We are now deep into the 2016 election cycle.  The success of Donald Trump in the Republican primaries held to date has been a shock to the Republican establishment and the left leaning main stream media.  The Republican establishment appears to be working extremely hard to find a way to deny Trump the nomination.  Much of the media and its stable of "expert" talking heads are attacking Trump at every opportunity.  So far Trump has knocked 14 opponents out of the race and has a solid delegate lead.  Can Trump win a majority of Republican delegates in advance of the convention?  We will learn the answer during the next three months.

It isn't often that one finds a new book in a book store that relates directly to current events.  However, it happened to me a few weeks ago when I picked up a brand new book by Jane Mayer, Dark Money - The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right.  Mayer explains how some of the richest people in the United States lead by Charles and David Koch, owners of Koch Industries, have led the Conservative political revolution that has fundamentally changed the US political system.  Mayer's book is extremely well researched with names of people, names of organizations, amounts of money raised for conservative activism and dates of meetings and events all put into context of the conservative movement. 

Many of us have heard of many of the people and organizations involved in the Conservative movement.  Mayer tells a pretty complete story about how the Conservative movement developed over 40 years.  It appears from the tone of the book that Mayer is a left leaning person and may be very liberal progressive in her personal views.  The book doesn't discuss any details of liberal progressive organizations that have been involved in similar political activity.  If you read the book it won't appear fair and balanced.  The analysis of the history of liberal progressive activity is a different issue for a different day.  Mayer has exposed the warts of the Conservative movement and that is a valuable resource for anyone interested in understanding our recent political history. 

Some of the significant questions that were raised in my mind when I read Dark Money include the following: 

Have we let tax-exempt organizations get out-of-control when using its funding for political purposes?  Why haven't our tax laws been enforced in this area? 

Should extremely wealthy people be permitted to use their fortunes to influence politics in the United States at any level of government?  If we want to set limits, how do we enforce them? 

Has our education system at all levels been compromised by political activists of all types?  What can we do about it?  Is there any form of centered education? 

What should our Federal income and estate tax rates be in the United States?  How much should the richest contribute to help the poorest in our nation make progress?  

I have a few policy thoughts after reading the book that I believe everyone should think about. 

Massive amounts of pollution of our land and water by a variety of industries has damaged many areas of the United States, either permanently or requiring massive amounts of money to remove the pollutants.  It is unacceptable for industries to rape our land and water for their profit and leave the clean-up to the public.  It is also unacceptable for regulators like the Environmental Protection Agency to create regulations that make doing business financially impossible.  There has to be an economic reality element to the environmental decision making process. 

It is very obvious that emitting black smoke into the air from human activity isn't good.  It is clear that smog over our cities created by human activity isn't good.  It is also clear that attempting to fundamentally rework the energy footprint of the United States without regard to market forces and economics in order to achieve an arbitrary climate change objective doesn't make sense either.  This is even more important when one considers what is happening or not happening in the rest of the world on this issue.  Making our overall environment cleaner is a good objective we should all help to achieve, but the extremists on both sides need to work toward rational objectives we can all support.  We don't need to be spending billions of government dollars that don't make economic sense to achieve artificial objectives. 

So how does Dark Money relate to the rise of Donald Trump.  The last section of the last chapter of Dark Money discusses the plans of the Koch brothers and their team of donors and conservative activists to raise and spend $889B for the 2016 election cycle.  The fund raising began in January 2015.  At that time Donald Trump was not in the picture.  The Conservatives envisioned using their money to capture the presidency as the capstone to their decades of efforts.  They envisioned a committed Conservative to follow their doctrine after taking over the White House. 

Guess what happened?  Donald Trump joined the race in June and decided to self-fund his campaign and eliminate the influence of the wealthy Republican donor community including the Conservative faction led by the Koch brothers.  By self-funding his campaign and appealling to people that have been left behind by globalization; those people that are frustrated by failure of Republicans to accomplish anything meaningful in the governing process in Washington even though they have Congressional majorities; and those that are fed up with political correctness of the liberal progessives; Trump has taken a significant lead and is now the favorite to win the Republican nomination.  All the big money players and big power establishment people have been left behind by Trump and a couple of his campaign people  and they can't stand the thought of a Republican president being elected and they have no influence over him.  All the "experts" of early 2015 were grossly wrong 14 months later. We will see what happens in the months ahead. 

Dark Money is an extremely interesting book for those interested in the subject matter.  The questions raised by the book are legitimate and apply to all players in our political process.  As a nation we have to decide who are and how we want to conduct our political process and manage our nation.  Do we want to elect legislators that have been bought by special interests? 

Lots of questions, not enough answers. 

TPM

I have commented on many books during the past few years and rarely have I been waiting with a great deal of anticipation for the publication of a book.  Graham Hancock's new book, Magicians of the Gods - The Forgotten Wisdom of Earth's Lost Civilization, which was published in late 2015, is one of the books I couldn't wait to read.  Magicians of the Gods is a sequel to Hancock's 1995 book, Fingerprints of the Gods.  I highly recommend that anyone that is interested in learning more about Hancock's view of our ancient history read this book. 

Ancient history is probably the wrong term.  What Hancock really addresses is the prehistory of our planet.  He discusses new discoveries by the scientific community during the past 15 years or so.  Hancock's fundamental contribution to the topic area is his integration of large amounts of new information from all over the world.  Hancock is the "systems engineer" of pre-history.  He is attempting to explain all of the new findings in a context that makes sense in a logical flow of history.  One can't ignore new information and pretend it doesn't exist.  New information must fit into our "system" of history.  Traditional archaeologists and historians tend to ignore data that is inconvenient to their established theories because to make a significant change means people with established reputations are wrong.  Very few people like to admit that they are and have been wrong and they must adapt to new facts. 

Hancock has traveled the world, including Turkey, Indonesia, Lebanon, Peru, and the United States, in researching this book.  He has read scientific papers that very few of us in the general public would ever see, much less read, and extracted the essence of them for the benefit of the reader.  

How did we get to where we are today?  What happened thousands of years ago that helped shape our destiny?  Graham Hancock has attempted to help us answer these questions in Magicians of the Gods. 

TPM