Gather Dark Money: The Hidden History Of The Billionaires Behind The Rise Of The Radical Right Edited By Jane Mayer Accessible In Document

is America living in an age of profound economic inequality Why, despite the desperate need to address climate change, have even modest environmental efforts been defeated again and again Why have protections for employees been decimated Why do hedgefund billionaires pay a far lower tax rate than middleclass workers

The conventional answer is that a popular uprising against “big government” led to the ascendancy of a broadbased conservative movement.
But as Jane Mayer shows in this powerful, meticulously reported history, a network of exceedingly wealthy people with extreme libertarian views bankrolled a systematic, stepbystep plan to fundamentally alter the American political system.


The network has brought together some of the richest people on the planet, Their core beliefsthat taxes are a form of tyranny that government oversight of business is an assault on freedomare sincerely held, But these beliefs also advance their personal and corporate interests: Many of their companies have run afoul of federal pollution, worker safety, securities, and tax laws.


The chief figures in the network are Charles and David Koch, whose father made his fortune in part by building oil refineries in Stalins Russia and Hitlers Germany.
The patriarch later was a founding member of the John Birch Society, whose politics were so radical it believed Dwight Eisenhower was a communist.
The brothers were schooled in a political philosophy that asserted the only role of government is to provide security and to enforce property rights.


When libertarian ideas proved decidedly unpopular with voters, the Koch brothers and their allies chose another path, If they pooled their vast resources, they could fund an interlocking array of organizations that could work in tandem to influence and ultimately control academic institutions, think tanks, the courts, statehouses, Congress, and, they hoped, the presidency.
Richard Mellon Scaife, the mercurial heir to banking and oil fortunes, had the brilliant insight that most of their political activities could be written off as taxdeductible “philanthropy.
”

These organizations were given innocuous names such as Americans for Prosperity, Funding sources were hidden whenever possible, This process reached its apotheosis with the allegedly populist Tea Party movement, abetted mightily by the Citizens United decisiona case conceived of by legal advocates funded by the network.


The political operatives the network employs are disciplined, smart, and at times ruthless, Mayer documents instances in which people affiliated with these groups hired private detectives to impugn whistleblowers, journalists, and even government investigators, And their efforts have been remarkably successful, Libertarian views on taxes and regulation, once far outside the mainstream and still rejected by most Americans, are ascendant in the majority of state governments, the Supreme Court, and Congress.
Meaningful environmental, labor, finance, and tax reforms have been stymied,

Jane Mayer spent five years conducting hundreds of interviewsincluding with several sources within the networkand scoured public records, private papers, and court proceedings in reporting this book.
In a taut and utterly convincing narrative, she traces the byzantine trail of the billions of dollars spent by the network and provides vivid portraits of the colorful figures behind the new American oligarchy.


Dark Money is a book that must be read by anyone who cares about the future of American democracy, Urge you to read this book,

Leave your political beliefs aside and read this book, How commercials, news media reports are influencing us how to vote country, state and every two years, All the dark money behind all thosec, . . billionaires and millionaires. We don't have one person one vote anymore, our cabinet members already made of billionaires and millionaires, Even university courses, professors, judges, senators, representatives are elected,
After reading how four Koch brothers were brought up, understand why Charles and David brothers do and say what they are doing, They even turned their backs on their two younger brothers,
For me reading and listening this book again and again for a month was taking a semester course, Jane Mayer was my professor.
I had to pass the test, As many of you know I wasn't burn in this country and English is my second language, I used to believe that my vote counted.
Not any more.
Just imagine, all this money for elections raised to influence us how to vote can be used to better, Just imagine The notorious Lewis Powell memo that rallied the Koch Brothers,

sitelink org/powellm



The disaster we face didn't happen overnight, of course, The Koch Brothers created and sought to perpetrate the male, white oligarchy though various means, For example, they were the behindthe scenes creators of the Tea Party movement, but had to admit that it got away from them, like the Sorcerer's Apprentice as has everything else that has gone awry resulting in Trump.


