KOCHS TO SPEND $889 MILLION ON 2016 ELECTIONS

“The Koch Brothers’ New Brand,” a review in the New York Review  (by Bill McKibben of Jane Mayer’s Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right (2016).

[In 2011, a blogger impersonating billionaire David Koch got through the switchboard at the Wisconsin state capitol and was connected to Governor Scott Walker. The recording of their conversation is a hard-to-listen-to blend of obsequiousness and braggadocio. At one point the Koch impersonator urged Walker to “bring a baseball bat” to negotiations with the state’s lawmakers.

[“I tell you what, Scott: once you crush these bastards I’ll fly you out to Cali and really show you a good time,” the Koch impersonator said.

[“That would be outstanding,” the governor responded. “Thanks, thanks for all the support and helping us move the cause forward, and we appreciate it. We’re, uh, we’re doing the just and right thing for the right reasons, and it’s all about getting our freedoms back.”

[And then Governor Walker added: “Thanks a million!”]

{from the review by Bill McKibben:}

“Walker was understating the case by at least three orders of magnitude [that is, a billion rather than a million]. Jane Mayer’s remarkable new book [The Koch Brothers’ New Brand] makes it abundantly clear that the Kochs, and the closely connected group of billionaires they’ve helped assemble, have spent thousands of times that much over the past few decades, and that in the process they’ve distorted American politics in devastating ways, impairing the chances that we’ll effectively respond to climate change, reducing voting rights in many states, paralyzing Congress, and radically ratcheting up inequality.

“In this election cycle, for instance, the Kochs have publicly stated that they and their compatriots will spend $889 million, more than either the Republican or Democratic parties spent last time around. According to a recent analysis in Politico, their privatized political network is backed by a group of several hundred extremely rich fellow donors who often meet at off-the-record conclaves organized by the Kochs at desert resorts. It has at least 1,200 full-time staffers in 107 offices nationwide, or three and a half times as many as the Republican National Committee. They may be the most important unelected political figures in American history.”