The truth at any cost lowers all other costs — curated by former US spy Robert David Steele.
Dissent
Review: Access Denied–The Practice and Policy of Global Internet Filtering
Review: Gag Rule–On the Suppression of Dissent and Stifling of Democracy
Review: NOW Who Do We Blame?–Political Cartoons by Tom Toles (Paperback)
Review: Speaking Freely–Trials of the First Amendment (Paperback)
Review: Why Societies Need Dissent (Oliver Wendell Holmes Lectures)
Blue Collar
Review: Blue Collar Ministry–Facing Economic and Social Realities of Working People
Review: Deer Hunting with Jesus–Dispatches from America’s Class War
Review: Exporting America–Why Corporate Greed Is Shipping American Jobs Overseas
Review: Talking Politics with God and the Devil in Washington, D.C.
Serious Book Highly Recommended, July 1, 2008
Joe Bageant
Senator Obama may or may not have read this book. It's author does open with the observation that life is so hard among the white poor and working poor that they seek solace in beer, overeating, Jesus, and guns. This is, however, a very serious book, a first-hand deep look into the hearts and minds of the 60% of the country that cannot control its lifestyle, environment, pay check, or future.
Early on I note that the author appears to combine both education and common sense. There are magnificent turns of phrase throughout.
My fly-leaf notes:
+ Parallel world to that of the educated urban liberals
+ Life runs from complete insecurity to looming job insecurity
+ Just over half the poor in the US are white and this is the only group that is growing in number
+ For someone earning $8 an hour, if nothing goes wrong, they have $55 a week for groceries, gas, and incidentals
+ Insurance can cost as much as rent or mortgage
+ One third of working Americans make less than $9 an hour
+ They are inherently anti-union, facts are irrelevant, Christian radio is their primary source of information and viewpoint
+ This is a permanent underclass, two out of five have no high school diploma while all over 50 have major health issues, and low to no credit
+ The leftist middle class does not realize that this group votes right in part out of a feeling of revenge
+ Right owns the bars, the non-Internet real world
+ Left lost the middle when they demonized guns and gun owners–70 million gun owners, 200 million guns, guns are used to protect 60 times more often than they are used to attack
+ Superb multi-page discussion of whitetrashonomics and the trailer mortgage scams
+ Fundamentalists are superbly organized, home schooling leads to select colleges where political indoctrination is part of the deal
+ Sense of Rapture and Left Behind is very real within this group
+ Excellent discussion of how health “non-profits” are a real-estate valuation scam that serve only the well-off and not the poor
+ Television and petroleum have defined us
The author makes it a point to quote and point to a dirty dozen books that he drew on, but overall this is an essay from the heart with a great deal of intellect and a great deal of discipline in the presentation.
I highly recommend this book to both moderate Republicans wondering where their Party went off the rails, and to moderate leftists and to libertarians wondering how best to reconnect to what appears to be a very angry, down-trodden, unheard and unseen majority.
The most compelling insight for me from the author centered on his description of small towns across America, but especially in the South including Virginia, where a network of “elites” controlled the bank, newspaper, city hall, zoning board, and so on. As the author describes it, these fiefdoms and their masters are all too eager to cut deals with corporations and make money off the resulting land transactions, while not spending money on education, localized health care, or anything that might elevate the “local poor” to a point where they might understand the value of unions or tenant boards.
I experienced one major personal insight in reading this: the author takes great care to point out that most members of this group do not read, period. No books, no newspapers, barely use the Internet (except for NASCAR) and–this is the insight–have great disdain for those of us who have the “luxury” of sitting around and reading (not real work, that). This book and this author really communicated to me how little value my education and reading has in this context–what is needed is a long-term hands-on strategy for educating all the people all the time, and that is something neither the Democrats nor the Republicans appear willing to fight for, which is sad, since Thomas Jefferson said so clearly that a Nation's best defense is an educated citizenry.
Other books I recommend (and have reviewed):
The Global Class War: How America's Bipartisan Elite Lost Our Future – and What It Will Take to Win It Back
The Battle for the Soul of Capitalism
The Working Poor: Invisible in America
Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America
Off the Books: The Underground Economy of the Urban Poor
Left Hand of God, The: Healing America's Political and Spiritual Crisis
Breach of Trust: How Washington Turns Outsiders Into Insiders
Running on Empty: How the Democratic and Republican Parties Are Bankrupting Our Future and What Americans Can Do About It
The Manufacture Of Evil: Ethics, Evolution, and the Industrial System
DVD (links poverty and military recruitment):
Why We Fight
Super Book, Fast Read, Relevant to Participatory Democracy, June 3, 2008
Ori Brafman
This is a very fine book, a fast read, and highly relevant to Web 2.0 and all the emergent opportunities to turn our world right side up, restoring power back to all the people. My reading has moved heavily toward cognitive science and “open everything,” and my avowed goal, apart from creating public intelligence in the public interest, is to make “true cost” visible to the public on every product and service, penetrating through the kinds of sway barriers this book describes.
