Dark Money or: America's Cartoonishly Evil Right-Wing Billionaires
It's so much worse than you think, y'all
First of all let me just get out of the way what I’m sure anyone who knows me is already aware of: I don’t think billionaires should exist. I think that once you reach a billion dollars, anything further you make should be donated to the state and you can get like… a plaque saying you won capitalism or a road named after you or something.
I think it’s morally wrong for any one person to have that much money. I’m also of the personal opinion that there is something psychologically wrong with 99% of them. We classify hoarding more than you could ever possibly use of any other item as a psychiatric disorder – why would money be an exception?
So when I started reading Guggenheim fellowship Jane Mayer’s multiple award-winning book, Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right, I felt like I knew what I was getting into. I already know how morally and ethically bankrupt most of these people are. I’ve seen Succession. I read the papers. I am fairly politically engaged. I get it.
Boy, was I wrong. It is so much worse than I anticipated. These people make Roman Roy look like Mr Rogers. The overt and unapologetic racism, the complete disregard for the lives of other people (especially other poor people), the disdain for the rule of law and democracy is staggering.
So this week, I decided the best thing I could do was put together a little snapshot of some of the worst offenders, using dot points, in case you wanted to skip the book and get the highlights. Which I don’t blame you for. Because great as it is, this one is a real fucking bummer, my dudes.
So without further ado:
The Koch Family
![A cartoon of David and Charles Koch. A cartoon of David and Charles Koch.](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F2e39c3f8-3159-4f59-a6cb-b55a3ce3482c_1401x788.webp)
Look, we all know these guys are terrible, right? Wrong! They are so much more terrible than you think! Here is just a taster of some of the things they have done:
Inherited a fortune made by their father, Fred, who set up oil refineries for both Adolph Hitler and Joseph Stalin. For the former, this was DURING the British blockade. He wrote: “Although nobody agrees with me, I am of the opinion that the only sound countries in the world are Germany, Italy, and Japan.” This was in 1938.
The eldest son, Charles, had to be sent away as a child for relentlessly bullying his brothers, including endlessly taunting his homosexual brother Fred. He and his brother would later attempt blackmail Fred (who actually seems kind of okay?) about his homosexuality for money as an adult.
Father Fred wrote that “the coloured man looms in the Communist plan to take over America.” He vigorously supported the campaign to impeach a supreme court justice who voted in favour of desegregating schools.
Believed Roosevelt’s “New Deal” was a “huge mistake” and that Roosevelt himself should be “annihilated.” They also believed in a revisionist history that painted the Robber Barons of the Gilded Age as American heroes.
Attended (and declared deep affection for) a school that advocated: “no government, no police, no fire department, no public health.” Essentially, they believe the Bill of Rights should extend solely to private enterprise. Thassit.
Charles Koch became the VP of the Libertarian Party in 1980 pretty much exclusively so that he could legally donate money to himself with no limits on spending. The party slogan was, completely unironically: “The Libertarian Party has only one source of funds. You.” LMAO.
He only received 1% of the vote. Amongst other things, he ran on the idea that people should legally be able to sell themselves into slavery if they want to (!!!), that all tax should be abolished, that there should be no child labour laws, or workplace, drug, or environmental regulation. At all. Including seatbelts. Oh, and also all public schools should be abolished.
At their Pine Bend Oil Refinery, the Koch family knowingly exposed workers to Benzene without their consent or knowledge, which causes cancer. Workers had to have their blood annually tested as per OSHA stipulations.
One worker who contracted leukaemia from a lifetime of work at the plant soon found out that his blood tests had yielded abnormal results for four years of testing. He was never informed.
When he got too sick to work, he was given only his sick leave as severance pay after working for them for 21 years. The company also refused to admit that his illness was job related and refused to pay him workers’ compensation, which would have paid for his hospital bills and given benefits to his wife and daughter.
After his death at the age of 53, his wife sued. The Kochs continued to deny compensation, eventually offering her money only if she agreed that there would be no written agreement. That way they could avoid court and avoid a written record of what they’d done.Knowingly continued to use an unsafe pipeline to transmit oil, eventually resulting in the death of two teenagers when the gas leak from the corroded pipeline exploded. They then tried to offer the family money to drop the wrongful death lawsuit and when they refused, had a private investigator tail the family. They were eventually forced to pay the largest wrongful death award on record (at the time) – $296 million.
