Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right by Jane Mayer (PDF)

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NATIONAL BESTSELLERONE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 10 BEST BOOKS OF THE YEARWho are the immensely wealthy right-wing ideologues shaping the fate of America today? From the bestselling author of The Dark Side, an electrifying work of investigative journalism that uncovers the agenda of this powerful group.In her new preface, Jane Mayer discusses the results of the most recent election and Donald Trump’s victory, and how, despite much discussion to the contrary, this was a huge victory for the billionaires who have been pouring money in the American political system.Why is America living in an age of profound and widening economic inequality? Why have even modest attempts to address climate change been defeated again and again? Why do hedge-fund billionaires pay a far lower tax rate than middle-class workers? In a riveting and indelible feat of reporting, Jane Mayer illuminates the history of an elite cadre of plutocrats—headed by the Kochs, the Scaifes, the Olins, and the Bradleys—who have bankrolled a systematic plan to fundamentally alter the American political system. Mayer traces a byzantine trail of billions of dollars spent by the network, revealing a staggering conglomeration of think tanks, academic institutions, media groups, courthouses, and government allies that have fallen under their sphere of influence. Drawing from hundreds of exclusive interviews, as well as extensive scrutiny of public records, private papers, and court proceedings, Mayer provides vivid portraits of the secretive figures behind the new American oligarchy and a searing look at the carefully concealed agendas steering the nation. Dark Money is an essential book for anyone who cares about the future of American democracy.National Book Critics Circle Award FinalistLA Times Book Prize FinalistPEN/Jean Stein Book Award FinalistShortlisted for the Lukas Prize

User’s Reviews

Editorial Reviews: Review Praise for Jane Mayer’s Dark Money“Revelatory. . . . Persuasive, timely and necessary.” —The New York Times“Dark Money is more than just a work of political journalism—it’s a vital portrait of a nation that, as perhaps never before, is being shaped by a few very rich, very conservative businessmen.” —San Francisco Chronicle “Absolutely necessary reading for anyone who wants to make sense of our politics.” —The New York Review of Books “Deeply researched and studded with detail . . . Seems destined to rattle the Koch executive offices in Wichita as other investigations have not.” —Washington Post“With such turmoil on the right wing of American politics, reading Dark Money is like reading the first chapter of what may be a great political page-turner.” —Chicago Tribune“Jane Mayer . . . is, quite simply, one of the very few utterly invaluable journalists this country has.” —Esquire “Amazing. . . . The most important political book of the year.” —St. Louis Post-Dispatch “Dark Money is almost too good for its own good.” —Los Angeles Review of Books“[A] comprehensive history. . . . Stunning.” —Salon About the Author Jane Mayer is a staff writer for The New Yorker and the author of three bestselling and critically acclaimed narrative nonfiction books. She co-authored Landslide: The Unmaking of the President, 1984–1988, with Doyle McManus, and Strange Justice: The Selling of Clarence Thomas, with Jill Abramson, which was a finalist for the National Book Award. Her book The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned into a War on American Ideals, for which she was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship, was named one of The New York Times’s Top 10 Books of the Year and won the J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize, the Goldsmith Book Prize, the Edward Weintal Prize, the Ridenhour Prize, the New York Public Library’s Helen Bernstein Book Award for Excellence in Journalism, and the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award. It was also a finalist for the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award. For her reporting at The New Yorker, Mayer has been awarded the John Chancellor Award, the George Polk Award, the Toner Prize for Excellence in Political Reporting, and the I. F. Stone Medal for Journalistic Independence presented by the Nieman Foundation at Harvard. Mayer lives in Washington, D.C. Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. CHAPTER ONERadicals: A Koch Family HistoryOddly enough, the fiercely libertarian Koch family owed part of its fortune to two of history’s most infamous dictators, Joseph Stalin and Adolf Hitler. The family patriarch, Fred Chase Koch, founder of the family oil business, developed lucrative business relationships with both of their regimes in the 1930s.According to family lore, Fred Koch was the son of a Dutch printer and publisher who settled in the small town of Quanah, Texas, just south of the Oklahoma border, where he owned a weekly newspaper and print shop. Quanah, which was named for the last American Comanche chief, Quanah Parker, still retained its frontier aura when Fred was born there in 1900. Bright and eager to get out from under his overbearing old-world father, Fred once ran away to live with the Comanches as a boy. Later, he crossed the country for college, transferring from Rice in Texas to attend the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. There, he earned a degree in chemical engineering and joined the boxing team. Early photographs show him as a tall, formally dressed young man with glasses, a tuft of unruly curls, and a self-confident, defiant expression.In 1927, Fred, who was an inveterate tinkerer, invented an improved process for extracting gasoline from crude oil. But as he would later tell his sons bitterly and often, America’s major oil companies regarded him as a business threat and shut him out of the industry, suing him and his customers in 1929 for patent infringement. Koch regarded the monopolistic patents invoked by the major oil companies as anticompetitive and unfair. The fight appears to be an early version of the Kochs’ later opposition to “corporate cronyism” in which they contend that the government and big business collaborate unfairly. In Fred Koch’s eye, he was an outsider fighting a corrupt system.Koch fought back in the courts for more than fifteen years, finally winning a $1.5 million settlement. He correctly suspected that his opponents bribed at least one presiding judge, an incompetent lush who left the case in the hands of a crooked clerk. “The fact that the judge was