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While William Koch was paying $2 million for a photo of Billy the Kid, his brothers, conservative lightning rods Charles and David, were meeting at the Ritz-Carlton resort at Bachelor Gulch near Vail -- a get-together that spurred a protest stirred up in part by ProgressNow Colorado. Why? According to executive director Kjersten Forseth, the Koches "are leading funders of the Tea Party, and the countless unnamed groups who appear on TV every election spreading misinformation. Their agenda is simple: they want to dismantle Medicare and Social Security, cut education and every other source of public funding beneficial to America's middle class, while giving the wealthy and big corporations even more tax breaks."

Word of the Koch brothers' unpublicized conference near Vail this weekend first leaked in an obscure Virginia news report about the upcoming travels of that state's conservative Gov. Bob McDonnell. The previous Koch conference, held in Palm Springs, California last January, was met with a large protest of progressives seeking transparency--and more importantly, truth in advertising.

"A larger problem for the Koch brothers, and other corporate funders of the right wing, is what happens when their consumers and shareholders figure out how the profits are being spent," said Forseth. "Our message for the Koch brothers for today is simpler: take all of the swanky vacations in our beautiful state that you want, because it's great for our local economy, but please end this war on America's middle class before it's too late."

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Gov. Bob McDonnell (R) is in Vail, Colo. Monday to attend a seminar sponsored by the Koch brothers, the wealthy supporters of conservative and libertarian causes, including Americans for Prosperity.

Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli also attended the seminar. He spoke at a breakfast about federalism and touted his office’s role in lawsuits against the federal government involving health care and the Environmental Protection Agency, Cuccinelli’s political director, Noah Wall, said.

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Florida Gov. Rick Scott attended a secret, invitation-only meeting outside Vail, Colo., hosted by conservative billionaire GOP donors David and Charles Koch, the governor’s staff confirmed today.

The meeting wasn’t on Scott’s official schedule and his spokesman Lane Wright initially refused to confirm or deny whether the first-term governor would make an appearance, saying he would not “speculate as to what he has done, or will do on his personal time.”

But, after The St. Petersburg Times reported Tuesday Scott did attend the meeting, Wright confirmed that the governor was there but would not say whether Scott was in Colorado on Sunday or Monday.

“I told anybody who asked me,” Scott, in Washington, D.C., told the Times, without revealing too much about what took place.

“It was very interesting,” he told the Times. “They wanted to know basically… what am I doing in Florida.”

Scott, the self-proclaimed “jobs governor,” joined at least three other conservative Republican heads-of-state at the semi-annual meeting.

Govs. John Kasich of Ohio and Bob McDonnell of Virginia all dropped into the conference, entitled “Understanding and Addressing Threats to American Enterprise and Prosperity.” And Scott’s competitor-in-chief, Texas Gov. Rick Perry, addressed the group on Sunday, the first of the four-day meeting that wraps up Wednesday.

Kansas-based Koch Industries, the second largest privately owned company in the United States, earned $100 billion in revenues in 2009, is controlled by Charles and David Koch, political activists who have donated more than $100 million to conservative GOP causes over the past three decades, according to a New Yorker profile. The pair have recently donated to tea party groups and organizations opposed to President Obama.

Florida Democratic Party spokesman Eric Jotkoff blasted Scott for secretly leaving the state during a state of emergency he declared because of wildfires.

“For Rick Scott to secretly leave the state during a state of emergency is completely irresponsible and shows why he continues to be the least popular governor in America,” Jotkoff said.

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