World Wide Crazy News!

Name tags required at secret Carlsbad gathering, as donors awaited Koch speech. BuzzFeed got tossed out.

CARLSBAD, Calif. — The Koch Brothers have locked down a resort hotel in this breezy San Diego suburb for their annual conservative conference, a gathering that directs a funnel of money to their favored conservative causes with the goal of pulling both America and the Republican Party hard to the right.

The intensely private conservative brothers, heirs to a Midwestern refining fortune, have been seeking an increasingly broad influence on public policy, and contributions attendees a their conferences have in the past financed everything from the anti-union campaigns of Americans for Prosperity to the 60-Plus Association’s attacks on President Barack Obama’s health care plan. This year, the group — many of them low-profile, old-line industrialist families like the Kochs — is expected to spend nearly $400 million on a range of causes, the core one defeating Obama’s reelection campaign.

The gathering makes Mitt Romney’s private donor retreat this weekend 700 miles away in Park City, Utah look almost laid back by comparison: The Romney retreat has been marked by occasional conversations with the press and snapshots of the candidate’s family.

View Entire List ›