n>In 2016, Americans who hoped to make sense of Donald Trump’s election could have done worse than turn to a book released earlier that year: Dark Money by Jane Mayer. In this extraordinary—and extraordinarily disturbing—work of nonfiction, Mayer, a veteran investigative journalist, laid bare the tremendous political influence of a handful of far-right billionaires: banking and oil heir Richard Mellon Scaife, chemical industry magnate John M. Olin, electronics barons Harry and Lynde Bradley, and, above all, fossil fuel tycoons Charles and David Koch. To Mayer, these men, and a few others, constituted the “vast right-wing conspiracy” of Hillary Clinton’s nightmares—except their conspiracy wasn’t all that vast. It consisted, she found, of “a small circle of billionaire donors.”Read Full Article »