bribed completely altered their view of justice,” one longtime family employee suggests. “They believe justice can be bought, and the rules are for chumps.” Meanwhile, crippled by lawsuits in America during this period, Koch took his innovative refining method abroad.He had already helped build a refinery in Great Britain after World War I with Charles de Ganahl, a mentor. At the time, the Russians supplied England with fuel, which led to the Russians seeking his expertise as they set up their own oil refineries after the Bolshevik Revolution.At first, according to family lore, Koch tore up the telegram from the Soviet Union asking for his help. He said he didn’t want to work for Communists and didn’t trust them to pay him. But after securing an agreement to get paid in advance, he overcame his philosophical reservations. In 1930, his company, then called Winkler-Koch, began training Russian engineers and helping Stalin’s regime set up fifteen modern oil refineries under the first of Stalin’s five-year plans. The program was a success, forming the backbone of the future Russian petroleum industry. The oil trade brought crucial hard currency into the Soviet Union, enabling it to modernize other industries. Koch was reportedly paid $500,000, a princely sum during America’s Great Depression. But by 1932, facing growing domestic demand, Soviet officials decided it would be more advantageous to copy the technology and build future refineries themselves. Fred Koch continued to provide technical assistance to the Soviets as they constructed one hundred plants, according to one report, but the advisory work was less profitable.What happened next has been excised from the official corporate history of Koch Industries. After mentioning the company’s work in the Soviet Union, the bulk of which ended in 1932, the corporate history skips ahead to 1940, when it says Fred Koch decided to found a new company, Wood River Oil & Refining. Charles Koch is equally vague in his book The Science of Success. He notes only that his father’s company “enjoyed its first real financial success during the early years of the Great Depression” by “building plants abroad, especially in the Soviet Union.”A controversial chapter is missing. After leaving the U.S.S.R., Fred Koch turned to Adolf Hitler’s Third Reich. Hitler became chancellor in 1933, and soon after, his government oversaw and funded massive industrial expansion, including the buildup of Germany’s capacity to manufacture fuel for its growing military ambitions. During the 1930s, Fred Koch traveled frequently to Germany on oil business. Archival records document that in 1934 Winkler-Koch Engineering of Wichita, Kansas, as Fred’s firm was then known, provided the engineering plans and began overseeing the construction of a massive oil refinery owned by a company on the Elbe River in Hamburg.The refinery was a highly unusual venture for Koch to get involved with at that moment in Germany. Its top executive was a notorious American Nazi sympathizer named William Rhodes Davis whose extensive business dealings with Hitler would eventually end in accusations by a federal prosecutor that he was an “agent of influence” for the Nazi regime. In 1933, Davis proposed the purchase and conversion of an existing German oil storage facility in Hamburg, owned by a company called Europäische Tanklager A.G., or Eurotank, into a massive refinery. At the time, Hitler’s military aims, and his need for more fuel, were already well-known. Davis’s plan was to ship crude petroleum to Germany, refine it, and then sell it to the German military. The president of the American bank with which Davis dealt refused to have anything to do with the deal, because it was seen as supporting the Nazi military buildup, but others extended the credit. After lining up the American financing, Davis needed the Third Reich’s backing. To gain it, he first had to convince German industrialists of his support for Hitler. In his effort to ingratiate himself, Davis opened an early meeting with Hermann Schmitz, the chairman of I.G. Farben—the powerful and well-connected chemical company that soon after produced the lethal gas for the concentration camps’ death chambers—by saluting him with a Nazi “Heil Hitler.” When these efforts didn’t produce the green light he sought, Davis sent messages directly to Hitler, eventually securing a meeting in which the führer walked in and ordered his henchmen to approve the deal. On Hitler’s orders, the Third Reich’s economic ministers supported Davis’s construction of the refinery. In his biography of Davis, Dale Harrington draws on eyewitness accounts to describe Hitler as declaring to his skeptical henchmen, “Gentlemen, I have reviewed Mr. Davis’s proposition and it sounds feasible, and I want the bank to finance it.” Harrington writes that during the next few years Davis met at least half a dozen more times with Hitler and on one occasion asked him to personally autograph a copy of Mein Kampf for his wife. According to Harrington, by the end of 1933 Davis was “deeply committed to Nazism” and exhibited a noticeable “dislike for Jews.”In 1934, Davis turned to Fred Koch’s company, Winkler-Koch, for help in executing his German business plan. Under Fred Koch’s direction, the refinery was finished by 1935. With the capacity to process a thousand tons of crude oil a day, the third-largest refinery in the Third Reich was created by the collaboration between Davis and Koch. Significantly, it was also one of the few refineries in Germany, according to Harrington, that could “produce the high-octane gasoline needed to fuel fighter planes. Naturally,” he writes, “Eurotank would do most of its business with the German military.” Thus, he concludes, the American venture became “a key component of the Nazi war machine.”Historians expert in German industrial history concur. The development of the German fuel industry “was hugely, hugely important” to Hitler’s military ambitions, according to the Northwestern University professor Peter Hayes. “Hitler set out to create ‘autarchy,’ or economic self-sufficiency,” he explained. “Gottfried Feder, the German official in charge of the program, reasoned that even though Germany would have to import crude oil, it would be able to save foreign exchange by refining the products itself.”In the run-up to the war, Davis profited richly from the arrangement, engaging in elaborate scams to keep the crude oil imports flowing into Germany despite Britain’s blockade. When World War II began, the high-octane fuel was used in bombing raids by German pilots. Like Davis, the Koch family benefited from the venture. Raymond Stokes, director of