the company
wasfor 20 years, there was fighting between these two sets of brothers, the
two against two. And in the end, Charles and David triumphed, and they run
the company, own the company, for the most part. There are a few other
shares that a few scattered other people have, but basically they own
virtually the whole company. And the two that were left out got decent-sized
inheritances and went off on their own ways.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Now, this is the only other part of your book that the Kochs
directly challenged. Theyre claiming that this information on this court
battle wasespecially the information in the deposition, was eventually
rejected by a jury, that they triumphed and that it was actually false
allegations.
JANE MAYER: Which? The allegation that they blackmailed the brother?
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Right.
JANE MAYER: No. Well, it says thatit says in the book that Charles denied
it, but this is a deposition sworn to be true by Bill Koch, who was in the
room at the time. So, I thinktake it for what it is. Facts are facts.
AMY GOODMAN: I want to turn to Charles Koch in his own words. Speaking at
the Wichita Metro Chamber 2015 annual meeting, Koch was asked to explain
what "good profit" is. His latest book is called Good Profit: How Creating
Value for Others Built One of the Worlds Most Successful Companies. This is
a part of what he said.
CHARLES KOCH: Good profit is creating superior value in society by helping
your customers improve their lives. And a business does that byas I say, by
creating superior value for its customers and by more efficiently using
resources and driving creative destruction, and, while youre doing it, do
the best job of keeping people safe and protecting the environment. And if
you do a superior job of all those, believe me, you will be profitable. And
if you dont, you wont last. Thats our philosophy.
AMY GOODMAN: So thats Charles Koch speaking in his own words. And I wanted
to talk about the company and the environmentalism. In 2012, the EPA said
that Koch Industries was the largest or the single biggest producer of toxic
waste in the United States. In 2014, according to the Toxic Release
Inventory, Koch Industries had consistently appeared among the top five U.S.
producers of toxic waste.
JANE MAYER: Yeah, and theres a University of Massachusetts in Amherst
study, too, that says that theyre one of only three companies that has been
among the top producers of air pollution, water pollution and climate
pollution. They have a huge history of environmental violations. And they
say theyve worked hard to improve on that. And I think they probably are
better than they were way back in the '90s maybe, but at that point they had
some of the largest environmental judgments against them that had ever been
brought in the U.S. So they have a checkered history on this subject. And I
was there in Wichita when Charles Koch gave that speech, and it certainly
caught my ear when he mentioned that one of the things you need to do is
have a good environmental record. I'm glad he thinks thats important.
AMY GOODMAN: So talk about climate change, as we just talked about it
before, but go further with what they have done around this issue, the
groups that have been set up, the money that has been funneled in to either
obfuscate or deny human-induced climate change.
JANE MAYER: Well, what you have to understand is the Kochs have built kind
of an assembly line to manufacture political change. And it includes think
tanks, which produce papers. It includes advocacy groups, that advocate for
policies. And it includes giving money to candidates. And you put those
three together, and theyve pushed against doing anything about climate
change on all those three fronts at once. So you get papers that look like
theyre real scientific opinions doubting that climate change is real, you
get advocacy groups saying we cant afford to do anything about it, and you
get candidates who have to sign a pledge thattheir largest political group
is Americans for Prosperity. They have a pledge that says that if you want
to get money from thisfrom their donors, you have to sign a pledge saying
that, if elected, you will do nothing about climate change that requires
spending any money on the problem. And 156 members of Congress currently
have signed that pledge. So, it sort of is a recipe for how to tie the hands
of the country from doing anything on this.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, whowhat are some of these think tanks? And also, talk
about their role with ALEC.
JANE MAYER: Well, thats just the other thing thats so interesting, is
theyve created a think tank and helped fund it in almost every state. In
fact, in every state, theres at least one of these think tanks. Its called
the State Policy Network. And theyve worked with the group ALEC, that you
all probably know about, which sort of funnels corporate money into lobbying
in state legislatures.
AMY GOODMAN: The American Legislative Exchange Council.
JANE MAYER: Thats right, yeah. And so, they have kind ofI mean, theres a
reason that they won the name "The Kochtopus." Its kind of tentacles on
many different levels out there and a lot of attention to state
legislatures, where money goes a lot further.
AMY GOODMAN: David Koch actually ran for Congress, is that right, in 1980?
JANE MAYER: He actually ran to become vice president of the United States in
1980. And this isone of the questions I had wasso he ran in 1980 on the
Libertarian ticket, and he got something like 1 percent of the vote. He
spent a huge amount of
AMY GOODMAN: Not Congress. So, for vice president.
