“Charles Koch, [CEO of Koch Inustries and a big founder of the Tea Party Movement], in a newsletter sent to his seventy thousand employees, compared the Obama Administration to the regime of the Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chávez. The Kochs’ sense of imperilment is somewhat puzzling. Income inequality in America is greater than it has been since the nineteen-twenties, and since the seventies the tax rates of the wealthiest have fallen more than those of the middle class. Yet the brothers’ message has evidently resonated with voters: a recent poll found that fifty-five per cent of Americans agreed that Obama is a socialist.”

—from “Covert Operations: The billionaire brothers who are waging a war against Obama,” by Jane Mayer, in the August 30th issue of The New Yorker