Each chapter is excellent, with a nice teaser diagram. The book is double-spaced with adequate notes and index.
My flyleaf highlights:
+ Diagnosis bias is huge. [The book does not focus enough on how our “experts know more and more about less and less,” but the core point is valid: once their tiny little brain storage reaches a conclusion, they bend everything to fit it. this could also be called paradigm or disciplinary bias.]
+ Hidden currents in the individual and group decision support process include loss aversion, value attribution or negatiion, and a commitment to the wrong s trategy. Holy Cow. Talk about CIA, Microsoft, Google, CISCO, they are all there.
+ NBA draft is mostly guess and speculation [so is most intelligence “analysis” and both groups get away with it because they are not held accountable for getting it wrong.]
+ Labels *matter* and deeply influence outcomes.
+ Visualization *sells* just about anything.
+ Cues and subtle messages are nuanced and complex and omnipresent. I was really engaged by this section.
+ Need to be heard is vital and the more one does that, the more value is created (this is social networking 101, as Web 2.0 starts to go over the cliff so Web 3.0 can rise like a Pheonix.] The authors stress that those offering to listen must *hear* each individual voice.
+ Blockers matter, i.e. there have to be people in the loop who have the courage, the commitment, the *role* of saying no to abuses of authority including rankism. [I think of all our flag officers and Congress Members who refused to challenge the criminal lies of the White House and the abuses of power by the Vice President, all documented now in the open literature. Had Colin Powell resigned and called for a stop, he would be President in 2009, instead of those now running. all flawed in their own way [and each a testiment to how easily we are swayed by a lack of substance on the part of all three–visit Earth Intelligence Network to see the 52 questions none of the candidates can answer, and the 52 “starter” answers for a Citizens Summit to discuss (February 2009 in Chicago, over Lincoln's birthday).
Great little book. Here are some others I have found to be valuable:
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media
The Landscape of History: How Historians Map the Past
Voltaire's Bastards: The Dictatorship of Reason in the West
Group Genius: The Creative Power of Collaboration
The Age of Missing Information
Forbidden Knowledge: From Prometheus to Pornography
Fog Facts: Searching for Truth in the Land of Spin
Weapons of Mass Deception: The Uses of Propaganda in Bush's War on Iraq
Below is the first in a series of non-profit books (also free online), relevant to creating public intelligence in the public interest).
Collective Intelligence: Creating a Prosperous World at Peace
Can Cause Discomfort, But This Book MATTERS, May 17, 2008
Grover Norquist
I was given this book as a gift, along with Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies and to my great surprise, being an estranged moderate Reagan Republican, I found that I am much more of a Libertarian than I realized, and this author, although he causes me great discomfort in some areas (such as privatizing Social Security), he makes complete sense. I learn he has been voted one of the 50 most powerful people in DC by GQ (2007) and I believe it. Senator McCain has better listen this time around. I urge all who are enthused with Senator Obama to read Obama – The Postmodern Coup: Making of a Manchurian Candidate. Senator Obama is NOT transparent and I consider his top foreign policy advisors to be dangerous–Dr. Strangelove (Brzezinski) has one last war with Russia left in him, and seriiousl believes he can confront the Chinese in Africa–this is lunacy (search for my Memorandum online <Chinese Irregular Warfare oss.net>.
The book lacks an index. This is a HUGE MISTAKE on the part of the publisher because there are too many important ideas in this book. The publisher should create and post online an index to this book. The publisher can also be criticized for failing to provide Library of Congress cataloguing information. This is a REFERENCE work. The author should consider holding the publisher accountable for such fundamental incompetencies that detract from the book's lasting value.
The five core reforms that he builds up to are:
1) Portable pensions
2) Competitive health care
3) Educational choice including home schooling
4) Outsourcing of all government functions possible
5) Transparency (see not only Groundswell, but also Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations)
The author posits a stark choice between the Leave Us Alone movement, that appears to be growing daily (and included 27 secessionist movements that meet annually at a conference organized by Kirkpatrick Sale, author of Human Scale, and what he calls the Takings Group, the tax and spend elected officials both Republican and Democratic.
This is a serious reference work with an even mix of books, articles, and online citations.
There are some areas where the author could benefit from knowledge that is not yet mainstream–for example, we can blow away the Medicare unfunded obligations by negotiating prices that are 1% (ONE percent) of what we foolishly pay now, and as a recent PriceWaterHouseCooopers study documented so well, also eliminating the 50% of the medical professional that is waste, including (the author does address this–the tort lawyers like Senator John Edwards who make millions putting good doctors out of business so bad doctors can do more elective operations).
On balance–and this was my first exposure to this individual–I put the book down thinking to myself that this author deserves his reputation, and that he combines a very powerful intellect with an equally powerful moral force.
Other books I recommend:
The Thirteen American Arguments: Enduring Debates That Inspire and Define Our Nation
The Revolution: A Manifesto
Don't Start the Revolution Without Me!
Crashing the Party: Taking on the Corporate Government in an Age of Surrender
Spoiling for a Fight: Third-Party Politics in America
The Vermont Manifesto
Recommended by Micah Sifry, Final Review–McCain Benefits, May 3, 2008
Tex Sample
Micah Sifry in Spoiling for a Fight: Third-Party Politics in America recommends this book. This book is a seminal reference, a vital, urgent reading for anyone who wishes to do the right thing for our massive blue collar population that has been betrayed by both parties (see Running on Empty: How the Democratic and Republican Parties Are Bankrupting Our Future and What Americans Can Do About It.
Here are highlights from my fly-leaf notes:
+ Our society has structured inequality built in at all levels, and the blue collar and working poor populations will NEVER climb out of their pit unless we minister to them in an active manner.
+ The focus of the blue collar worker is the neighborhood, and a web of favors given and received, favors that define not just a community, but a covenant of community. See Off the Books for more on this.
+ Our “culture” has managed to make every individual that is structurally repressed feel guilty for not being able to rise above their circumstances because our churches and our state preach freedom of opportunity, but the REALITY is that the upper class web of connections trumps lower class striving every time.
+ The deindustrialization and deskilling of the economy (Bill Clinton's signal mistake, apart from being inept at getting single-payer health care where the working class would be the principal beneficiary) has deepened the disadvantages of race and gender in America.
+ The author does a superb job–truly a scholarly and responsible job–of properly reviewing applicable literatures and offering proper citation in text, not just endnotes, of a rich buffet of practical and intellectual contributions by others.
+ He discusses five types of blue collar groups:
– Blue Collar Winners, a threatened species
– Blue Collar Respectables, want family, school, and church to be in harmony, conformists, a morality of repression, lowered social norms make it harder to be “respectable,” and there is no social mobility
– Blue Collar Survivors, trapped like inmates, a daily struggle to stay even with life in the face of multiple challenges
– Blue Collar Hard Living, heavy drinking, marital instability, toughness, political alienation, rootlessness, present time orientation, strong sense of individualism
The author's greatest contribution is his full exploration of how a pastor in a blue collar neighborhood cannot think of themselves as being on the pinnacle of a pyramidal organization between the community and God, but rather as a member at the base, part of a web of giving and love, dignity and local empowerment. This book should be required reading for EVERY pastor of ANY faith. It should also be required reading for every Precinct Captain for any political party, ideally a third party such as the Libertarians or Greens. This book is a handbook for connecting, empowering, and enriching at the local level.
The author concludes that the “ward heeler” is the best model, an individual that is constantly moving throughout the community, touching each person and especially the many that do not come to church, offering favors with love, investing in each individual. I am MOVED by this book. This is pastoral reference A, and it is touching in its understanding while illuminating in its scholarship.
Citing Andrew Greeley the author notes that ethnic politics is not about ideas, but rather about intuitive brokering among a broad diversity of intersecting interests. He goes on to cite the three weaknesses of ethnic politics: it depends on the group being structured; it overlooks small but explosive groups; and it fails to engage the intellectuals.
This is where I experience two huge epiphanies (Republican word for Aha!):
1. At the blue collar level, the author tells us, patriotism is not just a given, it is an EXISTENTIAL deeply rooted part of being. This helps me understand why Reverend Wright's intemperate (but accurate) depiction of the USA and the crimes done “in our name” would cause anger among the white blue collar population. America right or wrong is a tangible value.
