In a study released this spring, the University of Massachusetts at Amherst’s Political Economy Research Institute named Koch Industries one of the top ten air polluters in the United States. These views dovetail with the brothers’ corporate interests. The Kochs are longtime libertarians who believe in drastically lower personal and corporate taxes, minimal social services for the needy, and much less oversight of industry-especially environmental regulation. Their combined fortune of thirty-five billion dollars is exceeded only by those of Bill Gates and Warren Buffett. Forbes ranks it as the second-largest private company in the country, after Cargill, and its consistent profitability has made David and Charles Koch-who, years ago, bought out two other brothers-among the richest men in America. Koch Industries owns Brawny paper towels, Dixie cups, Georgia-Pacific lumber, Stainmaster carpet, and Lycra, among other products. The Kochs operate oil refineries in Alaska, Texas, and Minnesota, and control some four thousand miles of pipeline. The company has grown spectacularly since their father, Fred, died, in 1967, and the brothers took charge. With his brother Charles, who is seventy-four, David Koch owns virtually all of Koch Industries, a conglomerate, headquartered in Wichita, Kansas, whose annual revenues are estimated to be a hundred billion dollars. In Washington, Koch is best known as part of a family that has repeatedly funded stealth attacks on the federal government, and on the Obama Administration in particular. Yet had the First Lady shared the stage with Koch it might have created an awkward tableau. Her office said that a scheduling conflict had prevented her from attending. One dignitary was conspicuously absent from the gala: the event’s third honorary co-chair, Michelle Obama. He is a trustee of the museum, perhaps the most coveted social prize in the city, and serves on the board of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, where, after he donated more than forty million dollars, an endowed chair and a research center were named for him. This spring, after noticing the decrepit state of the fountains outside the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Koch pledged at least ten million dollars for their renovation. He has given twenty million to the American Museum of Natural History, whose dinosaur wing is named for him. In 2008, he donated a hundred million dollars to modernize Lincoln Center’s New York State Theatre building, which now bears his name. The gala marked the social ascent of Koch, who, at the age of seventy, has become one of the city’s most prominent philanthropists. Kennedy’s mother, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, had been a patron of the ballet and, coincidentally, the previous owner of a Fifth Avenue apartment that Koch had bought, in 1995, and then sold, eleven years later, for thirty-two million dollars, having found it too small. Koch received an award while flanked by two of the gala’s co-chairs, Blaine Trump, in a peach-colored gown, and Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg, in emerald green. Koch was being celebrated for his generosity as a member of the board of trustees he had recently donated $2.5 million toward the company’s upcoming season, and had given many millions before that.
It was the seventieth annual spring gala of American Ballet Theatre, and David H. On May 17th, a black-tie audience at the Metropolitan Opera House applauded as a tall, jovial-looking billionaire took the stage.
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