Universities and colleges all over the country he packed a punch. What about bradleys . They were two brothers who made a fortune in creating thermostat, they were civic minded about milwaukee. They they were very right wing but were interested in improving life in milwaukee. When they died, their fortuneot moved on into the hands of other people who became super committed to the conservative movement. Those funders in particular earmarked that money, that foundation is among rightwingle foundations now much of the money came from defense contracts. Much of the money in the Bradley Foundation is earmarked for antigovernment programs. Millions of those dollars came from the u. S. Governmentsin defense contracts. Host this is an email, i have long rager work and your books i completely agree with your take on things. Sc anyway, what i want to ask you about is your education at the school in new york. My late wife grew up in new yorb graduating in 1960. She was a wonderful art critic and had a great analytical insight and writing style. I wonder if you could reflect on your own education and what it provide jew at the basis of your ethical, analytical and writing abilities my wife ali said that mike was a piece of cake. Guest thank you for asking. Im sorry about your wife. The fieldstone i went from there from when i was four it till my high school education. It taught ethics which made it unusual among schools i guess. So some schools have chapel or some sort of religious orientation but this was an apical school so we spent an hour every week debating what is right and what is wrong. Looking at historical ethical dilemmas. Is on at the time we had to say we did take it that seriously in school, where kids that without great this is one class where you dont get graded, i think in retrospect it may be did have an impact. It certainly has made me very interested in right and wrong and issues about power and abuses of power. I think that is a theme that runs through all of the things that i have read. They did teach us to write, i guess i still struggle with writing to this day. Eedin we certainly did a lot of reading of great literature. Host the bob is calling in from florida. O caller i wanted to tell you that i completed your book and i found it very powerful and i congratulate you. I wish we we could clone you and have more people like you. M i myself have intertwined a little bit with appropriators, i was born in wichita, i ida interviewed with the koch, as all of these techniques that the koch has put through to try to control the situation have come into play the populacece especially the workers have become more and more enraged over pressures due to thesef programs being put into place. It appears that the back roads of the workers is going through donald trump and possibly Bernie Sanders. I want to get your opinion onll that. Guest interesting. At some point i have to catch up with you and hear what they were all like at an the father is a very huge and tough figure. I agree with the caller that what we are looking at in the trump phenomenon, in some ways is something of a frankenstein was created partly by these huge donors. The huge rightwing donors who, as the peace in the harvard study says, pulled the Republican Party so so far to the right on Economic Issues they kind of made the party toth be of their interests. Cutting social programs for people who were struggling, they left out a lot of the middle and workingclass voters. If you look at how the koch has done during the Obama Administration they have done phenomenally well. So has many of the other people who are the top donors in the country, the super rich. But they left left a lot of people behind. It their policies the Koch Brothers have wanted to abolish since it started. And they talk about privatizing it. I think you are right, they have left a lot of people behind with their policies and pushing for minimum government that does not too much for anybody i think they have left a lot of people behind as some of those people have gone to Bernie Sanders and a lot of those people have got to donald trump. Interestingly, the same things that are different for the donors about Social Security for instance. Caid ar ciampa saying that he wants to. Strengthen Social Security. He has also poked fun at some of the people that dont pay their taxes, so he is playing this populist thing where you say ind know these rich guys and they get away with murder. Th i think a lot of the workingclass and middleclass here that and they agree with it. They are mad at the party that these donors have created. Host heres a text message from miami. If you do send in a text message please include your city of first name. This ties in, thoughts on Citizens United, will it be overturned . Spee2 i guess the answer to whether that will be overturned depends on who was on the court. I think this is a very key moment for a lot of big issues and Citizens United is certainly one of him. W D Hillary Clinton said she will appoint someone who will overturn it. Bernie sanders said the same. I dont know donald trump has said anything about one where the other. He claims to be self funding, i dont know if that is an improvement to have to have the leaders running in order to make it to the presidency on their own or if its better to have billionaires behind the scenes earmarking, either way, as far as im concerned its a huge problem for the country. Both democrats and republicans,o and i think the lack of transparency for the company because whether its dark money like the name of this book is going through, its a hugeof dol problem. Theres millions and millions of dollars of secret money sloshing through american politics at this point. With host contrary to predictions the Citizens United decision had not triggered a tidal wave of corporate