| DARK MONEY The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right Jane Mayer New York: Doubleday, January 2016 |
Rating: 5.0 High |
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| ISBN-13 978-0-385-53559-5 | ||||
| ISBN-10 0-385-53559-7 | 449pp. | HC | $29.95 | |
Early in the twentieth century, private foundations established by the high-rollers of the Gilded Age were viewed as anathema. Theodore Roosevelt thundered that "No amount of charity in spending such fortunes can compensate in any way for the misconduct in acquiring them." A majority of politicians at the time felt the same way, and a parade of congressional hearings heard warnings that such foundations were a threat to democracy and a menace to the welfare of society.
The first private philanthropic foundations, established by John D. Rockefeller and Henry Ford, were chartered to award grants for genuine research aimed at solving problems. That began to change in the 1970s, following the counterculture protests against the Vietnam War and the military-industrial complex, and the growth of liberal social programs like Lyndon Johnson's Great Society. Conservatives conceived the idea of organizations ostensibly dedicated to social welfare, but really intended to advance conservative policies. Some of these were "think tanks" like the Heritage Foundation, whose reports were designed to discredit liberal programs, often with little regard for facts. Other types of organizations collected funding from right-wing billionaires while concealing their identities. These funds could be donated to favored candidates, bypassing the legal limits on donations, or used for "astroturfing" — spurious grass-roots campaigns.
By 1985 there were 30,000 private foundations, and in 2013 the number had grown to over 100,000, with aggregate assets exceeding $800 billion. Their donations were for the most part tax-deductible and there were few requirements for disclosure of the names of their funders.
Not all these new foundations were funded by conservatives and run for the benefit of conservative causes. There was for example the Open Society Foundation, a project of George Soros who as a child had escaped Nazi Germany, going to London and then to the United States. Though often derided as an enemy of freedom, Soros funds progressive and civil-liberty causes. However, those on the conservative side of the ledger far surpass the liberal ones both in number and in wealth. Another notable difference has to do with transparency: conservatives are much more likely to operate in secret, concealing the monetary value of their foundations, the names of their donors, and the true purpose of their activities.
The prime examples are Charles and David Koch, who twice each year organize a gathering of conservatives to further their campaign of molding government into a more congenial (to them) form. These two Koch brothers each control a fortune estimated at $42 billion, making them the fifth wealthiest people in America.1 But they have plenty of company: other billionaires willing to fork over generous sums for the cause, if not so eager for the spotlight — as well as political operatives and other experts happy to contribute their skills in exchange for pay.
Jane Mayer's book illuminates the long history of these right-wing billionaires, showing us the roots of their ardent pursuit of a capitalism unfettered by the pesky regulations imposed by government.2 Richard Mellon Scaife, John M. Olin, and the Bradley Brothers were among the first to put their great wealth behind conservative causes, alarmed that the liberal drift during the Cold War years represented an existential threat to America. They also pioneered the strategy of influencing universities and colleges by means of endowments. But while the Kochs were latecomers to this cause, they organized a more comprehensive and effective network in support of it than had existed before.
"To this end, the Kochs waged a long and remarkable battle of ideas. They subsidized networks of seemingly unconnected think tanks and academic programs and spawned advocacy groups to make their arguments in the national political debate. They hired lobbyists to push their interests in Congress and operatives to create synthetic grassroots groups to give their movement political momentum on the ground. In addition, they financed legal groups and judicial junkets to press their cases in the courts. Eventually, they added to this a private political machine that rivaled, and threatened to subsume, the Republican Paty. Much of this activism was cloaked in secrecy and presented as philanthropy, leaving almost no money trail that the public could trace." – Pages 3-4 |
There were some legal constraints on donations that the conservative movement found it difficult to work around — until 2010, when the Citizens United decision undercut them. The result was that in recent years this full-court press of multiple strategies fueled by gargantuan undisclosed amounts of cash overwhelmed the Democratic Party, bringing the GOP control of the majority of statehouses as well as the U.S. Congress.
"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 a conservative majority on the Supreme Court, had led a successful drive to gut most of these 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 to stay there. – Page 371 |
Dark Money is the result of extensive research and hundreds of interviews done over five extremely consequential years. While there are many fine books on America's growing economic inequality and its foreseeable consequences, this book ranks as a tour de force and a must-read. Not only does it reveal the huge amounts of covert cash and the hidden pathways through which they flow, but it compares the rhetoric of conservative manipulators against the results of their manipulation. The contrast is stark: They speak in terms of preserving freedom and protecting the poor, but with rare exceptions their policies and actions benefit the wealthy at the expense of everyone else.
You need not take my word for all this; it's there for the reading in this thoroughly documented book. If you're short of time, turn to Chapter 13 about what was done to North Carolina. That alone should convince you.
I found no factual errors, and very few grammatical ones. In addition to being easy to read (though not at one sitting) — and vital to read — the book has 178 endnotes and an excellent index that make it a keeper and a good reference for the players in this political tussle, most of whom will remain in the game for years yet.
To contact Chris Winter, send email to this address.