Photograph by Mario Tama/Getty Images

Americans for Prosperity Group activists attend a rally in Manhattan on Sept. 20, 2012 in New York City.

President Barack Obama has made it clear that he despises the tax-exempt nonprofit groups that play in politics.

Yet now his own campaign is becoming one of them.

The nonprofit Americans for Prosperity — a frequent target of Obama’s criticism — decided the “moment of sheer hypocrisy was too blatant to pass up,” AFP spokesman Levi Russell said.

So the group made an online video.

The jaunty minute-long spot, which will be circulated on friendly blogs and through AFP’s social media sites, intersperses clips of Obama mentioning Americans for Prosperity, him decrying nonprofits in politics and news segments about Obama’s new nonprofit.

“Well, that’s a change in tune,” a narrator says. The video concludes, “President Obama, let’s get real. It’s time to stop the hypocrisy.”

Obama for America, which spent $737 million to get the president re-elected, is converting from a political committee into a tax-exempt nonprofit. Aides involved in the project have told reporters that the group, now called Organizing for America, will voluntarily disclose donors.

Like Americans for Prosperity, it isn’t legally required to do that. AFP President Tim Phillips said his group spent more than $125 million on the 2012 elections, including an effort to try to oust Obama.

AFP has drawn attention because of its ties to billionaire industrialists Charles and David Koch, who founded it a decade ago. The brothers, worth a combined $89.8 billion, have contributed to numerous nonprofits that help fund the anti-tax Tea Party movement.

Original post is Anti-Obama Nonprofit Calls Out Pro-Obama Nonprofit: ‘Hypocrisy’ by Political Capital.

Hundreds of supporters signed the American Energy Alliance bus. Photograph by Allie Robinson/Bristol Herald Courier via AP Photo

The Center to Protect Patient Rights funneled $62 million into a series of nonprofit groups for the 2010 elections. The sources of the money were hidden from public view, Bloomberg reports.

The center was headed by Sean Noble, a former congressional aide with ties to energy billionaires David and Charles Koch.

Now the groups that Noble funded have launched an effort to kill the federal tax credit for wind energy, which competes with the Kochs’ business.

They include Americans for Prosperity, American Energy Alliance, 60 Plus Association, Club for Growth and Americans for Limited Government.

The ad opposes the “deplorable practice of using the tax code to favor certain groups over others.”

The groups are silent, however, about the billions in tax breaks that the oil and gas industry receive every year.

Original post is Koch Network Rides to Rescue of … Koch Business Interests by Political Capital.

In a 30-second spot that debuted last night and will run for two weeks on CNN and MSNBC, pictures of Charles and David Koch are displayed as a male narrator says the “billionaire oil tycoons” and their special-interest friends are spending $400 million “to buy this year’s elections and advance their agenda.”

The $500,000 ad campaign, supplemented by a website and online ads, is being waged by Patriot Majority, a group allied with Democratic super-political action committees that back President Barack Obama and Democratic congressional candidates.

Patriot Majority’s president is Craig Varoga, a Democratic strategist who has worked for past Democratic presidential candidates including Bill Clinton and Al Gore. Varoga says the intent of the national ad campaign is to introduce a wider audience to the Koch brothers, saying they’ve quietly funded Republican causes for decades.

The twist? Like Koch-backed groups including Americans for Prosperity and the 60 Plus Association, Patriot Majority is organized as a nonprofit, so it doesn’t disclose its donors and has limits on how much of its budget can be devoted to political activities.

Varoga wouldn’t identify the nonprofit’s donors or say how much money it plans to spend this year.

“We didn’t make the rules, we just play by them,” he said. A related super-PAC of the same name, which was active in 2010 and not in this election, counted unions as its top contributors, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan campaign-finance tracker in Washington.

The Kochs — the seventh and eight richest people in the world, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index — are co-owners of Koch Industries Inc. based in Wichita, Kansas. The closely held company has business interests in consumer products, chemicals and minerals, in addition to oil.

In a statement posted online,  Koch Industries, which is co-owned by the brothers, called the Patriot Majority ad “dishonest” and said Obama’s allies “choose to attack and demonize private citizens and job creators who disagree with them on the direction this country is going.”

