Acc01: Charles and David Koch

For the first project I'm focusing on the Koch brothers, who are the owners of Koch Industries. There are several characteristics of this company that interest me:

1. That it is a privately held company.
2. That it is highly diversified, and difficult to pin down which companies they own at any particular time.
3. That anything the company supports are almost all libertarian or republican free enterprise promoting organizations, which have a philosophic mandate to promote the unchecked ability of individuals to grow more wealthy.

What is difficult at this point is finding anything out about the brothers themselves. David ran for vice-president in 1980 (Ronald Reagan wasn't conservative enough), while Charles seems more active in the various think-tanks their foundations support (Cato Institute, the Institute for Justice, the Reason Foundation, etc.) Charles is also apparently viewed as the pretty one; he's the one in all the company literature, interacting with employees and tutoring orphans.

So this project is not really a stab at a "political piece" but an investigation into the reasons behind the nearly non-stop growth of this company; they've gone as far as changing the entire politcial disourse in the United States, in order to make more money. Is there a reason for this? There are obviously simple answers, like that they just want money, or they are really seeking power in some general sense. I don't think I'll figure this out right away, but of the course of this project I'll revisit this to see how it ties in with other installations.