The Koch brothers are hosting right wing billionaires at their annual, top secret retreat in Palm Springs this weekend to plan out their attack on the upcoming elections. The meeting of several hundred super rich right wing extremists serves to coordinate Super PAC, dark money, and direct donation political spending for the 2016 elections in the United States. They target campaigns at the federal, state, and local levels.
![image via wikipedia](https://liberalamerica.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/A_Maze_of_Money-350x321.png)
As a result of the Citizens United Supreme Court Case, which eliminated campaign finance reform and greatly reduced limitations and regulations on political campaign donations and spending, the Koch network has nearly unlimited power to attempt to influence elections. They have promised to spend nearly a billion dollars to try and control the outcome of the 2016 elections.
As the New York Times reports,
“Hundreds of conservative donors recruited by the Kochs gathered over the weekend for three days of issue seminars, strategy sessions and mingling with rising elected officials. These donors represent the largest concentration of political money outside the party establishment, one that has achieved enormous power in Republican circles in recent years”.
The retreat is a hot ticket among Republican office seekers. Only a select few get an invite, where they can pledge to do the bidding of the billionaires in exchange for millions of dollars in campaign donations and support.
In recent years Koch aligned donor networks helped to fund, create, and operate the so called “tea party” movement.
The Koch family has a long association with extremist, fringe, and right wing political movements. Fred Koch established the family fortune by building oil refineries for Stalin, and later for Nazi Germany, and was a supporter of the Third Reich. He was also one of the founders of the hate group the John Birch Society, and warned that integration was communist plot to destroy America.
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