The Big Squeeze by Steven Greenhouse

Just got through chapter five, The Rise and Fall of the Social Contract, from Steven Greenhouse's The Big Squeeze: Tough Times for the American Worker (click here to view all my posts about this book).

The background about the post-war business atmosphere in America and Walter Reuther's (president of General Motors division of the United Auto Workers) negotiations with Charles E. Wilson (president of General Motors) that helped to create the social contract that started to collapse for blue-collar workers in the 1980s and for white-collar workers in the 1990s provided an educational break from the heart-wrenching from the first few chapters.

Stories of Jefferson, Wiscosin's Chuck Moehling (a Tyson Foods pepperoni plant worker); of Birmingham, Alabama-native and former worker at North Miami Sam's Club Farris Cobb; of Bartlesville, Oklahoma-native Drew Pooters, a career retail worker and manager; and Dominican Republic immigrant Julia Ortiz fighting for wages at least equal to the federal minimum wage.

Expect to read more about this book...

The Big Squeeze: Tough Times for the American Worker

I've read just a few chapters of The Big Squeeze: Tough Times for the American Worker by New York Times labor and workplace correspondent Steven Greenhouse (click here to view all my posts about this book).

So far, much of the data is the same as from David Cay Johnston's Free Lunch: How the Wealthiest Americans Enrich Themselves at Government Expense (and Stick You with the Bill) and Perfectly Legal: The Covert Campaign to Rig Our Tax System to Benefit the Super Rich - and Cheat Everybody Else.

And the chapters of this book, like Johnston's book, each read like separate articles/essays with a common theme. But what is different from Johnston's books is the human aspect -- Johnston tells the stories of hard-working men and women (and their families) and their struggle as employees of mostly big corporations to join the middle class.

In that sense, this book is a lot like what I would expect of Barbara Ehrenreich's Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America (2001), which I wrote a short paragraph about here.

Looking forward to reading more of The Big Squeeze, particularly once I get to where Greenhouse discusses examples of employers who treat their employees well.

Click here to view the table of contents or click here to to download a PDF excerpt.

The Shadow Factory: The Ultra-Secret NSA from 9/11 to the Eavesdropping on America by James Bamford

James Bamford -- author of Body of Secrets: Anatomy of the Ultra-Secret National Security Agency, The Puzzle Palace: Inside the National Security Agency, America's Most Secret Intelligence Organization, and A Pretext for War: 9/11, Iraq, and the Abuse of America's Intelligence Agencies -- has a new book out about the NSA's spying on average Americans. Click here to read a recent article from The New York Times about the author.

As I understand it, Bamford (with the help of former intercept operators) exposes how private contractors have done the sensitive work of storing and processing the voices and written data of Americans and non-Americans alike and that the NSA has created a massive facility in Texs to store such data.

I realize national security isn't of much interest to most folks with the current financial crisis, but The Shadow Factory: The Ultra-Secret NSA from 9/11 to the Eavesdropping on America seems like an important book.

Click here to submit a question for the author for his 3pm online discussion today (October 14) on the Washington Post website.

David Cay Johnston on the bailout bill

Whether you were for or against the bailout bill, these three essays by David Cay Johnston, written for The Plank (a blog for The New Republic) are worth reading:

• Who Benefits From the Bailout?
• Celebrating The Bailout Bill's Failure--And Looking Ahead
• Time to Take a Step Back

I've been a long-time fan of Johnston's investigative reporting for The New York Times and after recently reading two of his books -- Perfectly Legal: The Covert Campaign to Rig Our Tax System to Benefit the Super Rich - and Cheat Everybody Else (click here to read an excerpt of the book or click here to read my entries on this book) and Free Lunch: How the Wealthiest Americans Enrich Themselves at Government Expense (and Stick You with the Bill) (click here to read my entries on this book or click here to read excerpts and view the table of contents on the author’s website for this book) -- I've come to trust Johnston as an advocate for the common person.

It seems to me that instead of doing concrete research into how the bailout bill might affect Americans and the global economy, most media sources were simply fear-mongering about the chaos that we were doomed to if the bailout failed to pass. I'm also disappointed that Congress appears not to have considered alternatives to the bailout bill initially proposed by Hank Paulson and instead just worked to improve it.

It couldn't have hurt them to talk to some of the world's economists who had differing opinions.

