Koch Brothers, Allies Pledge $100 Million At Private Meeting To Beat Obama

David Koch, executive vice president of Koch Industries, attends a meeting of the Economic Club of New York, Monday, April 11, 2011. (AP)

WASHINGTON -- At a private three-day retreat in California last weekend, conservative billionaires Charles and David Koch and about 250 to 300 other individuals pledged approximately $100 million to defeat President Obama in the 2012 elections.

A source who was in the room when the pledges were made told The Huffington Post that, specifically, Charles Koch pledged $40 million and David pledged $20 million.

The semi-annual, invitation-only meeting attracts wealthy donors, Republican politicians and conservative activists. Last year, hundreds of activists gathered outside the walled-off resort to protest the meeting. This year, however, the conference went off quietly.

"Conference organizers and their guests successfully slipped in and out of the Coachella Valley without being detected, by buying out nearly all of the 500-plus rooms at the Renaissance Esmeralda resort in Indian Wells," reported The Desert Sun. "The resort closed its restaurants, locked down the grounds with private security guards and sent many workers home."

This is the ninth straight year the Kochs have hosted the conference. As Politico reported last year, the meetings often adjourn "after soliciting pledges of support from the donors -- sometimes totaling as much as $50 million -- to nonprofit groups favored by the Kochs."

The fact that the wealthy conservative donors pledged $100 million for the 2012 elections shows how intent they are on trying to get Obama out of office -- and previews how intense, and likely nasty, the general election will be.

There are limits on how much an individual can give to a political candidate. Therefore, much of the money pledged at the recent gathering will likely go to super PACs or nonprofits that can spend and accept unlimited amounts of funds. GOP primary voters have already gotten a glimpse of how the political system looks with super PACs around: record amounts of money spent on a large number of negative ads in the early primary states.

The source told The Huffington Post that they lamented the direction the conference has taken over the years. They said it used to be about "conservative strategy" and building a movement, but now it was mostly an "alpha male" spectacle focused on fundraising to beat Obama.

The Koch brothers have been the major donors behind many Republican candidates, the Tea Party movement and efforts to discredit the science around man-made global warming. Democrats frequently highlight the brothers to fundraise, and the first TV ad of the Obama reelection campaign invoked them as "secretive oil billionaires attacking President Obama with ads fact checkers say are not tethered to the facts."

Also at the conference was Ken Griffin, founder and CEO of the Citadel Investment Group. He supported Obama in 2008, leading his employees to contribute more than $205,000 to the campaign. By the time of the election, however, he had switched his allegiance to Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.). Since the election, he has openly discussed his "frustration" with Obama's policies, stating that he is "greatly concerned about the fiscal instability of the U.S." In the fourth quarter of 2011, Citadel employees completely abandoned Obama, contributing nothing to his campaign while giving $120,500 to presidential candidate Mitt Romney.

The Center for Public Integrity also reported that for the first time, Las Vegas casino billionaire Sheldon Adelson attended the conference. Adelson and his family are largely bankrolling Newt Gingrich's presidential run, with Adelson and his wife, Miriam, having given the pro-Gingrich super PAC Winning Our Future $10 million just this year.

Koch Industries did not return a request for comment.

Comments

[Flaming Moderate Wacko]

01:42 AM on 03/20/2012

The KochBros MUST be stopped, and the five traitor justices on the SCOTUS must be impeached.

[Ronda AtkinsMartinez]

11:56 AM on 03/19/2012

Why am I not surprised? This is how this country is runned...back handed/room deals...Don't be surprised if they find some woman who will say that she is the President's mistress just for a few dollars... or for that matter some young teen to say that he's their father...If they have nothing to hide than why all the secrecy?That's how they work. Don't be fooled...

[DAISY-MAY]

05:53 AM on 03/03/2012

We know why oil is going up and up and up.

[dmillerfla]

08:21 PM on 02/16/2012

The XL Pipeline is not an enemy of America as we already have hundreds of thousands of miles of pipeline crisscrossing our country. This is a red herring from the Obama Administration to blame someone else for their failure.

