Money laundering, Koch style

[hue]

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/01/06/1267656/-Money-laundering-Koch-style?detail=facebook#

A few layers of the big ol' stinky onion that is the Koch brothers' political attack industry are peeled back in this massive report in The Washington Post. It details the myriad "non-profit" organizations set up and shuffled around within the Koch network to fund what has become an almost exclusively anti-Obamacare campaign, and to conceal where all that money is actually coming from.

The resources and the breadth of the organization make it singular in American politics: an operation conducted outside the campaign finance system, employing an array of groups aimed at stopping what its financiers view as government overreach. Members of the coalition target different constituencies but together have mounted attacks on the new health-care law, federal spending and environmental regulations. [...]

Its funders remain largely unknown; the coalition was carefully constructed with extensive legal barriers to shield its donors.

But they have substantial firepower. Together, the 17 conservative groups that made up the network raised at least $407 million during the 2012 campaign, according to the analysis of tax returns by The Washington Post and the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan group that tracks money in politics.

A labyrinth of tax-exempt groups and limited-liability companies helps mask the sources of the money, much of which went to voter mobilization and television ads attacking President Obama and congressional Democrats, according to tax filings and campaign finance reports. [...]