(Hardcover - Signed Edition)
Reader Rating: (67 ratings)
Detailed Rating: "Topical Conversation" See All
| More Formats | |
|---|---|
| Hardcover - New Edition | $21.56 |
| Compact Disc - Library ed. | $66.49 |
In their New York Times bestseller Outrage, Dick Morris and Eileen McGann turned their spotlight on the American government's most egregious abuses. The authors return with a fresh list of government exploitation and corporate malfeasance just in time for the 2008 elections.
More Reviews and RecommendationsDick Morris served as Bill Clinton's political consultant for twenty years. A regular political commentator on Fox News and other networks, he is the author of six New York Times bestsellers (all with Eileen McGann) and one Washington Post bestseller.
Reader Rating:
See Detailed Ratings
August 05, 2009: Would not recommend reading Dick Morris Back-to-Back, just too much politics in too little time, but his books are full of great information and facts!
Reader Rating:
See Detailed Ratings
April 04, 2009: If you want to really understand what is going on politically;Morris will explain it to you.Morris is the one person O'Reilly doesn't argue with.
Here are the facts:
The United States has released 425 terrorists from Guantánamo, at least 50 of whom have returned to the battlefield to fight our troops.
Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton both say they're fiscally responsible. But each has called for $1 trillion in tax increases over the next ten years--and dressed them up as tax cuts!
Mainstream Media has been given marching orders from the Society of Professional Journalists: never refer to "Islamic terrorists" or "Muslim terrorists." And they are obeying! Whenever our brave agents disrupt a terror plot, The media dismisses the culprits as a gang of idiots—lulling us into a false sense of security.
If the liberals win the 2008 election, they will cripple talk radio--forcing stations to give equal time to left-wing programs, and insisting that liberals play a key role in station management.
Up to a quarter of all state pension funds in the United States are invested in companies that are helping Iran, Syria, North Korea, or the Sudan--for a total of nearly $200 billion.
The Do-Nothing Congress is still doing nothing--and the worst offenders are the presidential candidates Clinton, Obama, and McCain, who never show up for their day jobs as senators . . . except to pick up their $165,000 paycheck!
Is it any wonder that Americans feel fleeced at every turn?
As more and more critical problems develop that need national attention, the White House and Congress appear to be AWOL.
Who's calling the shots instead?
Big business, big government, big labor, and big lobbyists. And their self-serving agendas are doing nothing to help the ever-increasing number of American people who are losing their homes, paying credit card interest rates higher than 25 percent, and finding their jobs increasingly outsourced to foreign countries.
In this hard-hitting call to arms, Dick Morris and Eileen McGann reveal the hundreds of ways American tax-payers are routinely fleeced--by our own government; by foreign countries like Dubai that are gobbling up American interests and spending millions to influence government decisions and American public opinion; by Washington lobbying firms that are pushing the agendas of corrupt foreign dictators on Capitol Hill; and by hedge-fund billionaires collecting huge tax breaks courtesy of the IRS.
With their characteristic blend of sharp analysis and insider insight, Morris and McGann call offenders of all kinds on the carpet--and offer practical agendas we all can follow to help turn the tide.
Loading...Introduction 1
1 President Obama: What Would He Do? 13
2 How the Liberal Media Downplay Terrorism 45
3 The Liberals' Secret Plan to Muzzle Talk Radio 77
4 The Do-Nothing Congress Is Still Doing Nothing! House Democrats Scale Back the Congressional Workweek - It's Too Burdensome! 87
5 Foreign Companies and American Pension Funds that Help Iran Build the Bomb 103
6 The New Lobbyists: Peddling the Agendas of Foreign Governments, Oppressive Dictators, and Foreign Corporations to the U.S. Government and the American Public 117
7 The Dubai-ing of America 151
8 The Plastic Fleece: Credit Card Company Abuse 163
9 Teachers Are Leaving the Profession - Too Much Stress, Too Little Pay 177
10 Released from Guantanamo, They Kill Again 191
11 How Hedge Fund Billionaires Live Off Tax Breaks 203
12 How the Teachers' Union Rips Off Its Members 211
13 Re-rebuilding Luxury Second Homes in Flood Areas Again and Again - at Our Expense 225
14 The Subprime Loan Crisis; Why the Greedy Are Going Free 237
15 How Halliburton Rips Off the Pentagon: While Some Fight for Freedom, Others Use War to Get Rich 257
16 Blocking Toys That Poison Children from Being Sold in America and Being Made in China 269
17 How the Company Bill Clinton Works for Fleeces the Vulnerable Elderly 285
18 From Movie Lights to Lighting Up: How Films Induce Teens to Smoke 291
Notes 311
Fleeced
How Barack Obama, Media Mockery of Terrorist Threats, Liberals Who Want to Kill Talk Radio, the Do-Nothing Congress, Companies That Help Iran, and Washington Lobbyists for Foreign Governments Are Scamming Us...and What to Do About It
One
President Obama: What Would He Do?
