| What's an oligarch, exactly? And does America have any? I got this great reader question about the nature of oligarchs — who are suddenly the objects of international fascination as the world impounds the monster yachts of wealthy Russians — and was intrigued. I called up Brooke Harrington, who studies the ultrarich at Dartmouth University. She said sanctioning Russian oligarchs can be an effective way to hurt Russian President Vladimir Putin as he invades Ukraine. Also, America has oligarchs, too, she argued. Here's what I learned. Oligarchs are more than wealthy, connected people "They're a subset of the very, very rich who get involved in influencing politics outside the formal system — so someone who isn't an elected representative or Cabinet member — but who has the ear of the president," Harrington said. Russian oligarchs, she added, also serve as de facto ambassadors to other countries.  A Russian oligarch's yacht in Barcelona. (Albert Gea/Reuters) | America has oligarchs, too "We don't have as many as the Russians do, and they are certainly not as out and proud as the Russians ones," she said. Harrington said the late billionaire Sheldon Adelson is a great example of an American oligarch, because he used his wealth and influence to lobby President Donald Trump on specific policies. He was instrumental in getting the U.S. Embassy in Israel moved from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, for example. They're more prominent on the political right than the political left Harrington struggled to find an example of an American oligarch on the left, saying that it's not really a politically tenable idea among liberals. Liberal donor George Soros, for example, is often pointed to by Republicans as having influence over liberals. But Harrington noted that he isn't associated with a particular politician and also advocates to spread billionaires' wealth out to the rest of society. She said Jeff Bezos, who owns the Washington Post, isn't really an oligarch either, because he doesn't have a set political agenda or politician he curries favor with. By contrast, brothers Charles Koch and the late David Koch have often been cited as influential conservative donors. They had a spelled-out political agenda, and they developed think tanks and embedded professors in academia to advance it, she said. That's more oligarch-y. Russian oligarchs and corruption go hand in hand "In Russia and in the case of many countries, the money that makes you an oligarch has been obtained through means that range from outright fraud to somewhere in a legal gray zone that is immoral but formally legal," Harrington said. When done right, sanctions on oligarchs can work Harrington said that chipping away the wealth of Russian oligarchs can turn them against Putin. This week, one renounced his Russian citizenship, saying, "everything Putin touches dies." But she said it also directly affects Putin: "What the Panama Papers showed us is that Putin's wealth is, to a large extent, held offshore in the names of these oligarchs. So it's Putin's wealth being taken away. It makes him look weak and it gives him less of a war chest to be an autocrat with." Why have there been no indictments of people in states that signed on as fake electors? Here are some more reader questions about recent political events. Ask me something any time. On the fake electors, those indictments could be coming. After the 2020 election, Republicans (including some GOP state officials) in at least five states that Trump lost tried to prop up their own electoral college count. They falsely declared that Trump won and that they were the true electors for their states. They submitted official paperwork claiming as much. It appears this was part of a national strategy to have Vice President Pence kick legitimate results back to the states, where Republican lawmakers there would swap the real electors (who were going to President Biden) to these fake electors (who supported Trump). Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel (D) said recently she thinks that fake electors in Michigan broke several state laws, like forgery of a public record or election law forgery. But she and other Democratic attorneys general want federal prosecutors to investigate this holistically. In January, the Justice Department took the rare step of saying that it is reviewing what these fake electors did. What has Congress done for the opioid crisis lately? This is one of the few major issues in Congress that's bipartisan. Yet progress has been slow. The last major legislation to combat the opioid epidemic passed in 2018. It overhauled decades-old federal laws to make it easier to treat people's addictions. The next battle could be addressing the demand in the U.S. for fentanyl, which often comes from Mexico illegally and is the primary driver of the crisis, reports Yahoo News. Biden mentioned focusing on demand in his State of the Union speech, and a bipartisan commission in Congress says this should be lawmakers' next priority. But Republicans tend to want to focus on being tough on drug dealers, while Democrats want to focus on harm reduction, like safe injection sites. This all comes as victims of the opioid crisis are coming close to getting billions from Purdue Pharma, which heavily marketed OxyContin. | 
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