In addition to one of the largest registered corporate lobbying offices in the country, located about two blocks from the White House, there is a constellation of Koch-funded think tanks and university centers. The machine is so effective because it is multifaceted.
#CHARLES BY CHARLES DAVID JETTISON OVER THE KNEE BOOT FULL#
The machine reached full fruition in 2008, when Barack Obama was elected president. That experience convinced David and Charles Koch that they needed to have a stronger presence in Washington to fend off their critics. The effort accelerated in the 1990s after a Senate committee, following a long investigation, accused Koch Industries of stealing oil from Native American reservations where the company was operating. He and David began funding and orchestrating a political project to restrain government power in the United States through lobbying, think tanks and political donations. In the face of this political problem, David Koch and his brother Charles built a political influence machine that is arguably unrivaled by any in corporate America.Ĭonstruction on the Koch political machine began in the 1970s, after Charles Koch took over the family company. But to his critics, his most lasting political legacy might very well be the rapidly warming world that he has left behind. For all this complexity, one business inside Koch Industries remains more important than the rest - processing and selling fossil fuels.ĭavid Koch, who died Friday at the age of 79, is best known as a major funder of right-wing political causes, from tax cuts to deregulation, an enthusiastic patron of the arts and a man-about-town.
Steel combined, and it makes everything from gasoline to nitrogen fertilizer to nylon, paper towels and windows. Its annual revenue is larger than that of Facebook, Goldman Sachs and U.S. He gave me a one-word answer: “Carbon.”Īt the time, I had been reporting for years on Koch Industries, one of the largest and most confusingly complex private companies in the world. I asked him what got him up in the morning when he worked for Koch. A few years ago, I was sitting in the book-lined study of an elegant condo with a view of downtown Washington, interviewing a former senior Koch Industries lobbyist about his job.
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