Este site usa cookies para fornecer nossos serviços, melhorar o desempenho, para análises e (se não estiver conectado) para publicidade. Ao usar o LibraryThing, você reconhece que leu e entendeu nossos Termos de Serviço e Política de Privacidade . Seu uso do site e dos serviços está sujeito a essas políticas e termos.
History.
Politics.
Nonfiction.
HTML:Why 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 hedge-fund billionaires pay a far lower tax rate than middle-class workers? The conventional answer is that a popular uprising against ??big government? led to the ascendancy of a broad-based 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, step-by-step plan to fundamentally alter the American political system. The network has brought together some of the richest people on the planet. Their core beliefs??that taxes are a form of tyranny; that government oversight of business is an assault on freedom??are 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 Stalin??s Russia and Hitler??s 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 tax-deductible ??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 decision??a 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 whistle-blowers, 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 interviews-including with several sources within the network-and 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 Am… (mais)
LamontCranston: This book provides the full account of an event mentioned in passing in Dark Money. The oil stealing allegation and investigation from the 1980s.
fulner: Dark Money is the investigation to the
How the Koch's influence American politics. Jennifer Government is a dystopian fictional work about 21st century world if the Ko hs ideology rules the planet
There is little doubt in my mind that in writing this book Jane Mayer has performed an important public service. Big money has been part of American politics for a long time. Commentators in the 1890’s decried Mark Hanna’s outsized contributions and fundraising for William McKinley’s elections. But today’s Radical Right uses very subtle means to infect the system.
Still, that doesn’t answer Mayer’s most serious charge, that the Koch brothers and their billionaires club have built a third national political party (a third column?) using the Republican Party as its stalking horse, much like the early Greeks used the Trojan Horse to defeat the walls of Troy.
By extension: have they used their cadres to effect a coup d’état in the 2016 election of Donald Trump?
This is a much more difficult question to answer.
Clearly, Donald Trump was not their favourite and yet Paul Manafort managed to convince Trump to adopt Mike Pence as his running mate. Pence is as close as anyone to the Koch brothers.
Trump could be forced out of office any day, or so soiled by his business dealings that he’ll resign rather than see himself or his children indicted for serious federal and state crimes.
This would leave Pence and by extension, Charles and David Koch in the catbird seat.
Mayer gives us plenty of background to figure out what would happen next: - to satisfy the Christian Fundamentalist wing, eradication of the divide between church and state - to satisfy the industrialists, complete eradication of environmental controls on big business - to satisfy the energy hawks, drilling in the Arctic, more fracking, more pipelines through indigenous peoples’ lands - serious reduction in government services, very likely including prosecution of white collar crime, more resources for incarceration and particularly outsourced incarceration - the distribution of weapons in the schools - a serious decline in social entitlement programs, and very likely wider differences between the rich and the poor
Would this lead to a counter-revolution? A Bernie Sanders’ led counter revolution?
I wouldn’t rule it out.
Funny thing is that I kinda agree with some of the tenants of the Ultra Right in the US.
For example, I do think that government could be smaller. In Canada, we have 10 provincial governments that do the work one government could do more cheaply. In the US, you have 50 states that basically do the same thing and replicate each other’s laws.
Pfft. Automation could eradicate these useless obsolete governments.
Even municipal governments, for that matter, duplicate each other.
I’m usually loath to reduce the role of local government because its the only level of government that most people understand. The Kochs and their buddies hate federal government mainly because it:
A) Makes them pay taxes B) Regulates their use of the commons C) Tries to make them treat blacks and other peoples fairly D) Assumes, fairly in my opinion, that failures in the marketplace will not redistribute income to all the owners of the commons
It’s pretty hard to sympathize with these rich people. Especially when they subvert the purpose of non-for-profit organizations toward political ends.
They don’t seem to have a problem with state governments, at least governments they can control. Nor do they have a problem spending unsustainable amounts for worldwide military domination.
My point is if under these circumstances the ability to vote does not produce democracy, or any incremental freedoms, why not just flush them down the toilet, then make rules to ensure majority rules?
Everyone who cares about American politics should read this book. It's a hard slog, not because of any lapses on the author's part, but because the story itself is full of twists and turns and deliberate obfuscations (shell organizations that are only a PO box, etc). If you want to understand how Charles and David Koch, two unelected billionaire brothers, motivate, steer, and fund the radical right, attempting at every turn to buy politicians and votes and elections, this is your book. A shameful, dark chapter in our democracy, which, unfortunately is not only not over, but is instead in full, hideous flower. Congratulations to Jane Mayer--I don't know how she stood it. ( )
"Urgent" and "compelling" are two words critics love to use. Most books to which these adjectives are applied are neither; Jane Mayer, happily, has written a book here which is both. If you are interested in understanding how our democratic institutions have been subverted, and how our legislative branch has become larded with incompetent, ignorant, and highly ideological obstructionists, this book will serve you well.