Absent that, we can trust Johnston to speak up for us.

Gaming the Vote by William Poundstone

With the presidential elections coming up, more and more folks seem to be talking about range voting -- how if we were only as smart as other countries we would have adopted range voting and people could have voted for Ralph Nader and still gotten Al Gore as our county's 43rd president.

So when I read Scientific American's review on William Poundstone's Why Elections Aren’t Fair (and What We Can Do About It), I thought it was worth writing about. When I first heard about this book in Janet Maslin's New York Times book review "Just Tell Us Whom You Want to Win" published March 20, 2008, I wasn't interested in reading it.

But with the election getting closer, it seems more and more relevant.

Poundstone calculates that at least 5 out of 45 presidential elections since 1828 have gone to the second-most-popular candidate because of spoilers -- a failure rate of more than 11 percent for our voting system.

I'm curious about what Poundstone ultimately concludes after his discussion of alternative voting systems.

Click here to view the table of contents or click here to read an excerpt.

As for the other books mentioned by Scientific American -- Physics for Future Presidents: The Science Behind the Headlines by Richard A. Muller and Electronic Elections: The Perils and Promises of Digital Democracy by R. Michael Alvarez and Thad E. Hall -- don't appeal as much to me.

To learn more about Physics for Future Presidents, click here; click here to view the table of contents for Electronic Election or click here to read an excerpt of Chapter 1 in PDF format (also available in HTML format here).

Friends' Recommendations

Three friends each recommended a book this week:

• Heirloom: Notes from an Accidental Farmer by Tim Stark
• One Party Country: The Republican Plan for Dominance in the 21st Century by Tom Hamburger and Peter Wallsten
• I Don't: A Contrarian History of Marriage by Susan Squire

The first book is a memoir about producing organic veggies on a small farm in Pennsylvania Dutch country, after giving up his city life in Brooklyn, NY.  Using an old Toyota pickup, he transported his first auspicious crop of Hill Billies, Tiger Toms and Radiator Charlie's Mortgage Lifters to the Union Square Greenmarket and soon began to sell his produce to New York's posh kitchens.

Considering my ongoing interest in gardening, and my enjoyment of books related to organic food, I think I would rather enjoy this book. Though I'm not sure I've got time for it.

Click here to read an excerpt of Heirloom.



One Party Country is by two The Los Angeles Times journalists -- Wallsten covers the White House and national politics and Hamburger is an investigative reporter.

The author's premise is that despite the Bush Administration's current unpopularity, the Republican domination of American politics is unlikely to end anytime soon due to the powerful Republican machine. Thanks to Karl Rove and others, the Republicans have identified and commodified every potential vote in the nation through large-scale fundraising, targeted single-issue marketing, manipulative gerrymandering, and more.

Definitely relevant to this year's presidential election and possibly worth reading, but not sure it'll jump to the top of my list of books to read.

Click here to read an excerpt.



And the last book is about the history of marriage from Adam and Eve to modern times. In irreverent laugh-out-loud-funny prose, Squire argues that marriage was developed to establish paternity by controlling the sex life of women. It received a favorable review from Slate's Dahlia Lithwick in her New York Times book review "I Now Pronounce You Totally Confused" published September 5, 2008.Click here to read an excerpt of I Don't.

I'm always interested in learning about the history of our traditions so I Don't is definitely my kind of book. I'll have to put it on my list to read next year.

Funny that all of these books were featured on NPR -- guess that's what everyone's listening to these days.

The Lizard King: the True Crimes and Passions of the World's Greatest Reptile Smugglers by Bryan Christy

I subscribe to a several e-newsletters from major publishers, including Random House, Penguin Group, Hachette Book Group, and many more.

I just read the latest Nonfiction e-newsletter from Hachette where I read about Bryan Christy's The Lizard King: the True Crimes and Passions of the World's Greatest Reptile Smugglers.

Reading Janet Maslin's review of this book -- "Coldblooded Commerce in Coldblooded Contraband" published August 6, 2008 in the New York Times -- and Terri Jentz review of this book -- "Cold-Blooded" published August 15, 2008 in the New York Times -- makes me think this book will be quite a page-turner. And Bryan Christy's website is worth a look for more information.


Here's what the publisher has to say about this book:

Imagine The Sopranos, with snakes! The Lizard King is a fascinating account of a father and son family business suspected of smuggling reptiles, and the federal agent who tried to take them down.

