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.
5.0 out of 5 stars 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
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.
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).
+ 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.
+ 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.
Setting the Stage for the NEXT Reform of National Security, April 10, 2008
James R., III Locher
I bought this book at the Army War College after hearing its author speak to the Army Strategy Conference on “Rebalancing the Instruments of National Power.” I have posted 29 pages of notes at Earth Intelligence Network, with a page or two from Jim Locher's brilliant luncheon presentation.
Having spent the evening with this book, and with an understanding of what the Project on National Security Reform will be providing to the next President of the United States, I found the book totally inspiring, and most important for what it represents as proof that “Phase II” of national security reform is not just possible, but likely in 2009.
A few highlights:
1) The service chiefs fought this bitterly, to include lies and deceptions and fabricated studies.
2) Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Jones, and later Crowe, get high praise for having the gumption to call for reform in the first case, and agree with reform in the second, but they were virtual outcasts for doing so.
3) Senator Sam Nunn will be back. As I look at the make-up of the Project, which also benefits from Newt Gingrich's brilliance and his mastery of history and House protocol, I have a very strong feeling that the follow-on to Goldwater-Nichols, a National Security Act of 2009, is not just viable, but undefeatable.
4) I've known Jim Locher as a thoughtful and courteous person for over a decade, and this book confirms my personal view that he is one of the most loyal, dedicated, intelligent, and responsible individuals we have, totally committed to public service in the purest sense of the word. The reviewer who demeans the author has no basis, in my view, for his negative judgement.
I have just one worry: everyone is beginning to realize that neither John McCain nor Barack Obama have a strong bench, and at the same time everyone I talk to seems to believe they will repeat the long-standing mistake of seeking to implement a single-party executive. This they must not be allowed to do. Please visit Reuniting America to understand the concept of Transpartisanship, in which ALL parties (including Libertarians, Reforms, Greens, and others) share leadership positions so that we might harness the COMPLETE distributed intelligence of the entire Nation.
The Project will provide a preliminary report on Phase II of national security reform in early July 2008, and a longer report in September 2008. Once a President is elected, a complete set of Presidential directives, draft legislation, and recommended amendments to Congressional jurisdictions and protocols, will be provided so that the President might be ready to implement national security reform within 100 days of taking office. We cannot wait for the Quadrennial Defense Review in the second year of the Presidency; those focusing their time on influencing that document would be well-advised to contribute shorter versions of their work sooner to the Project. By 1 May 2008.
In his comments today at the Army War College, the author told us that everyone said this would be impossible; that it was lunatic, and so on. This book is a deep historical account of how good intentions across party lines can achieve the impossible and serve the public. While I disrespect both party machines for failing to control a reckless and arrogant presidency hijacked by the vice president, I do believe that we can create a narrative on the need for reform that the public will accept and then demand of its Congress.
I will miss Barry Goldwater, the last true conservative I remember, but I am, in putting this book down, confident that John McCain and Sam Nunn and others can find common ground. This book proves the impossible can be achieved, and I believe this book is essential substantiation that the next step: civilian professionalization, inter-agency operations and authorities, multinational information sharing, a robust “white hat” capability, and a national open source agency that can influence how $2 trillion a year in other people's money is spent eradicating the ten high level threats to humanity, are all achievable in the near term.
Together with a Few Other Books, All You Need to Know, March 21, 2008
Fred Kaplan
The author is kinder to the protagonists than they merit.
I give the author high marks for making the case early on in the book that the world did NOT change after 9-11, and that what really happened was that the coincidence of neo-conservative back-stabbing and Bush's well-intentioned evangelical village idiot view of freedom and democracy.
The author does a fine job of reviewing how after 9-11 we were faced with two choices, the first, going for empire (“we make our own reality”) or revitalizing alliances. The neocons in their ignorance called for regime changes, but the author fails us here by not understanding that both political parties love 42 of the 44 dictators, those that “our” dictators.
The author has many gifted turns of phrase. One talks about how their “vision” turned into a “dream” that then met “reality” and was instantly converted into a “nightmare.”
The author adds to our knowledge of how Rumsfeld empowered Andy Marshall, and how the inner circle quickly grew enamored of the delusion that they could achieve total situational awareness with total accuracy in a system of systems no intelligent person would ever believe in.