Systematically stole oil from Native land, “mis-measuring crude oil from Indian Reservations all over the US.” For this they eventually paid $25 million after their own brother blew the whistle on them.
I feel like I need a bath.
Richard Mellon Scaife
I’d never heard of this guy before starting this book but man was he wild. He was the wildly alcoholic fuckup son of Andrew Mellon Scaife who made his money in banking, newspapers and oil. Healso quickly learned that it was easier to avoid paying taxes by using philanthropy than any other method, which exclusively motivated their doing so. After being kicked out of Yale, Richard entered the family business at the Pittsburgh Tribune Review. Here are the terrible things HE did (he’s dead now):
Thought that the coverage of smoking in the media was “too one-sided” and complained that the positive aspects of smoking were never given enough attention.
Started the American Enterprise Institute and the Heritage Foundation which… IYKYK.
Came up with the idea of creating exclusively ideological think-tanks and emphasised the need to disguise them as without agenda or bias. He also came up with the idea of planting ideologically-right-wing-driven Professors in Ivy League Universities.
Emphasised the need to create a covert “war of ideas” while making it appear that right-wing ideas were merely winning out in a free marketplace of ideas.
John M. Olin
This guy is GROSS. He’s so gross I don’t even want to use a picture of him, so instead, here is a picture of Vampire Mr Burns, which is pretty much this dude in a nutshell. His Wikipedia page describes him as a philanthropist and a conservationist, which is fucking hilarious. Why is this hilarious? Well, here’s what our boy John did before he shuffled off this mortal coil:
Knowingly allowed his company to dump more than twenty pounds of mercury into the Niagara River each day, then falsified their company’s records. Mercury causes birth defects – among other things.
Was one of the leading American producers of DDT, the heinous environmental effects of which were illustrated by Rachel Carson’s watershed book, Silent Spring. They were also sued by multiple companies for releasing DDT-laced effluents into conservation areas.
So badly polluted the drinking water and environment of the tiny Appalachian town of Saltville Virginia, that “the company faced the prospect of millions of dollars in cleanup costs with no end in sight.” The company was aware of this and yet took advantage of the lack of regulations surrounding industry at the time. They poured about a hundred pounds of mercury into their drinking water every day. Saltville’s water is still contaminated to this day.
Created and effectively sold a new approach to jurisprudence called “Law and Economics", originally a Libertarian fringe theory that made it into Ivy League college campuses around America thanks to a $68 million dollar investment from Olin. It stresses the need to analyse new laws (government regulations included) not just for their fairness, but also for their economic impact.
As political scientist Steven M. Teles explained it: “If you said to a dean that you wanted to fund conservative constitutional law, he would reject it out of hand. But if you said you wanted to support Law and Economics, he would be much more open to the idea… It seems neutral, but it in fact, isn’t.”“I saw it as a way into the law schools – I probably shouldn’t confess that.”
– John M. Olin to the New York Times in 2005
If you don’t have the heart to read Mayer’s book, I would not blame you. I had to put it down multiple times and go distract myself with something nice. But if you want any more information, you can get a sort of chapter-by-chapter synopsis here.
I know this one was kind of a bummer. But we have to be aware of the reality of a situation before we can fix it. And the first step in doing that is to recognise that money in politics is far from a problem that is exclusive to the United States. The rise of billionaires and their meddling in foreign policy (looking at you, Elon) and government is a global problem.
So what can you do? Learn about it. Vote. Become politically engaged. Write to your MPs. Join your union.
Don’t give up.
Bits and Bobs
Aside from being absolutely horrified by this book, this week I’ve been:
Watching: Turning Point: 9/11 and the War on Terror on Netflix because obviously I just did not feel like being happy this week.
Reading: Aside from this book, I’ve also been listening to the audiobook of Chasing the Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs by Johann Hari, which is outstanding.
I’ve also been reading more of Jane Mayer’s excellent work. You can catch her at The New Yorker here.
Listening to: The Children of Men soundtrack. Apparently this week is just grim dystopia.
However it does feature one of my favourite Jarvis Cocker songs that this week seems especially apt.
Until next time, lovely humans. Be excellent to one another.