
Dark Money
The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right
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Narrated by:
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Kirsten Potter
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By:
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Jane Mayer
About this listen
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 rise 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 also played a key role by bankrolling 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, foremost among them Charles and David Koch. 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.
When libertarian ideas proved decidedly unpopular with voters, the Koch brothers and their allies decided on 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.
The political operatives the network employs are disciplined, smart, and at times ruthless. 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 reform 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 listened to by anyone who cares about the future of American democracy.
©2016 Jane Mayer (P)2016 Random House AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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Kochland
- The Secret History of Koch Industries and Corporate Power in America
- By: Christopher Leonard
- Narrated by: Jacques Roy
- Length: 23 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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Just as Steve Coll told the story of globalization through ExxonMobil and Andrew Ross Sorkin told the story of Wall Street excess through Too Big to Fail, Christopher Leonard’s Kochland uses the extraordinary account of how the biggest private company in the world grew to be that big to tell the story of modern corporate America.
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An anti-capitalism treatise
- By Luis on 10-01-19
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The Scheme
- How the Right Wing Used Dark Money to Capture the Supreme Court
- By: Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, Jennifer Mueller
- Narrated by: Charles Constant
- Length: 8 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Following his book Captured on corporate capture of regulatory and government agencies, and his years of experience as a prosecutor, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse here turns his attention to the right-wing scheme to capture the courts, and how it influenced the Trump administration's appointment of over 230 "business-friendly" judges, including the last three justices of the United States Supreme Court.
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Dysfunctional democracy explained
- By Mark on 10-25-22
By: Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, and others
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The Hidden History of American Oligarchy
- Reclaiming Our Democracy from the Ruling Class
- By: Thom Hartmann
- Narrated by: Sean Pratt
- Length: 4 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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Billionaire oligarchs want to own our republic, and they’re nearly there, thanks to legislation and Supreme Court decisions that they have essentially bought. They put Trump and his political allies into office and support a vast network of think tanks, publications, and social media that every day push our nation closer and closer to police-state tyranny.
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Contains much needed for this country
- By Roy Roebuck on 03-14-21
By: Thom Hartmann
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The Shock Doctrine
- The Rise of Disaster Capitalism
- By: Naomi Klein
- Narrated by: Jennifer Wiltsie
- Length: 9 hrs and 2 mins
- Abridged
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In her groundbreaking reporting, Naomi Klein introduced the term "disaster capitalism." Whether covering Baghdad after the U.S. occupation, Sri Lanka in the wake of the tsunami, or New Orleans post-Katrina, she witnessed something remarkably similar. People still reeling from catastrophe were being hit again, this time with economic "shock treatment," losing their land and homes to rapid-fire corporate makeovers. The Shock Doctrine retells the story of the most dominant ideology of our time, Milton Friedman's free market economic revolution.
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If It's Bad for Humanity, It's Good for Business
- By Nelson Alexander on 09-29-07
By: Naomi Klein
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Becoming Abolitionists
- Police, Protests, and the Pursuit of Freedom
- By: Derecka Purnell
- Narrated by: Karen Chilton
- Length: 14 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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For more than a century, activists in the United States have tried to reform the police. From community policing initiatives to increasing diversity, none of it has stopped the police from killing about three people a day. Millions of people continue to protest police violence because these “solutions” do not match the problem: The police cannot be reformed. In Becoming Abolitionists, Purnell draws from her experiences as a lawyer, writer, and organizer initially skeptical about police abolition.
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highly recommended
- By C.O. on 12-17-21
By: Derecka Purnell
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Life Stories
- Profiles from The New Yorker
- By: Truman Capote, Ian Frazier, Susan Orlean
- Narrated by: Philip Bosco, Amy Irving, Alton Fitzgerald White
- Length: 9 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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One of art's purest challenges is to translate a human being into words. The New Yorker magazine has met this challenge more often and more successfully than any other modern American journal. Starting with its light fantastic evocations of the glamorous and the idiosyncratic in the '20s and continuing to the present, with complex pictures of such contemporaries as Marlon Brando and Richard Pryor, The New Yorker's Profiles have presented readers with a vast and brilliant portrait gallery.
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Exceptional writing makes this a fascinating read
- By Jody R. Nathan on 08-25-04
By: Truman Capote, and others
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The Wolves of K Street
- The Secret History of How Big Money Took Over Big Government
- By: Brody Mullins, Luke Mullins
- Narrated by: Jacques Roy
- Length: 19 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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In the 1970s, Washington’s center of power began to shift away from elected officials in big marble buildings to a handful of savvy, handsomely paid operators who didn’t answer to any fixed constituency. The cigar-chomping son of an influential congressman, an illustrious political fixer with a weakness for modern art, a Watergate-era dirty trickster, the city’s favorite cocktail party host—these were the sort of men who now ran Washington.