Another option: The Koch groups could  pay for an ad that questions the motives of Patriot Majority’s backers.

Original post is Secretly Funded Democratic Group Targets Koch Brothers for Secrecy by Political Capital.

Photograph by Amanda Gordon/Bloomberg

David Koch, executive vice president of chemical technology for Koch Industries Inc., center, at the Metropolitan Museum in New York.

Billionaire industrialist — not to mention major financial supporter of Republican causes — David Koch has been named as one of Mitt Romney’s delegates to the convention later this month in Tampa.

Koch, 72, is one of 95 delegates chosen to represent New York. The Wichita, Kansas, native and his wife, Julia, have a Park Avenue residence in Manhattan and a beach retreat in Southampton, where the couple recently hosted Romney for a fundraiser.

Koch is “deeply honored and humbled” to have been chosen as a delegate, he said in a statement posted today to a Koch Industries Web site.

“As Americans, we all have a role to play in the democratic process,” the statement says.“From learning about the issues to participating in campaigns and voting, this is an opportunity – and a right – to help chart the course for our nation.”

But will he actually head to Tampa? Yes, spokesman Robert Tappan confirmed.

Charles Koch, 76 and chairman and chief executive officer of Koch Industries, is not planning to attend. David Koch is executive vice president of the closely held holding company. David Koch is the eighth richest person in the world, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, and Charles Koch is the seventh richest — each worth an estimated $35.8 billion.

Even before David Koch travels to the Republican National Convention, his presence will be felt throughout the election cycle: Americans for Prosperity, a nonprofit political issues group the brothers launched in 2003, plans to spend at least $100 million before Election Day. David Koch is chairman of the companion Americans for Prosperity Foundation.

While AFP wants to spend most of its money on ground troops to get out the vote, this week it began what could amount to a $25 million summertime television ad campaign that specifically urges people to deny President Barack Obama a second term.

AFP activists also plan to be in Tampa during the convention.

Original post is David Koch Named as Romney Convention Delegate From New York by Political Capital.

Photograph by Kathy Kmonicek/AP Photo

Protestors from MoveOn.org, the Occupy Movement and the Long Island Progressive during a fundraiser for Mitt Romney on July 8, 2012, in Southampton, N.Y.

Protesters unfurled a “Koch Kills” banner and shouted “shame on you” as wealthy donors to presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney rounded a corner in Range Rovers, Denalis and other dark-colored luxury vehicles on their way to a fundraiser at the Southampton beach house of David Koch, an energy billionaire.

Details about yesterday’s $50,000 per-person dinner were spare. Brothers David and Charles Koch closely guard their privacy and prefer to spend their political dollars through non- profit groups that don’t disclose their donors — despite their publicly stated desire to oust President Barack Obama.

After an invitation to the Koch evening event surfaced publicly, MoveOn.org, Occupy Wall Street and other groups that support Democratic causes took note, busing in about 100 protesters from Manhattan and flying a plane trailing a banner that said: “Romney has a Koch problem.”

Midway through the event, the protesters took to the beach, making a three-quarters of a mile trek to the ocean-front backyard of David and Julia Koch’s home, where they were kept at bay by an entourage of Secret Service agents posted on a bluff between the beach and tents in the backyard. Some party-goers briefly peeked at the unfolding scene, smiling as the opposition shouted, “Voters in, money out.”

“After three and a half disappointing years in office, President Obama and his liberal allies are desperate to divert attention from his broken promises and failed record,” said Richard Gorka, a Romney spokesman, in an e-mail.

The Koch event was one of a trio of Hampton’s fundraisers for Romney yesterday. Earlier, the candidate attended a lunch at “The Creeks,” Ron Perelman’s 57-acre East Hampton’s estate. Perelman is chairman and chief executive of McAndrews & Forbes Holdings Inc., which owns cosmetics maker Revlon Inc. U.S. Representative Eric Cantor, the House majority leader, was a featured guest at the $5,000-per-person lunch.

Romney then made an afternoon visit to the beach home of Clifford Sobel, ambassador to Brazil under President George W. Bush, before a short drive up the street to David Koch’s residence, which has an assessed value of $18 million. Romney’s campaign did not allow reporters to attend any of the three events and declined to provide details about them.