political spending, that it had empowered a free view extraordinarily rich individuals of selfserving. Guest that is true, i think everybody at least critics thought it would unleash corporate spending some people thought all businesses were going to overwhelm the debates. That is really not what happened, at least for public corporations is to controversy oh area they do not want to alienate their customers by getting heavily involved with parties in politics. We we have sink Companies Like target back off. Instead what we have gotten, enormously wealthy individuals. If you think about it, what kind kind of people want to spend that much money in american politics. Most normal people do not have views that they care that much about to inevitably youll get people with intense views. Or people who have a lot at c stake. People who have self interest at stake spee1s call comes from joe and olympia washington. Caller thank you for taking my call, this this is a bit of a change in direction but still keeping in the same, being an artist im interested in being in that role of culture. You wrote an article called musical goals for new yorker. Looking at the Carpenter Family i would like to know what your you to that story, how you got appointed and what your take away was . Ble guest i wish i had written it. It sounds so good. I wonder if maybe it was written by mike kollek jane. Sometime we get each others compliments. I wish i could take credit for her work. It may. It may have been a jane kramerbr story. Viol i do come from a musical family i have to say, my dad is a composer composer and my brother is a concert pianist. I have never written about violence because i was like the musical reject of the family. Host you are also a lehman as an lehman brothers. Guest might great grandfather and great uncle found the lehman others Investment Bank on one side of my family. That side of the family was from germany originally and they were the german jews. On on the other side of my family i come from christiansen from illinois who had a hog farm. My grandfather left the farm, came to new york and became a historian. I like to think of my family is kind of a melting pot. Pot. We have a little bit of everything. Etts. It makes me love the history of the country because it is a buried in my family. Host s call from richard in massachusetts. Caller thanks cspan2. My wife has been reading the book and i have read it and i wanted to talk about the Koch Brothers and what they cannot get done in washington. Ures electing a lot of republican governors, consequently the 31 republican governors andgh restricted voting rights,rv restricted womens healthcare. Services, started a lot of the right to work state laws, they were were big fans of a governor from wisconsin. This year, 201830 governors that take over the state legislator are going to be in again forover another ten years, it is is going to be pretty bad if that happens what are your comments please. Guest you are right. People often miss this. Ch the press spent so much time looking at president ial politics they dont really pay that much attention to what is going on in the states and even below the state level. What the trend three have been really smart about is they haveh looked at how do you engineer social change in this countrye and they rely states were key. Pr money goes so much further at that level. At the president ial level it is very hard to have money completely buying what you want. If you pour money into a race where voters dont know much about it one way or the other, you can explain the issues much better and you can have a bigger impact. So the tram three specifically set their sights thats the legislative exchange council,ncr that the tram three have fundedy focus specifically on state legislatures but most people do. Not pay much attention to it but they are very important especially for businesses. They poured money into them and in terms of gerrymandering, i tell the story of my book about how in 2009 when obama was so wi populous there, one very smart guy edgar lasky said i know we should be focused on. Its instead of a what was going to be a redistricting year they had a red map which was a secret project where they target legislatures with money and slip there from democratic to republican control and they wanted to get as many as they could because the following year those legislatures would read district the congressional district. They picked up 537 legislativene that year for the republicans. Hs they overwhelm the house of representatives of course. People remember it was a republican side and they redistrict it. The amazing thing about the redistricting that took place was that in 2012, in total america cost more votes with democrats and republicans but more republicans were represented or elected in the house of representatives. The districts were so expertly gerrymandered that even though the majority voted for the democrats the republicans ended inches they did an amazing jobe is very skilled and deliberate. There is there is a lot of secret money that went into it. It was smart. Th the thing about the trend koch is that they are not mushy thinkers, is something doesnt work they go back to the dry board and figure out what went wrong and try it again and a different way. They did a great job in 2010 of grabbing both legislative. Over i now, again. Host do you get to pick the topics you cover in the new yorker. Guest sometimes. Sometimes others have a goodea idea and i welcome that. Often one story leads tot another. Writing up the Koch Brothers was my idea. I was turning a corner in manhattan and i looked up at Lincoln Center, grew up in and there was a david cokes name. Tm and they had done a story abouto it ten years earlier and i knew there were putting money into the keep party at that point