My conservative friends pull out the name of George Soros like it's some kind of automatic slam on all things liberal - an example of the way left wing thought and policy is controlled by corrupt and wealthy liberals of questionable loyalties.
The Koch Bros. put Soros to shame in the molding public opinion category and they do it far more secretively.
Jane Mayer, a staff writer at The New Yorker, profiles the brothers and their political connections in the Aug. 30 issue of the magazine. Her article "Covert Operations" describes how the brothers' political interests "dovetail with [their] corporate interests."
Teri Gross interviewed her, link to audio and transcript:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=129425186
From the transcript:
Ms. JANE MAYER (Staff Writer, The New Yorker): Well, they are long-time, very hard-line libertarians. So their private agenda is really the eradication of the federal government in almost all of its forms, other than the parts of it that protect personal rights.
They have been working to fight the federal government really since the 1970s. And their father was doing it before they were. So they're trying to get rid of federal regulations, particularly on energy companies like their own. They particularly have been at war with environmental regulations, and they have a history of serious and even criminal pollution problems. And they're very anti-tax in almost every form.
GROSS: Do you think that most of the people who see themselves as members of the Tea Party don't know about the corporate money behind it, don't know, for instance, that the Koch brothers are supporting a lot of the Tea Party activities?
Ms. MAYER: It's hard to tell. I mean, when I was down in the Austin convention talking to Tea Party people, there were a lot of people who had conspiracy theories about money flowing into American politics.
But, you know, ironically, none of those - the people that I interviewed, seemed to be focused on the Koch brothers. They were kind of obsessed with the possible role played by George Soros in particular.
So I didn't find anyone who seemed focused on the Kochs' role.
GROSS: You actually talked to one of Soros' spokespeople and asked them for their take on this because, you know, Soros is seen as, like, the great funder of liberal causes. And you quote his spokesperson as saying that Soros' funding is transparent. He doesn't secretly, you know, covertly fund things, and also, none of his contributions are in the service of his own economic interests.
Ms. MAYER: That was Michael Vachon who said that. And I can see out there on the Internet blogs that this is it had become kind of a war between red America and blue America about which billionaire, you know, creates more trouble in American politics.
And, you know, in some ways, I sort of think of it as choose your poison. The point is not to say that, you know, not to defend George Soros. It's to question, really, the role of these huge fortunes in flooding money into American politics.
And I actually wrote a very tough piece about George Soros for the New Yorker magazine also. So it's not that we're championing one over the other, necessarily.
But I can tell you one thing, which is when I did write about George Soros and the fortune - questioning the amount of money he was putting into politics, there was a big difference between writing about Soros and writing about the Koch brothers.
George Soros spent days talking to me and let me watch his operation pretty closely. And he puts out a lot of information about where his money is going.
By contrast, the Koch family refused to answer even the most fundamental question about their activities. They are, as I quote somebody saying who worked for them, they are not just under the radar, they are underground. And you cannot get this information out of them. So they prefer to be a much more closeted political force. [/I]