Caricature of David Koch by DonkeyHotey

Caricature of David Koch by DonkeyHotey

This is just a mind-boggling statistic : The various Koch-sponsored groups spent "more than double the combined political spending (including to undisclosed group) for the top 10 unions combined" in 2012.

Here's what that looks like:



The Wall Street Journal’s Kimberley Strassel either has no understanding of campaign finance, or is willfully misleading her readers. […] In her column, “The Really Big Money? Not the Kochs,” Strassel cites a Center for Responsive Politics list to claim that unions “collectively spent $620,873,623 more than Koch Industries” on political races. Of course, if you actually visit this page on the CPR website, the list runs below a disclaimer noting that it does not include certain Super PAC spending or most undisclosed dark money spending, the preferred route for the Koch brothers for decades.

That includes all the "dark money" spending of both unions and the Kochs, money to Super PACs, etc. There's a concerted push now among conservatives to try to say that the Kochs really aren't bankrolling the Republican Party, and look! Unions! Bad!I'll go with "willfully misleading" on that one. The reality is, the reported spending by the Kochs in 2012 was dwarfed—almost 100 times—by their unreported spending, $4.9 million in disclosed contributions compared to $407 million in undisclosed money spent.

Of course the best part about all that Koch money spent in 2012 is that they lost.