9 Signs the Kochs Have Created Their Own National Political Party

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http://www.alternet.org/tea-party-and-right/9-signs-kochs-have-created-their-own-national-political-party

1. America’s third-biggest political operation: Last June, the Washington Post compared the number of employees at Americans for Prosperity, the best-known Koch-funded group, to the Democratic and Republican Parties. The Post noted that AFP had 240 employees in 32 states, compared to 250 field staffers for Republicans (and another 150 at the GOP’s national headquarters), while the Democrats said they would have 4,000 campaign staffers nationwide. It turns out that the Post vastly underestimated AFP’s size; Politico.com recently reported that AFO had 550 paid staff and spent $130 million in 2014.

2. Better voter data than the GOP: One of the most significant political developments in recent years has been the way political parties have created vast files about voters, rivaling what private-sector giants like Google and Facebook offer their advertisers. But on the political right, there has been a data-gathering war between the Koch Party and Karl Rove’s Republican National Committee.

3. Lesser-known but sizeable party operations: Americans for Prosperity gets most of the press, but the rest of the operation is massive, starting with its political money-laundering non-profit Freedom Partners, which was created in 2012. Because it is a non-profit, as opposed to a political action committee, Freedom Partners does not have to reveal donors and evades campaign contribution limits. In the 2012 cycle, it “raised and spent roughly $250 million,” Politico reported, drawing on its tax returns.

4. A private political party’s profit-centered platform: Like all political parties, Koch has its own platform, or agenda, that begins with an ideology and ends with a to-do list. Put broadly, most people know that the Koch brothers are longtime libertarian industrialists who made billions in oil and gas. But their profit-centered agenda goes far beyond attacking environmental regulations, casting doubt on the scientific consensus on carbon-causing climate change, and attacking oil-and-gas competitors like wind energy.