which i looked around and said does anybody in manhattan have any idea who these brothers aret i think this story there i started digging. At that point the Koch Brothers were busy say they have nothing to do with the tea party. Iv they were not funding it, they were not behind it, they were not giving me an interview, so i just went to one of the meetings they are having, big weekend rally and is filled with the Tea Party People and so they were training and giving training sessions to the tea party so their own Political Organization was deeply embedded and trying to organize the tea party. When i asked the women who was in charge there, she was from taxes and i said so you guys supporting the tea party and she said oh yeah. Tea we were in the tea party before it was cool. She gave me me the full interview of how interrelated it was. It was clear that a lot of money going into the tea party were helping to organize it and turn the opposition into a movement against obama were coming from super wealthy donors from coasttocoast. Host a very Effective Movement though. Guest it was very effective. I think partly because they were taken by surprise. Obama was elected with this idea that theres no red america, no blue america come that we are all just one United States of america. Its a really nice idea but heas didnt really censor notice the right wing as it was organizing against him. Lack i dont think he knew much about the big money that was coming after him. He had had not tangled with a much before in his career. It was organizing as soon as he was elected. They had a meeting right after he was inaugurated, the Koch Brothers got together to figure out how they could fight back. Host cynthia in california. Caller good afternoon, thank you for taking my call. Im very interested, i have not read your book it sounds like it is very thorough and everything. What i am wondering is, have you investigated anything about the Clinton Foundation and all of their money and what they are doing with that . We are hearing a lot about other countries it donating andir influencing politics internally in our country through her o foundation. There is money on both sides. I am not naive enough to think that only the conservatives kept a big money supporting them. Have you you done any investigation into that . Host that was cynthia and theres another similar tax, do you know anything about the dark money that clinton received. Of guest i dont know about that. I have written about one clinton was president there was all kind of financial shenanigans thatt took place. We wrote about, will remember there is a revolving door practically with the lincoln bedroom there where the big donors were coming inches there is a scandal involving a the chinese donor who described the white house has been like a trendy style where you buy subway token and when you put in the money you get to come in and get what you want. It was a pretty steamy picture. Ive been working on this book for the last five years so i have not had a chance to dig into the Clinton Foundation. I think it is certainly fair game to take a close look at it. All foundations in my mind should be much more carefully policed i the irs to make sure that when we as citizens give them tax breaks and putting money into them, they are all supposed to be doing things that are in the Public Interest not just in their private interests. Not just pushing their corporate or political interest. Billion theyre supposed to be in the Public Interest. I would like to see much better policing of foundations. I there Something Like 800,000,000,000 dollars billion dollars right now an american foundations. That is a huge pot of money. It packs a punch in our public realm in terms of public policy. I agree with the caller that not single party has all of the angels on its side and all of this is, the area that we have to look at very closely. Host lets get to the new yorker. Guest i got to the new yorker after writing a book about clarence thomas. By someone at the new yorker asked me to review a book called the real and needed hill. It it was a book that said anita hill had made all of this up and at first i remember thinking, i should not review a book that has a conflict of interest, do to not seem like the right thing to do. So i just said lets wait and see. Anyway, this book, the real anita hill began to be taking seriously as if it were true. I knew from the reporting i have been doing that it was not truep that it was filled with lies. I began to think oh gosh i have a responsibility are probably one of the only people who really truly does know that this book is full of lies because i had done so much reporting myself of her. Amso so i have a responsibility to get the truth out there. So i reviewed the book, it was just before i was having my babe daughter. I remember Fact Checking when i was in the hospital and the review came out and i think we did the right thing. It shone a light on twisted things in that book, many years later, such a strange story. Many years later david brock changed his point of view completely. He admitted that his book was wise about anita hill, he he apologized to anita hill. He apologized to myself personally and he has now become a pro hillary on the democratica side and conservative operative. It is a very strange story but i got to say it clears out the fact that we were right, that book was not writes. So thats how i got to that interview, stirred up a lot of a interest and then they said would you consider writing for us, i was on maternity leaveve from the wall street journal and i thought great, first of all its the most amazing publication of the country and in a way i could be a mom and write at a certain time period anita brown was the editor and i had a little more control so i could be home with my baby some