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Mayer is one of the very best reporters around

If you have access to the internet, you easily can find those honours and awards

I have never heard of her...

...has anyone else besides you?

has been discussed on this thread.

That's not surprising, since it would require you to emerge from your right-wing echo chamber.

Quote:

I have never heard of her...

Sure. Her book, Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right is excellent and has been discussed on this thread.

"Desperate and passionate"

Inside the Clinton campaign, John Podesta, the chairman, was stunned by the news that the F.B.I. had launched a full-blown investigation into Trump, especially one that was informed by research underwritten by the Clinton.

Podesta and Mook have maintained that they had no idea a former foreign intelligence officer was on the Democrats’ payroll until the Mother Jones article appeared, and that they didn’t read the dossier until BuzzFeed posted it online. Far from a secret campaign weapon, Steele turned out to be a secret kept from the campaign.

Mayer is one of the very best reporters around so it will be worth your while to bookmark and read. I swear to god.

Koch Biographer Jane Mayer's Strange Denials of Her Family Nazi Connections

The book received a glowing review from the paper, as well as an article that played up one of the more scandalous accusations in Mayer's book: "Father of Koch Brothers Helped Build Nazi Oil Refinery, Book Says."

It seems that Fred Koch, the father of the Charles and David, did help build part of an oil refinery in Nazi Germany—but that was in 1933, six years before Germany invaded Poland. At the time, Coca-Cola, IBM, GM, and just about every big U.S. multinational was still doing business with Germany.

Well, there's one other aspect of this spurious accusation against the Kochs that bears mentioning. Mayer's great-great grandfather founded the now defunct Lehman Brothers investment bank. Lehman Brothers, as it happens, actually did business with the Nazis in a way that was seriously questionable.

Since this has been pointed out, Mayer has been pretty furiously spinning. According to Politico, "A source close to Mayer suggested the Nazi allegation was odd, noting that no one in her immediate family has anything to do with Lehman Brothers."

So now Mayer is trying to hide behind a semantic debate about whether her great-great-grandfather is her "immediate family." The trouble is that Mayer seems to have had no problem crowing about her association with Lehman Brothers in the past.

Here's her wedding announcement from 1992 that was published in, yes, The New York Times:

'Ms. Mayer, who is keeping her name, graduated from Yale University. She is a daughter of William and Meredith Mayer of New York. ... She is a great-great-granddaughter of Emanuel Lehman, a founder of Lehman Brothers."

It seems as if Mayer was fine noting this relation in her wedding announcement—indeed, the whole thing is a classic humblebrag about the accomplishments of her and her husband's respective families—it's hard to distance herself now.

Others have pointed out various flaws in Jane Mayer’s New Yorker article attacking Charles and David Koch for their donations to various libertarian causes. But I think it would be helpful to outline her three biggest errors in one place:

The title of Mayer’s piece is “The Covert Operations: The Billionaire Brothers Who are Waging a War Against Obama.” Throughout, she tries to insinuate that the Kochs’ efforts to fund various libertarian organizations are somehow secret or deceptive. In reality, there is nothing hidden about the Kochs’ efforts. They have openly funded a variety of libertarian and free market causes since the 1970s....

Mayer claims that the Kochs’ support of libertarianism is part of a “pro-corporate agenda” intended to help business interests.

The Kochs and other libertarians could reasonably be accused of having a “pro-corporate” agenda if they supported government interventions that benefit big business even as they opposed those that do not. However, libertarians – including the Koch-supported organizations – have vocally and consistently opposed virtually every pro-corporate government intervention since the libertarian movement began. Libertarians were among the leading critics (sometimes almost the only critics) of all of the interventions.

To her credit, Mayer admits that the Kochs are, at least in large part, motivated by ideological commitment rather than narrow self-interest alone. But she also contends that their donations and ideology “dovetail with the brothers’ corporate interests.

As Todd Zywicki points out, many of the libertarian causes the Kochs support have no conceivable connection to any financial interest of theirs (e.g. – drug legalization, curbing police abuses, school choice, increasing protection for the rights of criminal defendants). Even more telling, some of these causes actually cut against the Kochs’ interests. Todd mentions the case of the auto bailouts.

Re: coldjoint (Post 6687199)
Quote:
I have never heard of her...

coldjoint wrote:

Please list any awards. I have never heard of her, has anyone else besides you?

Good grief.

