Koch Brothers Plan To Take Over America

The Koch bothers have stepped back into the news with their $25 Billion dollars a piece – the company is privately held, and now their new political party.  If you’re in the oil business or flat out have billions and want to protect them, you need to be involved in politics, buying politicians or if all else fails, start your own party.

Politico Reports:

The Koch brothers’ political operation has increasingly come to resemble its own political party — and later this month in San Diego, it will hold what amounts to its most ambitious convention to date.

Many of the dozens of rich conservative invitees are expected to write huge checks to a pool of cash distributed among Koch-approved groups, potentially boosting the Kochs’ 2012 spending plan beyond their historic $395 million goal. And it’s also a chance for the Kochs to show off their increasingly robust political machine, including a growing voter database project called Themis that played a major role in conservatives’ recent efforts in Wisconsin and in which POLITICO has learned Koch operatives have discussed investing $20 million.

And they are working on bringing in money:

But most of the cash raised at the Koch summits — typically in pledge sessions on the last day of the summit that have a revival-like feel — goes to nonprofit groups that do not disclose their donors. And the groups represented at recent conferences provide some hints as to the recipients. According to the documents reviewed by POLITICO and interviews, there are think tanks such as The Heritage Foundation, the American Enterprise Institute and The Federalist Society, as well as advocacy groups including the 60 Plus Association, National Right to Work, the Club for Growth and Americans for Prosperity.

The Kochs raised more than $150 million at their winter conference this year in Indian Wells, Calif., on top of $49 million at a summit a year earlier in Rancho Mirage, Calif.

And they do want it to be kept secret:

Attendees are warned not to “post updates or information about the meeting on blogs, social media such as Facebook and Twitter, or in traditional media articles,” according to a packet distributed to participants at the June 2010 session that was obtained and posted by the liberal blog ThinkProgress. The summits had gone off without a peep of publicity until that packet, which included an invitation to the winter 2011 meeting in Rancho Mirage, Calif., leaked to The New York Times and ThinkProgress, paving the way for raucous protests outside the Rancho Mirage resort hosting the conference.

Their special “Save America For The Rich” seminar in 2011, they had a visitor that was not anticipated (they DID NOT WANT IT TO BE RECORDED).  From the Brad Blog, we have the transcripts:

KEVIN GENTRY [Emcee]: [trying to quiet down crowd] Shhhhhhh. Okay. Thank you very much. I’m going to turn it over for a quick welcome to Charles Koch. Charles, take it away.

CHARLES KOCH: Ya know, usually in a business if there’s something unpleasant to do or some guilt that somebody has to take, it’s not the CEO, it’s some poor guy or girl that had nothin’ to do with it. It doesn’t work [like that] at Koch Industries. I think it’s the principle of market based [inaud]. It’s dirty work that needs to be done, they assign it to me. So. [laughter] There you have it. I don’t know why I came up with this theory. I must have been crazy.

But we’ve been talking about — we have Saddam Hussein, this is the Mother of All Wars we’ve got in the next 18 months. For the life or death of this country. So, I’m not going to do this to put any pressure on anyone here, mind you. This is not pressure. But if this makes your heart feel glad and you want to be more forthcoming, then so be it.

What I want to do is recognize not all of our great partners, but those partners who have given more than a billion – a mill-, no, billion – [sustained laughter, applause]. Well, I was thinking of Obama and his billion dollar campaign, so I thought we gotta do better than that. [inaudible] you can’t run on these deals. No, I’m not, I’m gonna go easy on you. More than a million over the last 12 months. If you want to kick in a billion, believe me, we’ll have a special seminar just for you. [laughter]

So here — there are just a few names here, so bear with me. And I’m not going to read all the first names. But, alphabetical…

[TRANSCRIPTION NOTE: Names are transcribed phonetically as best as they can be understood from the recording. We've attempted to cross-check these names against lists of known attendees of previous seminars and other public records of Koch supporters. For details and background on most of those named by Charles Koch below, please see Mother Jones' "Koch Brothers' Million Dollar Donor Club".]

…The Camerons, John Childs, The Ciokas, The Cortopossis, Joe Craft, The DeVoses, The Farmers, Kelly Friedman, The Friesses, The Fullinwiders, The Gilliams, The Griffins, The Hamms, The Haworths, The Haydens, Diane Hendricks, The Humphreys family, Virginia James, The Levys, The Marshalls family, The Menards, John Moran, The Patricks, The Popes, The Schwabs, Paul Singer, The Templetons, The Traytellas, The Robertsons, Karen Wright, and Tom Rastin, and the principals with the Services Group of America, and then ten more will remain anonymous, including David and me [laughter], so we’re very humble in that… [laughter, applause].

The plan is the next seminar I’m going to read the names of the ten million. So there you have it. [laughter] Thank you.

KEVIN GENTRY [Emcee]: Okay, you all enjoy your dinner. We’ll be back to you a little bit later. Thank you.

[Dinner break. The evening's keynote speaker...will address the crowd afterward.]

[Picking up from the end of the closing address delivered by Fox's Judge Andrew Napolitano...]

JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO: … So what does the government fear the most? I think the government fears fear. I’m afraid the government is going to take the property and the freedom of everybody in this room. The government should fear that we will take its power away from it and put it into the hands of worthy custodians of our freedom.

Jefferson articulated this when he said, “When the people fear the government, there is tyranny. When the government fears the people, there is liberty.”

Thank you and God bless you, my friends. [applause]

CHARLES KOCH: You know, Judge, I wish I had said that. [laughter]

I’m workin’ on it. But, you know, we’ve talked about our competitive disadvantage, how we’re overwhelmed in a number of areas, but we have — and one of those areas, of course, is the media — and we’re overwhelmed. The media’s ninety-plus percent against us. But we have a few bright stars and Judge here is one of ‘em. So we thank you so much. [applause] Not only for being with us tonight but what you do every day in defending our free society.

And I also want to thank all of those here who made this, I think, a great seminar. And that goes for the staff who organized this, that goes for the people who made presentations, that goes for all of you who have to make these presentations a reality. That’s the easy part, of course.

Now, we’ve opined on what you should, and you have to, go execute. And I’m sure you’ll do a great job. And that goes for the participants. We’ve had great discussions, great arguers, I think great programs, great initiatives. And last but not least, I want to thank all of you who stepped forward so generously to support this as you’ve done in the past. And I want to give all of you a big hand for stepping forward to save our country. [applause]

And we’ve had a lot of tough battles. We’ve lost a lot over the years and we’ve won some recently. Set the stage for, as I’ve said, the mother of all battles coming up a year from November, and I’ve pledged to all of you who’ve stepped forward and are partnering with us that we are absolutely going to do our utmost to invest this money wisely and get the best possible payoff for you in the future of our country.

So I hope you will stay with us and also continue to do your utmost. Because it isn’t just your money we need. We need your energy. We need you bringing in new partners, new people. We can’t do it alone. This group can’t do it alone. We have to multiply ourselves. Just as to change the media we just can’t have the Judge. We need to clone him thousands and thousands-fold. And so [applause], thank you so much. God bless you and God bless America. [applause]

[End of recording.]

Here is more on the Koch brothers:

What are they really about?

And from Rachel Maddow: