The blog post below was first written in 2018. In 2023, the well-researched book Dark Money by journalist Jane Mayer remains essential reading for American voters who want to know the real power and money behind the hard-right positions of the GOP. Mayer urges readers to look for a new book due out in October 2023 – The Scheme: How the Right Wing Used Dark Money to Capture the Supreme Court by Senator Sheldon Whitehouse and Jennifer Mueller. “A damning investigation of dark money by a senior member of the Senate Judiciary Committee.” (Kirkus Reviews)
For months, the American news media has focused laser-like attention on the investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election and the apparent efforts by the current U.S. President to play it down, cover it up, and sidestep sanctions on the Putin-led Russian oligarchy. But there is an “oiligarchy” here at home that is presenting a threat at least as great. In her heavily researched and documented book, Dark Money, journalist Jane Mayer laid out the underpinnings of that oligarchy in 2016.
It may seem that this is old news two years later. However, too few Americans have been made aware of this homegrown risk to our democracy. While those who are aware of it may use “the Koch Brothers” as shorthand for the threat, this phrase means little or nothing to most American voters. As a result, I will spend a few months in my blog setting out in a very summarized fashion what Jane Mayer clarified in Dark Money in the hope that more Americans will actually read the entire book.
I firmly believe it should be required reading for every voter before the November 2018 election, because “the Koch brothers” have once again announced their plans to pour hundreds of millions of dollars into efforts to influence this year’s Congressional election. Their goals were once characterized by the conservative pundit William F. Buckley Jr. as “Anarcho-Totalitarianism,” as Mayer points out in her Introduction. Mayer documents the concentration of fossil fuel energy magnates in the Koch network, many of whom have run afoul of environmental protections and openly oppose regulation of the oil, gas and mining industries.
In addition to Charles and David Koch, American voters should learn the names of Corbin Robertson Jr. and his family’s billion-dollar oil company, Quintana Resources Capital. Anyone concerned about the influence of billionaires on public policy should beware of views propagated by front groups with names like “Plants Need CO2,” because these groups are similar to Russian trolls. They disguise who and what they represent and spread what most environmental scientists would regard as misleading information about climate change impacts, or as some might call it, “fake news.”
Billionaire donors such as these to Republican candidates are the real power behind the throne of today’s White House, U.S. Senate, and House of Representatives. They are the true “Deep State.” Republican elected officials have been flooding our democracy with their dirty oil, just as oil spills and plastics have been ravaging our oceans and seas. Our only way to challenge this abuse is to vote against their candidates and elect public service candidates in 2018 and 2020 who will represent the vast majority of the American people. This challenge must be mounted not only in federal elections, but in every state and local election throughout the USA.