When Bryan Christy began to investigate the world of reptile smuggling, he had no idea what he would be in for. In the course of his research, he was bitten between the eyes by a blood python, chased by a mother alligator, and sprayed by a bird-eating tarantula. But perhaps more dangerous was coming face to face with Michael J. Van Nostrand, owner of Strictly Reptiles, a thriving family business in Hollywood, Florida. Van Nostrand imports as many as 300,000 iguanas each year (over half the total of America's most popular imported reptile), as well as hundreds of thousands of snakes, lizards, frogs, spiders, and scorpions.

Van Nostrand was suspected of being a reptile smuggler by Special Agent Chip Bepler of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, who devoted years of his life in an obsessive quest to expose The Lizard King's cold-blooded crimes. How this cat-and-mouse game ended is engrossing and surprising.

Sounds like a book on an obscure topic that will be hard to put down -- just the kind of stuff I love!

The latest Hachette Nonfiction e-newsletter also included:

• Wild Boy: My Life in Duran Duran by Andy Taylor
• The Last Undercover: The True Story of an FBI Agent's Dangerous Dance with Evil by Bob Hamer (click here to read an excerpt)
• Mike's Election Guide 2008 by Michael Moore (click here to read the table of contents; click here to read an excerpt)
• The Lizard King: the True Crimes and Passions of the World's Greatest Reptile Smugglers by Bryan Christy (click here to read an excerpt)
• Measure of the Heart: A Father's Alzheimer's, A Daughter's Return by Mary Ellen Geist (click here to read an excerpt)
• Hard Call: Great Decisions and the Extroardinary People Who Made Them by John McCain (click here to view the table of contents; click here to read an excerpt)
• The Other Woman: Twenty-one Wives, Lovers, and Others Talk Openly About Sex, Deception, Love, and Betrayal edited by Victoria Zackheim (click here to read an excerpt)

The Last Undercover: The True Story of an FBI Agent's Dangerous Dance with Evil by Bob Hamer, a 26-year veteran of the FBI's undercover operations, also sounds interesting.

Thankfully I have my hands full with lots of library books so I won't be tempted to go find copies of any of these books -- at least not for another month.

I.O.U.S.A.

I just got back from I.O.U.S.A.: LIVE with Warren Buffett, Pete Peterson & Dave Walker, a primer on why we should be concerned about the rising national debt, in a packed house -- click here to watch a trailer.

As you may recall, there is a billboard-size clock near Times Square was put up by Seymour B. Durst in the late 1980's to bring attention to government borrowing. It had been turned off for nearly two years starting in 2000 while the federal government was flush with surpluses when in 2002 it flickered back to life, showing a national debt of $6.1 trillion, as George W. Bush's presidency racked up the national debt quickly.

The national debt has continued to increase an average of $1.86 billion per day since September 28, 2007 and is now over $9.7 trillion thanks to an ever-expanding government and military, increased international competition, and debts to foreign countries that are becoming impossible to honor. That makes each citizen's share of this debt more than $30,000! And according to I.O.U.S.A. that number rises to $53 trillion when you take into account total unfunded and overextended entitlement programs (Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid).

I.O.U.S.A. examines the rapidly growing national debt and its consequences for the United States and its citizens by following U.S. Comptroller General David Walker (who has resigned as head of the Government Accountability Office to be a more politically active in the grassroots effort to education Americans about the problem of our national debt) and Robert Bixby director of the Concord Coalition) as they crisscross the country during their "Fiscal Wake Up Tour" explaining America’s unsustainable fiscal policies to its citizens.

The documentary was written and directed by the husband and wife team of Patrick Creadon and Christine O'Malley and based in part on Empire of Debt: The Rise of an Epic Financial Crisis by William Bonner and Addison Wiggin, who also wrote Financial Reckoning Day: Surviving the Soft Depression of the 21st Century.

Topical and nonpartisan, I.O.U.S.A. drives home the message that we must mend our spendthrift ways or face an economic disaster of epic proportions while proposing solutions about how we can recreate a fiscally sound nation for future generations.

It features a number of candid appearances, including by Warren Buffett, Alan Greenspan, Paul Volcker, Peter G. Peterson, Sens. Kent Conrad and Judd Gregg, former Treasury Secretaries Paul O'Neill and Robert Rubin, former CBO chief Alice Rivlin, Rep. Ron Paul, Bob Bixby, and David M. Walker.

