The subject matter was often depressing, but over the eighteen months the Watchdog studied nine books, listed below, to try to understand the widespread dysfunction of our civil society, government and economy. To them we add another concerning the War on Drugs.
It is cumulative insights rather than any single theme that explains why our nation has fallen behind other industrialized countries throughout the world and, why, despite our rapid decline, some 1% of our population has gained hitherto unimaginable wealth while middle and lower class income has remained static for three decades. Only the combined observations enable us to comprehend what has been going wrong and what needs to be done to salvage our social democracy and to return our nation to prosperity.
The salient points from each of the books in the order they are listed below are:
1) Prohibition does not work, is a form of “Jim Crow”, has generated an underclass, and has fostered incredibly well funded criminal elements here and elsewhere, especially in Latin America.
2) President Eisenhower’s warning about the “military / industrial complex” has not been heeded with the result of involvement in unnecessary wars, the cost of supporting over 460 worldwide bases, and military spending roughly equivalent to that of all the other nations combined. Further, unnecessary security expenses consume 3% of our Gross National Product.
3) Lax or no enforcement of anti-monopoly and restraint of trade laws and regulations have enabled vital businesses to be acquired and looted by financial interests, generating huge short term profits at the expense of innovation and investment.
4) Americans pay 6% more of our Gross National Product for health care than any other advanced nation due to a cumbersome and decidedly second class health system. (The Watchdog adds: A simple solution is “Medicare for Everyone.”)
5) Reluctance to confront the religious views of others has inhibited scorn being directed at counter-factual views perpetrated through fundamentalist ideologies. The result is that 30% of the voters are selecting representatives based upon so call social issues (abortion, stem cell research, single sex marriage and so forth) rather than what is in their best economic and security interests.
6) Over the past three decades, legislation, regulations and general gaming of the system have enabled huge fortunes to be made at the expense of the public.
7) Some corporations and the super rich are able to conceal their incomes or, through individually tailored tax loop holes generated through their lobbyists, pay a lesser percentage of income in taxes than their employees, if any taxes at all.
8) The failure of much of the population to comprehend that reducing deficit spending is the worst thing that can be undertaken during times of sharp recessions and depressions. (Balancing the budget and generating surpluses is good economic policy only during prosperous and inflationary times.)
9) Permitting unlimited and secret political contributions corporations and allowing former officials to become highly paid lobbyists has an insidious impact on our social democracy.
10) The country’s founders did not want nor is it desirable to have a purely capitalistic state, but rather both government investments (canals, railroads, highways, education, research and so forth) and regulations are indispensable if we are to prosper as a nation and individually, preserve democracy, and enjoy a civil society.
“DRUG CRAZY; How We Got INTO THIS MESS & How We Can GET OUT” by Mike Gray, Random House, 1998. “Drug Crazy is an insightful book about the discriminatory nature of the drug war in America and how our politicians have converted a chronic medical problem into a criminal justice problem.”…Dr. Joycelyn Elders, former U. S. Surgeon General. We have squandered trillions of dollars and ruined untold number of lives through three wars over the past fifty years: Viet Nam, Iraq and The War on Drugs.
“Washington Rules, America’s Path To Permanent War” by Andrew J. Bacevich, Metropolitan Books, 2010 . “Bacevich forcefully denounces the militarization that he says has already become a routine, unremarked-upon part of our daily lives — and will only get worse as America fights on in Afghanistan and beyond. He rips into what he calls a postwar American dogma ‘so deeply embedded in the American collective consciousness as to have all but disappeared from view.’ ‘Washington Rules’ is a tough-minded, bracing and intelligent polemic against some 60 years of American militarism.” Gary J. Bass, Professor of International Affairs, Princeton University in The New York Times.
“CORNERED, The New Monopoly Capitalism And The Economics Of Destruction” by Barry C. Lynn, Wiley, 2010. “Cornered is a real eye-opener for America’s business community. Barry Lynn details how the concentration of power in large global corporations can hurt entrepreneurs, stunt innovation, and slow growth. This book is essential to understanding how we got into our current mess.” Michael Mandel, Chief Economist, Business Week.