the Centre for Business History at the University of Glasgow in Scotland and co-author of a history of the German oil industry during the Nazi years, Faktor Öl (The oil factor), which documents the company’s role, says, “Winkler-Koch benefited directly from this project, which was designed to help enable the fuel policy of the Third Reich.”Fred Koch often traveled to Germany during these years, and according to family lore he was supposed to have been on the fatal May 1937 transatlantic flight of the Hindenburg, but at the last minute he got delayed. In late 1938, as World War II approached and Hitler’s aims were unmistakable, he wrote admiringly about fascism in Germany, and elsewhere, drawing an invidious comparison with America under Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal. “Although nobody agrees with me, I am of the opinion that the only sound countries in the world are Germany, Italy, and Japan, simply because they are all working and working hard,” he wrote in a letter to a friend. Koch added, “The laboring people in those countries are proportionately much better off than they are any place else in the world. When you contrast the state of mind of Germany today with what it was in 1925 you begin to think that perhaps this course of idleness, feeding at the public trough, dependence on government, etc., with which we are afflicted is not permanent and can be overcome.”When the United States entered World War II in 1941, family members say that Fred Koch tried to enlist in the U.S. military. Instead, the government directed him to use his chemical engineering prowess to help refine high-octane fuel for the American warplanes. Meanwhile, in an ironic turn, the Hamburg refinery that Winkler-Koch built became an important target of Allied bombing raids. On June 18, 1944, American B-17s finally destroyed it. The human toll of the bombing raids on Hamburg was almost unimaginable. In all, some forty-two thousand civilians were killed during the long and intense Allied campaign against Hamburg’s crucial industrial targets.Fred Koch’s willingness to work with the Soviets and the Nazis was a major factor in creating the Koch family’s early fortune. By the time he met his future wife, Mary Robinson, at a polo match in 1932, the oilman’s work for Stalin had put him well on his way to becoming exceedingly wealthy.Robinson, a twenty-four-year-old graduate of Wellesley College, was tall, slender, and beautiful, with blond hair, blue eyes, and an expression of amusement often captured in family photographs. The daughter of a prominent physician from Kansas City, Missouri, she had grown up in a more cosmopolitan milieu. Koch, who was seven years older than she, was so smitten he married her a month after they met.Soon, the couple commissioned the most fashionable architect in the area to build an imposing Gothic-style stone mansion on a large compound on the outskirts of Wichita, Kansas, where Winkler-Koch was based. Reflecting their rising social status, the estate was baronial despite the flat and empty prairie surrounding it, with stables, a polo ring, a kennel for hunting dogs, a swimming pool and wading pool, a circular drive, and stone-terraced gardens. Some of the best craftsmen in the country created decorative flourishes such as wrought-iron railings and a stone fireplace carved with a whimsical snowflake motif. Within a few years, the Kochs also purchased the sprawling Spring Creek Ranch near Reece, Kansas, where Fred, who loved science and genetics, bred and raised cattle. Family photographs show the couple looking glamorous and patrician, hosting picnics and pool parties, and riding on horseback, dressed in jodhpurs and polo gear, surrounded by packs of jolly friends.In the first eight years of their marriage, the couple had four sons: Frederick, known by the family as Freddie, was born in 1933, Charles was born in 1935, and twins, David and William, were born in 1940. With their father frequently traveling and their mother preoccupied with social and cultural pursuits, the boys were largely entrusted to a series of nannies and housekeepers.It is unclear what Fred Koch’s views of Hitler were during the 1930s, beyond his preference for the country’s work ethic in comparison with the nascent welfare state in America. But he was enamored enough of the German way of life and thinking that he employed a German governess for his first two sons, Freddie and Charles. At the time, Freddie was a small boy, and Charles still in diapers. The nanny’s iron rule terrified the little boys, according to a family acquaintance. In addition to being overbearing, she was a fervent Nazi sympathizer, who frequently touted Hitler’s virtues. Dressed in a starched white uniform and pointed nurse’s hat, she arrived with a stash of gruesome German children’s books, including the Victorian classic Der Struwwelpeter, that featured sadistic consequences for misbehavior ranging from cutting off one child’s thumbs to burning another to death. The acquaintance recalled that the nurse had a commensurately harsh and dictatorial approach to child rearing. She enforced a rigid toilet-training regimen requiring the boys to produce morning bowel movements precisely on schedule or be force-fed castor oil and subjected to enemas.The despised governess ruled the nursery largely unchallenged for several years. In 1938, the two boys were left for months while their parents toured Japan, Burma, India, and the Philippines. Even when she was home, Mary Koch characteristically deferred to her husband, declining to intervene. “My father was fairly tough with my mother,” Bill Koch later told Vanity Fair. “My mother was afraid of my father.” Meanwhile, Fred Koch was often gone for months at a time, in Germany and elsewhere.It wasn’t until 1940, the year the twins were born, when Freddie was seven and Charles five, that back in Wichita the German governess finally left the Koch family, apparently at her own initiative. Her reason for giving notice was that she was so overcome with joy when Hitler invaded France she felt she had to go back to the fatherland in order to join the führer in celebration. What if any effect this early experience with authority had on Charles is impossible to know, but it’s interesting that his lifetime preoccupation would become crusading against authoritarianism while running a business over which he exerted absolute control.Fred Koch was himself a tough and demanding disciplinarian. John Damgard, David’s childhood friend, who became president of the Futures Industry Association, recalled that he was “a real John Wayne type.” Koch emphasized rugged pursuits, taking his sons big-game hunting in Africa and filling the basement billiard room with what one cousin remembered as a frightening collection of exotic stuffed animal heads, including lions and bears and others with horns and tusks, glinting glassy-eyed from the walls. In the summer, the boys could hear their friends splashing in the pool at the country club across the street, but instead of allowing the boys to join them, their father required them to dig up dandelions by the time they were five, and later to dig ditches and shovel manure at the family ranch. Fred Koch cared about his boys but was determined to keep them from becoming what he called “country-club bums,” like some of the other offspring of the oil moguls with whom he was acquainted. “By instilling a work ethic in me at an early age, my father did me a big favor, although it didn’t seem like a favor back then,” Charles has written. “By the time I was eight, he made sure work occupied most of my spare time.” Read more