2. At the national level, any candidate who would lead America must trisect three groups: money, brains, and brawn. I do not see any candidate, although John McCain appeals to me if he can avoid Leiberman or Rice as a Vice President (I would recommend to him the protagonists in The Average American: The Extraordinary Search for the Nation's Most Ordinary Citizen, that is doing that. All three of the candidates are doing platitudes to the public with secret handshakes behind closed doors with the money people, and all three are completely neglecting the intellectual substance: we are hated or distrusted around the world; we are doing nothing to eradicate the ten high level threats to humanity; we are bankrupt as a Nation (financially, morally, culturally, and intellectually), and “there is no plan.”
Read my reviews of the following for additional perspective on how we have betrayed the lower two thirds of the population:
The Working Poor: Invisible in America
Off the Books: The Underground Economy of the Urban Poor
I read this book while trying to see if a third party candidacy is still viable. In that context:
1) I have written off Obama. His rejection of Reverend Wright is the final nail in his political coffin this time around, he has become, as one Reverend of color put it, the “House Negro.” See Obama – The Postmodern Coup: Making of a Manchurian Candidate.
2) Bloomberg (see my review of Bloomberg by Bloomberg) needs to understand the difference between transpartisan ship and the two-party organized crime and spoils system, and then he needs to put his integrity on the line and go for the full enchilada.
Other reform books that have impressed me:
The Revolution: A Manifesto
Don't Start the Revolution Without Me!
Society's Breakthrough!: Releasing Essential Wisdom and Virtue in All the People
Beyond Five Stars–a Foundation Stone for Third Party Bid in 2008, May 3, 2008
Micah L. Sifry
I am not giving up on fielding a third-party team in 2008. All three of those running are part of the two party organized crime spoils system, and to mock 41, “this will not stand.”
This book is beyond five stars for its relevance, timeliness, and detail. It has gripped me all morning, and the level of detail including specific names, is phenomenal.
Although the author does not cover the 27 secessionist movements (but does cover the Vermont Progressive Party) and I could find no mention of the The Cultural Creatives: How 50 Million People Are Changing the World, I am totally impressed by the structure, the discipline, the detail. I started with the index and that alone persuaded me this was a phenomenal book worthy of every voter's attention.
The book was published in 2003, to early for the author to be following Reuniting America and its transpartisaship meme, or the World Index of Social and Environmental Responsibility (WISER) described in Blessed Unrest: How the Largest Social Movement in History Is Restoring Grace, Justice, and Beauty to the World but I can say with certainty that this author, who he knows and what he knows, is an essential contributor to appreciative inquiry and deliberative democracy.
I have a number of notes, and unlike many books, there is a lot in here that I simply did not know (I did not pay much attention in classes until I earned my MPA because it mattered).
+ Abe Lincoln was a third party candidate for president. The author is well-spo0ken and compelling in condemning the Supreme Court for several decisions that institutionalize the two-party spoils system, both within the states where Hawaii was allowed to ban write-in votes, in other states where the states are allowed to exclude all third parties from all debates
+ Although the author does not provide a policy framework, there is a great deal of compelling detail about how Jesse Ventura combined fiscal conservative and social liberal values in a centrist independent common sense platform that attracted the votes of the working class (the author notes that this class is bigger than most imagine, while the middle class is now smaller than most imagine).
+ Although I have read Don't Start the Revolution Without Me this book is in many ways better on policy details and personalities, and an ideal companions to everything written by Jesse Ventura, by Ron Paul (e.g. The Revolution: A Manifesto). I also recommend Our Undemocratic Constitution: Where the Constitution Goes Wrong (And How We the People Can Correct It) and The Thirteen American Arguments: Enduring Debates That Define and Inspire Our Country.
+ Four constituencies elected Jesse Ventura: women, moderate Republicans, blue collar suburbanites, and alienated 20-30 somethings. To this the author adds “unlikely voters” and says the polls always miss them but they make the difference for third party or independent candidates and are twice as likely to branch off from either of the two criminal parties. [I won't belabor this latter point, just see Running on Empty: How the Democratic and Republican Parties Are Bankrupting Our Future and What Americans Can Do About It.
+ The author teaches us that Americans certainly do want more choice (as well as honesty in politics) but third parties have a way to go.
+ 9-11 did not change the fundamentals, but did end public complacency and did start public engagement.
+ This book is especially strong and useful on why Ralph Nader won and why Ralph Nader did not undermine Al Gore, it was actually the other way around. Crashing the Party: Taking on the Corporate Government in an Age of Surrender is still a must read, but this author has given us a more concise and able ennumeration of all the reasons Gore lost, and he ends that section toward the end of the book by pointing out that Pat Buchanan took more states and more votes away from Bush 43 than Nader did from Gore.