Andrew Sabin, president of a precious-metals company and co-host of the Perelman lunch, told The New York Times that the three fundraisers were expected to raise $3 million to support Romney’s candidacy.

It was the Koch event that attracted the organized protest.

“You’re invited… to a Koch party!” a website called “the Occupied Wall Street Journal” announced, supplying readers with a map to the Southampton home.

David and Charles Koch each own 42 percent of closely held Wichita, Kansas-based Koch Industries, have a combined net worth of $70.8 billion and are the seventh and eighth richest people in the world, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires index.

The Democratic National Committee yesterday issued a new ad highlighting Romney’s Koch fundraiser — and how the wealthy could benefit from his election.

“Oil billionaire David Koch is hosting a fundraiser for millionaire Mitt Romney at his Hampton’s estate this weekend,” the ad begins. “And what would Mitt Romney do for the Koch brothers?,” the ad continues. “Give a new $250,000 tax cut to every millionaire & billionaire. Protect tax loopholes for companies outsourcing jobs. Protect tax subsidies for big oil.”

Standing outside the Koch home with the protesters, Southamption architect, Pete DeWitt, 59, said “the Kochs represent everything that’s wrong with the system. It’s their anti-labor, anti-environment agenda I’m protesting, their secret giving to politics. I wouldn’t protest someone like Perelman — he seems fine. I have no problem with wealth and money in general.”

The Koch brothers have become synonymous with outside spending in politics in part because David Koch is head of Americans for Prosperity, which has fueled the tea party movement. Americans for Prosperity is a nonprofit group that is not required to disclose its donors and by law cannot spend more than 50 percent of its budget on elections. It has spent more than $6 million on television ads attacking Obama and recently announced a $9 million ad campaign against the president’s health care law.

Democrats have highlighted the group’s secrecy. In February, Obama’s Twitter account posted a message asking its 12 million followers to sign a petition “to demand that the Koch brothers make their donors public.”

The Kochs also help finance the 60 Plus Association, an advocate for the elderly that favors privatizing Social Security. A nonprofit group called the Center to Protect Patients Rights has funneled $9 million to 60 Plus. The center, which does not have to disclose its donors, is headed by Sean Noble, who has spoken at Koch-sponsored gatherings of wealthy donors, including sharing a podium with Americans for Prosperity President Tim Phillips.

As of the end of May, neither David nor Charles Koch had contributed to Romney’s campaign. Another place the Koch brothers have not placed their money: super-political action committees, which require disclosure of donors and can directly spend on races.

In the 2008 presidential race, David Koch wrote a $2,300 check to Romney, a former Massachusetts governor and co-founder of private equity firm Bain Capital LLC, before he dropped out of the primaries. David Koch contributed $2,300 to Arizona Senator John McCain after he secured the Republican nomination, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

Their younger brother, William Koch, has given $1 million to Restore Our Future, a super-PAC backing Romney, through a personal check and through one of his companies company, Oxbow Carbon LLC. Another $1 million to Restore Our Future arrived in March from Huron Carbon LLC, which has the same West Palm Beach, Florida, address as Oxbow.

In January, William Koch contributed $2,500 to Romney’s campaign. He sold his share in Koch Industries, founded by his father, Fred Koch, as an oil company. William Koch’s Oxbow Carbon & Minerals is the world’s biggest marketer of petroleum coke, a carbon used to make aluminum.

None of the Koch protesters was arrested. The group obtained permits from the town to gather at the side of the road and secured permission yesterday to walk up the beach to Koch’s house.

Members of Move On drove a vehicle they’ve dubbed “the Romneymobile Cadillac,” which was plastered with stickers from companies that Romney co-founded, including Bain Capital LLC, the Boston-based private equity group. A fake dog was strapped to the top, a reminder of Romney’s decision to transport Seamus, the family dog, in a crate on the roof of his car on a family vacation in the 1980s.

Michael Korn, a 57-year-old from Brooklyn, stood shirtless as party-goers whizzed by in their vehicles, displaying a homemade placard with pictures of David and Charles Koch, identified as “the Kochtopus.”

“It doesn’t matter if it’s Romney or Obama,” he said. “Votes shouldn’t be weighed by oodles of cash.”

Original post is Romney’s `Koch Problem:’ $3 Million by Political Capital.