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Tea Party funder David Koch, all $17.5 billion of estimated worth of him, turns up looking very human in New York magazine profile. Koch, who was born into his family's industrial fortune and proceeded to get richer, tells the magazine:
“Father always wanted me to have less money than my friends so I would appreciate it. If I wanted to go to the movies, I’d have to ask him for the 25 cents.”
On Koch's Tea Party connection:
Koch denies being directly involved with the tea party--“I’ve never been to a tea-party event. No one representing the tea party has ever even approached me”--but he and his brother Charles were being accused of supporting the group through an affiliated conservative organization. Rachel Maddow had effectively called Koch the tea party’s puppet master. “The radical press is coming after me and Charles,” he said. “They’re using us as whipping boys.”
Maybe, but Koch absolutely funds Americans for Prosperity, which organizes Tea Party rallies. Which is right where New York magazine ends up, with this scene from an Americans for Prosperity convention last October:
To great applause, New Hampshire’s AFP representative announced that thanks to his chapter, when President Obama had traveled to Concord, he was forced to change his motorcade route “to avoid the angry mob.” Many others noted among their accomplishments the size of their state’s tea-party rallies. “We’re proud not only to be the home of peaches and pine trees,” Georgia’s AFP representative bellowed, “but also the largest Tax Day tea party in the nation on April 15.” There seemed to be little mystery in the room what AFP was up to. Of course, it’s impossible to say what David Koch was thinking at that moment. This much can be said for sure: All six feet five inches of him was standing up and clapping.