For Christmas this year I did what is not unusual in our marriage, I purchased my own gift and gave it to my husband to wrap up for me. While there is no surprise, there is also no return to deal with. It's a win for both me and my husband. This year the item I picked up was the book "Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right" by Jane Mayer. I had read a review on the book and given the political climate immediately after Trump's election, it sounded like my kind of reading. So, courtesy of Barnes and Noble, Santa arrived with just the right gift!
Jane Mayer writes for "The New Yorker" magazine and has written three other non-fiction books. Having never read any of her articles or books before, she was a new author to me. She did NOT disappoint. The book is an excellent read for anyone with an interest in how our political system has pretty much become a product for sale to the highest bidder. While her story is about the right end of the political spectrum, I have no illusions that there exists similar stories on the left end as well. She writes in a very easy to read, NON-conspiracy theory style.
The book begins with a history of several of our country's richest families. The Koch brothers, Richard Mellon Scaife, John M. Olin, the Bradley brothers and others. The story starts as far back as the 1970's and how the Koch's and others came to regard the Libertarian ideals as the proper political course for the country. David Koch ran for President in 1980 on the Libertarian ticket. According to Mayer, "In the view of the Kochs and other members of the Libertarian Party, government should be reduced to a skeletal function: the protection of individual and property rights." These ideas of very limited government are evident today in the Republican party and the Tea Party offshoot.
The book details how the Kochs and others set up their private foundations, think tanks and political action committees etc. It talks about how different families have plowed massive amounts of money into universities that agree to support courses in free market ideas and in sponsoring judicial seminars for federal judges. Ms. Mayer discusses the effects of the Supreme Court ruling in the Citizens United case in 2010. That ruling allowed some of the most wealthy in our country to try and turn back the clock to the Gilded Age of the robber barons. According to Ms. Mayer this ruling overturned "a century of restrictions banning corporations and unions from spending all they wanted to elect candidates." The ability to hide donations through intricate webs of non-profit groups has created the "dark money" description. She states that "the American political system became awash in unlimited, untraceable cash. In striking down the existing campaign-finance laws, the courts eviscerated a century of reform."
The following paragraph from Mayer's book is telling: "From the Republic's earliest days, the wealthy had always dominated politics but at least since the Progressive Era the public, through its elected representatives, had devised rules to keep the influence in check. By 2015, however, conservative legal advocates, underwritten by wealthy benefactors and aided by conservative majority on the Supreme Court, had led a successful drive to gut most of those rules. It was no longer clear if the remaining checks on corruption were up to the task. It had long been the conceit in America that great economic inequality could coexist with great social and political equality. But a growing body of academic work suggested that this was changing. As America grew more economically unequal, those at the top were purchasing the power needed to stay there."
If you have a concern about our political system and it's seeming failure of the common man, this book should be of interest to you. It was eye opening to me to read of the shear amount of money generated by these billionaire conservative families and how far they have come over the last 30 years in influencing our politics. Ms. Mayer quotes the political consultant Mark McKinnon who stated "We have reached a tipping point where mega donors completely dominate the landscape."
And in my opinion, most of us average citizens have no idea how our political decisions are being influenced by this money machine. That is the most frustrating thing of all.
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