The Koch brothers "have files on 250 million Americans (the current US population is just over 318 million) ..." And we're worried about the NSA?

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COMMENTS:
*  You couldn't ask for better villains than the Kochs - a dynasty that got its start selling oil services to Stalin or whatever that was their dad did.  But it seems sort of inevitable that we'd sink into this kind of corrupt decadence. The 20th century was an unusual moment in history when workers could take big factories hostage in a political context where the state would be very reluctant to just shoot the strikers. This resulted in actual concessions and general prosperity.  Of course, since then the capitalists have moved their factories to countries where the governments don't have such scruples.
*  Their influence in statewide politics is more problematic that the turd they'll try to polish in the general - no amount of money will make the GOP's candidate seem palatable.
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The Koch Brothers Have Become America's Real Third Party
By Matt Baume, April 27, 2015

Go ahead and register to vote as a Democrat or a Republican, for all the good it'll do you. The only way to really influence an election is to be a Koch, and that's a party you have to be born into.

A secret Koch brothers memo reveals the brothers are planning to spend $125 million in 2015, preparing for the election. But that's dwarfed by their 2016 budget: $889 million, about equal to what the Democratic Party and the Republican Party will each spend.

So just what are they spending all of that money on? We're starting to get a clearer picture, and it ain't Fabergé eggs.

It's time to get really worried about just how much control the Koch brothers might manage to wield over the government by the time the dust of the election settles. The leaked memo reveals extensive plans to build a massive data-gathering operation, create new chapters in deep red states, and pay hundreds of campaign staffers across the country.

Smart use of data was an area where the Democrats previously excelled, and it's definitely a concern to see what the Kochs are building. According to Politico, they have files on 250 million Americans (the current US population is just over 318 million), they've crafted their own message-testing machine, and they know if you've been bad or good.

The Koch database is called i360, and was built for about $50 million by former McCain lackey Michael Palmer. You are almost definitely in it. It has your credit card info, your social network data, your voting history and membership in organizations, and it knows what kind of car you drive. The quality of the data the Koch brothers have about you pales in comparison to the Republican party's files.

So what are they going to do with it?

You can expect them to keep quiet until Labor Day, at which point all indications are that they'll start launching an attack on Democrats. We won't see much action in Washington, but if you live in swingier states, you'll get ads, flyers, phone calls, knocks on the door—all that stuff. And it'll all be targeted specifically to you: the call that you get or the flyer on your doorknob will be different than the one your neighbor receives, because they know what messages work on you. Hopefully, this means that gay voters will start getting flyers with photos of a shirtless Rand Paul oiling up his nubile torso.

By the time the PR machine really gets going in the fall, we'll probably have a better idea of who's going to be going up against Hillary in the primaries. Expect to see all of those candidates come in for a bruising. (This could be one reason why some strong candidates may want to sit this race out. Why open yourself up to a brutal assault in a year when Hillary's probably going to get the nomination anyway?)

It remains to be seen whether the Koch brothers will support a specific Republican candidate, but indications are good that they like Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, who's an asshole in the exact same way that they are. David Koch gave him an unofficial endorsement, then backpedaled and said he didn't mean it. (Yet.)

But whether he did or not, Republican candidates are already obeying the call of the Koch. One of the brothers' chief causes is eliminating a government corporation called the "Export-Import Bank," which essentially subsidizes foreign purchases of American products. (The goal is to give American companies the ability to sell products in new foreign markets.) Amongst Democrats, there's no clear consensus on the Ex-Im Bank: Hillary likes it, as does Elizabeth Warren; Obama doesn't, but reauthorized it anyway. Republicans tend to be more opposed, but they're split on the issue, too.

But the Koch brothers definitely do not like it, and that's why Marco Rubio has obediently taken up their call to abolish it. "The government should not be picking winners and losers when it comes to the free market," Rubio said, which is a line that could have been (and maybe was) written for him by the Kochs.

I'm not too worried about the rhetoric over the Ex-Im Bank—it's such a boring and complicated issue that the public will never care about it, even though it's insanely important. What's important is that it's a litmus test for whether a candidate will get Koch money. The more candidates speak out against the program, the more money they'll get from the Kochs. So if you hear one of the Republican candidates bring it up, you'll know who they're actually talking to: not to voters, not to party leaders, but to the billionaires who actually control the election.
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