Fox News And The Phony Koch Brothers Defense - MediaMatters.org

[Bill USA]

http://mediamatters.org/blog/201202150007



Touching down their private jets at the Palm Springs Airport late last month, and convening at a nearby golf resort in Indian Wells, California, for a secretive retreat, wealthy conservative donors met again under the aegis of David and Charles Koch to plot the best way to pool their fortunes and defeat President Obama in November.

The high-priced Koch confabs have become a biannual ritual among Obama's super-rich foes. Operating in a post-Citizen United environment where there is no limit on how much money billionaires and their anonymous friends can spend financing negative campaign ads, the high-priced activists have signed up for the Koch War on Obama.

The battle is not a secret. The New Yorker spelled it out right in the headline of a 2010 profile, noting how the brothers were "waging a war against Obama." And a very expensive war it is. As Charles Lewis, founder of the Center for Public Integrity, a nonpartisan watchdog group, told The New Yorker, "The Kochs are on a whole different level. There's no one else who has spent this much money. The sheer dimension of it is what sets them apart."

Along with the entire Fox News enterprise, the Koch brothers became integral parts of the permanent conservative campaign to delegitimize Obama right from the inception of his presidency and to mercilessly demonize him as an enemy of liberty. (The wealthy duo bankrolled the "grassroots" Tea Party movement.)
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