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A cast of characters
- By Judy L. Bourget MD Inc. on 06-15-24
By: Brody Mullins, and others
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Kleptopia
- How Dirty Money Is Conquering the World
- By: Tom Burgis
- Narrated by: Tom Burgis
- Length: 10 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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In this real-life thriller packed with jaw-dropping revelations, award-winning investigative journalist Tom Burgis weaves together stories that reveal a terrifying global web of corruption. Glimpses of this shadowy world have emerged over the years. In Kleptopia, Burgis connects the dots. He follows the dirty money that is flooding the global economy, emboldening dictators, and poisoning democracies. From the Kremlin to Beijing, Harare to Riyadh, Paris to the White House, the trail shows something even more sinister: the thieves are uniting. And the human cost will be great.
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Lazy Journalism in long narrative form
- By Jeremy on 02-14-21
By: Tom Burgis
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Underground Empire
- How America Weaponized the World Economy
- By: Henry Farrell, Abraham Newman
- Narrated by: L. J. Ganser
- Length: 7 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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A deeply researched investigation that reveals how the United States is like a spider at the heart of an international web of surveillance and control, which it weaves in the form of globe-spanning networks such as fiber optic cables and obscure payment systems.
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Good summary
- By Medz on 01-28-25
By: Henry Farrell, and others
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Fantasyland
- How America Went Haywire: A 500-Year History
- By: Kurt Andersen
- Narrated by: Kurt Andersen
- Length: 19 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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A razor-sharp thinker offers a new understanding of our post-truth world and explains the American instinct to believe in make-believe, from the Pilgrims to P. T. Barnum to Disneyland to zealots of every stripe...to Donald Trump. In this sweeping, eloquent history of America, Kurt Andersen demonstrates that what's happening in our country today - this strange, post-factual, "fake news" moment we're all living through - is not something entirely new, but rather the ultimate expression of our national character and path.
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Bland Title For An Amazing Book!
- By David Larson on 09-07-17
By: Kurt Andersen
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Winner-Take-All Politics
- How Washington Made the Rich Richer--and Turned Its Back on the Middle Class
- By: Jacob S. Hacker, Paul Pierson
- Narrated by: John Allen Nelson
- Length: 11 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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We all know that the very rich have gotten a lot richer these past few decades while most Americans haven't. In fact, the exorbitantly paid have continued to thrive during the current economic crisis, even as the rest of Americans have fallen behind. Why do the "have-it-alls" have so much more? Lots of so-called experts claim to have solved this great mystery, but no one has really gotten to the bottom of it---until now.
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VERY INSIGHTFUL
- By Ray on 04-10-15
By: Jacob S. Hacker, and others
What’s good about this book is that it succeeds in presenting mountains of evidence of this manipulative activity, which has gone on for decades and is continually increasing in intensity. Huge sums of money are spent in subtle and strategic Machiavellian ploys to achieve these goals. It will leave you in no doubt that America is controlled, or at least heavily influenced by, unscrupulous, greedy, selfish elites who care only about money, power and perpetuating their dynasties.
What’s bad about this book, aside from the fact that it is depressing and leaves you feeling powerless, is that it is just a succession of facts, one after the other. It’s really hard to maintain concentration because it is like listening to a shopping list of 247 items. They may be accurate, they may be damning, they may represent extensive investigation and research by the author, but these things alone do not an entertaining listen make – and this is nothing to do with the inadequacies of the narrator – she is very good.
I stuck with it out of a sense of the worthiness of the material – the world does need to know that this is happening – but it was hard work and my concentration strayed frequently. I feel bad saying this because it’s an important work and I don’t want to discourage people from listening, but it isn’t a lot of fun.
Fact attack
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Would you listen to Dark Money again? Why?
I don't know...it scares me. I listen to this for at least an hour per day while at the gym.It doesn't keep me awake, too long, at night but everyday I get another dose of why I fear for this country. It is clearly controlled by the wealthiest among us for their own purposes. Every day I learn of another reason why.What did you like best about this story?
It's non-fiction. Interesting question, what did you like best? Let's see, that this proves the country was bought by the mega-wealthy? No, that's not a 'best' item. That it is a call-to-arms for everyone other than the 0.1% to tell our elected officials, especially in Congress, what it will take to keep them in office.Have you listened to any of Kirsten Potter’s other performances before? How does this one compare?
No, I haven't but I am willing to see what else she'll read to me.Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?
It made me fear for this country's future. With Citizens United there is a real risk to democracy as we were taught in school, a very real risk.Scarier than Pet Cemetary
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care about democracy? read this book.
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Read and learn about American plutocracy.
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Bet my last dollar they were the last kids picked on anyone's team.
Republican Party?
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Still, an excellent, educative and surprisingly detailed account that is well-read and absolutely worthy of a careful listen.
I HIGHLY RECOMMEND, "Dark Money".
EXCELLENT; informative; and deeply troubling!!!
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super depressing
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Evil
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Incredible informative
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An Eye Opener!!<br />
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