Exclusive Audio: Inside the Koch Brothers' Secret Seminar (AUDIO) A close-up view of the oil billionaires' dark-money fundraiser and 2012 strategy session.
Click icon to hear highlights from Charles Koch's speech.
(The Kochs have tried to keep everything about the seminars secret: the content, identities of attendees and speakers—even meeting locations and dates.)
Koch read off the million-dollar honor roll, a list of 32 donors who have made seven-figure contributions to the brothers' efforts. The list features many well-known GOP donors including John Childs (JW Childs Associates), Rick and Helen DeVos (Amway), Dick and Joyce Farmer (Cintas), and Diane Hendricks (ABC Supply). MoJo's Gavin Aronsen breaks it all down in his post, "Exclusive: The Koch Brothers' Million-Dollar Donor Club."
Part 2: Audio: Chris Christie Lets Loose at Secret Koch Brothers Confab
(Click icon to hear Christie's Corzine imitation.)
Christie had offered similar thoughts in a February speech at the Koch-funded American Enterprise Institute in DC. But in Vail, he went further as he recalled discussing a fiscal 2009 budget shortfall with his aides shortly after taking office. He claimed to have told his aides, referring to the majority Democrats in the state Legislature:
Listen. We've got to fix this problem, but I do not want to deal with those people down the hall…
And so they told me, "If you declare a fiscal state of emergency, you can use your emergency powers as governor to impound $2.2 billion in planned spending and balance the budget. And you can do it by executive order." I said, "Man, I love this state!"
So, I went in my office, all by myself, and set up the executive order, and I signed it. But I thought it would be rude for me not to go down and tell that coequal branch of government what I had just done. [Scattered chuckles.] So I asked them for a joint session speech…I basically said this: "You left me with a $2.2 billion problem. You want me to raise taxes. I'm not going to. I just impounded the money by executive order. I fixed your problem. Thanks, have a nice day." And I walked out.
