CapitalistImperialistPig

The revealing last sentences of Dark Money : As a child, he [Charles Koch] used to tell an unfunny joke. When called upon to split a treat with others, he would say with a wise-guy grin, “I just want my fair share— which is all of it.” Mayer, Jane (2016-01-19). Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right (Kindle Locations 7202-7203). Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right by Jane Mayer is a superbly written and extensively documented book that tells a sickening story. It tells how a tiny group of the super wealthy, not from the 1% but from the top 1/100th of a percent, adopted the tactics of Lenin and Hitler to seize control of much of the American government and poison the minds of Americans against their own country. They combine immense wealth with low tactics like the big lie, character assassination, and intimidation with a long range strategic plan based on control of strategic opinion makers, a vast network of propaganda organizations loosely disguised as think tanks, and aggressive buying of influence in everything to from local legislative races to the oval office. Many of them have skirted the law or flouted it, their vast wealth enabling them to escape with fines and other wrist slaps. Their aims are radical: dismantling every aspect of the modern prog...

No economic factor has been more important to the rise of modern civilization than fossil fuel energy, and this fact has concentrated enormous political and economic power in the hands of those who find, own, and control it. The available wealth attracted the bold, the brilliant and, frequently, the slightly crazy, but public spiritedness was not necessarily a major virtue or character trait among them. The enormously wealthy men, corporations, and countries that control this precious resource were not slow to recognize the threat that public concern over global warming posed to their particular fortunes - the money at stake was clearly in the trillions of dollars. From Dark Money, funding climate denial: The first peer-reviewed academic study on the topic added further detail. Robert Brulle, a Drexel University professor of sociology and environmental science, discovered that between 2003 and 2010 over half a billion dollars was spent on what he described as a massive “campaign to...

Buying influence, Koch style. When the EPA attempted to regulate surface ozone (a major byproduct of Koch refineries), a GMU Mercatus center economist came up with the far fetched scenario that such ozone might prevent cancer. The DC circuit court judges embraced this theory. It turns out that they had been beneficiaries of Koch sponsored boondoggles that combined luxurious living with a side of libertarian propaganda. Coincidence? Their embrace of the Mercatus Center’s novel argument, however, soon proved embarrassing. The Supreme Court overruled their position unanimously, noting that the Clean Air Act’s standards are absolute and not subject to cost-benefit analysis. Although their side lost in the end, the case illustrated that the Kochs’ ideological pipeline was humming. Mayer, Jane (2016-01-19). Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right (Kindle Locations 2951-2953). Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Kindle Edition. It seems...

At one point Jane Mayer told the story of Charles Koch's takeover of key departments at George Mason University. This bit caught my attention: Charles reportedly demanded better metrics with which to monitor students’ political views. To the dismay of some faculty members, applicants’ essays had to be run through computers in order to count the number of times they mentioned the free-market icons Ayn Rand and Milton Friedman. Students were tested at the beginning and the end of each week for ideological improvement. Mayer, Jane (2016-01-19). Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right (Kindle Locations 2878-2881). Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Kindle Edition. This strategy should appeal to old Stalinists like Lumo. Straight outa Dugashvili.

It took them a while, but the organized American plutocratic Right eventually realized that the Left's big advantage was control of prestigious American universities - Harvard, Princeton, Yale and a few others. It also realized that a frontal assault would not work. Perhaps mostly importantly, they chose their targets carefully. It's pretty obvious that much of the faculty at those schools are far to the left of the American public. Most of those faculty members are in departments with essentially zero influence on public affairs - humanities, liberal arts, ethnic and similar studies, much of social science and others. Scientists tend to be liberal rather than left, and engineers and doctors tend to be moderately right, so together they don't much affect the balance. Economics, law, government and history are exceptions, especially the first two. Dangled financial carrots persuaded top law schools that they needed Economics of Law faculty, and strategic funding pushe...

Tax exempt foundations seem to be a peculiarly or at least mainly American institution. The Rockefeller Foundation was the first. John D. Rockefeller, under pressure from the anti-trust movement and embarrassed by the exposes that had revealed the morally and legally dubious tactic by which his empire had been constructed, set out to donate a big chunk of his wealth to causes benefiting the public good: education, art, science and public health. A number of other public spirited (or intimidated) individuals followed suit. These early foundations faced a good deal of public scrutiny and criticism. Partially as a result of that skepticism, these early foundations were mostly explicitly nonpartisan and science based. This was not to be the case in the age of what Jane Mayer calls the age of "weaponized philanthropy." They were a creation of the ultra-wealthy who found they could have their ideological cake and eat it too. With the onset of World War II, Sarah Mellon Scaife...