It is amazing and terrifying how much one can control with money.

Between 1939 and 2010, 1,551 politically active "social welfare" nonprofits came into existence. Nonpartisan research organization MapLight, via its new Dark Money Watch project, has revealed that from 2010 to the present, 2,316 additional such groups were launched, a 150 percent increase in just six years.

Why have these politically active nonprofits spread so quickly? In January 2010, the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Elections Commission allowed unlimited elections spending by individuals, corporations and unions. Many big donors prefer to hide their political contributions by giving to social welfare nonprofits, which are not required to disclose their donors and are supposed to spend less than half of their resources on political work. With a gridlocked Federal Elections Committee and an Internal Revenue Service reluctant to crack down against potential rule-breakers, some social welfare groups are getting away with extra political activity, often misclassifying it as "education."
According to data provided to Facing South by MapLight, 650 new social welfare nonprofits were created in the South since the Citizens United ruling, and a number of these groups are tied to billionaire industrialists and conservative mega-donors Charles and David Koch. Before 2010, only 360 such groups existed in the 13 Southern states.*
Secret Money Escalates in Southern Politics, Fueled by Koch Brothers