JANE MAYER: No, for the vice president. And it was sowhich gives you an
indication: They were so far right, they were running against Ronald Reagan
because they thought he was too liberal. And so, at that time, you havethey
really defined the furthest fringe in America, and even conservatives
denounced their views. William F. Buckley called their views
anarcho-totalitarianism. So, what interested me, as a question, as a
reporter, was: How did this group, these two brothers and the others around
them, get from the furthest fringe to the center of gravity in the
Republican Party? Its pulled their way so far during these 30 years since
then.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: You mentioned this phrase that Buckley used,
"anarcho-totalitarianism." Talk about the Freedom School and how David Koch
was involved with this little-known operationin Colorado, was it?
JANE MAYER: It is. It was in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Even before he ran
as vice president on the Libertarian Party, he was, I guess, a young man in
his thirties and was very attracted to this school called the Freedom School
that was run by a man named [Robert] LeFevre, who had had a very odd
background. He had had a lot of legal brushes. And they taught a kind of a
fanatical libertarianism that was almost anarchism. The head of the school,
this LeFevre, called ithimself an "autarchist," instead of an anarchist.
They wanted to shrink the government to the point where they couldnt tax,
the government couldnt tax. They wanted to get rid of the EPA. They wanted
to get rid of pretty much much of the federal government. And the historical
view of this group was that the robber barons were Americas heroes and that
the Gilded Age really was the golden age. And it was a completely
revisionist view of America. And Charles Koch was so supportive of it, he
became a trustee of the school.
AMY GOODMAN: Were talking to Jane Mayer. When we come back, I want to find
out about her own history in investigating the Kochsdid that lead to an
investigation of her and her reporting?and continue to talk about the size
of the operation. Again, as we said at the beginning of the show, the
Republican and Democratic parties are expected to spend each something like
$1 billion in the 2016 elections. Theres another party thats going to
spend about that muchnot a political party per se, but it is the $900
billion of this$900 million, close to a billion dollars, that were looking
at today. Jane Mayer is staff writer for The New Yorker. Her book is called
Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the
Radical Right. Stay with us.
[break]
AMY GOODMAN: "Talkin John Birch Paranoid Blues" by Bob Dylan, here
onDemocracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. Im Amy
Goodman, with Juan González. Our guest for the hour is Jane Mayer, staff
writer for The New Yorker, author of multiple best-selling books, her most
recent, Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise
of the Radical Right. So that song that Bob Dylan was just singing, talking
about the John Birch Society, where, you know, not only Fred Koch, the
patriarch of the family, Charles and Davids father, but Charles Koch also
was a member of the John Birch Society. The John Birch Society called, what,
General Eisenhower, President Dwight Eisenhower, a communist?
JANE MAYER: Yes, they thought Dwight Eisenhower was a communist. They saw
communist conspiracies behind all kinds of things. And I have to say that
Im told that Charles Koch didnt buy all the far-fetched conspiracy
theories, and he really went in a slightly different direction. He was more
preoccupied with becoming a kind of a radical economic libertarian, meaning
that he wanted to get the government to just let businesses do what they
wanted to do and let the free market rule America. And so hes fought to
keep taxes really low, get rid of almost all regulations on business. This
is really what hes focused on, not so much on communism.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And you also describe in the book how some of the gatherings
of this caucus of the billionaires have also at times made it uncomfortable
for the established Republican figures, like Senator John Cornyn at one
point. And talk about their ability to empower the radical right in
Congress.
JANE MAYER: Well, I mean, when Obama was elected, there was a dilemma within
the Republican Party. It was: Do we work with him and try to get as much as
we canthe sort of the old-fashioned way of politics, where you make
compromisesor do we just simply go on strike and try to demonize him and
obstruct everything, shut down the government? And there was a big argument,
actually, that took place in front of the Koch donor group very early on.
And the side that won, and won over the hearts of this donor group, was the
side of Jim DeMint, who was then the senator from South Carolina, who said,
"Obstruct, obstruct, obstruct." And from that point onand were talking
AMY GOODMAN: He would later quit, right, and go to become the head of the
Heritage society.
JANE MAYER: Thats right.
AMY GOODMAN: Heritage Foundation.
JANE MAYER: Thats right. But at that point, it was a choice, and this group
put its money in to stop Obama any way you can. And so, part of also what I
try to tell the story of hereand you have to kind of follow the money
through the chaptersbut is that its not just an election force. Itsthis
club has become a force of obstruction against governing, so that when Obama
proposes the healthcare plan, this group funnels money to many, many
different front groups that then, unseen to the American public, pop up and
oppose the healthcare plan and disrupt meetings. I dont know if people
remember those town hall meetings during, I think it was, the summer of
2010, when there was just kind of pandemonium breaking out. And a lot of
that werethere were actually sort of plans laid among this group to pour
money in, get people all riled up and make them think that this was going to
have death squads, things like that, that werethat got people very upset.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And the connection to the tea party?
