Following the money that is killing democracy and civil liberties

The New Republic writes:

A few months before the midterms, with pollsters spewing red wave predictions and post-Roe conservatives planning to force raped children to give birth, a bit of political news added to progressives’ gloom. A Chicago billionaire had gifted anti-abortion Supreme Court fixer Leonard Leo the largest known tranche of dark money in U.S. history: $1.6 billion. The sum is staggering; it will finance at least a generation of extreme right-wing political proselytizing. And almost no one—except for the conservative cabal that bagged the whale—had heard of him.

Leonard Leo

The gift from nonagenarian electronics magnate Barre Seid (pronounced Barry Side) is effective altruism in reverse: a fire hose of cash aimed at destroying American liberal culture through lawsuits and support for politicians challenging gay rights, unions, environmental protection, voting rights, and public education. The money will last a good long while. Philanthropic recipients usually follow a 5 percent rule: They try not to spend more than 5 percent of the endowment per year. Seid’s pile is so large that it could return an average $136 million a year, or north of $230 million on a good year, to influence U.S. law and policy. Without ever having to touch the nut. For a sense of how enormous that is, consider this. The Heritage Foundation and its affiliates spent about $86 million in 2021. Heritage is a huge, and hugely influential, conservative think tank. Leo could create two Heritage Foundations and one more sizable organization on the side—all, again, without having to dip into the principal at all.

Barre Seid

Leo, a New Jersey Roman Catholic and grandson of an Italian immigrant who worked for Brooks Brothers, hobnobs around the upper echelons of American power .... Leo is a proud “Knight of the Sovereign Order of Malta,” and his long career has been motivated by fanatical opposition to women’s rights to reproductive choice. Since Seid handed the money over in 2021, part of the pile has been funneled into black boxes like Donors Trust, a mega-donor money-washing machine. Having succeeded at subjecting American women to forced pregnancy, Leo, 57, is directing the money toward other goals: stopping “woke” culture, ending federal regulations on climate change, and limiting voting rights. Ultimately, Seid’s money will be used to shore up society’s winners—the American oligarchy, inherited trusts, CEOs, self-made billionaires, corporations—against the demands of the weak. It will be used to make the United States a tougher and, for many, a nastier country, where big money always wins, under the eye of Rambo Jesus.

All that from a man nobody knows.

Mr. 999

Steven Baer is, like Leonard Leo, a career anti-choice fanatic, but with a political style from the Roger Stone School of Ratfuckery. The Illinois fringe conservative built himself a minor national reputation by shaming enemies like Donald Trump and Kevin McCarthy with salacious dirt. Even the conservative National Review finds Baer hard to stomach, calling him “the world’s most successful email harasser.”

Baer had his fetal rights epiphany as a student at Brown in the early 1980s, when he “saw photographs of piles of corpses at Auschwitz juxtaposed to photographs of piles of dead babies,” he told me, suggesting that legal abortion was equivalent to the Holocaust and abortion clinics the feminist version of Hitler’s gas chambers. He then spent much of his career raising hell and money from a wacky corner of fringe right-wing politics. 

What $1.6 Billion Means

Seid’s bequest is believed to be the largest dark money donation in U.S. history. Charitable nonprofits are required to disclose their major donors, but the IRS class of political recipients defined as “social welfare” groups like Leo’s Marble trust are not. “Seid’s donation seems to be one of the largest, if not the largest, single political donation ever given,” said Kathleen Enright, president of the Council on Foundations, a nonprofit association of philanthropic entities. “But to be clear, this is not a charitable contribution by any means. It is a political contribution made to support a political agenda.”

How it works is: If Warren Buffett sets up a charitable foundation, a 501(c)(3) organization under IRS rules, it must spend transparently. Political action committees engaging in candidate support also must disclose donors. But when a billionaire throws a fortune at a “social welfare,” 501(c)(4) status organization, the IRS doesn’t require donor disclosure. Beyond Leo and his coterie, nobody knows how the money is being spent, or whether Seid put any restrictions on it. If Leo’s past is precedent, the money will support cherished right-wing goals: expanded gun rights, further erasure of the wall between church and state, rollbacks of civil rights on various fronts, and federal and state judges who will rule favorably on those issues.

The NR article continues at length about the fanaticism and wealth that is a major source of wealth and power for the radical right Republican Party and American style fascism. What we are witnessing is an extremely well-funded, opaque, slow coup against democracy, civil liberties and inconvenient facts, truths and sound reasoning. 

If the American people could understand** what is going on here, most of them would oppose it. But this fascist effort to kill American democracy operates in as much secrecy as possible, which is a lot of secrecy. It also operates behind a powerful shield of dark free speech that effectively distracts, confuses and divides the American people. Public opposition to this evil political monster is splintered and diffused into weakness.

** By now, most rank and file people who still support radical right Republicans and Libertarians are, for the most part, psychologically and/or socially incapable of understanding what is going on. Facing the reality of what they actually support and empower with their votes is simply too painful to accept. The American fascist forces depend on two things. The first is the well-funded fascist elites like Barre Seid and Leonard Leo. The second is the deceived and betrayed rank and file voters who mostly unknowingly support and empower the elites and their American fascist agenda.