of the time and write thesefor i stories. Host what was it like . She was great actually. Ay [inaudible] host she was right, the combination would be just completely combustible. So she was fun to work with. I enjoyed working with tina a lot. She was a taskmaster too. Wewe would get faxes at 3 00 a. M. In the morning. En so she is demanding, appreciative, creative, fun. I, fun. I enjoyed working with her. H host howard in florida. Jane caller thank you for having me. In your book you talk of bouts the funding by the trend to of universities. It made me think of the death of the liberal class. He talked about victims whom may have been of koch system. Did he ever discussed this with you. No, i actually dont know the book that youre talking about. I what i write about is really in some ways the frontier of what the cokes are funding right now. You think a lot about them a putting money into president ial and other races this year and that money, 889 million is huge. What theyre doing so much more deliberately and systematically is funding programs and colleges and universities to try to recruit young people to having their point of view. I think the koch foundations are currently funding programs andfm Something Like 307 different schools, colleges and universities. That the every month i see a googleon alerts on another school that they are pouring money into. What i write about in my book is that they have had their eye on young people from the start almost. I had a paper that is part of a secret history that was written by the Koch Brothers who knew the family. His name is clayton. What he does arrives as charles very early on was how we needed to start a radical movement and youth were the best way to do it. We knew to to recruit kids. They are open to new ideas. He aimed to for the. Someone he was working with at the time another libertarian at that point said we should copy the nazi youth movement. People the nazi youth movement, hes not saying we should become nazis but they created a sense of identity by getting very young people into a movement where they identified as a particular ideology. That was 1976 when those papers were being written. This is the fulfillment of it these days. You can see in so many schools the koch are funding their trying to plant their programs in various economic departments mostly. D host jerry in phoenix, good morning. Caller thank you for taking my call. I am not quite through the book but i have looked up out of personal interest 20 references to the John Birch Society. It might be of real interest isr that i debated as a spokesman of the John Birch Society, theestae congressman at the time they were swinging mightily in the arizona and the rightwing newspaper. R. After that debate and i quoted a course where welsh and his new book calls eisenhower as a tool of the communist and so forth. And then went to a debate where rehnquist who is a lawyer in phoenix debated and another lawyer in phoenix about a civil rights issue at the lawyers club. Qu rehnquist quoted at length fromf robert roach, the issue of American Opinion. American opinion was the publication of robert welsh. I thought you might find it interesting that in phoenix it was generally known to those of us who are knowledgeable of all that power and arizona was tied into the John Birch Society and the arizona public controlled the state and they didnt like my criticism in the column. If in fact rehnquist was a debae member but that debate was taken entirely from that months of American Opinion and request when i called would not disavow, he just said he did not want to talk. Guest that is interesting. I assume when rehnquist was being confirmed that people must have looked at his ties to the John Birch Society. Its interesting, the Koch Brothers were both members of the John Birch Society as was their father. Fred was one of their founding members. Of what ive found so interestingis was again we think of the John Birch Society as a fringe group. People who belong to it thought as the caller said that eisenhower was a secret communist and it is farfetched. Just the same, that worldview that seems so laughable in some ways has generated these brothers that are so powerful now and the Republican Party. I think the story in the history that i have been trying to tell, how did those views become so mainstream into americanics. Politics . Part of the answer is that there was so much money poured in to mainstreaming them through so Many Organizations that most americans did not realize theyg were funded by one tiny group of people. They just kept pouring money in and the organizations that did not look connected cap to militating for these ideas. Eventually the ideas got more currency and now they are very much accepted. You hear today many of the republican candidates for the presidency are talking about abolishing the irs. , but it sounds like a ludicrous position, who is going to collect the taxes then . We . We may not like the irs but someone has to do it. Thats a position that the Libertarian Party took in 19809 when david kochs ran for vice president. Today it is being mainstreamed by the republican candidate. Ved it has moved far, the the center of gravity from the republican side of politics has been so far to the right during the period that i have been coveringf politics that people forget about it. It is not really that long of a time, part of the reason is because a verys determined, very smart and very rich donors. Host does the john birchoh Society Still exist . Guest i think some form of it has been reincarnated. It is not a major factor. I suppose what is more important is a lot of its ideas seem to be coming up again. Host every month when we have an author on we ask about their influences, about the books they are reading, et cetera. We asked jane that informationd to and this is what she said. Host jane mayor, charlottes web . Guest one of my favorite books of all time i discovered also what i read it to my own daughter it is beautifully written. The author is such a hue or grow in the beautiful use of the language. Its its about life, death, regeneration, life, and pigs. Wilbur. 