DAVID KOCH BACKGROUND

“Sometimes the hypocrisy ran so deep that it almost seemed like an inside joke. In 2009, Americans for Prosperity [AFP] ran a TV ad attacking environmental laws featuring “a louche-looking young man, plucking away at a plate of canapés.” He identified himself as

‘Carlton, the wealthy eco-hypocrite. I inherited my money and attended fancy schools. I own three homes and five cars, but always talk with my rich friends about saving the planet. And I want Congress to spend billions on programs in the name of global warming.’

“As [Jane] Mayer points out, it was David Koch, founder of AFP, who had inherited hundreds of millions, gone to Deerfield, owned four homes including an eighteen-room Park Avenue duplex, and drove a Ferrari.”

“The Koch Brothers’ New Brand,” a review in the New York Review [March 10, 2016; pp. 16-18] by Bill McKibben of Jane Mayer’s Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right (2016).