I wrote my Politico column today on the $889 million the Kochs are planning to spend in the 2016 cycle:

One sign it is still a free country is that a band of like-minded people, devoted to principles they consider essential to the country’s thriving, can get together and try to effect them in public policy.
My only quibble with the Kochs’ announcement is that they didn’t nail a nice, round $1 billion, as the most eloquent possible rejoinder to erstwhile Majority Leader Harry Reid’s campaign of vilification, which he forlornly hoped would help him hold the Senate last year.
For all that campaign reformers hate the Kochs, the brothers’ network is, in part, their creation. “This is the natural consequence,” campaign-finance reformer Lawrence Lessig griped to POLITICO about the $889 million, “of a regime with essentially no contribution limits.”
Actually, it is the inevitable — and long-ago predicted — consequence of contribution limits. The campaign-finance reformers knee-capped the political parties with malice aforethought and then are stunned that, in a free country, political activity has found other outlets.

One clarification: I write that Paul Waldman bitterly complained about the Kochs freely giving out this spending number, rather than reporters having to ferret it out from leaks as in the past. That wasn’t really his point — he was more bitterly complaining about the Koch spending itself, rather than their greater openness.