(2016-04-13) Inside The Remarkable New Book That Details The Koch Bros Dirtiest Deeds

Inside The Remarkable New Book That Details The Koch Bros' Dirtiest Deeds

Jane Mayer's new book, Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right, has already revealed many previously unknown facts about the Koch brothers in particular. For instance, reporting in the book forms the bulk of her latest New Yorker essay, showing that the Kochs' newfound interest in criminal justice reform is primarily a front to boost their P.R. and to gut health and safety laws. In addition, the book shows that family patriach Fred Koch's fortune was cemented by lucrative deals with Joseph Stalin, and was forged by providing crucial support to the Nazi regime

Fred Koch partnered with Nazi sympathizer William Rhodes Davis to build an oil refinery that was "a critical industrial cog in Hitler's war machine.",,, Mayer argues that he preferred their work ethic to the laziness and government dependence he believed was caused by the New Deal.

One of the crucial parts of the Koch strategy is creating an intellectual infrastructure for their libertarian ideas. Mayer lays out the long history of the wealthy buying their way into universities, focusing on John M. Olin's strategy of funding programs for "Law and Economics" at prestigious universities

The Koch brothers are slightly less subtle, funding organizations like the Mercatus Center, which unabashedly support a plutocratic agenda. Mayer writes that George Pearson, an early Koch advisor, believed gifts to universities "didn't guarantee enough ideological control." He suggested that donors maintain control over hires. As of 2015, Mayer reports that the Kochs subsidized programs in 207 colleges and universities

In North Carolina, Art Pope funded think-tanks that pushed to cut public university budgets at the same time as he gave grants to support programs in "Western civilization and free-market economics."

Even more disturbingly, the Koch brothers have recently been pushing their ideology into high schools... Christina Wilkie and Joy Resmovits of Huffington Post report that the program, Young Entrepreneurs, which Charles and Elizabeth Koch founded in 1991, has expanded dramatically, with $1.45 million in assets in 2012. In 2012-2013, it was taught in 29 Kansas and Missouri schools, with plans to expand into 42.

One of the dirtiest tactics on the right has long been the strategic use of racism for political gain. In his book on the subject, Ian Haney-Lopez argues that racism has been exploited to undermine the middle class. The Koch brothers and their network of organizations often stoop to low levels to ensure Republicans are elected.

Mayer reports that during now-Gov. Sam Brownback's 1996 Senate race there was a "barrage of phone calls informing voters that his opponent Jill Docking, was a Jew." According to later reporting from the Wall Street Journal, an operative on the Koch payroll was involved in the ads.

She notes that Glenn Beck is paid more than a million dollars a year to read what is termed "embedded content," which he says on air, "making it sound as if it were his own opinion."

Interestingly, the Koch brothers were not always loved by leading conservative intellectuals. Mayer notes that William F. Buckley Jr. called their ideas "Anarcho-Totalitarianism."

Mayer's book draws from other works, like Daniel Schulman, Ken Vogel and the brilliant investigative journalist Lee Fang. However, it offers a comprehensive history, not just of the Koch brothers, but of early funders of the conservative movement, like the Richard Mellon Scaife and John M. Olin. In addition, it includes detailed document of Art Pope's takeover of North Carolina, the powerful Betsy DeVos family and the depravity of John Menard Jr., who once labeled arsenic-tainted mulch as "ideal for playgrounds."