by Kimberley Strassel ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 28, 2016
An eye-opening lesson in the law of unintended consequences: where “a vast new disclosure regime” intended to curb...
In her debut, a Wall Street Journal columnist and editorial board member excoriates the left’s use of campaign finance laws to stifle free speech and free association.
On First Amendment grounds, the 2010 Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision overturned a number of federal campaign spending restrictions. Nevertheless, overlooking a noble American tradition of anonymous participation in politics stretching back to the Federalist Papers, the court left undisturbed a number of forced disclosure provisions seemingly at odds with a 1958 decision denying Alabama’s attempt to require disclosure of the state NAACP’s membership/donor list and another in 1995, striking down an Ohio statute prohibiting anonymous campaign literature. Citizens United fueled activists’ outrage at the continued influence of “special interests” and the power of “dark money” in our politics. Under the banner of “transparency,” “cleaner,” “more open” elections, activists have used the forced disclosure provisions to harass, humiliate, and threaten critics and to discourage political participation and speech. These, writes the author, are the hallmarks of “the modern intimidation game.” Her fiery, thoroughly reported, three-part story focuses on the IRS targeting and obstructing—under notorious apparatchik Lois Lerner—applications by tea party related groups for tax exempt status; the appalling tactics attending Wisconsin’s gubernatorial 2012 recall election; and the widespread use of the proxy movement and boycotts to disrupt corporate governance and blackmail business. Running through each tale are common themes: government agencies who, either out of righteous institutional bias or ideological agreement, conspire with activists to advance their agendas; the supercharging effect of the Internet and social media that makes these modern retribution campaigns so much easier and effective; and the genuine damage done to individuals, groups, and businesses who never dreamed they would pay such a price for exercising their rights to speech and assembly.
An eye-opening lesson in the law of unintended consequences: where “a vast new disclosure regime” intended to curb corruption has spawned a corruption all its own.Pub Date: June 28, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4555-9188-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Twelve
Review Posted Online: April 12, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2016
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BOOK REVIEW
by Howard Zinn ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 1, 1979
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
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BOOK REVIEW
by Howard Zinn ; adapted by Rebecca Stefoff with by Ed Morales
BOOK REVIEW
by Howard Zinn with Ray Suarez
BOOK REVIEW
by Howard Zinn
by Abhijit V. Banerjee & Esther Duflo ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 12, 2019
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.
“Quality of life means more than just consumption”: Two MIT economists urge that a smarter, more politically aware economics be brought to bear on social issues.
It’s no secret, write Banerjee and Duflo (co-authors: Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way To Fight Global Poverty, 2011), that “we seem to have fallen on hard times.” Immigration, trade, inequality, and taxation problems present themselves daily, and they seem to be intractable. Economics can be put to use in figuring out these big-issue questions. Data can be adduced, for example, to answer the question of whether immigration tends to suppress wages. The answer: “There is no evidence low-skilled migration to rich countries drives wage and employment down for the natives.” In fact, it opens up opportunities for those natives by freeing them to look for better work. The problem becomes thornier when it comes to the matter of free trade; as the authors observe, “left-behind people live in left-behind places,” which explains why regional poverty descended on Appalachia when so many manufacturing jobs left for China in the age of globalism, leaving behind not just left-behind people but also people ripe for exploitation by nationalist politicians. The authors add, interestingly, that the same thing occurred in parts of Germany, Spain, and Norway that fell victim to the “China shock.” In what they call a “slightly technical aside,” they build a case for addressing trade issues not with trade wars but with consumption taxes: “It makes no sense to ask agricultural workers to lose their jobs just so steelworkers can keep theirs, which is what tariffs accomplish.” Policymakers might want to consider such counsel, especially when it is coupled with the observation that free trade benefits workers in poor countries but punishes workers in rich ones.
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-61039-950-0
Page Count: 432
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: Aug. 28, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
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