“from 2005 to 2008, a single source, the Kochs, poured almost $25 million into dozens of different organizations fighting climate reform.” — Jane Mayer Copy Share Image
It's hard for them to run away from their record. The Kochs are businessmen. — Jane Mayer Copy Share Image
They [the Kochs] want free trade and cheap labour. They own the second-largest private company in America, which is a huge multinational… — Jane Mayer Copy Share Image
“the Olin Foundation provided crucial start-up funds for the Federalist Society, a powerful organization for conservative law students founded in 1982.” — Jane Mayer Copy Share Image
“It would be necessary to use ambiguous and misleading names, obscure the true agenda, and conceal the means of control. This is… — Jane Mayer Copy Share Image
“The Kochs were also directing millions of dollars into online education, and into teaching high school students, through a nonprofit that Charles… — Jane Mayer Copy Share Image
“Afterward, the Constitutional Accountability Center, a watchdog group, revealed that the judges in the majority had previously attended one of the all-expenses-paid… — Jane Mayer Copy Share Image
“it was the first time a major corporation used a tax-exempt nonprofit as a front group or, as he put it, “a… — Jane Mayer Copy Share Image
“it’s a major accomplishment for sponsors like the Kochs that they’ve turned corporate self-interest into a movement among people on the streets.”… — Jane Mayer Copy Share Image
I would argue that there's been a backlash this year [2016]. They [the Kochs] pushed the [Republican] party too far right. The… — Jane Mayer Copy Share Image
This year [2016] we're seeing a really strange upending [of the party]. The money was coming from these super-wealthy donors who were… — Jane Mayer Copy Share Image
“For years, the family funded legal challenges to various campaign-finance laws. Ground zero in this fight was the James Madison Center for… — Jane Mayer Copy Share Image
“the Kochs presented themselves as champions of criminal justice reform, but while they were active in ALEC, it was instrumental in pushing… — Jane Mayer Copy Share Image
“The Kochs were not alone. As they sought ways to steer American politics hard to the right without having to win the… — Jane Mayer Copy Share Image
“The Kochs’ extensive research had shown that what the American “customer” wanted from politics, alas, was quite different from their business-dominated free-market… — Jane Mayer Copy Share Image
“Olin Foundation made a key $25,000 investment of its own in an unknown writer named Charles Murray, funding a grant at the… — Jane Mayer Copy Share Image
“They made political contributions to party committees and candidates, such as Dole. Their business made contributions through its political action committee and… — Jane Mayer Copy Share Image
“David Koch’s 1980 campaign served as a bridge between LeFevre’s radical pedagogy and the Tea Party movement. Indeed the Libertarian Party’s standard-bearer… — Jane Mayer Copy Share Image
“One former insider in the Kochs’ realm, who declined to be named because he feared retribution, described the early donor summits as… — Jane Mayer Copy Share Image
“To this end, the Kochs waged a long and remarkable battle of ideas. They subsidized networks of seemingly unconnected think tanks and… — Jane Mayer Copy Share Image
“While amassing one of the most lucrative fortunes in the world, the Kochs had also created an ideological assembly line justifying it.… — Jane Mayer Copy Share Image
“Far from the Supreme Court majority’s assumption in the Citizens United case that political spending would be transparent, the Kochs and their… — Jane Mayer Copy Share Image
“The next morning, readers of The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal opened their papers to see a full-page ad… — Jane Mayer Copy Share Image
“1958, Fred Koch became one of eleven original members of the John Birch Society, the archconservative group best known for spreading far-fetched… — Jane Mayer Copy Share Image
“the John M. Olin Foundation in 1953, Olin embarked on a radical new course. He began to fund an ambitious offensive to… — Jane Mayer Copy Share Image
“On top of these programs, the foundation doled out $8 million to more than a hundred John M. Olin faculty fellows. These… — Jane Mayer Copy Share Image
“As Charles Lewis, the founder of the Center for Public Integrity, a nonpartisan watchdog group, put it, “The Kochs are on a… — Jane Mayer Copy Share Image
“One attractive solution for enormously wealthy families like the Scaifes and the Kochs was to donate to their own private philanthropic foundations.… — Jane Mayer Copy Share Image
The Kochs have been activists since the 1970s. You can go back and look at the platform of the Libertarian Party in… — Jane Mayer Copy Share Image
“At West Virginia University, the Charles Koch Foundation’s donation of $965,000 to create the Center for Free Enterprise came with some strings… — Jane Mayer Copy Share Image
“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 Copy Share Image
“The assumption soon proved wrong. Instead, as critics had warned, more and more of the money flooding into elections was spent by… — Jane Mayer Copy Share Image
“One was the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a group aimed at waging conservative fights in every state legislature in the country.… — Jane Mayer Copy Share Image
“the Koch brothers—owned virtually all of what had become under their leadership the second-largest private company in America. They owned four thousand… — Jane Mayer Copy Share Image
“In addition to the Kochs, this group included Richard Mellon Scaife, an heir to the Mellon banking and Gulf Oil fortunes; Harry… — Jane Mayer Copy Share Image
“David Brock, a conservative apostate who became a liberal activist, described the Heritage Foundation, where he was a young fellow, as almost completely under… — Jane Mayer Copy Share Image
“The early think tank was not a spy operation, but it was funded by wealthy men who had no objections to using pretexts and… — Jane Mayer Copy Share Image
“Americans for Prosperity annoyed some of the Tea Partiers,” recalls the libertarian blogger Ralph Benko. “These people drove up, opened the door, put T-shirts… — Jane Mayer Copy Share Image
“When Barack Obama took office, the fossil fuel industry was not only eager to preserve its perks but also more militant in its opposition… — Jane Mayer Copy Share Image
One of the oddities of this election is the man that [Donald] Trump chose as his vice-president, Mike Pence, is one of the Kochs'… — Jane Mayer Copy Share Image
“The candidates promised to cut taxes for those in the highest brackets, preserve Wall Street loopholes, tolerate the off-shoring of manufacturing jobs and profits,… — Jane Mayer Copy Share Image
“radicals in Congress refused to back down, bringing virtually the entire federal government to a halt for sixteen days in October, leaving the country… — Jane Mayer Copy Share Image
What I write about is how much influence it's had in things like state legislatures and governorships and congressional races. The other thing that's… — Jane Mayer Copy Share Image
“Two months into their tenure, Republicans on the House Energy and Commerce Committee also led a crusade against alternative, renewable energy programs. They successfully… — Jane Mayer Copy Share Image