Benjamin I Page, Jason Seawright, Matthew J Lacombe — What billionaires want: the secret influence of America’s 100 richest

A new study reveals how the wealthy engage in ‘stealth politics’: quietly advancing unpopular, inequality-exacerbating, highly conservative policies...

How can this be so? If it is true, why aren’t voters aware and angry about it?

The answer is simple: billionaires who favor unpopular, ultraconservative economic policies, and work actively to advance them (that is, most politically active billionaires) stay almost entirely silent about those issues in public. This is a deliberate choice. Billionaires have plenty of media access, but most of them choose not to say anything at all about the policy issues of the day. They deliberately pursue a strategy of what we call “stealth politics”.

We have come to this conclusion based on an exhaustive, web-based study of everything that the 100 wealthiest US billionaires have said or done, over a 10-year period, concerning several major issues of public policy.... 

Our findings help illuminate how the political network assembled by the Koch brothers could have become so powerful. The Kochs have had a fertile field of less-well-known conservative billionaires to cultivate for hundreds of millions of dollars in in secret, unreported contributions. The Kochs’ entrepreneurship and organizational skills, together with stealthy contributions by these little-known billionaires, have produced a political juggernaut.

Both as individuals and as contributors to Koch-type consortia, most US billionaires have given large amounts money – and many have engaged in intense activity – to advance unpopular, inequality-exacerbating, highly conservative economic policies. But they have done so very quietly, saying little or nothing in public about what they are doing or why. They have avoided political accountability. We believe that this sort of stealth politics is harmful to democracy....

The Guardian
What billionaires want: the secret influence of America’s 100 richest

Benjamin I. Page, Fulcher professor of decision making; Jason Seawright, professor of political science, and Matthew J Lacombe, PhD candidate in political science, all at Northwestern University and co-authors of Billionaires and Stealth Politics (forthcoming 2018, University of Chicago Press)

See also

Le Monde — Le Blog de Thomas Piketty
Le Monde » and the billionaires

Thomas Piketty

In Wasserman Schultz Case, Obama and Clinton Seem to Wink at the Law

Hardly only the Wasserman Schultz case. Let's count the ways. Obstruction of justice in the case of (admitted) torture, illegal aggression in the base of military operations against the objections of the sovereign government without a declaration of war. Check. They are both war crimes.

Subversion of the political process is not only un-America and illiberal to the extreme but it also borders on treason as attempted political "assassination" of a presidential candidate.

Any of these, and others not mentioned, are cause for impeachment.

Wall Street On Parade
In Wasserman Schultz Case, Obama and Clinton Seem to Wink at the Law
Pam and russ Martens

Benjamin I. Page — New Research: Deficit Hawks Reflect the Views of the Wealthy, Not the Majority

Survey by social scientists shows why Washington focuses on deficits instead of desperately needed jobs.

AlterNet
New Research: Deficit Hawks Reflect the Views of the Wealthy, Not the Majority
Benjamin I. Page | Scholars Strategy Network

You knew this already but here is the evidence.

Fabius Maximus — Two vital lessons from the election so far, about lies and force

Summary:  This campaign season has, as they should, taught us much about the condition of the Republic’s most vital political processes.  We should have learned that the Republic is dying.  Watch your TV and smell the rot.  Our leaders lie — big lies — and are willing to casually use overwhelming force to suppress protests. What will we learn in the remaining two months? We can re-take control, if we can muster the will to do so.

Fabius Maximus
Two vital lessons from the election so far, about lies and force