Tonight and thanks to rainy day books our favorite collaborator and of course one of the nation great independent bookstores. We pride ourselves here at the library among other things on the timeliness and relevance of our signature programming, whether we are holding forums on local issues over addressing national topics. We certainly didnt intend on the particular timeliness of tonights presentation. Christopher leonard was a busy man at the end of last week, taking reporters calls, wrote a couple of pieces for the New York Times and four cnn business after the death of david. Chris spent eight years immersed in oakland. The state of the place and the title of his new book. On the extraordinary Business Empire and putins Political Network that was put together from their base some three hours in which debate over wichita. Anybody have the chance to read the book yet . You wont understand that you will know immediately when you get into it what i am talking about. Its daunting when you pick it up. It is74 pages and you get to the notes and the appendix and acknowledgments. But chris has written a 574 page page turner. As a former journalist, i am in all and even inspired by ldp researched this book is by the degree of detail is packed into it despite his limited access including the mastermind charles cook. Yet it is so accessibly returned it is fascinating, dramatic in places, and at the top of the journalistic checklist, its fair maybe more than some people would like. New york times said in its review, quote, it ranks about the best books written in the american corporation. By the way he was released two weeks ago today and immediately cracked the times talk ten nonfiction sellers. Chris was born and raised here in kansas city, grew up in worksite area, went to college at nu and it was clear tha there got hooked on journalism. His first job after graduation of the columbia daily tribune, was a Business Reporter there and he has been one ever since. Went on to be an arkansas Democrat Associated press when he worked out of st. Louis. The tribune in colombia he worked a story on tyson foods and with that, he became intrigued with the issue of Corporate Power, which has brought us to tonight. Chris is here for the second time he spoke at the Central Library in 2014 on his book the secret takeover of americas food business which is about how a handful of companies have cornered the u. S. Beef supply. Joining him on stage will be sean, longtime broadcaster whos collaborated on a couple of books including the autobiography he was terrific if you were here in interviewing the former mayor in july about the book. We are honored to have both of them here with us tonight. Please welcome sean and christopher leonard. [applause] thank you everyone so much for being here. I think mainly kansas city that westerners in this group. Theres tremendous wealth in this part of the country. I think what all of us argue isnt fully understanding in your book illuminates this tremendous power in this part of the country. That is right. What attracted me so much to the story is how powerful and influential this industry is and how little known is, how secretive it is. We will talk about this. It isnt secretive in the james bond sends it an institution that doesnt want the rest of the world to know what its doing for strategic reasons baked into what they do and how they make so much money so you have a massively powerful institution that affects everybodys lives. They specialize in the kind of businesses that underpin civilization, the stuff you cant boycott was without. They make the Building Materials probably in this building, the structure, carpeting, material in our clothing, nylon, spandex one of the largest makers of my trojan fertilizer which is something people dont think they buy but its a bedrock of the food system, so it is engaged in these businesses quietly beneath the surface of everyday lives in annual sales are bigger than that of facebook, Goldman Sachs and at the same time we never encounter the brand name. You never know you are engaging in this company. That is what really drew me to get along with the fact that when you are writing about this company i feel if you write about the entire system. They are so diverse that the story is a story of bluecollar manufacturing workers on the factory floor who might belong to the labor unio union that haa pay raise in 20 years, writing about financier types with millions of dollars a year trading derivatives and futures contracts, writing about dealmakers going out across the country looking for other companies to buy a used it and finally you write about one of the largest corporate lobbying operations in the country to have been rivaled by the wily. On the Corporate Power in the country it helps us to explore a lot of questions about whats going on in the economy today. Very early on in the book, you talk about 1988 when the federal government through the bureau fears the uniteappears the units Governmental Department finds out about the industry is and what you eliminate, this is 1988, this is a multibillion Dollar Corporation of energy. Congress had no idea who they were. Some people thought they were importing cocacola and they were sending in as the gators to atlanta. How did they make it for four to 1981988 were literally outside f the Energy Industry and even the insiders at not only were they not known to the general public but to the United States congress. Thats where it started at this point. Hiding behind a bunch of