Four years ago, Warren Buffett, the third richest man on the planet, said, "Of course there is a class war, but it's my class, the rich class, that is waging the war, and we're winning."

This mid-term election in the United States is a front of the class war. Business interests and the wealthy have declared war against anything that dares to impose controls on them, limit their activities or touch their fortunes, and they say so, explicitly and openly.

The midterm elections are days away, but the winners are virtually certain: the corporations and conservative operatives like Karl Rove who have taken advantage of the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling to establish a well-heeled “shadow party” of networked trade associations and G.O.P. front groups (See a detailed list of these organizations below.)

Prudential Financial sent in a $2 million donation last year as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce kicked off a national advertising campaign to weaken the historic rewrite of the nation’s financial regulations.

Interest groups are spending five times as much on the 2010 congressional elections as they did on the last midterms, and they are more secretive than ever about where that money is coming from.

The $80 million spent so far by groups outside the Democratic and Republican parties dwarfs the $16 million spent at this point for the 2006 midterms. In that election, the vast majority of money - more than 90 percent - was disclosed along with donors' identities. This year, that figure has fallen to less than half of the total, according to data analyzed by The Washington Post.

A senior Democratic senator asked the IRS Wednesday to investigate third-party groups he says are manipulating tax-exempt status for political gain.

Since the Supreme Court's ruling on Citizens United vs. the FEC, political spending by such outside groups has exploded. Democrats have long said that because such spending has favored Republican candidates, the party's advantage in fundraising over Republican counterparts has been neutralized.

Outside groups supporting Republican candidates in House and Senate races across the country have been swamping their Democratic-leaning counterparts on television since early August as the midterm election season has begun heating up.