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐Dark Money by Jane MayerMs. Mayer has written a non-fiction murder story. A story that is being told everyday in our mainstream media and on the inter-net. It is a story of murder of political institutions (Congress, the GOP, Supreme Court) of academic institutions (universities and law schools seduced by grants and research monies) of the democratic approach to resolving conflict by compromise (organized disruption of public meetings), of the government of the United States (“government is the problem not the solution”) of science (deliberate lies and covering up of anthropomorphic climate changes), Machiavellian gerrymandering of voting districts, false claims of voter fraud when the biggest fraud was the gerrymandered districts. The list of “murders “ is long. The criminals unpunished, in many cases rewarded. The “Kochtopus” has been growing for years and is now poised to consume whatever remains of the “last best hope on Earth.”And, now that they have been exposed, the secrecy that they revered for years is no longer effective, the Kochs and their billionaire brethren have worked up a new brand. Disconcerted by the revelations of their huge contributions to sway the elections and the consequent low opinion held by a majority of Americans about money corrupting politics, the Kochs are embarking on a “Well-Being” campaign. The most substantive “part of this image building has been a drive for criminal justice reform,” as Bill McKibben reports. [The New York Review, March 10, 2016.] Regardless of the new image plan, the Kochs plan to spend $889 million on the forthcoming national election, an unheard of amount of money spent on a political campaign.Dark Money is a well researched book crammed with the details of the Kochtopus spreading throughout the country, destroying anything and anyone in the way. We’ve heard and read snatches of this before but Jane Mayer pulls it all together. Ms. Mayer ends the story in all its destructive details. We are all headed for Gomorrah by this account. The killers will be left to sift through the climate’s warm ruins and ruminate over the deposed values of a broad-based prosperity in the ashes. Knowing what we are facing from oligarchy rule to climate warming disinformation, we have to take it from here. And, all across this country, empowered Americans are doing just that. This is the gift of Dark Money.Dark Money by Jane MayerMs. Mayer has written a non-fiction murder story. A story that is being told everyday in our mainstream media and on the inter-net. It is a story of murder of political institutions (Congress, the GOP, Supreme Court) of academic institutions (universities and law schools seduced by grants and research monies) of the democratic approach to resolving conflict by compromise (organized disruption of public meetings), of the government of the United States (“government is the problem not the solution”) of science (deliberate lies and covering up of anthropomorphic climate changes), Machiavellian gerrymandering of voting districts, false claims of voter fraud when the biggest fraud was the gerrymandered districts. The list of “murders “ is long. The criminals unpunished, in many cases rewarded. The “Kochtopus” has been growing for years and is now poised to consume whatever remains of the “last best hope on Earth.”And, now that they have been exposed, the secrecy that they revered for years is no longer effective, the Kochs and their billionaire brethren have worked up a new brand. Disconcerted by the revelations of their huge contributions to sway the elections and the consequent low opinion held by a majority of Americans about money corrupting politics, the Kochs are embarking on a “Well-Being” campaign. The most substantive “part of this image building has been a drive for criminal justice reform,” as Bill McKibben reports. [The New York Review, March 10, 2016.] Regardless of the new image plan, the Kochs plan to spend $889 million on the forthcoming national election, an unheard of amount of money spent on a political campaign.Dark Money is a well researched book crammed with the details of the Kochtopus spreading throughout the country, destroying anything and anyone in the way. We’ve heard and read snatches of this before but Jane Mayer pulls it all together. Ms. Mayer ends the story in all its destructive details. We are all headed for Gomorrah by this account. The killers will be left to sift through the climate’s warm ruins and ruminate over the deposed values of a broad-based prosperity in the ashes. Knowing what we are facing from oligarchy rule to climate warming disinformation, we have to take it from here. And, all across this country, empowered Americans are doing just that. This is the gift of Dark Money.Dark Money by Jane MayerMs. Mayer has written a non-fiction murder story. A story that is being told everyday in our mainstream media and on the inter-net. It is a story of murder of political institutions (Congress, the GOP, Supreme Court) of academic institutions (universities and law schools seduced by grants and research monies) of the democratic approach to resolving conflict by compromise (organized disruption of public meetings), of the government of the United States (“government is the problem not the solution”) of science (deliberate lies and covering up of anthropomorphic climate changes), Machiavellian gerrymandering of voting districts, false claims of voter fraud when the biggest fraud was the gerrymandered districts. The list of “murders “ is long. The criminals unpunished, in many cases rewarded. The “Kochtopus” has been growing for years and is now poised to consume