The Wrecking Crew: How Conservatives Rule

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In his previous book, Thomas Frank explained why working America votes for politicians who reserve their favors for the rich. Now, in Wrecking Crew, Frank examines the Washington those politicians have given us, showing why, no matter what happens in November 2008, we’re stuck with it for the foreseeable future.   

    Casting back to the early days of the conservative revolution, Frank describes the rise of a ruling coalition dedicated to dismantling government. But rather than cutting down the big government they claim to hate, conservatives have simply sold it off, deregulating some industries, defunding others, but always turning public policy into a private-sector bidding war. Washington itself has been remade into a golden landscape of super-wealthy suburbs and gleaming lobbyist headquarters. And though arch-lobbyist Jack Abramoff has crashed and burned, the government-by-entrepreneurship he pioneered so outrageously has become the law of the land.

    It is no coincidence, Frank argues, that the same politicians who guffaw at the idea of effective government have installed a regime in which incompetence is the rule. Nor will the country easily shake off the consequences of deliberate misgovernment through the usual election remedies. Obsessed with achieving a lasting victory, conservatives have taken pains to enshrine the free market as the permanent creed of state.

    Stamped with Frank’s audacity, analytic brilliance, and wit, Wrecking Crewis his most revelatory work yet—and his most important.

What Customers Say About The Wrecking Crew: How Conservatives Rule:

This book is great if you're a devout American.COMMUNIST. If ultra-lib filth are fawning all over this piece of trash, I knowit's an early warning signal to all Patriotic Americans; Buyer Beware.

As they discovered in the years between Reagan and Bush II, the bigger government is the more lucrative opportunities it offers for profits and plunder through the privatization and outsourcing of its functions."Smaller government" is really a code term for ineffectual government. It is just one of the many customary lies that political parties tell people in order to gain their trust so you can betray that trust later. Consequently, they see government as a scam in which one group gains control in order to loot the public treasury and pillage the public trust. The trick, then, is to convince the public that it is normal and natural for governments to be corrupt, so they might as well do away with regulation altogether, and let the efficient market and Nature take its course; i.e., let the rich continue to grow richer until they become an aristocracy of wealth that owns the country outright, while the rest of us "commoners" struggle to keep from drowning in a sea of debt.

Thus, they regard any talk about the government improving the nation or the lives of the people in it as fundamentally dishonest. The Republicans believe that there is no such thing as "the common good." Rather, they believe that people are fundamentally selfish and only out for themselves; so when they band together to pursue their interests, they create a vicious zero-sum game in which the devil takes the hindmost. When the government is an honest beat cop, they can't get away with much. Next, "starve the beast," by underfunding and understaffing the agency, so that it becomes so dysfunctional that nobody in their right mind would want to work there. Since they see the role of government as primarily one of redistributing wealth from one group or stratum of society to another, their primary concern is to make sure that it is they who are sitting in the Brinks truck that is backed up to the U.S.

But when cop on the beat is on the take, they can fleece the public like it's almost legal. Then, deliberately enact programs that cannot possibly work, and then when they fail, blame it on the inability of government to do anything right. Governing is not about, well, _governing._ It is a mad scramble to see how much of the public treasury you can make off and how many permanent advantages you can vote yourself with before the public catches on and throws you out. The Wrecking Crew describes how this plutocatization done. Treasury.

Despite their much publicized preference for "smaller" government, there is actually no size of government that the Republicans would find acceptable. First, replace the all the dedicated career civil servants whose years of experience and actual expertise might prove useful with third-rate party hacks, wild-eyed ideologues, and people from industry who are hostile to the regulatory mission of the agency. And, keep on repeating this process until there is no effective government left and nobody is sorry to see it go.At this point, unaccountable corporate CEOs will be making policies formerly made by elected officials, and it will be implemented by the hidden hand of the corporation using its vast wealth to work its will on unregulated markets.

I could write my own book opposing the views pointed out in this book, but I'll just list some statements and say if you believe these statements this might be for you:Government is good and does great things.Government is held back from it's greatness by conservatives.Government needs to grow and pay it's people better.Conservatives hate the governmental system as it was created.Conservatives are out to do nothing more than undermine and destroy the government.Our financial crisis was caused wholly by allowing the free market principals to rule (not government meddling that congress was doing to force bad loans)I read books from both sides of the aisle, but this is really for the extreme leftist conspiracy theorist in your life. There is little basis in fact, but pre-supposes the worst throughout the book. If you choose to see the world from a less extreme point of view you can look up some of the information discussed in the book and you will find if you think for yourself that the views in this book are very extreme and you have to assume the worst of every event discussed.

Purchased this book as a gift for my nephew who loves to read non-fiction, esp. books on political subjects. Received item within a few days of placing the order, packaging was good, and item was in excellent condition.

This was purchased for my husband. He has been reading it although quite slowly as it is not a "cannot put down" book. He said he likes it, but finds it also depressing.