What a scathing description of the forces behind the near collapse of democracy we have witnessed in the United States. Even if the author has a liberal agenda, and even if only half of this book is unbiassedly reported, the situation is truly frightening. Worse still, it’s hard to envision a path out of this mess. ( )
Jane Mayer’s Dark Money is the ultimate in nightmare investigation of the Koch Brothers. They have their tentacles in all aspects of the planet. The way they have manipulated our way of life is scary real. It’s all here. The rise of the tea party, citizens united, obstruction of Obama, and reversing/eliminating any climate change rules. The best thing about the book is Jane’s writing clarity and refusing to sound academic and preachy. Hopefully this will be a wakeup call to an end of the wealthy 1% running the United States. And that dark money tactics of the ultra- rich Koch brothers comes to an end. ( )
Informação do Conhecimento Comum em inglês.Edite para a localizar na sua língua.
We must make our choice. We may have democracy, or we may have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both. - Louis Brandeis
Dedicatória
Informação do Conhecimento Comum em inglês.Edite para a localizar na sua língua.
FOR BILL HAMILTON Everyone needs an editor, but not everyone is lucky enough to marry one. Thank you for always being there with just the right words.
Primeiras palavras
Citações
Informação do Conhecimento Comum em inglês.Edite para a localizar na sua língua.
This faction hoped to use their wealth to advance a strain of conservative libertarian politics that was so far out on the political fringe as recently as 1980, when David Koch ran for Vice President on the Libertarian Party ticket, it received only 1 percent of the American vote. At the time, the conservative icon William F. Buckley, Jr. dismissed their views as "Anarcho-Totalitarianism."
In support of building their own youth movement, another speaker, the libertarian historian Leonard Liggio, cited the success of the Nazi model. In his paper titled "National Socialist Political Strategy: Social Change in a Modern Industrial Society with an Authoritarian Tradition," Liggio, who was affiliated with the Koch-funded Institute for Humane Studies (IHS) from 1974 to 1998, described the Nazis' successful creation of a youth movement a key to their capture of the state. Like the Nazis, he suggested, libertarians should organise university students to create group identity.
Últimas palavras
Aviso de desambiguação
Editores da Publicação
Autores Resenhistas (normalmente na contracapa do livro)
Informação do Conhecimento Comum em inglês.Edite para a localizar na sua língua.
History.
Politics.
Nonfiction.
HTML:Why 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 hedge-fund billionaires pay a far lower tax rate than middle-class workers? The conventional answer is that a popular uprising against ??big government? led to the ascendancy of a broad-based 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, step-by-step plan to fundamentally alter the American political system. The network has brought together some of the richest people on the planet. Their core beliefs??that taxes are a form of tyranny; that government oversight of business is an assault on freedom??are 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 Stalin??s Russia and Hitler??s 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 tax-deductible ??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 decision??a 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 whistle-blowers, 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 interviews-including with several sources within the network-and 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 Am
)
)
Google Books — Carregando...
2
Still, that doesn’t answer Mayer’s most serious charge, that the Koch brothers and their billionaires club have built a third national political party (a third column?) using the Republican Party as its stalking horse, much like the early Greeks used the Trojan Horse to defeat the walls of Troy.
By extension: have they used their cadres to effect a coup d’état in the 2016 election of Donald Trump?
This is a much more difficult question to answer.
Clearly, Donald Trump was not their favourite and yet Paul Manafort managed to convince Trump to adopt Mike Pence as his running mate. Pence is as close as anyone to the Koch brothers.
Trump could be forced out of office any day, or so soiled by his business dealings that he’ll resign rather than see himself or his children indicted for serious federal and state crimes.
This would leave Pence and by extension, Charles and David Koch in the catbird seat.
Mayer gives us plenty of background to figure out what would happen next:
- to satisfy the Christian Fundamentalist wing, eradication of the divide between church and state
- to satisfy the industrialists, complete eradication of environmental controls on big business
- to satisfy the energy hawks, drilling in the Arctic, more fracking, more pipelines through indigenous peoples’ lands
- serious reduction in government services, very likely including prosecution of white collar crime, more resources for incarceration and particularly outsourced incarceration
- the distribution of weapons in the schools
- a serious decline in social entitlement programs, and very likely wider differences between the rich and the poor
Would this lead to a counter-revolution? A Bernie Sanders’ led counter revolution?
I wouldn’t rule it out.
Funny thing is that I kinda agree with some of the tenants of the Ultra Right in the US.
For example, I do think that government could be smaller. In Canada, we have 10 provincial governments that do the work one government could do more cheaply. In the US, you have 50 states that basically do the same thing and replicate each other’s laws.
Pfft. Automation could eradicate these useless obsolete governments.
Even municipal governments, for that matter, duplicate each other.
I’m usually loath to reduce the role of local government because its the only level of government that most people understand. The Kochs and their buddies hate federal government mainly because it:
A) Makes them pay taxes
B) Regulates their use of the commons
C) Tries to make them treat blacks and other peoples fairly
D) Assumes, fairly in my opinion, that failures in the marketplace will not redistribute income to all the owners of the commons
It’s pretty hard to sympathize with these rich people. Especially when they subvert the purpose of non-for-profit organizations toward political ends.
They don’t seem to have a problem with state governments, at least governments they can control. Nor do they have a problem spending unsustainable amounts for worldwide military domination.
My point is if under these circumstances the ability to vote does not produce democracy, or any incremental freedoms, why not just flush them down the toilet, then make rules to ensure majority rules?
Do we need 17 people on the ballot? (