surveilling. It really happened. Senate investigators when they started investigating the huge issue of theft of a whale off of the land at the same reactio han us who are these people. All of a sudden, they had come to realize this company has the Largest Crude Oil operation in the United States and nobodys ever heard of it, and im reminded of an interview that i did then early executive who was on a plane with charles in the 60s and to back up a little bit, we can talk about the family and charles, but suffice it to say, he took over the company in 1967 when his father passed away and they were rearranging the firm and trying to figure out what to name it and specifically chose the name koch because it was a family name but completely without character, hard to remember and without description. You sort of stay in the background behind the curtain and just do it quietly really the patriarch Charles Coker early in the book he talks about a visit about people in this room where wall street financiers come and visit him and making Koch Industries public but he is not interested for echo as a reader of the book it is brilliant. You dont have to read it but if you just buy the book. [laughter] i would appreciate that. So he sends them away and says on the one hand he sends the new york guys packing that the other side of that its not just sticking up for the little guy but they just dont want to publicly report things they do not want to be beholden anybody outside of the teethree family and talk about this family Koch Industries was founded by fred teethree living in wichita kansas and in the 19 fifties he owned Pipeline Networks and cattle ranches and died of a heart attack 1957 his son charles was the president of the company it just 32 years old and thats when he assumed control. From the beginning this guy charles teethree who is been ceo since that time he became ceo when Lyndon Johnson was president at a time no other corporation in america that has been so shaped by a Single Person and personality and he had a very clear idea how a corporation not to be run. One of the key elements is longterm Strategic Thinking thinking two and five and ten years out and at the same time they operate in secrecy and we can talk about that but charles teethree new he wanted to remain private and retain control not only to turn quarter to quarter as so many corporations do but also think more longterm and as bankers came to wichita with jp morgan said take the Company Public you will have access to all this capital and money you personally will get 25 million it was a nobrainer he sent them packing a got the memo that they wrote that they are just banging their heads against the desk because he doesnt want the cash and he said if we go Public People will know how much other commodities traders make then they wont do business with us anymore that is very important to me so we could talk for a moment about trading because its at the heart of this organization those in the corporation and politically so from the 1970s the largest traders of Energy Suppliers in the world super tankers full of crude oil then they began trading the futures contract so to succeed in life as a traitor you want to know in the real world better than anybody else so somebody sells a barrel of oil for 50 you may know it is worth 52 so you buy all you can with any weight for the world to wake up to the reality it is 52 so for this reason the most important resource that they deal with is crude oil and natural gas. It is the knowledge about the world. They were in good position for those Energy Markets because they ran huge chunks of the system. With the gold coast of the United States and to make that that the shipment was about to come into the coast at the same time to get as much information as possible and in the year 2000 they hired away the meteorologist to have internal secret forecast so that teethree could and anticipate Energy Demand and also anticipate snowfall in california because that is an early predictor of reservoir levels which is another predictor of hydroelectric supply and another predictor of electric supply prices so they analyze this data and use it to make a trade in the real world. So you dont want other people to know what you know and you dont want people to know what you are about to do thats why the secrecy around what they do the company does it for headquarter building in 1992 its a giant building with opaque windows it is not coincidental its on the northeast side of wichita kansas they dont want you to know what they are doing is like the equivalent of trump tower in midtown manhattan. [laughter] with those philosophical differences between donald trump and charles teethree. [laughter] but really he is the lexicon there are actually four and it is almost shakespearean. I say that because he is patriarch in the ceo since hes 32 years old the other brother wants nothing to do with the company and the two eldest and the twins and bill ended up suing in a long legal fight with his brothers. It is a really sad story charles is in charge and as you point out the other brother was never content with the idea he could run the firm and they had a dispute over how to run the business he wanted to put the profits back in but he wanted to take money out and by helicopters and have nice houses which he originally did but to have him to take over the company and have his brother fired 20 years of litigation they would dig through the trash and pose as a reporter and it created a real feeling of