whatever remains of the “last best hope on Earth.”And, now that they have been exposed, the secrecy that they revered for years is no longer effective, the Kochs and their billionaire brethren have worked up a new brand. Disconcerted by the revelations of their huge contributions to sway the elections and the consequent low opinion held by a majority of Americans about money corrupting politics, the Kochs are embarking on a “Well-Being” campaign. The most substantive “part of this image building has been a drive for criminal justice reform,” as Bill McKibben reports. [The New York Review, March 10, 2016.] Regardless of the new image plan, the Kochs plan to spend $889 million on the forthcoming national election, an unheard of amount of money spent on a political campaign.Dark Money is a well researched book crammed with the details of the Kochtopus spreading throughout the country, destroying anything and anyone in the way. We’ve heard and read snatches of this before but Jane Mayer pulls it all together. Ms. Mayer ends the story in all its destructive details. We are all headed for Gomorrah by this account. The killers will be left to sift through the climate’s warm ruins and ruminate over the deposed values of a broad-based prosperity in the ashes. Knowing what we are facing from oligarchy rule to climate warming disinformation, we have to take it from here. And, all across this country, empowered Americans are doing just that. This is the gift of Dark Money.Dark Money by Jane MayerMs. Mayer has written a non-fiction murder story. A story that is being told everyday in our mainstream media and on the inter-net. It is a story of murder of political institutions (Congress, the GOP, Supreme Court) of academic institutions (universities and law schools seduced by grants and research monies) of the democratic approach to resolving conflict by compromise (organized disruption of public meetings), of the government of the United States (“government is the problem not the solution”) of science (deliberate lies and covering up of anthropomorphic climate changes), Machiavellian gerrymandering of voting districts, false claims of voter fraud when the biggest fraud was the gerrymandered districts. The list of “murders “ is long. The criminals unpunished, in many cases rewarded. The “Kochtopus” has been growing for years and is now poised to consume whatever remains of the “last best hope on Earth.”And, now that they have been exposed, the secrecy that they revered for years is no longer effective, the Kochs and their billionaire brethren have worked up a new brand. Disconcerted by the revelations of their huge contributions to sway the elections and the consequent low opinion held by a majority of Americans about money corrupting politics, the Kochs are embarking on a “Well-Being” campaign. The most substantive “part of this image building has been a drive for criminal justice reform,” as Bill McKibben reports. [The New York Review, March 10, 2016.] Regardless of the new image plan, the Kochs plan to spend $889 million on the forthcoming national election, an unheard of amount of money spent on a political campaign.Dark Money is a well researched book crammed with the details of the Kochtopus spreading throughout the country, destroying anything and anyone in the way. We’ve heard and read snatches of this before but Jane Mayer pulls it all together. Ms. Mayer ends the story in all its destructive details. We are all headed for Gomorrah by this account. The killers will be left to sift through the climate’s warm ruins and ruminate over the deposed values of a broad-based prosperity in the ashes. Knowing what we are facing from oligarchy rule to climate warming disinformation, we have to take it from here. And, all across this country, empowered Americans are doing just that. This is the gift of Dark Money.Dark Money by Jane MayerMs. Mayer has written a non-fiction murder story. A story that is being told everyday in our mainstream media and on the inter-net. It is a story of murder of political institutions (Congress, the GOP, Supreme Court) of academic institutions (universities and law schools seduced by grants and research monies) of the democratic approach to resolving conflict by compromise (organized disruption of public meetings), of the government of the United States (“government is the problem not the solution”) of science (deliberate lies and covering up of anthropomorphic climate changes), Machiavellian gerrymandering of voting districts, false claims of voter fraud when the biggest fraud was the gerrymandered districts. The list of “murders “ is long. The criminals unpunished, in many cases rewarded. The “Kochtopus” has been growing for years and is now poised to consume whatever remains of the “last best hope on Earth.”And, now that they have been exposed, the secrecy that they revered for years is no longer effective, the Kochs and their billionaire brethren have worked up a new brand. Disconcerted by the revelations of their huge contributions to sway the elections and the consequent low opinion held by a majority of Americans about money corrupting politics, the Kochs are embarking on a “Well-Being” campaign. The most substantive “part of this image building has been a drive for criminal justice reform,” as Bill McKibben reports. [The New York Review, March 10, 2016.] Regardless of the new image plan, the Kochs plan to spend $889 million on the forthcoming national election, an unheard of amount of money spent on a political campaign.Dark Money is a well researched book crammed with the details of the Kochtopus spreading throughout the country, destroying anything and anyone in the way. We’ve heard and read snatches of this before but Jane Mayer pulls it all together. Ms. Mayer ends the story in all its destructive details. We are all headed for Gomorrah by this account. The killers will be left to sift through the climate’s warm ruins and ruminate over the deposed values of a broad-based prosperity in the ashes. Knowing what we are facing from oligarchy rule to climate warming disinformation, we have to take it from here. And, all across this country, empowered Americans are doing just that. This is the gift of Dark Money.Dark Money by Jane MayerMs. Mayer has written a non-fiction murder story. A story that is being told everyday in our mainstream media and on the inter-net. It is a story of murder of political institutions (Congress, the GOP, Supreme Court) of academic institutions (universities and law schools seduced by grants and research monies) of the democratic approach to resolving conflict by compromise (organized disruption of public meetings), of the