America needs oil and it should be US or if not at least Canadian Oil and not from other foreign ports. The concept of using Green Energy today is a great lie of the administration; for the technology is not there yet for alternative energy -and it is, and has become, a totally absurd waste of taxpayer money and has compromised our economic sovreighnity.

[Swendell]

12:25 PM on 02/26/2012

The technology is not there? I must be imagining all the wind farms and solar plants across the globe.

[brt929]

12:04 AM on 02/27/2012

It's a red herring is it?  Then why are so many organizations opposed to it?  Do you even know what you are talking about?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XL_Pipeline

http://www.ilr.cornell.edu/globallaborinstitute/research/upload/GLI_KeystoneXL_Reportpdf.pdf

The fact is, that this project has more reasons to reject it than to go forward with it.

[Ronald McQueen]

08:05 AM on 02/14/2012

100 million dollars...but you still only get 1 vote a piece.

[tressa 4]

06:43 AM on 03/27/2012

You get many more if some of those millions are used on voting 'technology'.

[dixonpa]

08:37 PM on 02/13/2012

The good news is that since the 1% of the people hold the most wealth in this country, that leaves the rest of us, the 99% to fight them with our votes.

Tocqueville's vision that the death of a democracy is a class of people without hope, is so relevant today. A civil society depends on a fair distribution of wealth, we must fight to take money out of politics, we must restore hope.

[kemahcw]

02:39 PM on 02/11/2012

Your money is going to waste. Right now you have united a lot of common middle class and poor people with your hatred and rhetoric. I hope you pledge and lose all of your money. It's called Karma...

[Richard Rick Perry]

01:05 PM on 02/10/2012

BOYCOTT KOCH INDUSTRIES PRODUCTS

Angel Soft toilet paper
Brawny paper towels
Dixie plates, bowls, napkins & cups
Mardi Gras napkins and towels
Quilted Northern toilet paper
Soft ‘n Gentle toilet paper
Sparkle napkins
Vanity fair napkins
Zee napkins
Georgia-Pacific paper products & envelopes
All Georgia-Pacific lumber & building products
(INVISTA Products)
Lycra
Stainmaster Carpet

[DAISY-MAY]

05:42 AM on 03/03/2012

I use all these, and will not stop now.

[Corinne Rogan]

02:05 AM on 03/20/2012

Funny there's so much paper that absorbs. Toilet paper, nasal tissue and paper to wipe filth. The Koch's need to be cleaned. Instead of cleaning their clock, let's clean their KOCH.

[Corinne Rogan]

02:11 AM on 03/20/2012

Let's work on some ideas. Here's an idea. Let's educate about unions and how a middle class was created. I can not understand people who are Republicans when Unions are responsible for the wages they made.
I WILL follow thru. Join me in cyberspace and in person!!!

[elizabeth gerteiny]

12:57 PM on 02/07/2012

The insidious reach of the radical Right libertarian Koch brothers of Koch Inductries, Wichita, Kansas---philanthropism to the arts and medical research cloaking their real goals---was revealed in February 2011, to be behind Wisconsin governor, Scott Walker's assault on collective bargaining in his state (for the sake of the budget, he said) which burgeoned nationally, and the attempt to make clownlike Herman Cain president, touches upon other sectors, as well, notably the proposed Keystone Pipeline project, questioned by President Obama on environmental grounds and the few temporary jobs it would create, and higher education, Koch's endless resources now funding 150 colleges and universities with contracts that determine hiring of professors, curriculum and ideologies to be forwarded.

Moreover, the brothers' relentless push for impractically low personal and corporate taxes, minimum industrial and environmental regulation and dismantling of needed social programs makes them perhaps the most dangerous force in the nation today.

Unless stopped, their nefarious influence will ultimately control every facet of American life, including academic freedom.