+ Across the book the author outlines how states are deliberately disenfranchising all who would seek to run for office or vote as independents, but toward the end of the book he points out how Greens are winning half the elections they go for at the local level in some states.
+ I am personally inspired by this book to believe that on the 4th of July we need a third party transpartisan team with a balanced budget that also demands Electoral Reform prior to November 2008. We cannot led any of the three presidential contenders get away with the myth that this election means anything at all without debates open to all third party candidates, and voting on week-ends or holidays with instant run-offs to re-enfranchise the The Working Poor: Invisible in America.
+ The author enrages with his calm discussion of how voter registration is rigged to disenfranchise the working poor, and later in the book he observes that the true schism in America is between top and bottom, not left and right. See also The Global Class War: How America's Bipartisan Elite Lost Our Future – and What It Will Take to Win It Back.
+ This book is a mother lode of useful data in a coherent structure. My notes cannot do it justice.
+ On a positive note, while the book ends by saying third parties have a long way to go, the author notes across the book that the two-party spoils system is self-destructing and reform is largely inevitable. I agree.
+ We learn that Ralph Nader and Jesse Ventura are both of the view that any third party must attract people who can “raise hours, not just money.” Their logic is interesting, but with all the billionaires out there, and with Michael Bloomberg now strangely silent, I have to wonder if he has not been sidelined by the Trilateral Commission and the Councils on Foreign Relations in New York and Chicago, who now own Senator Obama lock, stock, and barrel (see Obama – The Postmodern Coup: Making of a Manchurian Candidate. He is an engaged young man of promise, but if he cannot lead conversations that matter and inspire citizen wisdom councils instead of listening to the Dr. Strangeloves (Bzezinski) and acolytes, then he is not worthy of governing and will be a repeat of Jimmy Carter, a gerbil on a wheel.
+ This book inspires me to think that a meme can be created between the League of Women Voters and WISER, “Our Deal or No Deal.” It should be possible to restore the League of Women Voters at every level, especially if we can finance legal challenges to every corporate donation to any entity that refuses to respect the need for transpartisanship and open source politics.
+ The author does a super job on how Ross Perot self-destructed and then Pat Buchanan more or less hosed the Reform Party into oblivion (after first wiping out their treasury to pay old debts, something we learn not from this author, but in Jesse Ventura's book.
+ Greens are not going to go away. I recommend everyone look for Paul Ray's “New Political Compass,” but there are green values that I do believe will carry the day within the decade:
– Ecological wisdom
– Personal and social responsibility
– Grass-roots democracy
– Nonviolence
– Respect for diversity
– Postpatriarchal values
– Decontralization (some would call this home rule, state and local officials are having to ignore federal laws paid for by special interests that specify CEILINGS on state and local standards instead of floors)
– Community economics (I am also very excited by the Interra Project for community credit cards, and the emergence of open money and no money economies)
– Global responsibility
– Future focus (what the Native Americans would call Seventh Generation thinking, a concept captured very well in Stewart Brand's Clock Of The Long Now: Time And Responsibility: The Ideas Behind The World's Slowest Computer.
+ I am completely blown away by the author's concise accounting of how the US Supreme Court has legitimized state exclusion of third parties. That is totally unacceptable and yet another reason for term limits on the Supremes.
+ The book ends with an overview of third parties (117 of them listed in the Encyclopedia of Third Parties in America, which is grotesquely overpriced but probably a useful candidate for a pass around shared purchase.
+ The bottom line in this book is that four national parties are viable: Green, Libertarian, the New Party and the Labor Party. The book was written too soon to see Reuniting America (110 million strong) and the Bloomberg phenomenon in New York which I note with concern may have been squelched by bigger multi-billionaires who want the two party system to remain “as is.” None of the three candidates in 2008 are true reformers, my vote right now is for Jesse Ventura with The Average American: The Extraordinary Search for the Nation's Most Ordinary Citizen as Vice President and Tom Atlee and Jim Rough and Paul Hawken and Juanita Brown and many others leading a national Wisdom Council at every level on the ten high-level threats to humanity and the twelve policies from Agriculture to Water that must be harmonized. I will be blunt: the “advisors” are disconnected from reality and vastly more dangeous to our future than any common sense appreciative open policy process might be.
+ The author concludes that Minnesota's Independence Party, Vermont's Progressive Party, and New York's Working Families Party are models that can inform any emergent national campaign.
