Koch Brothers' Real FEAR Revealed In Secret Audio: LIBERAL MONEY [View all]

[Segami]

"...The general counsel to Koch Industries, Mark Holden, discusses the progressive opposition group, the Democracy Alliance, at their June 2014 seminar in Dana Point, California..."

Charles and David Koch may be annoyed at Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), who has made it his mission to elevate the billionaire industrialist brothers to the highest level of political villainy. But when it comes down to it, the biggest issue weighing on the Kochs' network of wealthy conservative money men is something entirely different: liberal money. At a private retreat on June 16 in Dana Point, California, Mark Holden, general counsel of Koch Industries, the Kochs' privately held company, delivered a disquisition on the overwhelming power of rich progressive donors lined up against the meager resources of the oil barons and their network of elite allies. His speech, an audio recording of which was obtained by Lauren Windsor's YouTube show The Undercurrent and provided exclusively to The Huffington Post, was titled "The Opposition: Understanding Their Strategy and Infrastructure."



Holden's talk focused on the Democracy Alliance, a network of wealthy liberal donors who strategically steer money to a set of hand-picked progressive groups. Holden told those assembled that "we've been able to learn a lot more details about them in the last couple of months from documents that someone in the group, Democracy Alliance, left behind at their last seminar." Holden went on to note the group's hypocrisy in not disclosing its own donors while advocating for a more transparent system and criticizing conservatives for relying on secret donors. He added that most of the groups for which the Democracy Alliance recommends funding are nonprofits that also don't disclose donors.



The threat from the Democracy Alliance is especially daunting, Holden said, because of a sympathetic mainstream media and a close relationship with organized labor that gives the group massive firepower. Holden claimed that the Alliance plans to steer roughly $40 million toward its favorite causes in 2014, and that together with a host of other numbers connected to Democratic spending and big labor, progressive groups will have an estimated $2.2 billion at their disposal by the time of the November midterms. Holden added that he may have done some significant double counting by adding labor money to Super PACs largely funded by that same labor money, but he concluded that, either way, liberals have a fortune with which to hammer the Kochs.

"What we have is a drop in the bucket compared to the left," Holden told his wealthy audience. "And they outnumber us. They outnumber us by a lot. So why do we get all the love? We know this, right? We talk about it all the time. Because you're effective." "They have 172 groups, 172," Holden said, referring to a document obtained by The Washington Free Beacon. "I was really bad at math, but 172 is a lot more than 31."

Holden's mention of "31" was a reference to a number of Koch-supported groups, but when it came to the 172, it wasn't clear if Holden didn't understand the way the Democracy Alliance works or if he was purposely inflating the group's power in order to inspire his audience to donate. The 172 groups are simply a list of organizations that do progressive work, though they are not part of the elite list of groups the DA is working to direct funding toward. That list includes only 20 groups. Holden also said that the Alliance "must have run out of names because MoveOn" isn't on the list. MoveOn, however, is funded only by small donors, not the wealthy types who frequent Democracy Alliance gatherings. Holden seemed unable to believe that a bottom-up group like MoveOn could raise as much money as it does.





cont'


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/09/09/koch-brothers-democracy-a_n_5790896.html