government of the United States (“government is the problem not the solution”) of science (deliberate lies and covering up of anthropomorphic climate changes), Machiavellian gerrymandering of voting districts, false claims of voter fraud when the biggest fraud was the gerrymandered districts. The list of “murders “ is long. The criminals unpunished, in many cases rewarded. The “Kochtopus” has been growing for years and is now poised to consume whatever remains of the “last best hope on Earth.”And, now that they have been exposed, the secrecy that they revered for years is no longer effective, the Kochs and their billionaire brethren have worked up a new brand. Disconcerted by the revelations of their huge contributions to sway the elections and the consequent low opinion held by a majority of Americans about money corrupting politics, the Kochs are embarking on a “Well-Being” campaign. The most substantive “part of this image building has been a drive for criminal justice reform,” as Bill McKibben reports. [The New York Review, March 10, 2016.] Regardless of the new image plan, the Kochs plan to spend $889 million on the forthcoming national election, an unheard of amount of money spent on a political campaign.Dark Money is a well researched book crammed with the details of the Kochtopus spreading throughout the country, destroying anything and anyone in the way. We’ve heard and read snatches of this before but Jane Mayer pulls it all together. Ms. Mayer ends the story in all its destructive details. We are all headed for Gomorrah by this account. The killers will be left to sift through the climate’s warm ruins and ruminate over the deposed values of a broad-based prosperity in the ashes. Knowing what we are facing from oligarchy rule to climate warming disinformation, we have to take it from here. And, all across this country, empowered Americans are doing just that. This is the gift of Dark Money.Dark Money by Jane MayerMs. Mayer has written a non-fiction murder story. A story that is being told everyday in our mainstream media and on the inter-net. It is a story of murder of political institutions (Congress, the GOP, Supreme Court) of academic institutions (universities and law schools seduced by grants and research monies) of the democratic approach to resolving conflict by compromise (organized disruption of public meetings), of the government of the United States (“government is the problem not the solution”) of science (deliberate lies and covering up of anthropomorphic climate changes), Machiavellian gerrymandering of voting districts, false claims of voter fraud when the biggest fraud was the gerrymandered districts. The list of “murders “ is long. The criminals unpunished, in many cases rewarded. The “Kochtopus” has been growing for years and is now poised to consume whatever remains of the “last best hope on Earth.”And, now that they have been exposed, the secrecy that they revered for years is no longer effective, the Kochs and their billionaire brethren have worked up a new brand. Disconcerted by the revelations of their huge contributions to sway the elections and the consequent low opinion held by a majority of Americans about money corrupting politics, the Kochs are embarking on a “Well-Being” campaign. The most substantive “part of this image building has been a drive for criminal justice reform,” as Bill McKibben reports. [The New York Review, March 10, 2016.] Regardless of the new image plan, the Kochs plan to spend $889 million on the forthcoming national election, an unheard of amount of money spent on a political campaign.Dark Money is a well researched book crammed with the details of the Kochtopus spreading throughout the country, destroying anything and anyone in the way. We’ve heard and read snatches of this before but Jane Mayer pulls it all together. Ms. Mayer ends the story in all its destructive details. We are all headed for Gomorrah by this account. The killers will be left to sift through the climate’s warm ruins and ruminate over the deposed values of a broad-based prosperity in the ashes. Knowing what we are facing from oligarchy rule to climate warming disinformation, we have to take it from here. And, all across this country, empowered Americans are doing just that. This is the gift of Dark Money.Dark Money by Jane MayerMs. Mayer has written a non-fiction murder story. A story that is being told everyday in our mainstream media and on the inter-net. It is a story of murder of political institutions (Congress, the GOP, Supreme Court) of academic institutions (universities and law schools seduced by grants and research monies) of the democratic approach to resolving conflict by compromise (organized disruption of public meetings), of the government of the United States (“government is the problem not the solution”) of science (deliberate lies and covering up of anthropomorphic climate changes), Machiavellian gerrymandering of voting districts, false claims of voter fraud when the biggest fraud was the gerrymandered districts. The list of “murders “ is long. The criminals unpunished, in many cases rewarded. The “Kochtopus” has been growing for years and is now poised to consume whatever remains of the “last best hope on Earth.”And, now that they have been exposed, the secrecy that they revered for years is no longer effective, the Kochs and their billionaire brethren have worked up a new brand. Disconcerted by the revelations of their huge contributions to sway the elections and the consequent low opinion held by a majority of Americans about money corrupting politics, the Kochs are embarking on a “Well-Being” campaign. The most substantive “part of this image building has been a drive for criminal justice reform,” as Bill McKibben reports. [The New York Review, March 10, 2016.] Regardless of the new image plan, the Kochs plan to spend $889 million on the forthcoming national election, an unheard of amount of money spent on a political campaign.Dark Money is a well researched book crammed with the details of the Kochtopus spreading throughout the country, destroying anything and anyone in the way. We’ve heard and read snatches of this before but Jane Mayer pulls it all together. Ms. Mayer ends the story in all its destructive details. We are all headed for Gomorrah by this account. The killers will be left to sift through the climate’s warm ruins and ruminate over the deposed values of a broad-based prosperity in the ashes. Knowing what we are facing from oligarchy rule to climate warming disinformation, we have to take it from here. And, all across this country, empowered Americans are doing just that. This is the gift of Dark Money.