The author highlights two major intelligence failures that contributed to the policy bubble:
1. Soviet Union was way behind the US during the Cold War, not ahead.
2. Soviet economy was vastly worse and more vulnerable that CIA ever understood.
The author helps us understand that the 1989 collapse of the Berlin War created a furor over the “peace dividend” and the “end of history” that were mistaken, but sufficient to bury with noise any concerns about Bin Laden and Saudi Arabian spread of virulent anti-Shi'ite Wahabibism from 1988 onwards.
By 1997 Marshall and Andy Krepinevich were staking everything on Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV), high speed communications and computing (still not real today), and precision munitions.
The author provides a super discussion of Col John Warden's “five rings” in priority order: 1) leadership and C4I; 2) infrastructure; 3) transportation; 4) population (again, war crimes); and finally, 5) the enemy. The author is brutal in scoring the campaign designed by Col Warden a complete failure. It…did…not…work (in Gulf I).
I cannot summarize everything, so a few highlights:
+ Taliban quickly learned how to defeat US overhead (satellite) surveillance–remember, we do not do “no-notice” air breather imagery any more, except for easily detected UAVs, with mud as well as cover and concealment. .
+ Excellent account of the influence on Rumsfeld of George Tenet's failure to satisfy him during a missile defense review. It became obvious to all that the U.S. Intelligence Community a) no longer had a very high level of technical mastery on the topic; and b) was so fragmented as to make the varied analytic elements deaf, dumb, and blind–not sharing with each other, using contradictory data sets, the list goes on.
Page 187 is the page to read if you are just browsing in the bookstore:
Summarizing 2007: “Not so much a return to realism as a retreat to randomness.” Also: “Grand vision was shattered by reality. Policies were devised piecemeal; actions were scattershot, aimless.” And: “put forth ideas without strategies; policies without process; wishes without means.” Devastating.
So many other notes. Here are a tiny handful:
+ Speechwriter Michael Gersen connected with Bush on an evangelical level, wrote major speeches, in the case of a foreign policy speech, without actually consulting any adult practitioners.
+ Joseph Korbel was both Madeline Albright's father and Condi Rice's educational mentor–talk about a non-partisan losing streak!
+ American Enterprise Institute and Richard Perl used Natan (Anatoly) Sharansky to impress Cheney and subvert Bush by reframing the Israeli genocide against the Palestinians as the first 21st Century war between terrorism (the hapless Palestinians) and democracy (the Israeli's).
+ He credits Eliot Abrams with devising the unique linkage between American Jews whose numbers and influence have been declining, and the Evangelical Christians whose influence peaked with Bush-Cheney.
+ He slams General Tommy Franks for providing assurances and making promises he could not keep with respect to settling and stabilizing the towns by-passed or over-run by the US Army.
+ The author is misleading in his account of the Saudi-Powell discussions on how an election would lead to radical Islamics in charge (as opposed to despotic, perverted spendthrifts).
+ Rumsfeld Lite going into Iraq meant that a quarter million tons of ordnance was looted by insurgents, which is what cost us four years time. General Shinseki is vindicated.
+ For the first time I learn of a planned Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
+ The author introduces Ahmed Chalabi but does not fully understand this man's crimes as well as his special relationship with Iran. Iran used him to get the USA to depose the Taliban and Sadaam Hussein, , and to lure the entire US military into a quagmire.
+ Department of State, Mr. White in particular, got it right every time.
+ Legitimacy and stability must come before elections.
+ Hezbollah win in Lebanon dealt a crushing blow to the Bush delusions.
+ Bush refused to deal with Syria and Iran throughout. I am reminded of how Civil Affairs was told in the first five years of the war to blow off the tribal leaders and imams, and only now are they being allowed to get it right.
+ Useful account of three failed Public Diplomacy tenures (Charlotte Beers, Margaret Tutwiler, Karen Hughes (who waited six months so her son could leave for college–so much for the importance of that job….)
+ USA sent $230 million in aid to Lebanon, while Iran poured in $1 billion via Hezbollah (meanwhile, the Chinese do the same everywhere else).
Page 191 is glorious: Bush's strategies were “based on fantasies, faith, and a willful indifference toward those affected by their consequences.”
Page 192: the real divide is “between the realists and the fantasists.”
The author quite properly slams the Democrats for not having an original idea, plan, program, bill, budget, or moral thought.
He ends by suggesting that multinational consensus is still the true litmus test for the sensibility and sustainability of any endeavor.
On this note, I conclude that five stars are right where this book should be. Incomplete, but original and provocative. Bravo.
