2 book selections from client Jill A., PLUS a little something extra
We always like hearing what our clients are reading, and this month client Jill A. had two great picks for us. Donald Trump’s version of a “Deep State” may be delusional, but groups colluding to influence government, openly or secretly, effectively or ineffectively, actually do exist. Jill’s choices take a deep look at two…
“Democracy in Chains”By Nancy MacLean
(from Amazon.com) In a brilliant and engrossing narrative, Nancy MacLean shows how (Nobel Prize-winning political economist James McGill) Buchanan forged his ideas about government in a last gasp attempt to preserve the white elite’s power in the wake of Brown v. Board of Education. In response to the widening of American democracy, he developed a brilliant, if diabolical, plan to undermine the ability of the majority to use its numbers to level the playing field between the rich and powerful and the rest of us. Corporate donors and their right-wing foundations were only too eager to support Buchanan’s work in teaching others how to divide America into “makers” and “takers.” And when a multibillionaire on a messianic mission to rewrite the social contract of the modern world, Charles Koch, discovered Buchanan, he created a vast, relentless, and multi-armed machine to carry out Buchanan’s strategy.
“Sons of Wichita”By Daniel Schulman
(from Amazon.com) Influenced by the sentiments of their father, who was present at the birth of the John Birch Society, Charles and David have spent decades trying to remake the American political landscape and mainline their libertarian views into the national bloodstream. They now control a machine that is a center of gravity within the Republican Party. To their supporters, they are liberating America from the scourge of Big Government. To their detractors, they are political “contract killers,” as David Axelrod, President Barack Obama’s chief strategist, put it during the 2012 campaign.
SONS OF WICHITA traces the complicated lives and legacies of these four tycoons, as well as their business, social, and political ambitions. No matter where you fall on the ideological spectrum, the Kochs are one of the most influential dynasties of our era, but so little is publicly known about this family, their origins, how they make their money, and how they live their lives. Based on hundreds of interviews with friends, relatives, business associates, and many others, SONS OF WICHITA is the first major biography about this wealthy and powerful family- warts and all.
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Do you have a book you’d like to share with the Tom Dwyer audience? Please email your suggestions to tomdwyer@tomdwyer.com. We’ll pass them on in Book Spotlight, and they may even find a place in our lobby Book & Bumper Sticker Library. Please call us… we want to hear from you!
That Little Something Extra…
Jill’s book suggestions can be seen as a lucid equivalent version of books from the Right decrying conspiracies on the Left, but as Barrack Obama said in his most recent speech, Donald Trump is “a symptom, not a cause” of the political trainwreck in our country. Both sides are exactly the same… the Right accuses the Left of an organized campaign to destroy all that’s good and light in America, while the Left alleges the Right is coordinating an attack on every value Americans hold dear. Gosh, in such a world, who’s to say who’s right? We’ll tell you- the side with the evidence, and exhibit A on the Left is The Powell Memo…
The Powell Memo
Originally posted on June 30, 2016 by tomdwyer in “Your Car Matters”
The roadmap to our current situation was drawn in 1971
If you look around at our media/political/corporate landscape, it seems obvious (as Mr. Snydor will say below in his memo, “to any thoughtful person”) that there is an overriding pro-business, pro-corporate, anti-worker, authoritarian fascist agenda. That same thoughtful person may come to the conclusion that this agenda could be the result of conscious intent. But wouldn’t that be paranoia? Isn’t someone who says there’s a “vast right-wing conspiracy” just giving in to tin-foil hat theories? The Powell Memo is a smoking-gun argument otherwise.
The Powell Memo (also called the Powell Manifesto) is frequently referred to as the blueprint for the modern conservative echo chamber. It is an 8-page letter written in 1971 by Eugene Snydor of the US Chamber of Commerce to his friend Lewis Powell. (If the name Lewis Powell sounds familiar it’s because good ol’ Lew was a corporate lawyer nominated to the Supreme Court two months after this memo). Snydor describes a pervasive attack on the “American economic system” by leftists, Communists, and consumerists. He sees their influence in politics, in the media, and on the campus, and suggests that the Chamber of Commerce lead the charge to counter them. He lays out a plan of political pressure, legislative change, think tanks, school curriculums, media personalities, TV and radio appearances, textbook reviews, and much more to promote the cause of “the American Business Executive”, who he says is “truly the forgotten man”….
