Jane Mayer

“A 2008 study of the wealthiest four hundred taxpayers, for instance, showed that they earned an average of $202 million and paid…

— Jane Mayer

“George Mason was the Kochs’ largest libertarian academic project but far from the only one. By 2015, according to an internal list,…

— Jane Mayer

“Another consequence was that the Citizens United decision shifted the balance of power from parties built on broad consensus to individuals who…

— Jane Mayer

“On top of these programs, the foundation doled out $8 million to more than a hundred John M. Olin faculty fellows. These…

— Jane Mayer

“The numbers regarding Koch Industries’ pollution were incontrovertible. In 2012, according to the EPA’s Toxic Release Inventory database, which documents the toxic…

— Jane Mayer

“By choosing a tested, moderate, bipartisan approach, the Obama administration and many environmentalists assumed a deal would be winnable. “What we didn’t…

— Jane Mayer

“In 1999, the District of Columbia Circuit Court embraced Dudley’s pro-smog argument. Evaluating the EPA rule, the court found that the EPA…

— Jane Mayer

“It is unclear what Fred Koch’s views of Hitler were during the 1930s, beyond his preference for the country’s work ethic in…

— Jane Mayer

“Those cuts had lowered the top income tax rate from 39.6 percent to 35 percent. With bipartisan support, Bush had also slashed…

— Jane Mayer

“The Economic Policy Institute, a progressive think tank, estimated that the hedge fund loophole cost the government over $6 billion a year—the…

— Jane Mayer

“Rob Reich, a professor of political science at Stanford University and co-director of the Stanford Center for Philanthropy and Civil Society, explains…

— Jane Mayer

“The real enemies, he suggested, were “the college campus, the pulpit, the media, the intellectual and literary journals, the arts and sciences,”…

— Jane Mayer

“After a series of campaign scandals involving secret donations from the newly rich industrial barons in the late nineteenth and early twentieth…

— Jane Mayer

“They challenged the widely accepted post–World War II consensus that an activist government was a force for public good. Instead, they argued…

— Jane Mayer

“in 2005, the Olin Foundation had supported eleven separate programs at Harvard, burnishing the foundation’s name and ideas and proving that even…

— Jane Mayer

“David Brock, a conservative apostate who became a liberal activist, described the Heritage Foundation, where he was a young fellow, as almost…

— Jane Mayer

“Obama nonetheless continued to seek bipartisan support. His experience with what Hillary Clinton labeled the “vast right-wing conspiracy” was limited. He had…

— Jane Mayer

“In 1986, Buchanan was awarded a Nobel Prize in economics. Liberal economists were aghast. Robert Lekachman, for instance, lambasted Buchanan for reducing…

— Jane Mayer

“In addition to the Kochs, this group included Richard Mellon Scaife, an heir to the Mellon banking and Gulf Oil fortunes; Harry…

— Jane Mayer

“the fossil fuel industry is an oligarchy.” Some might dispute that American oil, gas, and coal magnates met the dictionary definition of…

— Jane Mayer

“The company’s political activism was so unusually intense that one FTC attorney at the time told Forbes, “They’re not a business, but…

— Jane Mayer

“after Citizens United was that the business of manipulating politics from the ground up was now heavily directed and funded by the…

— Jane Mayer

“They turned on Obama so early,” he later recalled ruefully. “Not only did we not have the answers yet, we barely knew…

— Jane Mayer

“Private foundations have very few legal restrictions. They are required to donate at least 5 percent of their assets every year to…

— Jane Mayer

“The early think tank was not a spy operation, but it was funded by wealthy men who had no objections to using…

— Jane Mayer