202 host 202 is the area code if you want to talk with arthuryer. Jane mayor 7488202 we have a little over an hour left in our program today. You can contact but tv at cspan. Org. At book tv if you want to leave a twitter message and you can make a comment on on our facebook page, facebook. Com book tv. N you can set text to two oh 2 7179684 textonly, include your first name and city thatyo would be great. Jane is the author of four books beginning in 1988, the landslide, thawed making of the president , strange justice came out in 1994, co author of the new york times, the dark side, the inside story of how the war on terror turned into war on american ideals came out in 2008, and finally dark money just came out this year. Jane, you wrote to darkside in 2008, the Bush Administration was still in office. Not its 2016, guantanamo still open. Guest its not what many people thought wouldht happen. R before leaving Charlotte Webb behind i just want to say one other thing. I was just thinking about why does a book resonate and stick with us from childhood on . Causee think one of the thing about charlottes web is it is the story of the runt, wilbur who is the piglet who is going to die because he was the runt of the litter. There is something about rooting for the underdog that i think is so appealing to most americans. This idea that you can start as the runt of the litter but you have talent and in the ends he does really well through trying really hard, and he saved the little girl who doesnt want to have the farmer kill them off because he is the runt. In some ways its such an american story and it resonates so much with so many kids, anyway its also beautiful illustrations and in the beginning i wanted to be an illustrator not a writer and i b wanted to either illustrateer childrens books or be a cartoonist. The first things i submitted to the new yorker were cartoons not stories. Host did any of her getce published. Guest know i got nice rejection notes. I did get one published in the wall street journal when i worked there and at yale when i was in college. It is really what i wanted to do but its very hard to make a living to be a cartoonist. So for all of those reasons much of my heart, i love childrens literature, i loved having a kid where i could read the stories out loud and enjoyed the illustrations all over again. Going to slightly darker subject of guantanamo, i think it is a pity that this country seems to be gradually acclimating to the idea that we would have people held in detention without triali indefinitely. We have the right to a speedy trial. We have a fantastic Justice System. We have a Justice System that has heard trials of terrorist and put them away for life. 9 some of the most dangerous terrorists of all in the 911 era situation. It is only politics as far as i can tell that has gotten in thed way of us doing the right thing here which is putting these terrorist who are in guantanamo on trial, give a military trial if you want but they should put them in article three courts were the prosecutors are itching to prosecute them. The u. S. Attorneys office in new york has such good cases against many of these guys in guantanamo and it is Congress Standing in the way and acting as if for some reason these terrorists are too good or too powerful to be tried in our own courts. I i think thats silly. I think thats a real pity. Host hasnt the Obama Administration continued the same policies that the Bush Administration has. In many ways they have, they they tried in the beginning as yout ir might remember the first week that obama was president he said he was going to aim to close down guantanamo. They have argued, argued, their hands have been tied by congress. Fo but they have participated in some of the same policies. For for instance early on they were going to be some of thee detainees were chinese, muslims, theyre not terrorist, according to the bush and menstruation there were not terrorist. The u. S. Was about to take one or two of them to show its good faith that we too could rehabilitate some of these people. When word got out the Obama White House freaked out just asm much as the republicans were freaking out. They were afraid it was going to look badt politically, something bad would happen and so they quenched on a deal, then they were sent to bermuda of all places where they were busy working and at least one and maybe two people weree working in a country club taking care of the sans trap and things like that. Nothing terrible has happened in bermuda. We could have done that in this country and demonstrated that we too can take some of these people instead of treating them like lepers that are too dangerous to have in our country. I think its pitiful really. Host bob is calling in from Overland Park kansas, you are on. Caller greetings from the state of kansas which is described as a division of koch industry. I am interested in the rebranding of the koch and youwe cite the professor who described the power of reframing and there Movement Towards promoting wellbeing as a way of injectinn a new face on freemarket capitalism. Im interested in your elaboration on that, iy really see that as being with the next major influence and how that is being cropped up. You mentioned it is with universities around the country. Guest thank you for asking. Hello to kansas. S. I write about it, this last chapter of the book is based partly on a weak tape that came out from one of the secret meetings that the kochs had with their donor. In