BELOW FIVE OTHER POPULAR AND RECENT BOOKS ON THE BROKEN U.S. REPUBLIC AND ON HOW WE CAN CONTRIBUTE TO FIX IT, IN THE BEST NON-VIOLENT CIVIC TRADITION OF THE SPIRIT OF 1776 AND THE ENLIGHTENMENT PERIOD OF 1789.
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James K Gailbrath: "Today, the signature of modern American capitalism is neither benign competition, nor class struggle, nor an inclusive middle-class utopia. Instead, predation has become the dominant feature — a system wherein the rich have come to feast on decaying systems built for the middle class. The predatory class is not the whole of the wealthy; it may be opposed by many others of similar wealth. But it is the defining feature, the leading force. And its agents are in full control of the government under which we live."
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THE PREDATOR STATE
HOW CONSERVATIVES ABANDONED THE FREE MARKET AND WHY LIBERALS SHOULD TOO
BY JAMES GALBRAITH
(Son of the reknown Harvard professor of economy John Galbraith)
What should we do with a free market that's really a rigged market?
James K. Gailbraith has some answers.
Book Description:
Galbraith follows with an impertinent question: if conservatives no longer take free markets seriously, why should liberals? Why keep liberal thought in the straitjacket of pay-as-you-go, of assigning inflation control to the Federal Reserve, of attempting to "make markets work"? Why not build a new economic policy based on what is really happening in this country?
The real economy is not a free-market economy. It is a complex combination of private and public institutions, including Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, higher education, the housing finance system, and a vast federal research establishment. The real problems and challenges -- inequality, climate change, the infrastructure deficit, the subprime crisis, and the future of the dollar -- are problems that cannot be solved by incantations about the market. They will be solved only with planning, with standards and other policies that transcend and even transform markets.
A timely, provocative work whose message will endure beyond this election season, The Predator State will appeal to the broad audience of thoughtful Americans who wish to understand the forces at work in our economy and culture and who seek to live in a nation that is both prosperous and progressive.
The cult of the free market has dominated economic policy-talk since the Reagan revolution of nearly thirty years ago. Tax cuts and small government, monetarism, balanced budgets, deregulation, and free trade are the core elements of this dogma, a dogma so successful that even many liberals accept it. But a funny thing happened on the bridge to the twenty-first century. While liberals continue to bow before the free-market altar, conservatives in the style of George W. Bush have abandoned it altogether. That is why principled conservatives -- the Reagan true believers -- long ago abandoned Bush.
Enter James K. Galbraith, the iconoclastic economist. In this riveting book, Galbraith first dissects the stale remains of Reaganism and shows how Bush and company had no choice except to dump them into the trash. He then explores the true nature of the Bush regime: a "corporate republic," bringing the methods and mentality of big business to public life; a coalition of lobbies, doing the bidding of clients in the oil, mining, military, pharmaceutical, agribusiness, insurance, and media industries; and a predator state, intent not on reducing government but rather on diverting public cash into private hands. In plain English, the Republican Party has been hijacked by political leaders who long since stopped caring if reality conformed to their message.
"Shows how to break the spell that conservatives have cast over the minds of liberals (and everyone else) for many years."
-- Joseph E. Stiglitz, Nobel Laureate in Economic Sciences (2001)
"James Galbraith elegantly and effectively counters the economic fundamentalism that has captured public discourse in recent years, and offers a cogent guide to the real political economy. Myth-busting, far-ranging, and eye-opening."
-- Robert B. Reich, Professor of Public Policy, University of California at Berkeley |
CLICK HERE FOR A NEW YORK TIMES REVIEW OF JOHN GALBRAITH'S SON BOOK (ABOVE). JOHN GALBRAITH WAS A RENOWNED HARVARD ECONOMY PROFEESOR WHO SIGNIFICANTLY INFLUENCED MILLIONS OF AMERICANS AND MANY GOVERNEMENTAL AGENDAS. HIS SON IS SUCCESSFULLY WALKING ON THE SAME PATH.