being embattled inside of the company. Because in the 19 nineties this real weekend said its been picked up in the media to say im glad hes dead and i hope the end was painful. The vitriol that people think of bill marr that was hardcore from the left he did say that one and former president bush passed away outside of donald trump if he would say that about anybody but that came from the whole life from a certain perspective from the Koch Brothers everything started with Global Warming. It has made my job exceedingly difficult to report on this company because they are in the atmosphere of toxicity and hostility with distrust and all the rest that makes people inside the company extremely hesitant to share their story and hesitant to talk thats one reason why the book took so long to report. As a reporter in general it is extremely unhelpful for our general understanding of how things work with this rhetoric for it to become so commonplace and even with my own role in the introduction i talk about i wrote two essays one when he passed away passed away talking about this empire. But it was critical about david teethree and the gas emissions that we can talk about that i truly do think is a large part of his legacy but on another level thats curtis mann terrible to criticize somebody on the day they pass away but there was one hot moment when they really wanted to learn about david teethree and spending years interviewing people looking at the empire that made him rich and the political operation that he saw and i felt if i had something to tell people both positive and critical then you dont wake up feeling like garbage to be honest but then to tell people the truth and tell people whats going on and then often the family is obscured intentionally because of political operations with the Business Operation they are taken from the exact same blueprint that politics is just as obscure as the derivative markets so its important to tell people what happened categorically and then to present itself i dont know if its more important but what we will have to contend with in the next 30 or 40 years. And you uncover this with david teethree this was a sincere Investigative Journalism not only did they politicize Global Warming but i dont think its ever been fully understood how they tried to keep up the theory or the truth of Global Warming but it starts with the teethree brothers. I started reporting for a simple reason a few years ago i was interviewing a former senior lobbyist and i wanted to know how they did what they did and i said what woke you up in the morning quex he did not hesitate and he said carbon it was the preeminent political issue so if we take a second to talk about Coke Industries and politics so from the sixties charles coke had a very particular view how society should be structured he is a Classical Liberal to be developed by these economists like kayak i read diplomacy and action so you do not have to. [laughter] it is a fascinating and bananas kind of book. [laughter] anyway what he thinks is that organized societies and a voluntary Exchange System and that human set prices about what they care about but what i really prioritize in my life and the price will reflect that. So there must be a place for healthcare or roads or education. You name it and only done through free markets when you try to intervene with government regulation and take money from the winners and give it to those who are losers then you are distorting the system according to charles teethree he has worked patiently in a discipline fashion since the 1970s to make america a society what it is he tried to stay away from corporate lobbying until the 19 nineties and then he realized we have to be in washington if or not in a big way so in the 19 nineties teethree build a political apparatus unrivaled in america and i would like to say when i started reporting this book i thought i would be writing a Political Part about super pacs and political donations but i was wrong that was the wrong area to focus on the real action the started the day after the election getting into the granular business down in the pipes thats where he has his expertise so to do that he has built a multifaceted machine in the offices one that said along the lines of true power lies silent so that is awesome then you have this think tanks that he has founded from the Energy Alliance and independent Energy Research they promote ideas and they mainstreamed these ideas and with these political donors that sometimes he could give us much money to the Political Party itself huge money to sway politicians then finally and activist Network America for prosperity that can activate people to knock on doors from North Carolina or West Virginia from washington dc with a glossy protest sign and then specifically targeted congressional offices to support the point of you as well so what you see with this entire machine is the ability not just to sway and influence policy that you write policy and create policy that can be remarkably effective to washington dc and one of the key elements that they have been recognized for decades that the price of carbon emission and the regulations put on carbon emission to have dramatically negative consequences. Imagine having these billions of dollars in Oil Refineries and pipelines the value of all of that could demand for fossil fuels so they had fought vigorously not only to forestall the way to derail any activity. What i think is clear in your book with very solid investigative reporting