Watching the movie made me think of all the ways the super rich are cheating the tax code and other government regulations at the expense of everyday Americans -- which I learned all about from David Cay Johnston’s Perfectly Legal: The Covert Campaign to Rig Our Tax System to Benefit the Super Rich - and Cheat Everybody Else (click here to read my entries on this book or click here to read an excerpt of the book) and Free Lunch: How the Wealthiest Americans Enrich Themselves at Government Expense (and Stick You with the Bill) (click here to read my entries on this book or click here to read excerpts and view the table of contents on the author's website for this book).

I.O.U.S.A. premiered at the Sundance Film Festival 2008 where it was nominated for the Grand Jury Prize. It also played at the 2008 Maryland Film Festival where it was a huge hit -- sold out in nearly every showing!

I.O.U.S.A.: LIVE with Warren Buffett, Pete Peterson & Dave Walker was broadcast via satellite to about 400 theaters nationwide. The documentary was immediately followed by a live satellite broadcast of a fantastic 45-minute town meeting style Q&A on the US economy from Omaha with America's most notable financial leaders and policy experts, including:

• Warren Buffett, CEO of Berkshire Hathaway
• William Niskanen, chairman of the CATO Institute
• Bill Novelli, CEO of AARP
• Pete Peterson, senior chairman of The Blackstone Group and chairman of the Peter G. Peterson Foundation
• Dave Walker, president & CEO of the Peter G. Peterson Foundation and former U.S. Comptroller General.

Agora Financial's Addison Wiggin (who concieved of, co-written and executive produced the movie) and David Walker (President and CEO of the Peter G. Peterson Foundation which purchased the movie in July 2008) are also releasing a book I.O.U.S.A to accompany new feature-length documentary based on the writings of Agora's The Daily Reckoning. It features stories about the people involved in making decisions about the four major deficits in the country (federal deficit, trade deficit, savings deficit, and leadership deficit) including Warren Buffet, Robert Rubin, Alice Rivlin, Pete Peterson, David Walker, Paul O'Neill, James Areddy, and Bill Bonner.

Click here to download the Peter G Peterson Foundation's Citizens Guide, intended to provide a clear and concise summary of where our nation stands financially and where it is headed fiscally.

I.O.U.S.A. opens in 12 cities nationwide Friday August 22, 2008:

• Atlanta
• Chicago
• Dallas
• Irvine, CA
• Omaha
• Miami
• Kansas City
• Los Angeles
• New York
• Philadelphia
• San Francisco
• Washington DC

And after tonight, other theaters nationwide may decide they want to show it too!

Now maybe I should finally get to reading my copy of Peter G. Peterson's Running on Empty: How the Democratic and Republican Parties Are Bankrupting Our Future and What Americans Can Do about It!

Click here to view the table of contents of Running on Empty; or click here to read an excerpt; or click here to read a chapter by chapter summary.

But first, I'm going to read Warren Buffet's essay about Squanderville and Thriftville titled "Why I'm not buying the U.S. dollar," published in Fortune Magazine in October 2003 and mentioned in I.O.U.S.A.

Most U.S. Corporations Pay No Income Tax

Just read "Most U.S. Corporations Pay No Income Tax" published August 13, 2008 in the New York Times DealBook blog. Here's an excerpt:

Two out of every three United States corporations paid no federal income taxes from 1998 through 2005, according to a report released Tuesday by the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress.

...

Among foreign corporations, a slightly higher percentage, 68 percent, did not pay taxes during the period covered — compared with 66 percent for United States corporations. Even with these numbers, corporate tax receipts have risen sharply as a percentage of federal revenue in recent years.

Immediately made me think of David Cay Johnston's Perfectly Legal: The Covert Campaign to Rig Our Tax System to Benefit the Super Rich - and Cheat Everybody Else (click here to read my entries on this book) and Free Lunch: How the Wealthiest Americans Enrich Themselves at Government Expense (and Stick You with the Bill) (click here to read my entries on this book).

Now let's see if Senate, armed with this GAO data, actually makes any changes!

Perfectly Legal by David Cay Johnston

I've finally finished reading David Cay Johnston's Perfectly Legal: The Covert Campaign to Rig Our Tax System to Benefit the Super Rich - and Cheat Everybody Else!

