Tonight and thanks to rainy day books our favorite collaborator and of course one of the nation great independent bookstores. We pride ourselves here at the library among other things on the timeliness and relevance of our signature programming, whether we are holding forums on local issues over addressing national topics. We certainly didnt intend on the particular timeliness of tonights presentation. Christopher leonard was a busy man at the end of last week, taking reporters calls, wrote a couple of pieces for the New York Times and four cnn business after the death of david. Chris spent eight years immersed in oakland. The state of the place and the title of his new book. On the extraordinary Business Empire and putins Political Network that was put together from their base some three hours in which debate over wichita. Anybody have the chance to read the book yet . You wont understand that you will know immediately when you get into it what i am talking about. Its daunting when you pick it up. It is74 pages and you get to the notes and the appendix and acknowledgments. But chris has written a 574 page page turner. As a former journalist, i am in all and even inspired by ldp researched this book is by the degree of detail is packed into it despite his limited access including the mastermind charles cook. Yet it is so accessibly returned it is fascinating, dramatic in places, and at the top of the journalistic checklist, its fair maybe more than some people would like. New york times said in its review, quote, it ranks about the best books written in the american corporation. By the way he was released two weeks ago today and immediately cracked the times talk ten nonfiction sellers. Chris was born and raised here in kansas city, grew up in worksite area, went to college at nu and it was clear tha there got hooked on journalism. His first job after graduation of the columbia daily tribune, was a Business Reporter there and he has been one ever since. Went on to be an arkansas Democrat Associated press when he worked out of st. Louis. The tribune in colombia he worked a story on tyson foods and with that, he became intrigued with the issue of Corporate Power, which has brought us to tonight. Chris is here for the second time he spoke at the Central Library in 2014 on his book the secret takeover of americas food business which is about how a handful of companies have cornered the u. S. Beef supply. Joining him on stage will be sean, longtime broadcaster whos collaborated on a couple of books including the autobiography he was terrific if you were here in interviewing the former mayor in july about the book. We are honored to have both of them here with us tonight. Please welcome sean and christopher leonard. [applause] thank you everyone so much for being here. I think mainly kansas city that westerners in this group. Theres tremendous wealth in this part of the country. I think what all of us argue isnt fully understanding in your book illuminates this tremendous power in this part of the country. That is right. What attracted me so much to the story is how powerful and influential this industry is and how little known is, how secretive it is. We will talk about this. It isnt secretive in the james bond sends it an institution that doesnt want the rest of the world to know what its doing for strategic reasons baked into what they do and how they make so much money so you have a massively powerful institution that affects everybodys lives. They specialize in the kind of businesses that underpin civilization, the stuff you cant boycott was without. They make the Building Materials probably in this building, the structure, carpeting, material in our clothing, nylon, spandex one of the largest makers of my trojan fertilizer which is something people dont think they buy but its a bedrock of the food system, so it is engaged in these businesses quietly beneath the surface of everyday lives in annual sales are bigger than that of facebook, Goldman Sachs and at the same time we never encounter the brand name. You never know you are engaging in this company. That is what really drew me to get along with the fact that when you are writing about this company i feel if you write about the entire system. They are so diverse that the story is a story of bluecollar manufacturing workers on the factory floor who might belong to the labor unio union that haa pay raise in 20 years, writing about financier types with millions of dollars a year trading derivatives and futures contracts, writing about dealmakers going out across the country looking for other companies to buy a used it and finally you write about one of the largest corporate lobbying operations in the country to have been rivaled by the wily. On the Corporate Power in the country it helps us to explore a lot of questions about whats going on in the economy today. Very early on in the book, you talk about 1988 when the federal government through the bureau fears the uniteappears the units Governmental Department finds out about the industry is and what you eliminate, this is 1988, this is a multibillion Dollar Corporation of energy. Congress had no idea who they were. Some people thought they were importing cocacola and they were sending in as the gators to atlanta. How did they make it for four to 1981988 were literally outside f the Energy Industry and even the insiders at not only were they not known to the general public but to the United States congress. Thats where it started at this point. Hiding behind a bunch of surveilling. It really happened. Senate investigators when they started investigating the huge issue of theft of a whale off of the land at the same reactio