Dark Money past times Jane Mayer
As I said inward an before post, spell I was nonetheless reading the book:
"it is extremely well-researched as well as well-written. It's also infuriating, terrifying as well as downright depressing. But don't permit that deter you lot from reading it. This is a majority that NEEDS to go read. RIGHT NOW."The paperback version I was reading includes a novel preface that discusses the upshot of the 2016 United States of America election. Despite Donald Trump's populist schtick as well as lonely wolf/beholden-to-nobody appeal, the overall results were a huge victory for the multi-billionaires who direct maintain been pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into influencing the final several elections (at all levels of government), equally good equally the policies those governments pursue -- policies which, of course, produce goodness them as well as their interests.
Mayer delves into the history of the key players behind the "dark money" that's been pouring into the system: the Koch brothers, the DeVos position unit of measurement (yet, THAT DeVos family!), the Bradleys, Richard Mellon Scaife, John Olin, Art Pope as well as others. She shows inward exceptional how they direct maintain spent the yesteryear 30+ years pooling their coin to systematically construct an interlocking network of mean value tanks, academic institutions, media groups, courthouses as well as authorities allies that has fundamentally altered the American political system, overshadowed the official Republican Party, as well as undermined American democracy.
In particular, she shows how these billionaires direct maintain taken wages of taxation loopholes to fund their pet causes through donations to their ain individual foundations, as well as to nonprofit organizations that -- on the surface -- seem to go populist as well as grassroots-driven, alongside names such equally Americans for Prosperity, Citizens for a Sound Economy as well as Center for Patients' Rights. In reality, most of these groups were manufactured as well as funded yesteryear corporate interests -- "astroturf" organizations, equally opposed to really organic grassroots movements.
"Astroturf" organizations exploded afterwards the election of Barack Obama, as well as fifty-fifty to a greater extent than as well as hence alongside the ruling on the Citizens United representative yesteryear the Supreme Court, which removed limits on corporate travail funding as well as made it much easier for donations to go made anonymously. As a result, it has perish increasingly hard to position where the hundreds of 1000000 of dollars flowing through the scheme are coming from.
There are dozens of revealing anecdotes (sample quote from Charles Koch: "I simply desire my fair portion -- which is all of it"), including around unsettling personal stories from people who direct maintain challenged the billionaires -- or simply gotten inward their way. This includes Mayer herself. After The New Yorker published a story she wrote nearly the Kochs, she discovered a individual investigator had been poking into her personal life. When they establish zilch unsavoury there, Mayer was defendant of plagiarism (charges that she rapidly disproved, alongside total back upward from the writers she was defendant of plagiarizing).
There is so, as well as hence much to a greater extent than to go said nearly this book, but I hardly know where to begin.
I consider myself fairly good read & informed nearly politics, inward the the States equally good equally Canada. I had heard nearly many of these people before. I knew they were using their wealth as well as influence to seek to sway populace sentiment as well as votes toward the causes they favoured.
But I didn't know the one-half of it. Reading this majority is an eye-opener. The reach as well as comport on of what the Kochs as well as their allies direct maintain achieved over the yesteryear few decades is really stunning. And frightening.
To summarize: this is a real of import book, as well as the sort of majority that nosotros (a) ask to a greater extent than of, as well as (b) ask to read, NOW.
It may already go equally good late. (I promise not.)
This was majority #12 that I've read as well as hence far inward 2017, bringing me to 50% of my 2017 Goodreads Reading Challenge finish of 24 books. I am currently iii books behind schedule to encounter my goal. :p ;) Sumber http://theroadlesstravelledlb.blogspot.com
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