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  • Dark Money

  • How a secretive group of billionaires is trying to buy political control in the US
  • By: Jane Mayer
  • Narrated by: Laurel Lefkow
  • Length: 16 hrs and 33 mins
  • 4.9 out of 5 stars (77 ratings)

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Dark Money

By: Jane Mayer
Narrated by: Laurel Lefkow
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Publisher's Summary

One of The New York Times' top 10 books of 2016. 

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.

Dark Money is an audiobook that must be heard by anyone who cares about the future of American democracy. 

©2016 Jane Mayer (P)2017 Audible, Ltd
  • Unabridged Audiobook
  • Categories: History

Critic Reviews

"Revelatory...persuasive, timely and necessary.... Only the most thoroughly documented, compendious account could do justice to the Kochs' bizarre and Byzantine family history and the scale and scope of their influence." (The New York Times)

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    3 out of 5 stars

Heavy going if you don’t know the people already

I’m an Australian with an interest in American politics and I found the volume of names in this book overwhelming. Heavy slog.

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    5 out of 5 stars
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Devastating

Devastating, gripping account of the corruption of politics by big money. Hoping Jane Mayer writes a second volume covering 2016 to now

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Exceptional book, well researched and ruthless

A well researched and and take no prisoners account of money in politics and what that is doing to our democratic society.

Non partisan accounts of both big money on the left and right of the political spectrum

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Everyone, everwhere should listen to how the system really works - it won't just be happening in the United States!

Clearly well-researched and fair to both sides. Essential to understand what is really going on and who is controlling it

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Horrendous, everyone should read this book

Horrendous everyone should read this book at least once. Laws need to change to catch-up with behaviour.

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A must read for climate and justice advocates.

Recommended to me. The widespread misinformation of climate change and the deepening inequity in the USA is clearly explained.

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Eye Opening and Concerning

Why is the US political landscape so divisive and dysfunctional? A good part of the answer lies in this outstanding treatise on the political project of the extremely wealthy, a project to subvert the political process and thwart any policy that would impede their desire to return to the gilded age plutocracy. Antithetical to democracy, the effect of the baffling Citizens United decision of the SCOTUS is laid bare. America is firmly in the grip of big money once again and the rise of big data is providing the means for that grip to only strengthen.

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    5 out of 5 stars

A frightening look into the Orwellian USA world.

How wealth has grown to be a threat to the majority of mankind and the planet. It certainly looks like another Kochup.

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  • Ian
  • 13-11-2019

A must read

This is a well researched and presented book that makes you furious at and revolted by the manipulative forces that have warped our society. So much for the illusion of a free democracy. Everyone should read this brilliant horror story.

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Eye Opener

This book is a really eye opener for me! highly recommend for anyone who is interested in understanding the change in politics over the last decade

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In the spirit of reconciliation, Audible acknowledges the Traditional Custodians of country throughout Australia and their connections to land, sea and community. We pay our respect to their elders past and present and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples today.