Outside the Beltway

Comments

1. teve tory says:
   Friday, 15 June 2018 at 11:22

   Is this, like, an Open Thread?

   Asking for a friend.
2. Steven L. Taylor says:
   Friday, 15 June 2018 at 11:44

   @teve tory: If you like.

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3. PT says:
   Friday, 15 June 2018 at 12:33

   nice one
4. Franklin says:
   Friday, 15 June 2018 at 13:16

   From your many photos, this is instantly one of my favorites! That’s despite the fact that I usually prefer nature shots.
5. teve tory says:
   Friday, 15 June 2018 at 14:29

   Dan Savage
   ‏
   Verified account

   @fakedansavage
   Follow Follow @fakedansavage

   Reminder that the people currently justifying tearing children away from their parents spent the last twenty years insisting “every child deserves a mother and a father.”

   1:54 PM – 14 Jun 2018
6. teve tory says:
   Friday, 15 June 2018 at 14:36

   Danielle Ivory
   ‏
   Verified account

   @danielle_ivory
   Follow Follow @danielle_ivory

   Scott Pruitt, shortly after taking the EPA job, contacted the former speaker of the Virginia House of Delegates to help his daughter get into the University of Virginia ⁦@EricLiptonNYT⁩ ⁦@SteveEder⁩ ⁦@HirokoTabuchi⁩ ⁦@LFFriedman⁩

   4:46 AM – 15 Jun 2018

   literally every single day we hear some new scam Pruitt was up to. Few days ago it was leaning on Chik Fil A to give his wife a franchise. Yesterday it was sending his security boys to try to score Ritz Carlton moisturizer for free rather than buy it on the internet. Today it’s getting his daughter into college.

   I will never read a book about the Trump administration, but when, a year or so from now, Pruitt’s innumerable scams are collected into a (big) book, I will be on the reserve list for a copy.
7. teve tory says:
   Friday, 15 June 2018 at 18:29

   Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right

   by Jane Mayer

   4.36 · Rating details · 11,878 Ratings · 2,028 Reviews

   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 American oligarchy.

   Dark Money is a book that must be read by anyone who cares about the future of American democracy.
8. de stijl says:
   Friday, 15 June 2018 at 18:36

   Nice tonality.
9. Steven L. Taylor says:
   Friday, 15 June 2018 at 18:41

   @PT: @Franklin: @de stijl: Thanks!
10. Steven L. Taylor says:
    Friday, 15 June 2018 at 18:41

    @teve tory: The Pruitt thing is utterly amazing.

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