Yes, Virginia, if you are a right wing politician there is a Santa Claus. In fact, there are two of them, and they raised (excuse me for repeating the information in the title) over FOUR HUNDRED MILLION DOLLARS for the 2012 elections, most of it from anonymous donors. This is your Citizens United democracy on steroids.
The filings show that the network of politically active nonprofit groups backed by the Kochs and fellow donors in the 2012 elections financially outpaced other independent groups on the right and, on its own, matched the long-established national coalition of labor unions that serves as one of the biggest sources of support for Democrats.
The resources and the breadth of the organization make it singular in American politics: an operation conducted outside the campaign finance system, employing an array of groups aimed at stopping what its financiers view as government overreach. Members of the coalition target different constituencies but together have mounted attacks on the new health-care law, federal spending and environmental regulations. […]
Together, the 17 conservative groups that made up the network raised at least $407 million during the 2012 campaign, according to the analysis of tax returns by The Washington Post and the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan group that tracks money in politics.
A labyrinth of tax-exempt groups and limited-liability companies helps mask the sources of the money, much of which went to voter mobilization and television ads attacking President Obama and congressional Democrats, according to tax filings and campaign finance reports.
And remember, this was in addition to the money raised by Rove’s Super PAC, Crossroads, which raised $325 Million for the 2012 elections. But that isn’t the worst news. According to the Washington Post article linked above, the Koch organization is already in the process of repeating its 2012 effort for the 2014 elections, hiring staff and running ads against Democrats throughout the country. How much will they raise this time? Your guess is as good as mine, but don’t be surprised to see a tsunami of attack ads against Democrats and other political activity funded ever so secretly by the greatest threat to democracy in the United States, to the extent that what we have can still be called a democracy.
You’ve seen plenty of evidence of what Koch money bought over the last few years. The tragedy of Wisconsin’s Republican controlled state government. The elimination of entire city governments in Michigan, thanks to Koch funded Republican politicians. Fracking gone wild in Pennsylvania. Name your state, and you will find a Koch funded organization working hard to take away your rights, your health, your employment opportunities, you and your children;s educational opportunities and, if you are a women the fundamental right to decide what happens to your own body. And remember, the $400 million raised for the 2012 election cycle does not include the Koch sponsored ALEC organizations, which as we speak are writing and promoting bills for Republicans in state legislatures to pass into laws all across the country.
In twelve reports released on November 13, 2013, the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) and Progress Now state groups expose the State Policy Network (SPN), an $83 million web of right-wing “think tanks” in every state across the country.
Although SPN’s member organizations claim to be nonpartisan and independent, an in-depth investigation reveals that SPN and its state affiliates are major drivers of the ALEC-backed corporate agenda in state houses nationwide, with deep ties to the Koch brothers and the national right-wing network of funders.
The reports show how these groups masquerade as “think tanks,” and describe how some of them may be skirting tax laws while really orchestrating extensive lobbying and political operations to peddle their legislative agenda to state legislators, all while reporting little or no lobbying activities.
How much money has been poured into defiling our political system by the Koch Brothers? Better question: How much more money will they secretly raise and spend over the next decade to turn the United States into the equivalent of a third world country? One billion dollars? Two? Three? More? You tell me.
Am I an alarmist? Is Rachel Maddow? I don’t think so. Frankly, I don’t think anyone can be too alarmist when you consider what is at stake. The demolition of the social safety net. The unbridled, unregulated destruction of our environment. The continuing ability of Wall Street to steal our national wealth receive money from the Federal Reserve for their own financial benefit.
FOUR HUNDRED MILLION DOLLARS raised from anonymous to sabotage one election cycle. How much next time, and the time after that, and the …? As Ben Franklin (the man not the face on a hundred dollar bill) once told us, the Constitution gave us “A Republic, if [we] can keep it.” Right now, there are two obscenely rich white men, men who could care less about anything other than their own greed, who are determined to dismantle that republic. It’s easy to say, “Well, they are doomed to fail because of the changing demographics in America, Americans are becoming more progressive, blah, blah, blah…” But right now, we face (and pardon the appropriation of an infamous right wing slogan) a very real and present danger.
Money can’t buy happiness, they say, but as we have seen in many states, it can buy politicians who represent the interests of the wealthiest, greediest, most destructive individuals among us. The time to fight that power is now, because in twenty years it may not matter how progressive Americans are if progressive voters and politicians and ideals are shut out of any chance of winning elections and governing this nation.