han us who are these people. All of a sudden, they had come to realize this company has the Largest Crude Oil operation in the United States and nobodys ever heard of it, and im reminded of an interview that i did then early executive who was on a plane with charles in the 60s and to back up a little bit, we can talk about the family and charles, but suffice it to say, he took over the company in 1967 when his father passed away and they were rearranging the firm and trying to figure out what to name it and specifically chose the name koch because it was a family name but completely without character, hard to remember and without description. You sort of stay in the background behind the curtain and just do it quietly really the patriarch Charles Coker early in the book he talks about a visit about people in this room where wall street financiers come and visit him and making Koch Industries public but he is not interested for echo as a reader of the book it is brilliant. You dont have to read it but if you just buy the book. [laughter] i would appreciate that. So he sends them away and says on the one hand he sends the new york guys packing that the other side of that its not just sticking up for the little guy but they just dont want to publicly report things they do not want to be beholden anybody outside of the teethree family and talk about this family Koch Industries was founded by fred teethree living in wichita kansas and in the 19 fifties he owned Pipeline Networks and cattle ranches and died of a heart attack 1957 his son charles was the president of the company it just 32 years old and thats when he assumed control. From the beginning this guy charles teethree who is been ceo since that time he became ceo when Lyndon Johnson was president at a time no other corporation in america that has been so shaped by a Single Person and personality and he had a very clear idea how a corporation not to be run. One of the key elements is longterm Strategic Thinking thinking two and five and ten years out and at the same time they operate in secrecy and we can talk about that but charles teethree new he wanted to remain private and retain control not only to turn quarter to quarter as so many corporations do but also think more longterm and as bankers came to wichita with jp morgan said take the Company Public you will have access to all this capital and money you personally will get 25 million it was a nobrainer he sent them packing a got the memo that they wrote that they are just banging their heads against the desk because he doesnt want the cash and he said if we go Public People will know how much other commodities traders make then they wont do business with us anymore that is very important to me so we could talk for a moment about trading because its at the heart of this organization those in the corporation and politically so from the 1970s the largest traders of Energy Suppliers in the world super tankers full of crude oil then they began trading the futures contract so to succeed in life as a traitor you want to know in the real world better than anybody else so somebody sells a barrel of oil for 50 you may know it is worth 52 so you buy all you can with any weight for the world to wake up to the reality it is 52 so for this reason the most important resource that they deal with is crude oil and natural gas. It is the knowledge about the world. They were in good position for those Energy Markets because they ran huge chunks of the system. With the gold coast of the United States and to make that that the shipment was about to come into the coast at the same time to get as much information as possible and in the year 2000 they hired away the meteorologist to have internal secret forecast so that teethree could and anticipate Energy Demand and also anticipate snowfall in california because that is an early predictor of reservoir levels which is another predictor of hydroelectric supply and another predictor of electric supply prices so they analyze this data and use it to make a trade in the real world. So you dont want other people to know what you know and you dont want people to know what you are about to do thats why the secrecy around what they do the company does it for headquarter building in 1992 its a giant building with opaque windows it is not coincidental its on the northeast side of wichita kansas they dont want you to know what they are doing is like the equivalent of trump tower in midtown manhattan. [laughter] with those philosophical differences between donald trump and charles teethree. [laughter] but really he is the lexicon there are actually four and it is almost shakespearean. I say that because he is patriarch in the ceo since hes 32 years old the other brother wants nothing to do with the company and the two eldest and the twins and bill ended up suing in a long legal fight with his brothers. It is a really sad story charles is in charge and as you point out the other brother was never content with the idea he could run the firm and they had a dispute over how to run the business he wanted to put the profits back in but he wanted to take money out and by helicopters and have nice houses which he originally did but to have him to take over the company and have his brother fired 20 years of litigation they would dig through the trash and pose as a reporter and it created a real feeling of being embattled inside of the company. Because in the 19 nineties this real weekend said its been picked up in the media to say im glad hes dead and i hope the end was painful. The vitriol that people think of bill marr that was hardcore from the left he did say that one and former president bush passed