{"id":8148,"date":"2019-12-31T15:26:43","date_gmt":"2019-12-31T20:26:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/?p=8148"},"modified":"2019-12-31T15:26:45","modified_gmt":"2019-12-31T20:26:45","slug":"dark-money-book","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/2019\/12\/31\/dark-money-book\/","title":{"rendered":"Dark Money (book)."},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Jane Mayer’s Dark Money:\nThe Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right<\/a><\/em>\nis the most horrifying book I read all year \u2013 but it’s not a horror novel, just\na work of well-investigated, well-argued non-fiction that details how\narchconservative billionaires, usually mad over having to pay taxes, have spent\nhundreds of millions or more of their own money to buy control of our\ngovernment. Their efforts helped catapult the retrograde right-wing of the\nRepublican Party from the fringes to the party’s new core, gave them control of\nthe legislative and executive branches, and have, for the last two years,\nallowed them to pack the federal judiciary with judges who agree with their\nreactionary views on taxation, environmental regulations, and women’s rights.\nIf this book doesn’t horrify you, you must be one of them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The main target of Dark Money<\/em> is the Koch brothers, David\n(who just died this August) and Charles, who run the second-largest closely\nheld company in the United States. Before David’s death, each was worth around\n$50 billion, each had longstanding individual efforts to avoid paying taxes,\nand their company had decades of violations of environmental regulations, including\ndumping benzene, a known human carcinogen that we absorb by breathing its\nvapors, into the air near their\noil refinery in Corpus Christi<\/a>. The Kochs’ response to these various\nfederal actions against them has been to pump hundreds of millions of dollars\ninto various front groups that donate to legislative and gubernatorial\ncandidates who promise, in turn, to roll back environmental protections or to\npush tax cuts for the highest brackets; and to fund professorships at various\nuniversities where the positions will go to so-called “free-market\nadvocates” and where the Koch brothers may\nhave had say in hiring<\/a>. Along with other anti-tax, anti-regulation\nbillionaires, including the DeVos family, Wilbur Ross, John Olin, Art Pope, and\nmore, the Kochs helped found the Cato Institute and the Heritage Foundation;\nspent hundreds of millions fighting\nclimate reform<\/a>; and helped fund massive gerrymanders in states from Ohio\nand Pennsylvania to North Carolina. They’ve packaged most of these policies,\nwhich help them directly or indirectly by helping the businesses they own, as\nissues of “freedom,” while tying some of them to issues that matter\nto social conservatives, so that they might convince enough voters to swing\ntheir way even when those policies (such as eliminating\nlaws or regulations that fight pollution<\/a>) would hurt those voters themselves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even if you agree with some of the positions that these\nbillionaires are pushing, Mayer’s main thesis here is that our democracy has\nbeen bought by a tiny number of people, so that fewer than 20 of these\nbillionaires are setting wide swaths of federal and state policies for a\ncountry of 300 million. It is improbable that this extreme minority, all of whom\nare white and quite old, nearly all of whom are male, and all of whom are in\nthe top 1% of the top 1% of the top 1% of Americans by wealth, would all agree\namong themselves on policies that are also beneficial to the country as a whole\n\u2026 but even if, improbably, they did so, that’s not how our system of government\nis supposed to work, and not how most Americans think it works. But, as Mayer\ndescribes through her history of the Kochs and of the way money has metastasized\nthroughout our political system, since Citizens United <\/em>\u2013 a Supreme Court\nruling that resulted from funding by the Koch brothers and their allies \u2013 this is\nexactly how our government works. Billionaires buying the policies they want is\na feature, not a bug.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mayer also goes into the Nazi roots of the Kochs’ fortune;\nit is unlikely that the brothers would have become this wealthy had their\nfather not helped Adolf Hitler build a major oil refinery in Hamburg that let\nthe Nazis refine high-octane fuel for their warplanes. Fred Koch, Charles’ and\nDavid’s father, also helped Joseph Stalin develop the Soviets’ then-moribund\noil industry, helping ensure the dictator’s grip on power and setting the stage\nfor the Cold War after the second World War. It’s estimated they spent nearly $900\nmillion in the 2016 election to try to elect their favored, hard-right\nRepublicans to state legislatures across the country and ensure control of both\nhouses of Congress. Is that possible if Fred Koch doesn’t take Hitler’s money?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<\/a>\n\n\n\n

There isn’t a simple solution to the problems Mayer details\nin Dark Money<\/em>, and she doesn’t pretend there are, instead pointing out\nevery policy change and judicial decision that created this particular monster.\nLax IRS regulations have allowed billionaires to funnel money into “non-profits”\nthat don’t have to disclose their donors but manage to skirt rules against such\ngroups funding candidates. Citizens United <\/em>gave corporations the free\nspeech rights previously reserved for individuals. A lack of federal rules on\nsoft money, donated to groups (like Super PACs) but not directly to candidates,\nhas further enabled the wholesale purchasing of legislators; corporations can’t\ncontribute directly to candidates, but they can fund Super PACs, which can then\ncampaign for or against candidates as long as they aren’t coordinating with the\ncandidates they support. None of this will change soon; it certainly won’t\nchange as long as this version of the Koch-funded Republican Party retains\ncontrol of the Senate, the White House, and much of the federal judiciary. A\nhuge part of the power of Dark Money<\/em> is that Mayer channels her obvious\nindignation into providing more details on the shady (yet legal!) behavior of\nthese billionaires, rather than just delivering a screed on the subject, even though\nthe desire to deliver a screed would be easy to understand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I don’t think boycotts accomplish a whole lot \u2013 they require\nsuch enormous coordination, and the presence of viable alternatives \u2013 but I am\nat least trying to avoid spending my money with companies owned by these reactionary\nbillionaires and other companies that support their efforts (such as by funding\nthe American Legislative Exchange Council, the conservative lobbying group that\ngoes so far as to write bills for their member legislators to submit). I wouldn\u2019t\nshop at Menard’s if I lived in the Midwest, not with its owner helping fund\nfights against unions and saying he “doesn’t\nbelieve in environmental regulations<\/a>.” I won’t buy paper goods from\nGeorgia Pacific, although I’m realistic \u2013 if I buy a new house, or do some\nrenovations, I probably have no say over where any plywood or OSB comes from.\nAnd I don’t think I’m going to move the needle with any of these companies; I\nwould just rather know my money isn’t going directly to help the subjugation of\nour democracy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Next up: I’m reading a pair of Evelyn Waugh novels \u2013 first The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold<\/a><\/em>, and then Black Mischief<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jane Mayer’s Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right is the most horrifying book I read all year \u2013 but it’s not a horror novel, just a work of well-investigated, well-argued non-fiction that details how archconservative billionaires, usually mad over having to pay taxes, have spent hundreds […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[35,1053,161,225,244,940],"class_list":["post-8148","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-american-history","tag-current-events","tag-highly-recommended","tag-non-fiction","tag-politics","tag-the-swamp","entry"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8148","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8148"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8148\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8149,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8148\/revisions\/8149"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8148"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8148"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8148"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}