The efforts of the Koch brothers and their rich Libertarian buddies paved the way for the election of Trump, Trump and the Kochs never had any use for each other and Trump never needed their money, The unintended consequences of Koch hubris are on full display with this freak in the White House,



How the Koch family systematically undermined union formation,

sitelink com/article/koch

Mayer documents how the senior Koch, Fred, was sympathetic to Emperor Hirohito, Hitler and Mussolini, The New Deal helped save democracy, but the Kochs wanted authoritarianism instead,

We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both.
Louis D. Brandeis

It has been a consistent element of modern life in the USA that the public polls as sitelinkmore progressive than our elected officials.
Given that in a democracy one would expect representatives to more or less reflect the views of the people who make up the population, and not speak in opposition to them, this seems surprising at first blush.
Yes, we have our extremist elements, but by and large, the political position of the majority of the nation is a bit left of center.
And yet, there has been a remarkable shift in the nations political direction, At least the political direction of the professional political class, elected officials, lawmakers, government executives, members of the judiciary, political operatives, lobbying organizations, interest groups.
This pushing of the political gauge, this redefinition of what constitutes the center in American political thought, can only be understood by looking below the surface at actions that have been going on for decades, stealthily, effectively, dangerously.


Jane Mayer from WashingtonNote, com

There is a cancer on American democracy, It began with the accumulation of unimaginable amounts of capital in a few hands, It spread through targeted application of that money to the political process, under the fig leaf of philanthropy, and has metastasized into a lifethreatening malignancy.
It does this through the application of billions of dollars to stealth organizations, set up specifically to propagandize against government programs and policies that the uberrich oppose.
It does this through the application of billions of dollars to tar political candidates who are not with the program, regardless of party affiliation.
It does this through application of billions of dollars to programs promoting the redrawing of voting districts to minimize and eliminate, where possible, the chances that candidates with any respect for democracy might be elected to public office.
It does this by applying untold millions to target those who expose their secret doings, whether that means going after whistle blowers, within their own organizations, whose consciences have outgrown their need to earn a living, their fear for their personal safety, or following, investigating, smearing and attempting to intimidate journalists who dare to speak and document truth to power.
The only question at this point is whether it is, even now, too late to prevent the oligarchs from amassing total power within the USA, and beyond.
Is democracy already at StageIf it is, it will be no problem identifying those guilty of democricide, Of course it will be impossible to prosecute them, as they have gained considerable control of the courts that were once upon a time a barrier to the dismissal of the national interest by the uberwealthy.
Consider, even now, how none of those responsible for the economic meltdown have seen the inside of a cell, The truth is becoming ever more stark, ever more frightening, There is no law, only power, And the big money group has the biggest army in town, having gained control of Congress, and the judiciary, and they are very much hoping to get their greedy paws on the presidency.
Be afraid. Be very afraid.


Charles Koch from USA Today

So how did this dire state of affairs come to be Jane Mayer digs through history and shows us, stage by stage, how fanatical right wingers with vast sums, have moved from the political fringes to the mainstream, not by, themselves, shifting, but by using the gravity of their money to pull the mainstream closer to their farright positions, positions erstwhile rightwing centerfold William F.
Buckley once called ”AnarchoTotalitarianism. ”


David

Koch from artnews, com

There are two parallel tracks in Dark Money, One looks at the mechanisms by which the oligarchs have converted their money into political power, and thus into even more money, And the other is the personalities behind this movement, Although calling it a movement may be offering more credit than is due, It is less a movement than a well planned putsch, Think of the darkhearted spouse who feeds an ailing partner increasing doses of poison, evading suspicion, and then inheriting an entire estate,

