Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right
In the late 1980s, Richard Fink, the principal political aide of Charles Koch, laid out a blueprint for a takeover of American politics. The first phase required investments in intellectuals and think tanks to produce ideas and turn them into marketable policy initiatives. The next phase involved subsidizing " grassroots " citizen groups that would elect politicians primed to enact the policies and along with " special interest " lobbyists, keep the pressure on them and government agencies. Faced with serious threats to their energy businesses from environmentalists in and outside the government, Charles and David Koch (whose father was a founding member of the John Birch Society) committed hundreds of millions of dollars to this " vertically and horizontally integrated " plan to establish a libertarian, anti tax, anti regulation, anti union, antisocial welfare, pro corporate America. In " Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right, " Jane Mayer, a staff writer for The New Yorker and the author of " The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned into a War on American Ideals, " provides an extraordinarily well documented account of the influential, interlocking organizations with innocuous names created by the Koch brothers.