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Editorial Reviews
As the practice of democracy becomes a lost art, Americans are increasingly desperate for a restored nation. Many have a general sense that the "system" is in disorder -- if not on the road to functional collapse. But though it is easy to identify our political problems, the solutions are not always as clear. In Give Me Liberty: A Handbook for American Revolutionaries, bestselling author Naomi Wolf illustrates the breathtaking changes that can take place when ordinary citizens engage in the democratic system the way the founders intended and tells how to use that system, right now, to change your life, your community, and ultimately, the nation.
About the Author
Naomi Wolf made a sensation with her landmark international bestseller The Beauty Myth in 1991. The author of four books, she is also the cofounder and president of the Woodhull Institute for Ethical Leadership. She lives in New York City.
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BUZZFLASH REVIEW:
We were big fans and promoters of Naomi Wolf's last book,
"The End of America: A Letter of Warning To A Young Patriot," -- and Wolf credits BuzzFlash with helping get "The End of America" rolling into the best seller list. In fact, Wolf has contacted us to let us know of her new book, and to offer us another interview, which we will follow through on shortly.
You can find out a lot about Wolf's fears for and love of democracy in our BuzzFlash discussion with her about "The End of America." She is an impassioned, persuasive author whose latest writings serve as a canary in the coal mind about the erosion of our great experiment in Constitutional rule by the governed.
So we were excited to learn from Wolf that she has a sequel to "The End of America" hitting the bookstands: "Give Me Liberty: A Handbook for American Revolutionaries." She got us from "Hello" with the title alone. It is prima facie evidence of how far we have strayed as a nation from our revolutionary roots that the word "revolution" has become a pejorative when applied to contemporary politics. To England, the founders of this nation were revolutionaries and radicals. Yet today, adherence to the status quo and to an authoritarian state is considered "patriotic." King George no doubt would support the same notion.
So, when Wolf announces a "Handbook for American Revolutionaries," she is truly restoring us to the Spirit of '76. The status quo has become the restoration of Tory principles of wealth, privilege, and paternalistic "unitary authority" monarchal rule.
Yes, "Give me Liberty" is the true cry of patriots who heed the actions and words of the radicals who founded America by breaking away from rule by those of entrenched power and wealth.
Wolf end the introduction to her new book with these words:
Today we have most of our rights still codified on paper -- but these documents are indeed "only paper" if we no longer experience them viscerally, if their violation no longer infuriates us. We can be citizens of a republic; we can have a Constitution and a Congress; but if we, the people, have fallen asleep to the meaning of the Constitution and to the radical implications of representative and direct democracy, then we aren't really Americans anymore.
So we must listen to the original revolutionaries and to current ones as well, and explain their ideas clearly to new generations. To hear the voices of the original vision and the voices of those modern heroes, here in the U.S. and around the world, who are true heirs to the American Revolution is to feel your wishes change. "[Freedom] liberated us the day we stopped living in a world where 'truth' and 'falsehood' were, like everything else, the property of the State. And for the most part, this liberation did not stop when we were sentenced to prison," wrote Sharansky.26 "I was not born to be forced," wrote Henry David Thoreau. "I will breathe after my own fashion. Let us see who is the strongest...they only can force me to obey a higher law than I."27 You want to stay in that room where these revolutionaries are conversing in this electrifying way among themselves. It feels painful but ultimately cleansing and energizing. You want to be more like them; then you realize that maybe you can be -- then finally you realize that you already are.
Our "America," our Constitution, our dream, when properly felt within us, does more than "defend freedom." It clears space to build the society that allows for the highest possible development of who we ourselves personally were meant to be.
We have to rise up in self-defense and legitimate rebellion. We need more drastic action than e-mails to Congress.
We need the next revolution.