I have also read Free Lunch (click here to read my entries on that book) and I felt like while I preferred Free Lunch, I really think the preference was mostly due to the order in which I read these books.

Had I read Perfectly Legal first, I think I would have liked Perfectly Legal more than I liked Free Lunch. (Sorta how I felt about Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code versus Angels & Demons having read The Da Vinci Code first.)

Funny how that works huh?

Still I like how David Cay Johnston concludes both books with calls for action and discussion of some potential solutions -- he actually ends both books with "Reform begins with you."

I particularly like this story from the conclusion of Perfectly Legal:

There is a fable of a village in wine country where each fall, after the grapes have been crushed and the vintage bottled, a bacchanal is held. Each vinter climbs a ladder in the town square and pours into a common cask a jug of his wine. One year the last vinter making the climb had fallen on hard times. The weather had not been kind to his grapes and he felt pinched. He decided that no one would notice if he thinned the wine with a jug of water. When he came down from the ladder, everyone applauded and the mayor swung a mallet to knock the cork from the base of the cask, out of which flowed clear water.

The moral is that when one person cheats, no one but the cheat notices. But when everyone cheats, there is no party for anyone.

Now on to cheerier books, I hope.

Perfectly Legal by David Cay Johnston

I've been very slowly reading David Cay Johnston's Perfectly Legal: The Covert Campaign to Rig Our Tax System to Benefit the Super Rich - and Cheat Everybody Else!

I really enjoyed reading Johnson's 2007 Free Lunch (click here to read my entries on that book) but have had a much harder time getting through Perfectly Legal; while the material in each book is different, they book have the same feel and I guess I've had enough of hearing about how the super-rich are profiting from ordinary middle class and lower class Americans.


To find out more, click here to read James K. Galbraith's New York Times review of this book titled " Nothing Is Certain but Death" and published in February 2004 or click here to read an excerpt from the author's website for this book.

Click here to read Johnston's articles published in the New York Times.

Working Longer: The Solution to the Retirement Income Challenge by Alicia H. Munnell and Steven A. Sass

I just read a review of Working Longer: The Solution to the Retirement Income Challenge by Alicia H. Munnell and Steven A. Sass -- "Who Wants to Retire Later? (Don’t Laugh)" by Harry Hurt III published in the New York Times on July 20, 2008.

These two highly qualified individuals -- Sass is associate director of the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College and Munnell is director of the Center for Retirement Research, the Peter F. Drucker Professor of Management Sciences at Boston College’s Carroll School of Management, and a former member of the president’s Council of Economic Advisers under President Clinton -- estimate that people who retire at age 65 today can expect Social Security to provide the equivalent of only 39 percent of their incomes after deductions for basic Medicare contributions while those who plan to retire later can expect declining net benefits.

Clearly, Social Security will not be available for people in my generation and it will be interesting to see how our parents generation copes with retirement or lack of retirement.

Click here to view the table of contents or click here to read an excerpt -- both courtesy of Brookings Institute Press (the publisher).

The Political Mind by George Lakoff

Just read William Saletan's "Neuro-Liberalism" published June 22, 2008 in the New York Times Sunday Book Review, a review of The Political Mind: Why You Can’t Understand 21st-Century Politics With an 18th-Century Brain by George Lakoff.

George Lakoff is Richard and Rhoda Goldman Distinguished Professor of Cognitive Science and Linguistics at the University of California at Berkeley and Senior Fellow at the Rockridge Institute, a think tank in Berkeley, and The Political Mind sounds like a guide for progressive politicians.

As Lakoff explains:

American values are fundamentally progressive, centered on equality, human rights, social responsibility, and the inclusion of all. Yet progressives have, without knowing why, given conservatives an enormous advantage in the culture war. The radical conservatives seek and have already begun to introduce: an authoritarian hierarchy based on vast concentrations and control of wealth; order based on fear, intimidation, and obedience; a broken government; no balance of power; priorities shifted from the public sector to the corporate and military sectors; responsibility shifted from society to the individual; control of elections through control of who votes and how the votes are counted; control of ideas through the media; and patriarchal family values projected upon religion, politics, and the market.

Lakoff's suggestions for progressives, according to Saletan, are also interesting:

What should progressives say? That conservatism is “fundamentally antidemocratic.” It “tells us to save your own skin and not to care about your neighbor,” so “conservatives don’t pay that much attention to injured veterans.”

