If you can't beat 'em, buy 'em. Billionaire Charles Koch. The bankrupt Tribune Company has put its bundle of eight huge newspapers on the block.

One of the expected bidders for these papers, Amy Chozick of The New York Times reports, is Koch Industries, the massive energy and manufacturing conglomerate owned by the conservative billionaires David and Charles Koch.

The Kochs may bid for the newspapers, a person who attended a recent seminar held by the Koch brothers in Aspen said, to "make sure that [the libertarian] voice is heard."

The Tribune's newspapers include:

The Chicago Tribune

The Los Angeles Times

The Baltimore Sun

The Hartford Courant

The Orlando Sentinel

Buying the papers is expected to cost only about $625 million, which would be a rounding error for the gigantic Koch Industries, which generates a staggering $115 billion of revenue per year.

The focus of the Koch's recent Aspen seminar, Chozick reports, was to put together a 10-year plan for achieving a goal of lower taxes and less regulation.

The seminar produced a three-point plan:

educating grass-roots activists

influencing politics, and...

media

The acquisition of the Tribune papers would obviously go a ways toward supporting the latter tactic.

As many Koch supporters point out, the brothers are not technically "Republicans" — they support gay marriage and other socially progressive freedoms. But there is no mainstream libertarian party in the United States, and the Koch's donations go to the GOP (which is very far from libertarian.) So Democrats will undoubtedly get their knickers in a twist about this.

You can read Amy Chozick's story here >