Sunday, January 17, 2016

Dark Money review: Nazi oil, the Koch brothers and a rightwing revolution

New Yorker writer Jane Mayer examines the origins, rise and dominance of a billionaire class to whom money is no object when it comes to buying power

Lots of American industrialists have skeletons in the family closet. Charles and David Koch, however, are in a league of their own.

Charles Koch is 'disappointed' in 2016 Republicans – but will still give $900m

The US businessman says he gave presidential candidates a list of issues to address, but hasn’t seen results: ‘You’d think we could have more influence’

<?XML:NAMESPACE PREFIX = "[default] http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" NS = "http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" />

Read more

The father of these famous right-wing billionaires was Fred Koch, who started his fortune with $500,000 received from Stalin for his assistance constructing 15 oil refineries in the Soviet Union in the 1930s. A couple of years later, his company, Winkler-Koch, helped the Nazis complete their third-largest oil refinery. The facility produced hundreds of thousands of gallons of high-octane fuel for the Luftwaffe, until it was destroyed by Allied bombs in 1944.

In 1938, the patriarch wrote that “the only sound countries in the world are Germany, Italy and Japan”. To make sure his children got the right ideas, he hired a German nanny. The nanny was such a fervent Nazi that when France fell in 1940, she resigned and returned to Germany. After that, Fred became the main disciplinarian, whipping his children with belts and tree branches.

These are just a handful of the many bombshells exploded in the pages of Dark Money, Jane Mayer’s indispensable new history “of the billionaires behind the rise of the radical right” in America.

A veteran investigative reporter and a staff writer for the New Yorker, Mayer has combined her own research with the work of scores of other investigators, to describe how the Kochs and fellow billionaires like Richard Scaife have spent hundreds of millions to “move their political ideas from the fringe to the center of American political life”.

Twenty years after collaborating with the Nazis, Fred Koch lost none of his taste for extremism. In 1958 he was one of the 11 original members of the John Birch Society, an organization which accused scores of prominent Americans, including President Dwight Eisenhower, of communist sympathies.

In 1960, Koch wrote that “the colored man looms large in the Communist plan to take over America”. He strongly supported the movement to impeach chief justice Earl Warren, after the supreme court voted to desegregate public schools in Brown v Board of Education. His sons became Birchers too, although Charles was more enamored of “antigovernment economic writers” than communist conspiracies.

After their father died, Charles and David bought out their brothers’ shares in the family company, then built it into the second largest privately held corporation in America.

“As their fortunes grew, Charles and David Koch became the primary underwriters of hard-line libertarian politics in America,” Mayer writes. Charles’s goal was to “tear the government out ‘at the root’.”

Rauner must move beyond populist imagery in budget battle

 

image

Public opinion polls vary widely on who's going to succeed Chicago's Barack Obama as president, but they agree on one thing: Public confidence in government and its ability to get things done is at record low levels.

The reason is fairly obvious. A weak economy that's creating jobs but not nearly as much wealth for the average person has lots of folks convinced that “they” are eating our bacon. From Donald Trump on the right to Sen. Bernie Sanders on the left, populism is the current rage as pols try to figure out how to make the case that they are on voters' side.

Obama never really has pulled off that trick. Though he's accomplished more than people realize and many in Washington never gave him a fair shot, the former University of Chicago law instructor's wonky side slips out far too much.

 -

Similarly, Mayor Rahm Emanuel never connected with average Chicagoans, even before anyone ever heard of Laquan McDonald. Following Richard M. Daley, who mangled the English language and dressed like 50 bucks, Emanuel comes across as utterly self-contained and concerned about rich people like himself. He has little reservoir of personal goodwill to draw on in this time of crisis.

However, it's Gov. Bruce Rauner whom I find really interesting when it comes to pulling off populism.

Rauner is truly rich compared with Emanuel. He pretty much bought the governor's mansion by himself. He's about as ordinary as a private jet to St. Bart's. Yet he's smart enough to know that instinctively. Ergo, all the Harley riding, “g” dropping and frumpy dressing.

The same is true with Rauner's proposals for change in the ongoing state budget standoff.

He's right that the property tax and corporate income tax in Illinois are well above those of competing states. He's right that the state's job creation machinery has clunked to a near-total stop, except in downtown Chicago. He's right that House Speaker Mike Madigan has been in power a couple of decades too long. And he's right that organized labor has much of the state's politicians by the short hairs and has used that power to get things it shouldn't, like 3 percent annual compounded hikes in pension benefits in an era of 1 to 2 percent inflation.

But many of us suspect that if Rauner were to get his way and curb union influence, all he would be doing is moving money from middle-class union households to upper-income groups.

I mean, isn't that what outsourcing is all about? Firing people who make $12 an hour and replacing them with people who make $8 so that taxes paid by the wealthy can be a little lower? And aren't Madigan and the unions trying to prevent that?

My conservative friends would argue that states with a different economic model, some in the South but also Indiana, are creating jobs faster than we are. A recent study by the Illinois Policy Institute even suggested that statewide, after adjusting for the cost of living, factory jobs in Indiana on average now pay better than in Illinois.

If Rauner really wants to win this war with Madigan, he's going to have to take his inner populist beyond appearances. That means moving away from the mano a mano power struggle. (My suggestion is to concede that each is a beast and get on with it.)

Instead, the governor is going to have to start convincing Illinoisans that it's in their economic interests to side with him. That means more than just opposing higher taxes. It means demonstrating to voters why his policies will put more money in their pockets than Madigan's will.

I can't guarantee that would end this fight. But all Rauner is doing now is wearing out the state's credit card. Time for a new approach, sir?

Above is fromhttp://www.chicagobusiness.com/article/20160116/ISSUE05/301169991/rauner-must-move-beyond-populist-imagery-in-budget-battle