This book will expose a disastrous array of fleeces that are conspiring to rob the American people of their money, their security, and their way of life. The worst among them, however, is what we'll all have to go through if Barack Obama takes office on Inauguration Day in January 2009. There's a strong chance that a Democratic winner would be accompanied by an overwhelming congressional majority, consolidating Democratic control over both houses. We believe that as many as fifty-eight Democrats will be elected to the Senate and the Democrats will extend their domination of the House. The beleaguered Senate Republicans may find it hard to summon the forty-plus votes they would need to sustain a filibuster and stop Obama from fulfilling his agenda. He would be able to do his will. But what will that be? Where would he take our country?
Obama would take the country sharply, suddenly, and dangerously to the far left. He would raise taxes immediately and substantially: increasing the top bracket to at least 40 percent, lifting the cap on Social Security taxes, and doubling capital gains taxes and taxes on dividends. He would roll back the increases in the threshold for the inheritance tax passed under Bush. But his catastrophic intervention in our society would hardly end there. Obama would open the door wide to illegal immigrants and make it easy for them tobecome citizens and voters.
He would socialize medicine in America—through a federal insurance program that would include illegal immigrants.
He would weaken the PATRIOT Act in important ways and would increase our vulnerability to terrorists.
He one would weaken the standards Bush imposed for improved public education.
He would lower penalties for some of our most dangerous drug criminals and give many a free pass to leave prison.
And, most important, Obama would pull out of Iraq unilaterally, without conditions, and leave it to its (likely bloody) fate. If it became a base for terrorists, he is likely to do little more than to wring his hands and blame President Bush. During the primary season, Obama has been relatively clear about what he would do as president. The trouble is that most voters haven't been listening to what he's been saying. Enthralled by his charisma, enraptured by the idea of electing the first black president, thrilled to have an alternative to the deadly oscillation of Clintons and Bushes in the White House, the voters have allowed the specifics of Obama's agenda to get lost along the way. They have missed the dangerously radical substance that lies behind his attractive rhetoric.
For Obama has done much more than merely promise to end the current political style in Washington and to bring the "audacity of hope to the nation's politics. During the campaign, he explicitly outlined an ultra-liberal agenda—one that runs even further to the left than what Hillary was willing to own up to.
Whereas Hillary flip-flopped on the war in Iraq, Obama was quite clear: he wants out, regardless of the price in lost credibility or Iraqi lives.Whereas Hillary hid her planned tax increases, Obama is quite explicit about them: he would nearly double the capital gains tax and the tax on dividends while raising Social Security and income taxes sky-high.
Hillary forced us to read between the lines to see what she would do as president. With Obama, it was all there in plain sight; we just needed to look—and pay attention.
After all, paying attention to the specifics of what Obama says he will do is vital. We must understand the policies and programs he would bring with him to the White House.
Broadly speaking, there are two kinds of presidents: ideologues and pragmatists. Ideologues have a clear agenda based on their political philosophy; they see their election as an opportunity to implement it. Pragmatists, on the other hand, take office with no clear idea of what course they will adopt until they get there. Clearly, Hillary Clinton is an ideologue—and the evidence we have so far suggests that Barack Obama is one as well.
But Bill Clinton was no ideologue. He was the ultimate pragmatist—and this is the crucial respect in which he differs from Hillary. Bill Clinton, for example, campaigned on generalities: he promised to enact a middle-class tax cut, to "end welfare as we know it," and to focus "like a laser beam" on the economy. Once he took power, however, it became clear that he had no set agenda in mind. Shortly after the election he convened an economic "summit" in Little Rock, Arkansas, with one central mission: for others to tell him what to do. For days he sat and listened as experts propounded their solutions; then, after arriving in Washington, he convened a nonstop parade of policy meetings to try to settle on a concrete agenda. What emerged was a hodgepodge. First he decided to increase the deficit in order to stimulate the economy. Then he decided to cut the deficit and raise taxes in order to bring down interest rates. But the fact is that the zigging and zagging produced a good and solid economic expansion—a stroke of very good fortune.
But the core of Bill Clinton's approach to governing was the quotation from Franklin D. Roosevelt that he often recited: a commitment to "bold, persistent experimentation," seeing what worked and discarding what did not.
But if presidents such as FDR, John F. Kennedy, George H. W. Bush, and Bill Clinton took office with only a vague sense of what they would do, many presidents were ideologues—like Ronald Reagan, Lyndon Johnson, and George W. Bush—who had clear agendas in their minds as they laid their hands on the Bible to take the oath of office.
Lyndon Johnson, empowered first by a national outpouring of grief and guilt after John F. Kennedy's murder and then by a massive electoral victory in 1964, moved quickly to pass JFK's civil rights bill and then implemented a program of domestic spending to combat poverty that he'd envisioned ever since his days as a New Deal congressman from a poor district in Texas.
Fleeced
loading...
loading...
loading...
Terms of Use, Copyright, and Privacy Policy
© 1997-2009 Barnesandnoble.com llc