that even though the teethree brothers are massive donors to the Republican Party this is not the religious right are social conservatives this is a libertarian free market viewpoint is that out pragmatism for political ideology quick. Thats a really hard question to answer. As the donors of the Libertarian Party they were disgusted they are just as big donors as the democrats so if you have the view i just described no Government Intervention day have been frustrated fast forward to the year 2005 to one of the very first state directives for america for prosperity he vividly remembers going to the network when charles coke teethree said we will never influence them yet to see the agenda we have to focus on republicans we have to move the Republican Party to where we see the world strict libertarianism scale that government so americans for prosperity has the vast majority of their firepower to transform that because they see that is the only viable option as the Vice President on the libertarian ticket donating a bunch of money gave speeches and 13 percent of the vote libertarian does not pull well. It never really has. They realize we need to transform the Republican Party to achieve our policy and. So there is a strong relationship over a decade. Trump strongly opposed obama in the candidacy of president trump. So in terms of social issues or the economy where do you feel Charles Falls on that spectrum quick. Just beyond the selfinterest of what they have done with the American Party and the viewpoin viewpoint. It must be frustrating because of what has been in place with the free market utopia in the United States consistently at the beginning of 2015 charles teethree elected the top five candidates included rubio and cruise and then this Reality Television star comes along and flips open the gate table with the agenda thats at odds with the teethree agenda the America First agenda of donald trump doesnt coincide with what they want they want to dismantle the Administrative State to tear apart the epa the transition doctrine and its items 12 and three that are carbon and carbon that donald trump has shown he is willing to impose tariffs that are trade deals so they are pushing where they can and where they want to help which is appointing conservative judges we can talk about this at a tremendous influence on the tax reform. Lets talk about the culture of teethree industries one thing that comes out very clear in your book its not a fortune 500 company he always puts a premium on outside of the box thinkers entrepreneurs is not company men and Company Women coming in he wants people to challenge him and always thinks what happens in ten or 20 or 30 years and the best example is budgets are for publicly traded companies and then just like that it was goin going. It is astounding i shouldnt say this publicly but there was a moment and i was thinking i admire them but its true in the following sense and i will get to the negatives and the downsides later but charles teethree truly has built a subtle Entrepreneurial Organization in the example that you picked out of corporate budgets back in the 1970s because theys trying to hit the budget numbers and it was a waste of time think of how many people in publicly traded corporation spend so much of their time to do that and they just said get rid of it. So they created a very complicated philosophy called marketbased management you will spend the first three or four days in your job in an auditorium in the basement learning this philosophy you will learn the vocabulary and the concept and the directives they walk around speaking this language to each other that only they truly understand the somebody says point of view when she says humility they dont mean it as we do so they talk about the Downside Risk it is so coded you are all in you are all out. Because it is its own society now im thinking about the first time i visited i drove up to the front door and walked in. Now the Corporate Headquarters in 2141 of the things they had was a 10foot tall urban wall that surrounds the campus it is literally a fortress i have never seen a corporation more insular than the way they embrace this Corporate Culture while at the same time more and more embedded of the everyday life as they continue to grow its pretty amazing. Looking at teethree industries they go back to their father fred they always have that culture of secrecy but you had unprecedented access. Why quick. First they said no way. Because they had heard of me. [laughter] but i spent a miserable week knocking on peoples doors saying i really want to understand this institution and the whole job if you knock on six stores every day the seventh opens you talk to somebody and you learn and then you knock on seven more doors and maybe to open. Eventually teethree realized it was going to happen and we would like to have our point of view in their i am extremely glad they did they told me stories that are truly amazing theres a story how teethree got front of of fracking and crude oil in southern texas it will blow your mind how he did that and god ahead of that. And using the ceo as a oil position. It is a mixture to open the doors and be more willing but on the other side thats the nature of reporting with extremely repetitive phone calls and thousands of pages of documents and government investigations and eventually over time almost by nature by definition one book such as this come out anytime you profile someone you play this right down the middle trying to recruit journalist