Only 34 percent of Wisconsin’s registered voters said Walker deserves a third term, while 61 percent said it was “time to give a new person a chance.” In a hypothetical head-to-head matchup with state schools superintendent Tony Evers, the Democratic frontrunner, Evers led Walker 54 percent to 41 percent.

Some of us aren't so skilled at pointing at purported intellectuals and yelling "Look everyone! I think what that person thinks!"

We just have to get by with thinking for ourselves instead.

Five Myths About the Koch Brothers — And Why It Matters To Set Them Straight

Not long ago, many Americans, including Washington, DC, insiders, had never heard of Charles and David Koch. That changed after a slew of investigative reports started to appear in 2010 — most famously Jane Mayer’s “Covert Operations” in The New Yorker that June, one of several pieces that have led to her recent book, Dark Money.

Since 2010, Democrats have tried to demonize the humongous political spending orchestrated by Charles and David Koch, even as journalists and some scholars have learned a lot more about their network. By now, the politically active Koch brothers are highly visible, no longer obscure actors in US politics.

But even as much more information flows, myths about the Koch network persist. Invariably, myths take off from real facts, but end up painting pictures that overall are misleading.

Setting the record straight is important not just for observers of US politics, but for democratic reformers who need to know exactly what they are up against — now and likely for years to come.

. As philosophically committed libertarians, Charles and David support or encourage many causes far beyond opposing environmental and labor-market regulations... The Koch political network has also come out strongly against many other kinds of subsidies for private sector businesses — including some that Koch companies collect for themselves. The network has pushed GOP legislators in Congress to discontinue the Export-Import Bank and has opposed business-friendly tax breaks...

Keep thinkin for yourself, Roy.

The Southern Poverty Law Center Is A Hate-Mongering Scam

Slandering good-faith people is SPLC’s raison d’etre. Why? Because that’s how it rakes in millions of dollars a year, show its latest tax filings, to fund its astronomical $432,723,955 endowment and management’s $200,000-$350,000 annual salaries (plus perks!).

Simply put, SPLC is not a legitimate arbiter of public discourse. It poisons public discourse for profit. Its business model is to target groups and people, sometimes with baseless smears, to gin up fear and anger so people send SPLC gobs of cash it largely doesn’t use to benefit the oppressed.

SPLC is basically a very effective scam organization that uses images of white-bedsheeted people and, now, Donald Trump policies, to scare donors into sending them piles of money. Trump-mongering has been very good for business. The organization’s latest IRS form, from 2017, shows that “Gifts, grants, contributions, membership fees” to SPLC almost tripled, from $50,297,653 in 2015 — already a huge amount — to $132,044,179 in 2016...

Whatever credibility SPLC earned fighting some anti-KKK cases in the 1970s is long gone. It has squandered its moral authority many times over. Its proclamations exploit people to serve its bottom line, and should receive no furtherance from media or organizations like Amazon.

Treating SPLC as a good-faith arbiter of public discourse grants speech police power to an organization whose business model is to make money from poisoning public discourse. Those who care about free speech and justice will grant no such power to folks who, like SPLC, exploit these noble and necessary ideas for their own selfish, cynical, socially destructive end.

Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) appeared on Fox News for an interview with Neil Cavuto Saturday, and trashed former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen as a “turncoat,” before downplaying the potential that President Donald Trump lied about the infamous Trump Tower meeting.

When discussing coverage of Trump, Issa remarked on news that Cohen is claiming Trump knew about, and authorized, the meeting between Don Jr. and a Kremlin-linked Russian lawyer, despite his repeated denials.

“A turncoat lawyer, a lawyer who deserves to be disbarred for a number of his actions including recording his client clandestinely, makes a much better story than ‘Businessman Makes America Great Again,'” Issa said.

Cavuto pressed the Republican on whether Trump could face consequences for his claims that he didn’t know about the meeting.

“But what if he’s proven to be a liar, congressman?” Cavuto asked.

“If he’s proven to have not told the whole truth about the fact that campaigns look for dirt, and if someone offers it, you listen to them, nobody’s going to be surprised,” Issa said. “There are some things in politics that you just take for granted.”

You don’t think this has any long-term impact?” Cavuto asked. “He wouldn’t be the first politician, or president for that matter, to maybe just misrepresent things?”

“Businessmen listen to almost everyone who might be helpful, and by the way, they make pragmatic decisions about how to make bad stories go away,” Issa replied.