This news isn't brand-new anymore, but it's important enough to pass along. The New Yorker has published online a deep investigative article that will appear in its Aug. 30 print edition. The investigation -- laid out in a long, intricate narrative which spans a few decades -- concerns the role of David and Charles Koch, two of the wealthiest men in America, in what many named sources describe as their single-handed creation and propagation of the political ideology driving the current Tea Party movement. The report asserts the Kochs have funneled uncountable millions to a tangled network of political nonprofits, think tanks and academic research centers, which although appearing independent, unfailingly promote ideas, sometimes disingenuous ones, that benefit Koch Industries and its companies.

Americans have heard some of those ideas quite a bit recently: A smaller and less-funded federal government (anti-government in general), less regulation, an ultra-strict interpretation of the U.S. Constitution, the notions that climate change is either mythical or is not being driven by human activity, and that recently passed health care reform legislation should be de-funded or repealed.

The article alleges the Kochs and their company, Koch Industries, are the originators and primary benefactors of the hard shift to the anti-government right America seems to be taking these days. But it's not just conspiracy talk; quite a few sources are named, and they speak candidly. The story is impossible to summarize here, and it's a rather challenging read, but it's very well worth your time. Read much, much more, here.

And there are Alaska connections. As Linda Kellen Beigel writes in The Mudflats blog, years ago, then-Gov. Sarah Palin cited a Koch-funded -- and to be sure, completely denounced -- study that suggested polar bears would not be adversely affected by the loss of sea ice in their arctic habitat. She used that paper in her arguments against the EPA's listing of the polar bear as a threatened species before it had been publicly released. Mudflats also digs up connections between the Tea Party Express and foundations created by the Kochs. As you may recall, Tea Party Express spent more than $560,000 on behalf of Joe Miller in his GOP primary run against U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski.

The other Alaska connection is that Koch Industries owns Flint Hills Resources, the company which owns that particularly troubled refinery in North Pole. A fact Dermot Cole mentions briefly in his blog for the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner.

We're not drawing any conclusions about Miller being some kind of a corporate Libertarian version of the Manchurian Candidate or anything. It's safe to say that without Tea Party Express efforts on his behalf, Miller would likely not have a lead, slim or otherwise, in the Senate primary. But it's not just about the money. What's most interesting is that Miller's campaign "issues" page is almost identical to the ideologies and policy standpoints promoted by Koch-funded foundations as detailed in the New Yorker investigation.