Reactionary, often anti-democratic, billionaires are charged with trying to change and control America.
Why should a reasonable person believe this?
Begin with commentary from the last 2,000 years:
-Plutarch: “Am imbalance between rich and poor is the oldest and most fatal ailment of all republics.”
-Matthew 19:21-24: “…It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter
into the kingdom of God.”
-Daniel Webster: “The freest government cannot long endure when the tendency of the law is to create rapid
accumulation of property in the hands of a few, and to render the masses poor…”
-Abraham Lincoln [1864]: “Corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will
follow.”
-Mark Twain: “Why do we need government? To protect us from the crooks and scoundrels.”
-Honore Balzac: “Behind every great fortune is a crime.”
-Theodore Roosevelt [1906]: “The primary objective should be to put a constantly increasing burden on the
inheritance of those swollen fortunes, which is certainly of no benefit to this
country to perpetuate
-Benito Mussolini: “Fascism should rightly be called corporatism as it is a merger of state and corporate power.”
-Dwight Eisenhower: “In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted
influence…by the military industrial complex…We must never let the weight of this
combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes.”
-Joseph Stigitz: “American inequality didn’t just happen. It was created.”
-Abraham Lincoln [1837]: “These capitalists generally act harmoniously and in concert to fleece the people.”
[note: some above quotes from D.C.Johnston’s “Divided”]
For more perspective, refer to historical facts of top 1% and corporate actions:
-1865-1901 “Robber Barons” era, also known as “The Gilded Age” – for the massive corruption of the American economy
and government by the top 1% and corporations. [Lincoln, Tain, Balzac above] Republicans dominate.
– 1920-1929 – known as “The Roaring Twenties” for many things. Republican presidents, 1921-1932. Speculation and
“exuberance” on Wall Street without regulation leads to the “Great Depression,” 1920-1941. Hitler, World War
II, and much misery of people world-wide.
-the 1933 plot by the top 1& and corporations to take over American government, revealed in a February, 1935
Congressional report [Jules Archer’s “The Plot to Seize the White House”]
-corporate aid to the Nazis, 1933-1949, including DURING World War II {Edwin Black’s “IBM and The Holocaust” and
Charles Higham’s “Trading With The Enemy”]
-top 1% and corporate opposition to almost all 1901-1970 reforms that benefit ordinary Americans
-subversion of corporate critics – Rachel Carson and Ralph Nader – whose work threatened their profits
-opposition to dealing with the CLIMATE CRISIS now threatening the very existence of the earth – the single
GREATEST CRIME IN HUMAN HISTORY. For what? Their GREED.
SO – is it possible, that reactionary billionaires might want to subvert America? With above, below, and much, much more FACTUAL EVIDENCE the answer is “YES”
Jane Mayer’s “Dark Money The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right” belongs on every American’s bookshelf who cares about a democratic America. It is that simple. The 1980-2021 existence of the various antidemocratic forces in America is not an accident. They’ve been encouraged and financed [millions virtually every year] by the reactionary billionaires Mayer documents.
Page 377, “Phil DuBose, the former Koch Industries manager who spent 26 years working for the Kochs before testifying against them in court, had no doubt that they now had their sights on all three branches of government. “What they want is to get their own way…The little people? They’d get gobbled up.”
Page 53, “…Doherty, the libertarian chronicler who has interviewed both brothers…Charles’s aim, he said, was to tear the government out “at the root.”
Page 82, “The new, hyper-partisan think tanks…introduced doubt into areas of settled academic and scientific scholarship, undermined genuinely unbiased experts, and gave politicians a menu of conflicting statistics and arguments from which to choose…..partisan shills would create “balance” based on fraudulent research and deceive the public about pressing issues in which their sponsors had financial interests.”
Page 105, “..the Olin Foundation was investing in William F. Buckley…also funding Allan Bloom [attack higher ed]….also supported Dinesh D’Souza [blasted “political correctness’]…..funded professors at leading schools all over the country [Harvard program emphasizing a conservative interp of American history; $8.4 million for a hawkish foreign policy approach]…….Through these carefully curated programs, the foundation trained the next generation of conservatives….Between 1990 and 2001, 56..Olin fellows..continued to teach [at top schools]…Many others became public figures in government, think tanks, and the media.”
