Thursday, September 12, 2013

What's A Quarter Of A Billion Among Friends?

Meanwhile, the Koch Brothers secretly raised and spent $250 million to influence the 2012 elections, and we're only now just finding this out a year or so after the fact.

The group, Freedom Partners, and its president, Marc Short, serve as an outlet for the ideas and funds of the mysterious Koch brothers, cutting checks as large as $63 million to groups promoting conservative causes, according to an IRS document to be filed shortly.

The 38-page IRS filing amounts to the Rosetta Stone of the vast web of conservative groups — some prominent, some obscure — that spend time, money and resources to influence public debate, especially over Obamacare.

The group has about 200 donors, each paying at least $100,000 in annual dues. It raised $256 million in the year after its creation in November 2011, the document shows. And it made grants of $236 million — meaning a totally unknown group was the largest sugar daddy for conservative groups in the last election, second in total spending only to Karl Rove’s American Crossroads and Crossroads GPS, which together spent about $300 million.

Short, a soft-spoken but ferociously conservative 43-year-old operative, provided us a draft of a forthcoming IRS filing that will soon be available to the public. Short, like most in the Koch empire, feels wealthy conservative activists such as Charles and David Koch get a bum rap from the media. So, Short wants to ease his groups and their cause out of the shadows.

“There’s a mystery around us that makes an interesting story,” Short said in an interview in his conference room. “There’s also a vilification that happens that gets exaggerated when your opposition thinks you’re secretive. Our members are proud to be part of [the organization].”

And thanks to Citizens United, they can buy as much of our political process as they want.  When $250 million isn't enough, they'll simply spend more in 2014 and 2016 until the entire country is under Tea Party control.  If you're wondering why nearly half of Americans think Obamacare has been repealed or overturned already and is no longer law, well, you might want to start with the kind of media coverage that $250 million can buy.

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