whatever your views this just plays right down the middle was this your aspiration quick. Yes. Thank you so much because i had such a deep conviction i know nobody really cares what i thin think. But what really they want is just good information and good reporting. They want someone to go out and find out whats going on to describe the way so we can walk around and go get books every time im in town because i want to know how these institutions that affect our lives are really operating in whats really going on in the world so they certainly describe an institution so then what is going on in America Today click clicks . Ultimately be the judge is this appropriate use of power where the economy is structured in this way or not. One more question then we will turn it over to audience questions. We have microphones in front of the roothe room so i would encoe you to come up. Two questions for you first. Your book has a lot of press selling copies and debuted on the bestsellers list. The best was the team thousand. Its phenomenal. I described the relationship ended in february before the book came out, there were about 260 pages of material to give a chance to respond. Once we use everything thats going to be bad and i told them from the beginning my role models are reporters and i want to capture the brilliance and show the downside and blind spot and they knew that so they had months to respond and they engaged. We had a lot of back and forth and it was a productive process. I think everybody got pretense at times. There were phone calls i got heated but then once the book has come out, its been mostly radio silence and i think what the Public Relations team is trying to do this practically get out the story they see as positive. You see a lot of advertisements on twitter and television about the industries and i think its great we should get that story out there. Its an important story. My job as an independent reporter is to show the good and bad. The consequences of their actions have been negative and the parts of the institutions that are admirable and i think should be studied the people in politics or business. Again i think our country is in desperately short supply of longterm Strategic Thinking. This is a case study and beneficial for anybody to read. The comments the public shows may be off to the extremes of what bomar said certainly shows that viewpoint if you look at the brothers, billionaires, working the oil industry, trying to influence elections, those three factors are going to make any american popular. Do you think that those are the means the fact that theyve been doublesided large sections of the country or do you think that its beyond that . Is completed. First of all, sort our media landscape is garbage today. It is a climate of permanent hostility. Fully agree 100 , and the species that cannot survive are the Little Creatures of nuance and paradox and difficult thinking so thats one reason when they are talked about, i cant tell you how many people they are evil. Listen, this organization has had to manifest the Public Policy in the United States. States. They have done it surreptitiously. The book documents crimes theyve committed in 1996 they intentionally polluted wetlands rather than shut down the plans and that was a crime. But its not helpful to simply i think paint things in a blackandwhite pictures of the question is its very hard in america right now. I think that theres a deep understanding that the system we here at all the time, the system is rigged. Statistics confirm the middle classecome from the middleclasss been captured by a very small population of people. This is creating heat, this is creating antagonism, it helped elect donald trump and so i think that helps describe a part of the vitriol thats going on right now. But to deal with the problem, you need to diagnose accurately and think about it deeply. And its not helpful i think to just try to find the ones to use as punching bags. Questions from the audience. I know you want to ask questions so we have a microphone here and here. Im so happy that you are the first person to ask a question. [applause] its kind of like the dance nobody wants to be first. Thank you for coming up first, go ahead. So, trying to be polite. Dont bother. [laughter] im asking this question because i genuinely dont know. This is a political question, so its kind of a loaded word control of how much influence do they have on local politics in wichita, how much control i hate to use that word that influence do they have in topeka because we are talking local politics, and im pretty familiar how much influence they have in washington, but im more curious local in our area how much influence do they really have . Im not going to lie i didnt report on wichita as a city that much and i frankly think that horizon is pretty big and they are a huge Corporate Citizen in whicinwichita but i havent loot the politics there. And kansas its been enormous. There is a chapter in the book that looks at the power sector in kansas and how it ought against that. There is a conservative republican state senator from kansas named tom bosley that retired tells the story of how he came to support alternative Energy Sources from washington lobbyists, to help take apart the growing industry in kansas, and of course the backing for Sam Brownback and this sort of vision of the structure was very involved in that. I think that there is a the influence on kansas politics is tremendous. Its huge. I have kind of a political