Page 113, “The Bradley Foundation virtually drove the early national “school choice” movement, waging an all-out assault on teacher’s unions and traditional public schools….militated for parents to be able to use public funds to send their children to private and parochial schools” [with help from “conservative” Supreme Court “Justices”]
Page 137, ‘The Kochs never did play by the rules. They had their own playing field. They just didn’t abide by anything.”
Page 233-235: “The DeVoses were..deeply involved in the secretive Council for National Policy, described by The New York Times as a “little-known club of a few hundred of the most powerful conservatives in the country,” which..”met behind closed doors in undisclosed locations”…three times a year. Membership lists were secret….There was overlap with a number of other participants in the Koch seminars…surreptitiously fund attack ads……few issues were more central to the DeVos family’s mission than eradicating restraints on political spending….DeVos..said, “I have decided..to stop taking offense at the suggestion that we are buying influence. Now I simply concede the point.”
There is also a documentary DVD, “Dark Money< directed by Kimberly Reed, written by Reed and Jay Arthur Sterrenberg. It stars the state of Montana. A review by Kenneth Turan, L.A. Times, appeared on 9/7/2018 – “Documentary tracks the harm from secretive campaign contributions.”
Nancy MacLean’s “Democracy in Chains The Deep History of The Radical Right’s Stealth Plan For America” [2017] was the winner of the L.A. Times Book Prize and the Lillian smith Book Award, finalist for the National Book Award is also a book belonging on patriotic American book shelves.
Page xvii, “..take a longer view…the utterly chilling story of the ideological origins of the single most powerful and least understood threat to democracy today: the attempt by the billionaire-backed radical right to undo democratic governance….a stealth bid to reverse-engineer all of America, both the state and the national levels, back to the political economy and oligarchic governance of midcentury Virginia, minus the segregation….an action would be taken by governmental figures on the radical right that went well beyond typical party politics….”
Page xviii, “..what happened in Wisconsin in 2011..governor Scott Walker put forth legislation to strip public employees of nearly all their collective bargaining rights……in New Jersey, where Governor Chris Christie started attacking teachers….Equally mysterious were the moves by several GOP-controlled state legislatures to inflict flesh-wounding cuts in public education….In Wisconsin, North Carolina, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Iowa, these same GOP-controlled legislatures also took aim at state universities and colleges…..Then came a surge of synchronized proposals to suppress voter turnout…..its all-out campaign to defeat the Obama Administration’s Affordable Care Act..” [pg. 134 – A.L.E.C.!!!!!]
Page xxix, “The Koch team’s most important stealth move, and the one that proved most critical to success, was to wrest control over the machinery of the Republican Party…..The new men in the wings respect only compliance; if they fail to get it, they respond with swift vengeance. The cadre targets for removal any old-time Republicans deemed a problem, throwing big money into their next primary race to unseat them and replace them with the cause’s more “conservative” choices – or at least teach them to heel.”
Page 126, “The “campaign for the courts”…sought “to mold a new jurisprudence” that would radically change “the way justice is dispensed in our society>” In particular…”to make the protection and enhancement of corporate profits and private wealth the cornerstones of our legal system.”…investors helped fund “law and economics” programs..and property rights “public interest” law firms…..to train journalists in an approach to law that was sympathetic to corporations that found themselves in court.” [SUCCESSFUL, see Rehnquist-Roberts Courts PATTERN]
Pages 227 – the Koch plan for a Constitutional revolution [6 major points]
Anne Nelson’s “Shadow Network Media, Money, and the Secret Hub of the Radical Right” [2019], pages ix-xii lists the names of “Dramatis Personae,” with * marks for members of the “Council for National Policy [4l. not a complete roster – fundamentalists, political operatives, media, money, organization leaders.
Pages xiv-xix, “The CNP was founded in 1981 by a small group of archconservatives who realized the tides of history had turned against them…They dreamed of restoring a 19th century patriarchy that limited the civil rights of women, minorities, immigrants, and workers, with no income tax to vex the rich or social safety net to aid the poor……So the CNP decided to change the rules….Three key players dominate [radio]: Salem Media Group, Bott Radio Network, and the American Family Radio networks…they have connected their holdings to a cohort of pastors, politicians, and tycoons, creating an armada of radio stations and news outlets loyal to the CNP’s political agenda, and selling millions of Americans on its harsh combination of plutocracy and theocracy.