JANE MAYER: They put a lot of money into the tea party. I started writing
about them in the summer of 2010. And at that point, the spokesmen for the
Kochs were saying they had nothing to do with the tea party. I then went
down to a weekend meeting that the biggest Koch group was holding, Americans
for Prosperity, in Austin, Texas, and there they were giving seminars to tea
party members on how to organize. So they reallyand the people I
interviewed down there evidently hadnt gotten the sound bites, because
there were saying, "Are you kidding? The tea party? Weve been into the tea
party before it was cool."
And so, itsI think whats interesting to me is that, as youve been
saying, there have always been Democrats with a lot of money, Republicans
with a lot of money. The history of the country has been, you know, of
certainly big money players. What youve got here is almost like a third
party that is the money party. Its a conservative, outside pressure group
that is acting as a force field, pulling the Republican Party, particularly,
to the right.
AMY GOODMAN: With three-and-a-half times as many employees as the Republican
National Committee.
JANE MAYER: And a larger budget by two times the budget that the Republican
National Committee had in the 2012 presidential campaign. So youre talking
about really a pretty professionally organized operation. Theres a new
paper [3] that I thought was really interesting by Theda Skocpol, whos a
professor at Harvard. It came out just last week. Its called "The Koch
Effect." And it describes whats been built by them and their allied donors
as akin to a national party.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, Jane, Id like to ask youin July, speaking at the
NAACPannual convention in Philadelphia, President Obama praised the Koch
brothers for their involvement in the campaign to reform the criminal
justice system. This is what he said.
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: [This is a cause thats] bringing people in both
houses of Congress together. Its created some unlikely bedfellows. Youve
got Van Jones and Newt Gingrich. Youve got Americans for Tax Reform and the
ACLU. Youve got theNAACP and the Koch brothers. No, youve got to give them
credit. Youve got to call it like you see it.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, a day after President Obamas speech in July, we
interviewed Mark Holden [4], senior vice president and general counsel for
Koch Industries, on why the Koch brothers were getting involved in a
coalition to reform the criminal justice system.
MARK HOLDEN: Charles Koch and David Koch are classical liberals who believe
in expansive individual liberties in the Bill of Rights and limited
government. And so, if your goals are to honor the Bill of Rights and to
remove obstacles to opportunity, especially for the poor and the
disadvantaged, you have to be in the criminal justice arena.
And to answer your question, you know, as Van pointed out, what worked 20 or
30 years ago doesnt work today. And we have to have the intellectual
honesty and courage and humility to correct that. In our businesses, we do
that all the time when things arent working. And I think, to Vans point,
what were seeing happen in the states is really a template for what should
happen at the federal level, and making sure that everything we do enhances
public safety and that it honors the Bill of Rights and treats everybody in
the system as individuals with dignity and respect, particularly victims,
law enforcement, the incarcerated, the accused and their families.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: That was Mark Holden, a senior counsel for the Koch
Industries. This whole issue of them getting involved in criminal justice
reform?
JANE MAYER: Well, I mean, Mark Holden is a very eloquent advocate for
criminal justice reform. And the Kochs have long cared about criminal
justice reform. But what people may not realize is that theyve pushed a
different kind of reform than most liberals have. What they would like to do
is get rid of many crimes that have to do with pollution, that have to do
with corporate crimes, tax crimes. They want to weaken prosecution of
companies like their own.
Now, there is a tiny overlap. If you did a Venn diagram of where the far
right and everybody else overlaps, they would like to see sentencing reform
for drug offenders at this point, whichnonviolent drug offenders, which
youveyou know, its an important issue. Its good theyre talking about
it. Its not something theyve cared about until 2014. And I have a new
piece [5] out in The New Yorker which notes that in 2014 they launched a
huge public relations campaign to change their image. Theyre involved in
what David Axelrod described as one of the biggest rebranding efforts
anybodys ever launched. And I see this as certainly part of it.
And the reason I do isyoull see, if you read this bookthere are tapes.
There are tapes that were leaked out from one of their meetings, where they
describe how they need to change their image. After they did not win the
presidency in 2012, despite the money they put behind Mitt Romney, they went
back to the drawing board, and they tried to figure out what they were doing
wrong. And they did a huge number of polls. And they came to the conclusion
that the public thought they were greedy and didnt trust them. And so, they
speak in this tape about how we need to prove that we have good intent and
we care about other people. And at that point, they launched a number of
programs that have to do with doing good works for the poor. So, I see this
as quite related to that.
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[1] http://www.alternet.org/authors/amy-goodman
[2] http://www.democracynow.org/
[3]
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for_spsa_w_apps_skocpol_and_hertel-fernandez-corrected_1-4-16_1.pdf
[4]
http://www.democracynow.org/2015/7/15/strange_bedfellows_why_are_the_koch
[5] http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/01/25/new-koch
[6] mailto:corrections@xxxxxxxxxxxx?Subject=Typo on Dark Money: Jane Mayer
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Right
[7] http://www.alternet.org/
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