“THE HEALING OF AMERICA, a Global Quest For Better, Cheaper, And Fairer Health Care” by T. R. Reid, Penguin, with new afterwards, 2010.
“Reid shows us how other advanced countries easily combine universal coverage and government regulation with entrepreneurialism and respect for market forces to produce high quality, low cost health care — a simple empirical truth we can no longer afford to ignore.”, Phillip Longman, New American Foundation for The Washington Post.
“The Age of American Unreason” by Susan Jacoby, Vintage, Revised and Updated, 2009. “There are few subjects more timely than the one tackled by Susan Jacoby in her new book, The Age of American Unreason, in which she asserts that ‘America is now ill with a powerful mutant strain of intertwined ignorance, anti-rationalism and anti-intellectualism.’ Skip to next paragraphFor more than a decade there have been growing symptoms of this affliction, from fundamentalist assaults on the teaching of evolution to the Bush administration’s willful disavowal of expert opinion on global warming and strategies for prosecuting the war in Iraq.” MICHIKO KAKUTANI for The New York Times.
“PERFECTLY LEGAL, The Covert Campaign to Rig Our Tax System to Benefit the Super Rich – and Cheat Everbody Else” by David Cay Johnston, Portfolio, 2003. “Everyone who wants to understand what’s happening to the tax system should read Perfectly Legal.” Paul Krugman for The New York Times.
“FREE LUNCH, How the Wealthiest American’s Enrich Themselves at Government Expense (and Stick You With the Bill)” by David Cay Johnston, Porfolio, 2007 “If you’re concerned about congressional earmarks, hedge fund tax breaks, subsidies to sports teams, K street lobbyists, the state of our health-care system, to say nothing of the cavernous gap between rich and poor, you’ll read this fine book – as I did – with a growing sense of outrage.” John C. Bogle, founder and former chairman, The Vanguard Group
“AFTER-SHOCK, The Next Economy and America’s Future” by Robert B. Reich, Knopf, 2010 “Robert Reich argues that the root cause of the 2008 economic collapse was not Wall Street, but our ever-increasing inequality. Even the middle class, says Reich, has to amass substantial debt in order to achieve a decent standard of living. This event was hosted by the Drucker Business Forum in Pasadena, California. Richard Waters, West Coast Editor of the Financial Times, acted as moderator.”
“WINNER-TAKE-ALL POLITICS, How Washington Made the Rich Richer – And Turned Its Back on the Middle Class” by Jacob S. Hacker & Paul Pierson, Simon and Schuster, 2010. “Hacker and Pierson make a compelling case. If Marie Antoinette were alive, she might aver of today’s great economically challenged masses, ‘Let them nibble on passbook-savings-account interest’ – if they can manage to save anything, that is.” David Holahan for the Christian Science Monitor.
‘ILL FARES THE LAND” by Tony Judt, The Penguin Press, 2010 “That is what Judt sets out to provide: a polemic that can offer some hope for the young that there is a better way of organising our affairs. It is called social democracy, and while it represents neither an ideal future nor an ideal past, it is better than anything else to hand”. Chris Patten is chancellor of Oxford University and a former Conservative Party chairman for the Guardian.
Also excerpts published from The New York Times.
The big issue not included in your list and, if unfortunately not covered Wnner-Take-All Politics it should have been, is the Democratic Party and the closing of elections to third party and independent candidates. Hacker is a Democrat so it is not surprising he does not say it explicitly. He hints at it showing how the Dems have become a corporate party since the second half of Carter’s term in office, but he does not describe how the system is closed to the non-corporate duopoly. The Democratic Party is very damaging to the development of not only politics focused on peoples needs, but also on developing independent movements. Many movements go into the Democratic Party and die — labor, environment, civil rights, peace etc. — have all made this mistake and have basically committed suicide by doing so. The Democratic Party is one of the biggest obstacles to real change. And, they aggressively work to keep significant challengers off the ballot and out of debates. As a result voters only get to vote for corporate-approved candidates and have made our “democracy” into a charade.
EDITOR: Although the authors do not delve into the issue of third parties, they certainly emphasize that the need to raise vast amounts of money has caused the Democrats to veer to the center and, on issues, the center right. They too are the captive of special interests groups.