The Koch Brothers’ Mother of All Databases

by David Safier

Charles Koch, worth about $25 billion, called the 2012 presidential election "the mother of all wars." He and his brother David, also worth $25 billion — that's a combined $50 billion net worth, in case you weren't counting — are planning to fund the war with the help of their billionaire friends who, along with huge corporations, are putting their money in the Republican corner in 2012.

Putting up $2.5 million for starters — that's .005% of their combined net worth, if I did my math right — the Brothers K are creating Themis, a gigantic database of conservative organizations which will link their strategies, their information, their mailing lists — basically everything they know and do — into one repository to allow the greatest possible coordination and the most accurate targeting of conservative voters.

Whether conservative groups will want to cooperate at that level is a reasonable question, of course. Lots of their information — mailing lists, voter information, etc. — is carefully guarded. But linking all these well funded groups together will help them coordinate efforts for greater effectiveness.

If Themis looks like it's working, I'm sure there will be lots more money where that $2.5 million came from, maybe even as high as .01% of their combined net worth.

The Brothers K have given at least $100 million to conservative causes — they're huge supporters of the global warming denial movement — and they'll be giving lots more this time.

According to Kenneth Vogel of Politico, the brothers intend to use their leverage among billionaire conservatives to pump more than $200m into the proceedings, focusing in particular on the presidential race.

Lots of money, lots of cooperation, complete lack of scruples, the willingness to lie, cheat and steal to get what they want . . . those are powerful tools for any group. The next campaign may well be "the mother of all wars." (However, the phrase came from Saddam Hussein before the U.S. invaded, and he didn't fare so well. Let's hope the Brothers K suffer from similar levels of hubris.)

An interesting note: According to the UK Guardian article I got my information from, the Themis program is modeled after the Democrats' Catalyst, created after Kerry's defeat in 2004 and used to build support and organization during Obama's 2008 campaign.