question. You are at the right place. Thats for sure. The views between trump and koch, do you feel like that would perhaps cause a schism or even a civil war between say the economic nationalists were the religious rights and koch righth libertarian philosophy that that would cause a threeway scroll or whatever within the rightwing of the Republican Party . Is that that something that coo beyond and get into the bowels of the Republican Party . Yes. And the way that i describe it is right now a lot of the political chapters in this book but notably in basements. The staff offices of the Senate Building and where the machinery works there is a fight going on down there for the control of the Steering Wheel of the Republican Party. And it is a tense and constant back and forth. They wia winwin certain federas are appointed like Mitch Mcconnell and donald trump is completely happy to let that happen. Koch loses when donald trump disrupts the Global Energy system and global trade, so it is a public war with Neither Party trying to completely breached the party. Where it goes i have note bleu. Donald trump has tremendous support within the Republican Party, and so if as you have seen many times, its difficult for politicians t to, quote unquote take him on. Whats interesting is that people who are, the jeff flakes of the world are very close with this network and they stand up if you will for those policies s and is awaiting for 2020 is going to be a huge year if donald trump wins they will withdraw for the generation. I have so many questions so ive got to pick. The one i would ask is a about a treatment of his own workers. I know that he didnt fall far from the tree. His father was one of the activists when kansas passed right to work in the 1950s. His antiunion sentiments par from the beginning. Iran but the book talked about a worker that was filled because of being poisoned and i know that in georgiapacific theres unions and ive heard about she tried to tell his workers how to vote. Can you comment on sort of the things you ran acros across an g the research in terms of the way he relates to his workers . This is so glib and predictable but please read the book. The labor union is a story of the labor union and workers throughout the book and ended up playing a much more Important Role than i anticipated at the beginning. If they had been vehemently opposed to unions as the beginning as you said. When he took over the Company Announced the first things he did is to break the union in minnesota that was my month strike, really hard to fight and then over the years they had funded right to work efforts. I think they battled that acrosstheboard. When you asked how he treats his workers, there is a cadre of people that work at the headquarters in wichita that would jump in front of the bus for them. They admire him and culture and they are hardworking people to give their lives to the company. Then youve got other workers like these bluecollar manufacturing workers in Portland Oregon where i spent years reporting on a Massive Distribution Center there and there is a rough picture of the Labor Union Contract in 1970s there was an outside experts have analyzed them and they havent gotten a raise since the 1980s when they adjust for inflation. Working longer and harder hours than ever. Somebody gave me ten years of internal safety data that shows workplace activists have been steadily arriving since 2012. Its becoming more dangerous for the workers. These are negative consequences for employees, so the picture is mixed. The picture is mixed and i truly think that reflects broad trends going on in America Today. Labor unions show that they have problems, they had problems in the 70s but when you go from 33 of americans in the labor union to 7 as a rough number of where it is today, you see these consequences for the middleclass workers. Its a very important part of the story. Thank you. Sir . Youve exercised the degree to which they set the tone for the company but he is a man in his 80s i believe its apparent what is likely to happen when he goes to the great oil well in the sky . [laughter] the question is what happens when charles koch steps away. There is the education of his son who was born in 1977 and when he was born they hung up the banner in the office of the industries that welcomed him. That is the burden that he had his whole life. He had been given a fascinating education at the institution from the age of seven. For all of that, hes a remarkably levelheaded guy that had support in the midst of this switch answer your question after he steps away i think potentially he will run the corporation. The big question is in the future. How much of this explosive growth that we saw the last 50 years was attributable to an individual and how much o of tht is attributable to what he wants to point which is a Corporate Culture, the institutions he spit into place. He said the company will continue to grow without and really only time will answer that question. Thank you very much. Sir. I would be remiss not to say that this deja vu all over aga again. Your book, your whole conversation is reminiscent the history of standard oil company. And remember john d. Rockefeller, junior also had to carry the burden of both and oversee th the empire entire ofe standard oil company. What you converse today is that parallels our unprecedented. My question to you is in light of my statement, have you ever researched the gilded age into some of the robber barons and a lot of the carnegies and