And she also states in the introduction:
What I had called a "fascist shift" in the United States, projections I had warned about as worst-case scenarios, was now surpassing my imagination: in 2008, thousands of terrified, shackled illegal immigrants were rounded up in the mass arrests which always characterize a closing society;1 news emerged that the 9/11 report had been based on evidence derived from the testimonies of prisoners who had been tortured -- and the tapes that documented their torture were missing -- leading the commissioners of the report publicly to disavow their own findings;2 the Associated Press reported that the torture of prisoners in U.S.-held facilities had not been the work of "a few bad apples" but had been directed out of the White House;3 the TSA "watch list," which had contained 45,000 names when I wrote my last book, ballooned to 755,000 names and 20,000 were being added every month;4 Scott McClellan confirmed that the drive to war in Iraq had been based on administration lies;5 HR 1955, legislation that would criminalize certain kinds of political thought and speech, passed the House and made it to the Senate;6 Blackwater, a violent paramilitary force not answerable to the people, established presences in Illinois and North Carolina and sought to get into border patrol activity in San Diego.7
The White House has established, no matter who leads the nation in the future, U.S. government spying on the emails and phone calls of Americans -- a permanent violation of the Constitution's Fourth Amendment.8 The last step of the ten steps to a closed society is the subversion of the rule of law. That is happening now. What critics have called a "paper coup" has already taken place.
Yes, the situation is dire. But history shows that when an army of citizens, supported by even a vestige of civil society, believes in liberty -- in the psychological space that is "America" -- no power on earth can ultimately suppress them.
We all need to join that army of the founders of the nation to restore their vision to a land that has lost its way in greed, authoritarian rule, and the stultifying status quo.
Our country was founded on revolutionary idealistic principles of freedom and liberty, not on who could pocket the most money.
TO READ MORE ON THIS BOOK, CLICK HERE
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CLICK HERE TO REVIEW AND TO BUY AT AMAZON
Amazon.com Review
Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine advances a truly unnerving argument: historically, while people were reeling from natural disasters, wars and economic upheavals, savvy politicians and industry leaders nefariously implemented policies that would never have passed during less muddled times. As Klein demonstrates, this reprehensible game of bait-and-switch isn't just some relic from the bad old days. It's alive and well in contemporary society, and coming soon to a disaster area near you.
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"At the most chaotic juncture in Iraq'' civil war, a new law is unveiled that will allow Shell and BP to claim the country's vast oil reserves… Immediately following September 11, the Bush Administration quietly outsources the running of the 'War on Terror' to Halliburton and Blackwater… After a tsunami wipes out the coasts of Southeast Asia, the pristine beaches are auctioned off to tourist resorts… New Orleans residents, scattered from Hurricane Katrina, discover that their public housing, hospitals and schools will never be re-opened." Klein not only kicks butt, she names names, notably economist Milton Friedman and his radical Chicago School of the 1950s and 60s which she notes "produced many of the leading neo-conservative and neo-liberal thinkers whose influence is still profound in Washington today." Stand up and take a bow, Donald Rumsfeld.
There's little doubt Klein's book--which arrived to enormous attention and fanfare thanks to her previous missive, the best-selling No Logo, will stir the ire of the right and corporate America. It's also true that Klein's assertions are coherent, comprehensively researched and footnoted, and she makes a very credible case. Even if the world isn't going to hell in a hand-basket just yet, it's nice to know a sharp customer like Klein is bearing witness to the backroom machinations of government and industry in times of turmoil. --Kim Hughes --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
From Publishers Weekly
The neo-liberal economic policies—privatization, free trade, slashed social spending—that the Chicago School and the economist Milton Friedman have foisted on the world are catastrophic in two senses, argues this vigorous polemic. Because their results are disastrous—depressions, mass poverty, private corporations looting public wealth, by the author's accounting—their means must be cataclysmic, dependent on political upheavals and natural disasters as coercive pretexts for free-market reforms the public would normally reject. Journalist Klein (No Logo) chronicles decades of such disasters, including the Chicago School makeovers launched by South American coups; the corrupt sale of Russia's state economy to oligarchs following the collapse of the Soviet Union; the privatization of New Orleans's public schools after Katrina; and the seizure of wrecked fishing villages by resort developers after the Asian tsunami. Klein's economic and political analyses are not always meticulous. Likening free-market shock therapies to electroshock torture, she conflates every misdeed of right-wing dictatorships with their economic programs and paints a too simplistic picture of the Iraq conflict as a struggle over American-imposed neo-liberalism. Still, much of her critique hits home, as she demonstrates how free-market ideologues welcome, and provoke, the collapse of other people's economies. The result is a powerful populist indictment of economic orthodoxy. (Sept.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
 See all Editorial Reviews |
http://www.amazon.com/Cheating-America-Avoidance-Evasion-Billions/dp/0060084316
Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com Review
This book is a group project; Charles Lewis and Bill Allison are the principle authors, but they have relied on an "investigative team" that includes 19 other individuals affiliated with the Center for Public Integrity, a left-of-center research organization in Washington, D.C. What they've assembled in The Cheating of America is a muckraking survey of how the rich and powerful shirk their responsibilities: "We investigate the people and companies who have benefited most from our society and our way of life and then chosen to thumb their noses at the rest of us, by paying little or no taxes." The book is full of facts and figures, many sure to outrage. The authors identify, for instance, some 45,000 tax returns filed by people earning more than $100,000 and paying less than 7 percent of their income to the federal government--compared to millions of workers who earn much less and proportionally pay much more. (One recent IRS report counted 2,680 filers with incomes of $200,000 or more claiming they owed no taxes at all, up from just 85 in 1977.)