There are plenty of billionaires on display in Dark Money, but the primary focus of the book is the brothers Koch, particularly David and the leader of the pack, Charles.
We peek into the family history, which includes providing significant material support to Stalin and that other moustachioed European dictator as they ramped up for WW II.
The brothers father, Fred, was so smitten with what he saw as the German work ethic that he hired a German nanny for his sons.
Think Nurse Ratched, complete with white uniform and pointed cap, Freud would have had a heyday with this one, She made the boys defecate at the same time every day, and if they did not produce, it was codliver oil and enemas, And read them stories from sundry cruel German childrens books, including sitelinkDer Struwwelpeter, which includes warnings about horrifying things that might happen to misbehaving children.
These include being burned alive, starving to death for refusing to eat a particular kind of soup, and having ones thumbs cut off for the crime of sucking on them.
It is the sole place in the book where one can actually feel sorry for these kids, Excited about the Nazi conquest of France, this antiPoppins spitspotted back to Germany to join in the celebrations, Papa Fred was not one to spare the rod, and physical abuse of his children was a significant feature of their less than joyful upbringing.


Frederick Koch the elder was certainly a dark force, Ever eager to bring the joys of fascism home, he was an ardent supporter of the fanatically and paranoiacly antiCommunist sitelinkJohn Birch Society.
In, he declared, “Our movement must destroy the prevalent statist paradigm, ” p. Charles embraced the Birchers as an adult, but it may have been just to suck up to his old man and gain a favorable seat at the inheritance table.
However, while his allegiance to the Birchers may have less than wholehearted, he does appear to have incorporated much of what they stood for.
Charles was much taken with a nutjob named sitelinkRobert Lefevre, who established what he called The Freedom School, Notable among its teachings was a view that the robber barons were heroes, LeFevre was basically opposed to any form of government, Charles seems similarly inclined. The Brothers Koch have also had their own power plays within the family, dragging each other through lawsuits, and even threatening to out one brother suspected of being gay.
Other members of the billionaire mostly boys club and their political fellow travelers come in for a look as well, Richard Devos, head of Amway, for example, and Richard Mellon Scaife, And there does seem a considerable proportion of these folks who suffer from significant mental illness and/or substance abuse issues, But the peregrinations of the Kochs is the primary focus on the personality side,

Of far greater interest is learning what these people want and how they have gone about building a massive machine to manufacture it.


InDavid Koch ran for vice president on the Libertarian Party line,

The partys platform was an almost exact replica of the Freedom Schools radical curriculum, It called for the repeal of all campaignfinance laws and the abolition of the Federal Election Commission FEC, It also favored the abolition of all government healthcare programs, including Medicare and Medicaid, It attacked Social Security as “virtually bankrupt” and called for its abolition too, The Libertarians also opposed all income and corporate taxes, including capital gains taxes, and called for an end to the prosecution of tax evaders.
The platform called for the abolition too of the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Environmental Protection Agency, the FBI, and the CIA, among other government agencies.
It demanded the abolition of “any laws” impeding employmentby which it meant minimum wage and child labor laws, And it targeted public schools for abolition too, along with what it termed the “compulsory” education of children, The Libertarians wanted to get rid of the Food and Drug Administration, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, seat belt laws, and all forms of welfare for the poor

This is what they want.
And this is how they have gone about getting it,

In the lates, Richard Fink, after studying the Kochs political problems for six months, drew up a practical blueprint, ostensibly inspired by rightwing icon, economist Friederich Hayeks model of production, that impressed Charles by going beyond where his ownpaper on the subject had left off.
Called “The Structure of Social Change,” it approached the manufacture of political change like any other product, As Fink later described it in a talk, it laid out a threephase takeover of American politics, The first phase required an “investment” in intellectuals whose ideas would serve as the “raw products, ” The second required an investment in think tanks that would turn the ideas into marketable policies, And the third phase required the subsidization of “citizens” groups that would, along with “special interests” pressure elected officials to implement the policies, It was in essence a libertarian production line, waiting only to be bought, assembled and switched on,

In the same way that those seeking to promote war use mercenaries, so that voters need not be concerned about Johnny becoming cannon fodder in some pointless foreign adventure, the warfare that is politics has likewise been outsourced.
Prevented by law from contributing mass quantities to your favorite tax cutter Not to worry, Just set up a nonprofit foundation and have the foundation redirect your contributions to Astroturf political creations where foundation money is magically transformed into a paidinfull army of attack ads.
And this is legal Democracy We doan need no steenking democracy,

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