I received this mass emailing today from Public Citizen:

Warning from Public Citizen (from a mass emailing I just received). These numbers are stunning:

Here’s something rather alarming to consider. Forbes recently updated its list of billionaires. Each of the notorious Koch Brothers — Charles and David, the 6th and 7th richest men alive — are now estimated to be worth $40 billion. That’s up $6 billion each from just a year earlier, which was up $9 billion each from just a year before that.

I guess it really does take money to make money. If you have billions to begin with. But wait, there’s more. Total spending in the 2012 federal election — for the White House and every open seat in Congress — was $6.3 billion. It was the most expensive election ever. Yet the Koch Brothers could have easily covered that record-smashing tab all by themselves just with the amount their already vast wealth increased in a single year.

Let me say that again: The Koch Brothers alone could pretty much fund every candidate for federal office without even eating into their unimaginable fortunes. Then there’s casino magnate and funder of the far-right, Sheldon Adelson. And Karl Rove’s dark money Crossroads outfits. And the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. And Exxon Mobil, Goldman Sachs, Comcast and all the other mega-corporations that “are people too.”

We face this basic choice: democracy or plutocracy.

I know where I come down, and where you do, too.

It’s time to roll up our sleeves.

Nobody is doing more than Public Citizen — that’s YOU — to defend democracy from billionaires and Big Business.

We ARE the front lines in the battle for the very heart and soul of this country.