rockefellers and so forth and what farewells are we going through in the second gilded age . Okay. I was really nervous when that question started out. [laughter] i really appreciate [laughter] i thought he was literally my hero. What she did for Investigative Journalism in the 1900 set the template for the documents and interviews. It was amazing. Im obsessed with that iran and a lot of the stories are the economic history of the United States. We had the gilded age, the robber baron age if you will from 1865 to roughly 1930s. This was an era of unbridled Corporate Power in america. I called it a capitalist free fire zone. The problem that has emerged, income inequality is what messages the new deal of the 1930s under fdr and that is the structure we lived under for maybe 30 or 40 years. And it cost a lot of money, so influential throughout the United States. [inaudible] so what we can say, history repeats itself, capitalism returns where there again i think in many significant ways and the question is which path do we take forward. And i just, you know, theres not enough time to talk about it, but we are in a state of political paralysis in America Today. What role should government play, what role should we do. In an environment like that, time and time again its the entrenched Corporation Like koch on the streets. The question is where do we go from here i think. [inaudible] this gentleman and then the final question, please. In your opinion, do they not appreciate the magnitude of Climate Change or is he fully playing the climate denial for profit . Im not even going to pretend i have an answer to that. And honestly, they would not let me interview trombone a topic. He had made comments acknowledging the reality of human induced Climate Change which scientifically as inarguable and it sounds amazing that that is a controversial statement, but what does he really believe in his heart, does he think that the solutions are going to solve this problem ultimately . I just dont know. I couldnt interview him about it. Its a huge question but the one thing we can report and we can talk about authoritatively is what the Political Network has done and the realworld consequences. Even passing the likes of exxon mobil. Do you think we will ever have an attorney general that will invite charles as far as becoming more and more of a reality and if we get a guy like Bernie Sanders in the white house. [laughter] [applause] well, i mean, i dont know. How about that. I dont have an answer to that question. There is no body of law but i think that would happen anytime in the near horizon that american politics is very unpredictable. These will be the final two questioners, go ahead, please. [inaudible] do you feel the full effect their attitudes Going Forward and if so, in what way . To be blunt, i dont think that it will affect their attitudes, i dont think that will affect the corporation in any significant way. Charles koch was the driving strategic thinker, the innovative force behind the corporation and Political Network so as personally tragic as the passing is to him and his family, you are not going to see a significant change. At the moment to watch is when charles steps away and takes the larger rol role that is the quen of whether things will change or not. Finafinal questioner, good, please. Yes. Could you briefly comment on the effort to make the political contributions throughout the country if the state Legislature Candidates . We talk a lot about the commodities trading. The politics are in the same way as the trading commodities. It explores the advantage of knowledge. So, koch is still essentially a map of political cover in the United States, like a complex type by network. Youve got your state legislature, the courts system, federal courts system cummings United States congress. Koch examines where they will have the most impact and where to change the policy and it realized early on political power in the state legislature is an undervalued commodity. You can buy it really cheap. It might cost 50,000 youve got to hand it to the Political Network. Theyve been very forward leaning and moving into the state legislatures donating to candidates actually literally writing the legislation through the site of exchange council. So, koch was way ahead of other people in realizing the power of this, and they definitely talk about that. They focus on the state level. Thank you, sir. Im going to ask you one more question. Im going to ask you a followup question and then crisply available to chat, sign your books, talk about politics, economic theory, all the rest. You started this in 2011 with a massive undertaking. You certainly had an idea of who the brothers were when you started. What is the biggest revelation for you on the other side of the . That analytical rigor of these people. That i did not expect. It blew my mind. I talked to people that changed the way that i saw the world. Small example, they are not focused on the shiny objects. Their focuthey are focused on te undermining fundamentals and that changed how i thought about so much in life, so what surprised me most as i reported on this was the analytical rigor aninto the depths of Strategic Thinking. [applause] thank you, everyone. [applause]cspan2s book tv, moretelevision for serious readers. Good evening everybody. Weve got to try it one more time. I know you have greatenergy, we saw you coming in. This looks like a highenergy group so lets try it one more time. Good evening, that the energy we know you have. Am