What makes the book succeed, however, is not its careful number crunching, but all the little stories that detail "the phenomenon of tax avoidance (that's legal), tax evasion (that's illegal), and tax 'avoision' (catch us if you can)." There are the wealthy film producers who use offshore trusts and tax shelters to hide their income, the millionaire tax evaders who renounce their U.S. citizenship in order to escape making tax payments, and the accountants who help it all happen. At times, the book feels like a long Reader's Digest article, all told in the service of an outrageous conclusion: "Many of the nation's wealthiest individuals and its largest corporations are not paying their fair share of taxes today." The Cheating of America will appeal to readers who appreciated the Center for Public Integrity's previous efforts, as well as admirers of Donald L. Barlett and James B. Steele. --John J. Miller --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Publishers Weekly
Probing everything from smart legal maneuvers to outright tax fraud by the wealthy, this fascinating, highly readable survey explores the tax code's haphazard evolution since 1913, and how it has favored rich individuals and large corporations over average taxpayers. Citing IRS Commissioner Charles Rossotti, who testified in 1998 that tax evasion costs the federal government $195 billion annually, Lewis and Allison et al. (The Buying of the President) note that almost 1,000 families earning more than $200,000 paid no income tax in 1995 and that corporate income taxes, which made up 28% of federal tax revenue in 1956, now are only 10%. Familiar ploys like hiding money in offshore trusts, tax shelters and nonprofit fronts figure in these sensational tales, but people like movie producer Saul Zaentzwho stashed profits from One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest offshore and later settled the IRS claim for $26 million with a payment of $1.5 millionloom larger. Despite stiff competition, Joseph and Pamella Ross inspire the most outrage for fleeing in 1986 from a grand jury investigation of Joseph Ross's tax evasion on the government contracts that made his fortune. The couple's elaborate travels and disguises bear astonishing witness to how far some people will go to avoid paying the taxman. As these tales of privilege and chutzpah set readers' blood to boil, the authors judiciously urge their audience to demand fair tax treatment from lawmakers. What the rich don't pay, the rest of us do, they remind us. Little guys everywhere will read this book with righteous indignation. Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
About This Book
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Editorial Reviews
Product Description
Everyone knows what organized crime is. Each year dozens of feature films, hundreds of books, and thousands of news stories explain to an eager public that organized crime is what gangsters do. Closely knit, ethnically distinct, and ruthlessly efficient, these mafias control the drugs trade, people trafficking and other serious crimes. If only states would take the threat seriously and recognize the global nature of modern organized crime, the FBI's success against the Italian mafia could be replicated throughout the world. The wicked trade in addictive drugs could be brought to a halt. The trouble is, as Woodiwiss demonstrates in shocking and surprising detail, what everyone knows about organized crime is pretty much completely wrong. In reality the most important figures in organized crime are employees of multinational companies, politicians and bureaucrats. Gangsters are certainly a problem, but much of their strength comes from attempts to prohibit the market for certain drugs. Even here they are minor players when compared with the intelligence and law enforcement agencies that selectively enforce prohibition and profit from it. Woodiwiss shows how respectable businessmen and revered statesmen have seized these opportunities in an orgy of fraud and illegal violence
About the Author
Michael Woodiwiss lectures on American history at the University of the West of England. His previous books include Crimes, Crusades and Corruption: Prohibitions in the United States, 1900-1987 and Organised Crime and American Power: A History.
