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Comment by merpnderp | Hacker News Reader

When I see the Koch brothers mentioned, but not George Soros, who's donated far more money and influenced far more country's politics, it always strikes me as highly partisan. When it comes to influencers of US politics, the Koch brothers are relative pikers.

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>...George Soros, who's donated far more money and influenced far more country's politics...

Prior to 2012, that was probably true:

http://www.opensecrets.org/news/2010/09/opensecrets-battle-k...

But since then, the Koch brothers really ramped it up. The Koch brothers spent an estimated $412MM in the 2012 election alone, about an order of magnitude more than the amount Soros spent in the entire previous decade:

http://www.thenation.com/article/koch-brothers-spent-twice-m...

Combine the $412MM they spent in 2012 with the $900MM they want to spend in 2016, and that's ~$1.3 billion this decade, compared to Soros's ~$40 million in the last. That's not even close to the same level. And I haven't found any evidence that Soros is spending at the same level as the Koch brothers this decade.

You wouldn't happen to have a breakdown of the $412M spent by the Koch brothers would you? Like who, what, where, how much. Because that number includes $5M spent by the Koch brothers PAC and $407M spent by undisclosed campaign entities. Even of the $5M spent by the Koch brothers PAC, not all of that is necessarily Koch brothers' money. As such, using the $412M figure is rather disingenuous at best.

Do you have a source for this assertion? So far as I have seen, Soros has donated more money personally than the Kochs have - but the Kochs have an extensive network of "grassroots" political organizations which in aggregate have funneled far money to politicians than Soros has done personally(on the order of hundreds of millions). I suppose at some level they are all using tricks and loopholes.

Clinton's FOIA emails are full of Soros literally giving orders to her and other reps. Use Wikileaks archive to read them/search for Soros.

He's also bought electronic voting corps and managed to get them into primaries like Utah. There were all kinds of shenanigans with them recently like denial of service to some voters.

Sources would be good for this. I'd like to see him literally giving orders via email.

This is a highly partisan site, but they do source most of their links. And keep in mind this is just a list of US political organizations he funds.

I'm not sure not what you mean by the Koch's extensive network. They're either giving their money, or it is other people's money. They can't be held responsible for how other people donate their money. I don't hold Soros responsible for all the ACLU's actions, even if he is a major backer. When they ACLU stands up for something I believe in, I donate, but I'm certainly [not responsible] for all their actions, especially in years I don't donate.

http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/viewSubCategory.asp?id=12...

So does Soros. Moveon.org for example.

The Kochs donate far more to charity than they do political causes too. Really, if it weren't for FreedomWorks, they would not have much dirt on them. FreedomWorks is just terrible. Otherwise, they donate to Cato, Reason, etc.

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