⭐Market societies unrestrained by government inevitably experience relentlessly increasing inequality. The wealthy beneficiaries of inequality then have the resources to perpetuate and enhance this unfortunate cycle by capturing government and public opinion. In Dark Money, Jane Mayer shows how this cycle is made worse by a system that allows unlimited funding of campaigns, lobbying, and propaganda by dark money that maintains secrecy and avoids taxes. Thus the superrich are able to maintain public postures of high-minded innocence while secretly providing massive financing for programs that further increase inequality by favoring their interests at the expense of everyone else.The dark money that is a key component of this process is money funneled through nonprofit organizations that can receive unlimited donations from corporations and individuals and spend funds to influence elections but are not required to disclose their donors. The main vehicles for this process are tax-free, nonprofit private 501 (c) foundations which were originally said to be for charity, social welfare, and education but not for politics. Super PACs like Karl Rove’s American Crossroads and business organizations like the Chamber of Commerce are also major vehicles for the use of dark money.The history of private foundations began in 1909 with John D. Rockefeller’s request to set up a tax-free foundation. This request was first denied by congress because of its undemocratic nature. However, it was later approved by the New York state legislature with limitation to education, science, and religion. Over time, the numbers of private foundations and the issues they served multiplied rapidly so that by 2013, there were over a hundred thousand foundations with assets over $800 billion. The supposedly nonpolitical nature of these foundations was progressively undermined so that by the time of the Citizens United decision of 2010, they could be the source of enormous unlimited tax-free secret special interest political funding.The transition of non-profit foundations from charitable organizations to political tools of the superrich accelerated in the 1970s. In 1971, Lewis Powell, a corporate lawyer, tobacco defender, and future Nixon-appointed Supreme Court justice, wrote a special memorandum for the business league. He called for “guerilla warfare” against what he saw as the anti-business threat posed by “perfectly respectable elements of society,” including “the college campus, the pulpit, the media, the intellectual and literary journals, the arts and sciences, and politicians.” Public opinion was to be captured by exerting influence over these institutions and the courts, by demanding balance in textbooks, television, and news, and by donors demanding a say in university hiring and curriculum.This was followed in 1976 by Charles Koch of the extremist libertarian Koch brothers laying out a road map for future takeover of American politics. His intent was to overturn the post WWII view of government as a force for good (including regulation of business, progressive taxation, and worker’s rights) and instead argue for limited government, drastically lower personal and corporate taxes, minimal social services for the needy, and much less oversight of industry. Campaign contributions and lobbying were to be supplemented by a secretive long-term plan to capture public opinion by 1) investing in intellectuals, 2) investing in think tanks, and 3) subsidizing “citizens” groups that gave the appearance of public support.In 2003, the Koch brothers began their “donor summits,” which were secretive meetings of large numbers of superrich donors for archconservative causes. By 2014, the impressive list of 300 or so secretive donors in this group included 18 billionaires with combined assets of $222 billion as well as numerous sub-billionaires, top Republican politicians, conservative media stars, and even two Supreme Court justices (all listed in the book). Goals now included winning the presidency, capturing the House and Senate, cementing control of congress by gerrymandering, capturing state legislative bodies, governorships, and supreme courts, and controlling the Republican Party. For the 2016 elections, the donor summit group alone pledged $889 million.When Powell and the Kochs formulated their strategies, America’s greatest corporate fortunes were already poised to enlist their private foundations for the cause. Early participation by the Scaife, Olin, Coors, Koch, Bradley and other Family Foundations, which controlled hundreds of millions of dollars, and by scores of Fortune 500 corporations was only the tip of the iceberg. The powerful leaders of these families and corporations eventually funded hundreds of additional foundations in what was cynically called the “philanthropy plan” to change academia, the media, the courts, regulation, taxation, politics, government, and public opinion.The effectiveness of this secret dark money was greatly facilitated by organization of these foundations into multiple additional layers. Donors at the top could contribute family, foundation, and corporate money to the next layer of foundations, some of which were mere conduits, or to organizations like the Chamber of Commerce and super PACs. These foundations and organizations could then disguise the self-serving nature of these donations by redirecting them to their actual targets without revealing the donor’s identities. The scope of this process became unlimited after the 2010 Supreme Court Citizens United decision that removed all restrictions on the size of the contributions to this system.The enormous resources of this system are distributed to innumerable