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SOME EVIDENCE CONFIRMING THAT THE PRESENT FEDERAL REPUBLICAN GOVERNMENT & SOME OF THE OTHER ONES BEFORE MAY HAVE BEEN TAKEN OVER and-OR ABUSIVELY CONTROLED BY A SMALL MINORITY OF PRIVILEGED & CALLOUS INDIVIDUALS
1. EXPERT TESTIMONY ONE. James K Gailbraith (Economist and son of the reknowned Harvard professor John Gailbraith writes, "Today, the signature of modern American capitalism is neither benign competition, nor class struggle, nor an inclusive middle-class utopia. Instead, predation has become the dominant feature — a system wherein the rich have come to feast on decaying systems built for the middle class. The predatory class is not the whole of the wealthy; it may be opposed by many others of similar wealth. But it is the defining feature, the leading force. And its agents are in full control of the government under which we live." (James Gailbraith, THE PREDATOR STATE HOW CONSERVATIVES ABANDONED THE FREE MARKET AND WHY LIBERALS SHOULD TOO, CLICK HERE FOR THE BOOK REVIEW).
2. JUDICIARY EXPERT TWO. "The real rulers in Washington are invisible, and exercise power from behind the scenes". US Supreme Court Justice Felix FRANKFURTER
3. PRESIDENTIAL WITNESS THREE: " In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist......We cannot mortgage the material assets of our grandchildren without risking the loss also of their political and spiritual heritage. We want democracy to survive for all generations to come, not to become the insolvent phantom of tomorrow".GENERAL EISENHOWER, COMMANDER IN CHIEF OF THE EUROPEAN THEATER DURING HITLER'S & KRUPP'S MILITARO-INDUSTRIAL WAR, REPUBLICAN PRESIDENT OF THE U.S.A.
4. PRESIDENTIAL WITNESS FOUR: " Since I entered politics, I have chiefly had men's views confided to me privately. Some of the biggest men in the United States, in the field of commerce and manufacture, are afraid of somebody, are afraid of something. They know that there is a power somewhere so organized, so subtle, so watchful, so interlocked, so complete, so pervasive, that they had better not speak above their breath when they speak in condemnation of it.". US President WOODROW WILSON, The New Freedom: A Call For The Emancipation Of The Generous Energies Of A People (quote found in his book's preface).
5. SCIENTIST WITNESS FIVE: “I'm angry that in the land of freedom, Americans are still denied access to dozens of effective cancer treatments that are available in other countries around the world (…) I'm angry that the Food and Drug Administration denies people's rights to choose their own treatments (…) I'm angry that the Federal Government has failed to test a single alternative cancer treatment, despite years of efforts (…) I'm angry about the Mafia-like control of the cancer field by the drug industry, through their domination of virtually every single cancer research and treatment institution (…) I'm angry that the "scientific" studies of new drugs, funded by huge companies, almost always turn in favorable results and are approved by the FDA”. Dr Ralph W. Moss, Director of Cancer decisions, formerly from the Sloan Kettering cancer institute.
6. PRESIDENTIAL WITNESS SIX: ABRAHAM LINCOLN ON CORPORATE FINANCE BAIL OUTS."It is an old maxim and a very sound one, that he that dances should always pay the fiddler. Now, sir, in the present case, if any gentlemen, whose money is a burden to them, choose to lead off a dance, I am decidedly opposed to the people's money being used to pay the fiddler...all this to settle a question in which the people have no interest, and about which they care nothing. These capitalists generally act harmoniously, and in concert, to fleece the people, and now, that they have got into a quarrel with themselves, we are called upon to appropriate the people's money to settle the quarrel." Abraham LINCOLN January 11, 1837
“The continued existence of a free and democratic society depends upon recognition of the concept that justice is based upon the rule of law grounded in respect for the dignity of the individual and the capacity through reason for enlightened self-government". (On attorney ethic rules, Washington State's Supreme Court)
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