Our greatest blight, the brothers Koch,
Unlike most of our gentlefolk;
Once and for all, their covert skill
Has been uncloaked and yet they still

Can bend the spineless to their will
(Their noxious sway no one foresaw?)
And surely will persist until
The legislators on The Hill,

To bring that power down to nil,
Devise and vote yea to a bill
Signed by the president into law.

Elizabeth Gerteiny
Author of The President of War
www.bushandcompany.org

[Kai-HK]

03:50 AM on 02/07/2012

Great News!

[tellthetruth118]

02:47 AM on 02/07/2012

Beware, Be very aware;In 2007, Koch Nitrogen's plant in Enid, Oklahoma, was listed as the third highest company releasing toxic chemicals in Oklahoma, according to the EPA, ranking behind Perma-Fix Environmental Services in Tulsa and Weyerhaeuser Co. in Valliant.[43] The facility produces about 10% of the US national production of anhydrous ammonia, as well as urea and UAN.[44]
In 2010, Koch Industries was ranked 10th on the list of top US corporate air polluters, the "Toxic 100 Air Polluters", by the Political Economic Research Institute at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.[45]

[DAISY-MAY]

05:45 AM on 03/03/2012

You all all trying to scare people....Haven't you all seen rich people trying to help others???The Dems do the very same things. Quit acting like you don't.

[elaine43]

12:23 PM on 03/17/2012

daisy may come on get a backbone,this is reality, these koch brothers could care less about you,as long as you are in the 99%, you are nothing to them.Nobody is trying to scare you,we are trying to let you know the truth about what the republican party is ,people who think they are better than you.But we are stronger by going out to vote,no matter how rich they are,we as people are richer and wiser,we have the one thing they want from us the VOTE,any by God they won't get my vote.

[tellthetruth118]

02:44 AM on 02/07/2012

In June 2003, the US Commerce Department fined Koch Industries subsidiary Flint Hill Resources a $200,000 civil penalty. The fine settled charges that the company exported crude petroleum from the US to Canada without proper US government authorization. The Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security said from July 1997 to March 1999, Koch Petroleum (later called Flint Hill Resources) committed 40 violations of Export Administration Regulations.[41]

[tellthetruth118]

02:41 AM on 02/07/2012

Pollution and resource finesIn March 1999, Koch Petroleum Group, a Koch Industries subsidiary, pled guilty to charges that it had negligently dumped hundreds of thousands of gallons of aviation fuel into wetlands near the Mississippi River from its refinery in Rosemount, Minnesota, also illegally dumped a million gallons of high-ammonia wastewater onto the ground and into the Mississippi River. Koch Petroleum paid the Dakota County Park System $6 million fine & $2 million in remediation costs, and was ordered to serve three years of probation.[32]

In 1999, a federal jury found that Koch Industries had stolen oil from government and American Indian lands, had lied about its purchases more than 24,000 times, and was fined $553,504.[33]

In January 2000, a Koch Industries subsidiary, Koch Pipeline, agreed to a $35 million settlement with the U.S. Justice Department and the State of Texas. This settlement, including a $30 million civil fine, was incurred for the firm's three hundred oil spills in Texas and five other states going back to 1990.[34][35][36] The spills resulted in more than 3 million US gallons (11,000 m3) of crude oil leaking into ponds, lakes, streams and coastal waters.[37]

[sonomacountylady]

02:40 AM on 02/07/2012

Just like the nasty GOP trying to BUY an election! What else is new?????


OBAMA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 2012!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[stonemann]

02:39 AM on 02/07/2012

You know, the Kochs are about to learn that money can't buy everything, especially when most folks perceive that the President has the moral high ground on the issues. Besides, which horse are they going to bet this hundred million on, the one that claims corporations are people and that the President has made the economy worse when stats clearly show he hasn't, or the one that wants us to have a moon base "Yippee" by the end of his second term?

To Mitt, who claims he will "Fix" the safety net for the poor..."If it's broken" how are you going to achieve that, and what are you going to do with that roll of duct tape?