Just finished DARK MONEY by Jane Mayer, not a new book, but an important one. It is terrifying, in that it makes it so abundantly clear that money has shaped policy in a terribly ugly way. The subtitle of the book is the hidden history of the billionaires behind the rise of the radical right. Its focus is on the Koch brothers,but there are others, and their agenda is hands off business and money, so they can screw their employees,not hire union workers, taxes are tyranny, no environmental regulations-everything for the betterment of their businesses. The upshot? What is good for big billionaires business people is not good for most of America, but by employing the false rhetoric of populism, they get common folks to believe they are on their side. And they pay to get common folks on their sides-millions of dollars in districts all across America. Their beliefs advance their personal and corporate interests. One example is the DeVos family, a billionaire family invested in shaping politics as such. They make political deals, and one was providing Betsy DeVos with a cabinet position: as Secretary of Education, a job for which she is grossly unprepared and not qualified for. She never stepped into the foot of a public school until she got this position in the Trump administration, and she is not interested in the needs of this population; hence, vouchers as a suggestion to help dismantle the public school system.
These libertarian ideas are dangerous and appalling, and here we are stuck in an America that has been manipulated by the finances of self-serving"rich" interests. This is not my America-yet how to stop this? A MUST READ book, but very depressing in its reality-based focus.
No comments:
Post a Comment