Memo exposes secret list of conservative donors plotting campaign against Democrats, climate change

A secret memorandum and invitation to an under-the-radar meeting of conservative minds has been leaked to the liberal blog ThinkProgress, and the list has been reprinted by Raw Story below, in an effort to highlight and focus on the names of the participants in the meeting. The meeting was organized by Charles Koch, Chairman of Koch Industries (whose secretive 'war' against Obama's agenda was recently documented by Jane Mayer in The New Yorker).

A review of the list shows that some of the CEOs and owners of massive multinational corporations are behind efforts to plot against the progressive agenda. Among them include the owners of the Bechtel Group, the largest engineering company in the United States; the CEO of Fluor Corporation, a multinational involved in pipeline construction and oil refinery production; the Vice Chairman of Cintas Corp; the former CEO of Circuit City; the CEO of Service Group of America; the founder of the Blackstone Group; the owner of The Examiner newspapers; and the former CEO Dreyer’s Grand Ice Cream, among others. Also in attendance was Fox News host Glenn Beck.

ThinkProgress' Lee Fang notes: "While the Koch brothers — each worth over $21.5 billion — have certainly underwritten much of the right, their hidden coordination with other big business money has gone largely unnoticed. ThinkProgress has obtained a memo outlining the details of the last Koch gathering held in June of this year. The memo, along with an attendee list of about 210 people, shows the titans of industry — from health insurance companies, oil executives, Wall Street investors, and real estate tycoons — working together with conservative journalists and Republican operatives to plan the 2010 election, as well as ongoing conservative efforts through 2012. According to the memo, David Chavern, the number two at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and Fox News hate-talker Glenn Beck also met with these representatives of the corporate elite. In an election season with the most undisclosed secret corporate giving since the Watergate-era, the memo sheds light on the symbiotic relationship between extremely profitable, multi-billion dollar corporations and much of the conservative infrastructure. The memo describes the prospective corporate donors as “investors,” and it makes clear that many of the Republican operatives managing shadowy, undisclosed fronts running attack ads against Democrats were involved in the Koch’s election-planning event." Fang's expose is well-documented and well-linked and is a very worthy read. Raw Story has reprinted the list of attendees to Koch's event below in an effort to broaden knowledge about those involved in the Koch's anti-progressive efforts.