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like Africa,” she said. “We’re going to be living in little mud huts, drinking whatever water we can find floating across the road.”
    Lisa Gentner and her coworkers were put out of work not because the rest of the world’s economy was catching up with America, but directly because of policies put into place by the powerful who rewrote the rules to serve their own interests.
    They hired lobbyists and bought Congress to do their bidding, and they did something else that may have been even more important: they created a powerful propaganda machine.
    The very rich have never liked the federal government, because it occasionally enacts broad programs such as Social Security, Medicare, and now health care reform that they regard as interfering with the private market. While that’s long been their credo, during the last three decades they’ve acted aggressively to convert those beliefs into national policies by funding foundations and think tanks that agitate for lower taxes, smaller government, and less regulation—policies that benefit them. Authoritative-sounding research reports, studies, and news releases issued by these groups under the guise of scholarship are peddled to the media, receive wide distribution, and influence national policies on taxes, jobs, and benefits in ways that adversely affect the middle class. Among the super-rich, few have been more active and influential in shaping national policy for the elites than two brothers whose fortune is rooted in the plains of Kansas, and there’s no sign that they think their task is anywhere near complete yet.
    Charles and David Koch are two of the richest men in the world. Forbes calculates their net worth at $25 billion each, which, if combined, would rank them only behind Bill Gates on the list of richest Americans. They head Koch Industries, the second-largest private company in America with annual revenue of about $100 billion. They have holdings in oil refining, pipelines, and forest products, but the Kochs are also major investors in consumer products, from Brawny paper towels to Dixie cups.
    The company was started by their father, Fred, who built oil refineries in Russia for Joseph Stalin before returning to the United States to build Koch into a profitable regional energy company based in Wichita, Kansas. He later helped found the right-wing John Birch Society and instilled in his sons a burning hatred of governments of all types. After his death in 1967, his sons took the company to new heights through expansion, acquisitions, and aggressive business practices.
    Like many rich people, Charles and David Koch believe fervently in unrestricted free enterprise and as little government regulation as possible. But they aren’t content to exchange their ideas with fellow plutocrats at their private clubs: they turn them into policy decisions that enrich themselves to the detriment of America’s middle class.
    The Kochs have contributed $12.7 million to candidates (91 percent Republican) since 1990 and spent more than $60 million on lobbying Washington in the last decade. But their greatest impact is the millions they have poured into foundations, think tanks, and front groups to mold public opinion in their favor by promoting positions that in almost every case benefit the few.
    The rise of these conservative think tanks and foundations directly coincides with the economic decline of the middle class. Among the more prominent of these organizations are the Cato Institute, which Charles cofounded in 1974, and Americans for Prosperity, which David launched in 2004 as a successor to a similar group that he had helped found earlier called Citizens for a Sound Economy. Dozens of other groups receive Koch money at the national or regional level. In early 2012, a rift developed between the Kochs and Cato, sparking litigation by the Kochs and charges by Cato president Ed Crane that Charles Koch was trying to gain full control of the think tank to advance his