in that meeting there is some fascinating material where richard fink who is one of their lieutenants for many years talks about a problem they agreed they had after 2012. The 2012 election was was a big disappointment for the coax. They had held in their donorb group for money behind romney and they were hoping to stop obama for being reelected and they failed. Afterwards they paid a ten of internal Market Research according to richard fink, an aide that is talking to the donors in the state and they describe how they did all of0 these focus groups and looked at 170,000 holes. He describes how they realize they had an image problem, the country regarded them that is very right wing, libertarian corporate donors is greedy. W they needed to appear to have good intents if they were going to convince the country to come their way politically. Cou they talk about how the country is divided into three parts, one third of the country is leftwing or liberal and will never accept the koch message. Another is conservative conservative or rightwing and is already with them. That middle third is what they are aiming at. If they want to win over thed, y country and get their policies implemented they need to win over that middle third, that is what they are aiming for. Ket r they did this Market Research which is not unusual for a Huge Corporation to figure out how do you sell the kochs brand, not just the brand of Kochs Industries but of their politics. How do you market it better . They came to the conclusion that if they needed to show good intent among the things they should do is describe their movement as a movement for wellbeing. That free markets make people happy, freemarket gives people opportunity. If you you shrink the government from the way theg describe it you will wellbeing to america. From that point on they started a wellbeing institute and started talking about wellbeing and many of their programs. That word pops up again and again. They also came to the conclusion that people regarded them as highly partisan, very righttry wing, due to the fact that they actually occupied the furthest right wing of the country on the spectrum. In order to seem more openminded they talk about how they needed to form alliances with unexpected allies. Among those allies they introduced, during the secret a summit where the National Association of criminal defensed lawyers and the United Negro College fund. They announced they would give more money in the to these groups and make a push foris working with democrats on some issues like criminal justice reform. They also poured money for the first time into corporate advertising for Kochs Industries which we have seen at baseball games, on tv on sunday mornings, you see it all over the place where they have the kind of traditional soft focus and describe how they are creating a Better Future for america, they are pouring money into a new image and you will see we call it the new koch but actually is it . Its the same philosophy politically it is just been sold in a new way. Host you quoted Charles Coker david coca same the whale that gets harpoon is the one that spouts. Aranc here are two recent media appearances by the kochthers. Brothers. Some days it seems like all david coca does is give, give, give, he gave Lincoln Center 100,000,000 dollars to help support the ballet. N he gave 185 million to mit. 20 million to the American Museum of natural history. New an entire wing to the hospital. At the metropolitan museum of art. You are not wellliked primarily because of your very conservative politics. Describe your political point of view. I am basically a libertarian, im a conservative on economic am matters and i am social liberalw deuce you support gay rights, womens right to choose, as a conservative candidate many do not have those views. That is their problem. I do have those views. What i want these candidates to do is to support a balanced budget. Im very worried that if the budget is not balanced that inflation could occur in the economy of our country couldrri suffer terribly. Because the candidate youat support because of their fiscal policies most important. Ts exa that the right. Im focused intensely on economic and fiscal issues. If those go bad, the country as a whole suffers terribly. Host do you think it is goot for the political system that so much of what is called dark money is falling into thein process now . First of all what i give isnt dark, what i givet i politically, that is all reported either to packs or to the candidates. What i give to my foundation is all public information, but a lot of art donors do not want to take the kind of abuse that i do. They do not want these it tax or death threats, so they are not going to participate if they have to have their names associated with it. But you do not really consider yourself a republican. I consider my client myself a classical liberal. Dred the democrats are taking uso about 100 miles an hour over thl financial cliff and theepub republicans are taking us theree is 70 miles per hour. The lesser of two evils i dont like to put it that way less and productive. Host what did you think about that. Guest it has been interesting to watch, the whales that did not want to be harpoon turnout swimming around whereit you can see them, it is such a change from when i started writing about them. He five years ago there are the most secretive billionaires in the country. That was saying something. This was part of the new Public Relations effort that theyre following, they are following, they are trying to talk and put a human face on their views. Its a smart policy probably. They certainly have gotten a lot of great publicity from barbara walters, you can hardly buy publicity like that about give, give, give. Give, give. In that interview if you listen carefully what you