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.”
October 10, 2015
The Families Funding the 2016 Presidential Election
Nicholas Confessore, Sarah Cohen and Karen Yourish, The Families Funding the 2016 Presidential Election. The New York Times, 10 October 2015. “Just 158 families have provided nearly half of the early money for efforts to capture the White House. They are overwhelmingly white, rich, older and male, in a nation that is being remade by the young, by women, and by black and brown voters. Across a sprawling country, they reside in an archipelago of wealth, exclusive neighborhoods dotting a handful of cities and towns. And in an economy that has minted billionaires in a dizzying array of industries, most made their fortunes in just two: finance and energy.”