away outside of donald trump if he would say that about anybody but that came from the whole life from a certain perspective from the Koch Brothers everything started with Global Warming. It has made my job exceedingly difficult to report on this company because they are in the atmosphere of toxicity and hostility with distrust and all the rest that makes people inside the company extremely hesitant to share their story and hesitant to talk thats one reason why the book took so long to report. As a reporter in general it is extremely unhelpful for our general understanding of how things work with this rhetoric for it to become so commonplace and even with my own role in the introduction i talk about i wrote two essays one when he passed away passed away talking about this empire. But it was critical about david teethree and the gas emissions that we can talk about that i truly do think is a large part of his legacy but on another level thats curtis mann terrible to criticize somebody on the day they pass away but there was one hot moment when they really wanted to learn about david teethree and spending years interviewing people looking at the empire that made him rich and the political operation that he saw and i felt if i had something to tell people both positive and critical then you dont wake up feeling like garbage to be honest but then to tell people the truth and tell people whats going on and then often the family is obscured intentionally because of political operations with the Business Operation they are taken from the exact same blueprint that politics is just as obscure as the derivative markets so its important to tell people what happened categorically and then to present itself i dont know if its more important but what we will have to contend with in the next 30 or 40 years. And you uncover this with david teethree this was a sincere Investigative Journalism not only did they politicize Global Warming but i dont think its ever been fully understood how they tried to keep up the theory or the truth of Global Warming but it starts with the teethree brothers. I started reporting for a simple reason a few years ago i was interviewing a former senior lobbyist and i wanted to know how they did what they did and i said what woke you up in the morning quex he did not hesitate and he said carbon it was the preeminent political issue so if we take a second to talk about Coke Industries and politics so from the sixties charles coke had a very particular view how society should be structured he is a Classical Liberal to be developed by these economists like kayak i read diplomacy and action so you do not have to. [laughter] it is a fascinating and bananas kind of book. [laughter] anyway what he thinks is that organized societies and a voluntary Exchange System and that human set prices about what they care about but what i really prioritize in my life and the price will reflect that. So there must be a place for healthcare or roads or education. You name it and only done through free markets when you try to intervene with government regulation and take money from the winners and give it to those who are losers then you are distorting the system according to charles teethree he has worked patiently in a discipline fashion since the 1970s to make america a society what it is he tried to stay away from corporate lobbying until the 19 nineties and then he realized we have to be in washington if or not in a big way so in the 19 nineties teethree build a political apparatus unrivaled in america and i would like to say when i started reporting this book i thought i would be writing a Political Part about super pacs and political donations but i was wrong that was the wrong area to focus on the real action the started the day after the election getting into the granular business down in the pipes thats where he has his expertise so to do that he has built a multifaceted machine in the offices one that said along the lines of true power lies silent so that is awesome then you have this think tanks that he has founded from the Energy Alliance and independent Energy Research they promote ideas and they mainstreamed these ideas and with these political donors that sometimes he could give us much money to the Political Party itself huge money to sway politicians then finally and activist Network America for prosperity that can activate people to knock on doors from North Carolina or West Virginia from washington dc with a glossy protest sign and then specifically targeted congressional offices to support the point of you as well so what you see with this entire machine is the ability not just to sway and influence policy that you write policy and create policy that can be remarkably effective to washington dc and one of the key elements that they have been recognized for decades that the price of carbon emission and the regulations put on carbon emission to have dramatically negative consequences. Imagine having these billions of dollars in Oil Refineries and pipelines the value of all of that could demand for fossil fuels so they had fought vigorously not only to forestall the way to derail any activity. What i think is clear in your book with very solid investigative reporting that even though the teethree brothers are massive donors to the Republican Party this is not the religious right are social conservatives this is a libertarian free market viewpoint is that out pragmatism for political ideology quick. Thats a really hard question to answer. As the donors of the Libertarian Party they were disgusted they are just as big donors as the democrats so if you have the view i just described no Government Intervention day have b