“The cumulative effect is the creation of a parallel universe of information…devastating to American democracy…The CNP and its allies spent years building party machines at a state level…..The movement has..appropriated a vocabulary that it deploys with Orwellian flair. “Family” is code word for homophobic, and “defense of marriage” means prohibition of same-sex unions. “Fairness” and “justice” means lowering taxes for the wealthy and corporations. ‘Values” means conservative evangelical ideology. “Right to work” means depriving unions of the benefits of collective bargaining.”…..At the heart of the debate is climate……..Members of the Council for National Policy have worked in concert with affiliates of the Koch network…”
Gordon Lafer wrote “The One Percent Solution How Corporations are Remaking America One State at a Time” [2017] to provide “a comprehensive account of legislation promoted by the nation;s biggest corporate lobbies across all fifty state legislatures and encompassing a wide range of labor and economic policies.
“In an era of growing economic insecurity, it turns out that one of the main reasons life is becoming harder for American workers is a relentless – and concerted – offensive by the country’s best-funded and most powerful political forces: corporate lobbies empowered by the Supreme Court to influence legislative outcomes with an endless supply of cash. These actors have successfully championed hundreds of new laws that lower wages, eliminate paid sick leave, undo the right to sue over job discrimination, and cut essential public services.”
Page 7, “For the first time ever, in 2012 more than half of all income in America went to the richest 10 percent..a degree of inequality surpassing even..the late 1920s….one historian of oligarchy notes that the richest 400..in the United States now exercise a degree of influence over society comparable to that of the rulers of ancient Rome>”
Page 27, “The conservative strategist William Kristol famously a logical reason [for opposition to single-payer}..in a 1993 memo outlining the dangers of President Bill Clinton’s health care proposal. Kristol argued that successful health care reform COULD FUNDAMENTALLY RESHAPE THE WAY PEOPLE THINK ABOUT THE ECONOMY, RAISING THEIR SENSE OF WHAT THE PUBLIC [through its government] COULD DEMAND OF THE PRIVATE SECTOR.
Page 70, “…the deficits of all 50 states could have been erased entirely through TWO SIMPLE POLICY CHANGES: undoing the Bush tax cuts for the top 2%..and taxing capital gains at the same rate as ordinary income.”
Page 175, “>>scientists using a NASA-funded model projected the unsustainable demands on natural resources, combined with economic stratification of society into Elites ans Masses, could lead to a widespread collapse of civilization” [study modeled 5,000 years of civilizations – “closely reflecting the reality of the world today”].
For even more perspective, one can read Nomi Prins’ “All the Presidents’ Bankers…The Hidden Alliance that Drive American Power” [2014] My take; bottom line – the big bankers ALWAYS get what they want, regardless.
And – for a different, slightly, perspective – one can read “How Democracies Die,” by Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt {2018]. Unfortunately, we have too many examples. America is NOT guaranteed to continue to last forever – not without ordinary people making an effort – this means YOU. Who have YOU voted for since 2010 – and why?
Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis” famous “either-or” warning should be clear to YOU by now. In Lincoln’s immortal words, we either have a government of the people, by the people, FOR the people – or, we have what has been documented above – a government by-of-FOR the rich.
The Koch-captured Republican party has, since 1980, but even more so, since 2010, placed us on the slippery slope, sliding ever more each Supreme Court decision, ever more Republican Congressional moves toward a plutocratic theocracy.
I miss my parents, people of the “Greatest Generation.” But, as we talk about often, we’re glad they’re not here to see what America has become – a travesty of the 1947-73 peak. Dad spent 3 years fighting fascism – and now we have the beginnings of it here. Mom and Dad believed in simple things: doing the right thing, treating people with respect, just simple decency. America, in which Abraham Lincoln could no longer be nominated by the party he helped create, has disgraced itself – but that was/is the PLAN. America 2021 is NOT an accident – it has been bought by the obscene wealth of greedy, authoritarian billionaires. If YOU can’t see that – we’re in big trouble.
With Justice For All 