Jane Mayer, New Koch: Rebranding the Koch Brothers. The New Yorker, 25 January 2016. “The billionaire brothers are championing criminal-justice reform. Has their formula changed?… On the night of November 2nd [2015], well-dressed Wichita residents formed a line that snaked through the lobby of the city’s convention center. They all held tickets to the Wichita Metro Chamber of Commerce’s annual gala, which had drawn thirty-five hundred people. The evening’s featured speaker, Charles Koch, had lived in town almost all of his eighty years, but few locals—even prominent ones—had ever laid eyes on him. Charles, along with his brother David, owns virtually all of the energy-and-chemical conglomerate Koch Industries, which is based in Wichita and has annual revenues of a hundred and fifteen billion dollars. Charles’s secretive manner, right-wing views, and concerted campaign to exert political influence by spending his fortune have made him an object of fascination, especially in his home town. “You never see him,” one local newsman whispered.”
Letter from Oklahoma: Weather Underground: The arrival of man-made earthquakes
Rivka Galchen, Letter from Oklahoma: Weather Underground: The arrival of man-made earthquakes. The New Yorker, 13 April 2015. “Until 2008, Oklahoma experienced an average of one to two earthquakes of 3.0 magnitude or greater each year. (Magnitude-3.0 earthquakes tend to be felt, while smaller earthquakes may be noticed only by scientific equipment or by people close to the epicenter.) In 2009, there were twenty. The next year, there were forty-two. In 2014, there were five hundred and eighty-five, nearly triple the rate of California. Including smaller earthquakes in the count, there were more than five thousand. This year [2015], there has been an average of two earthquakes a day of magnitude 3.0 or greater.”
Inside the Koch Brothers’ Toxic Empire
Tim Dickinson, Inside the Koch Brothers’ Toxic Empire. Rolling Stone, 24 September 2014. “Together, Charles and David Koch control one of the world’s largest fortunes, which they are using to buy up our political system. But what they don’t want you to know is how they made all that money…. The enormity of the Koch fortune is no mystery. Brothers Charles and David are each worth more than $40 billion. The electoral influence of the Koch brothers is similarly well-chronicled. The Kochs are our homegrown oligarchs; they’ve cornered the market on Republican politics and are nakedly attempting to buy Congress and the White House. Their political network helped finance the Tea Party and powers today’s GOP. Koch-affiliated organizations raised some $400 million during the 2012 election, and aim to spend another $290 million to elect Republicans in this year’s midterms. So far in this cycle, Koch-backed entities have bought 44,000 political ads to boost Republican efforts to take back the Senate. What is less clear is where all that money comes from.”
A Word From Our Sponsor: Public television’s attempts to placate David Koch
Jane Mayer, A Word From Our Sponsor. The New Yorker, 27 May 2013. “Public television’s attempts to placate David Koch…. For decades, federal funding for public broadcasting has been dwindling, and the government’s contribution now makes up only twelve percent of PBS’s funds. Affiliates such as WNET are almost entirely dependent on gifts, some of which are sizable….”
Covert Operations: The billionaire [Koch] brothers who are waging a war against Obama
Jane Mayer, Covert Operations: The billionaire brothers who are waging a war against Obama. The New Yorker, 30 August 2010. “The Kochs are longtime libertarians who believe in drastically lower personal and corporate taxes, minimal social services for the needy, and much less oversight of industry—especially environmental regulation.”