activities and organizations thoroughly interspersed in American life to maximize influence on politics and public opinion. Many examples of the numerous additional non-family foundations funded by the Kochs and others are listed and characterized in the book. Business Associations and PACs that hide donor’s identities are also listed and characterized in the book. Many examples of the numerous ideological think tanks like the American Enterprise Institute, the Heritage Foundation, and the Cato Institute funded by the Kochs, Scaife, and others are listed and characterized in the book. The establishment of right wing media outlets and organizations like the Tea Party and the sponsorship of media stars like Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, and Glenn Beck are discussed in the book.Numerous partisan university institutes and activities were funded. A network of 5,000 scholars was established in 400 colleges and universities. Koch foundations alone funded pro-corporate programs in 283 colleges and universities. Twenty-four right wing academic centers were privately funded, such as George Mason University’s Koch-funded Mercatus Center and Institute for Humane Studies. The conservative Olin Foundation funded Harvard Law School’s influential Center for Law, Economics, and Business. The Olin foundation and later Scaife and the Kochs funded the Federalist Society, which grew to 150 law school chapters and 42,000 right-leaning lawyers. The Olin Foundation backed the Collegiate Network which funded a string of right wing newspapers on college campuses.The book’s depiction of how extensively these many organizations and activities penetrate American life cannot be recounted in a brief review. A few examples may suffice to illustrate the depth of resources and breadth of scope involved: 1) Richard Scaife, the billionaire heir to Mellon Banking, Gulf Oil, and Alcoa Aluminum, estimated that he spent $1 billion on philanthropy, of which $670 million was to influence public opinion by bankrolling 133 of conservatism’s most important movements. 2) A carefully staged ten year legal campaign using the “social welfare” corporations Citizens United and Speech Now succeeded in removing campaign financial restrictions to increase the influence of the superrich. 3) From 2003 to 2010, 140 conservative foundations contributed $558 million as 5,299 grants to 91 nonprofit organizations to promote denial of climate change. Three-fourths of these funds were untraceable due to use of conduits. In addition, efforts were made to discredit, defund, and fire leading climate scientists.4) Finally, even complete right wing takeover of targeted state governments is not out of reach. This has actually happened for all three branches of government in Wisconsin. In 2010, Scott Walker was elected governor after promotion at the Koch’s Americans for Prosperity Tea Party rallies and with support from Koch Industries (second largest campaign contributor) and the Republican Governor’s Association (also supported by the Kochs) to work around state contribution limits. The out-of-state Kochs also contributed to sixteen legislative candidates who all won, helping conservatives control both houses of the legislature. In addition, the state Supreme Court majority was captured by funneling $10 million (which exceeded campaign contributions for all candidates combined) through the Wisconsin Club for Growth and Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce to elect three conservative justices in 2007, 2008, and 2011 and to replace the liberal chief justice with a conservative. This provided the final step to victory when the right wing packed state Supreme Court upheld the right-wing program passed by Walker and the legislature by a partisan 4 to 3 vote. Similar abuses have occurred with the 2012 Walker recall election and state redistricting.

⭐Outstanding book! This is a very detailed, but very readable analysis. It is very informative and very shocking. If you think you know how bad things are try reading this book. The facts are overwhelming. I am appalled that I have not heard this information from other sources. I cannot recommend this book highly enough. A tremendous read.

⭐America is ruled by the super rich elite, who only care about lowering taxes and bringing about a second gilded age. This book documents who they are and how they’ve been getting away with it.

⭐Detailed research and revealing background reading in relation to the advent of Trump

⭐haven’t finished it yet but it’s well written and very informative about the Neo-cons

⭐Jane Mayer ha hecho un trabajo increíble en este libro, el nivel de investigación y de periodismo de investigación es simplemente irreal. Este libro realmente cambió mi visión de la política estadounidense y fue el primer libro que explica la razón por la que Trump ganó en los Estados Unidos. Es un libro muy bien investigado que explica el movimiento republicano para ganar poder usando el dinero que se remonta a mediados de 1900. Explica cómo el dinero de los ricos donantes republicanos, especialmente los hermanos Koch, han influido lentamente en la política estadounidense. Finalmente, conduciendo a la elección de Trump y quiénes eran los verdaderos actores que manipulaban al público, operando desde la sombra. Ella explica la cantidad de trabajo de base que se llevó a cabo para traer este cambio y cuánto tiempo y esfuerzo tomó. Realmente tuvo un gran impacto en mi comprensión de la política estadounidense. Definitivamente lo recomendaría a cualquiera que esté interesado en la política internacional y en el periodismo de investigación.

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