I don't know how much I buy into all of this but I'm certainly curious to hear more about Lakoff's theories!

Free Lunch by David Cay Johnston

I stayed up late last night to finish reading David Cay Johnston's eye-opening Free Lunch: How the Wealthiest Americans Enrich Themselves at Government Expense (and Stick You with the Bill) (click here to read my other entries on this book).

I've never considered myself a populist but reading this book made me feel outraged at the rising income inequality in our country and the government's role in increasing this tragedy.

In Chapter 26, Not Since Hoover, Johnston expands on the income inequality data that was first discussed in Chapter 2, Mr. Reagan’s Question, and finally answers my question about whether those numbers quoted are for individuals or families. The answer, "A single person and a family are each counted as one unit. For simplicity we will treat each unit as having an equal share of the population."

Having grown up in the 80s, I remember my parent's admiration for President Reagan and his tax cuts. I didn't know until now that the top income tax rate was 70% before Reagan's presidency (today the top tax rate is just 35% and people balk at that).

Shockingly, Johnston's data shows that for the top 400 "very-highest-income taxpayers" (about 1,200 people), "Under Clinton, their effective tax rate fell by almost eight cents on the dollar; under Bush, it fell only five." And people always say that it's just Republicans who give tax cuts!

And about those 400 "very-highest-income taxpayers," in 2000 each one had an income of at least $88 million with an average of almost $174 million each.

What I really liked was Johnston's call to action. His proposal to extend the franking privilege (allowing every Congressman to send out all the mail they want for free) to expenses is not one I'd heard before. But it seems like a viable solution to cutting out the influence of lobbyists. Johnston's proposal is this:

Let each member of Congress spend however much he or she deems necessary to do his or her job. . . .

This would come at a price: No more free trips, no more free meals, and no more gifts. Senator, if you need to inspect the cleanliness of the sink behind the bar at a resort in Tahiti, go right ahead, just give us the receipts with an explanation of the costs. We will collect the receipts from every elected representative monthly and post it all on the Internet in a format that makes for easy analysis.

Every dollar, and every meeting, must be disclosed. And we will pay for it all, subject only to the usual penalties for embezzling, the punishments accorded by the full House or Senate because of their exclusive right to judge the fitness of members, or the decision by voters to oust a spendthrift.

. . .

Let us also pay the real cost of maintaining two households, one back home and one in Washington, as well as going back and forth as often as the lawmaker chooses. Sure the Congresswoman from Hawaii will spend more on travel than the one from Northern Virginia, but people are smart enough to figure that out.

. . .

Reform begins with you.

I can't say that I'll go out and get involved in politics. But I'm glad to have read this book and learned about some of the ways that the rich are getting richer with the government's help at the expense of the average American.

If you want to hear more, click here to visit NPR and listen to Johnston speak about Free Lunch.



I'm looking forward to reading Johnston's Perfectly Legal: The Covert Campaign to Rig Our Tax System to Benefit the Super Rich - and Cheat Everybody Else!

I hate tax time not because I don't want to pay taxes but simply because it seems so confusing.

I certainly believe Johnston's premise that the "Super Rich" benefit from such a complicated tax system and I'm curious to read Johnston's proposal to fix the broken tax system.

And I may just have to track down a copy of Johnston's Temples of Chance: How America Inc. Bought Out Murder Inc. to Win Control of the Casino Business, a New Jersey casino industry expose (published in 1992).

Free Lunch by David Cay Johnston - Student Loans

I've been reading Free Lunch: How the Wealthiest Americans Enrich Themselves at Government Expense (and Stick You with the Bill) by David Cay Johnston (click here to read my other entry on this book) and just got through Chapter 14, Indentured Scholars

.Reading this chapter made me feel very thankful that I do not have student loans. Johnston tells readers that about two-thirds of college students who graduate are in debt, and many owe more than their parents make in one or even several years!

Did you know that students borrow about $85 billion each year with repayment guaranteed by the federal government? Even if you go bankrupt, federal law prohibits clearing student loans!

In 2003, I was fortunate to hear Noam Chomsky give a talk at MIT. I don't recall the topic of his speech, but I clearly remember his argument that the purpose of student loans is to make young adults functional members of society. It does this by saddling students with debt that requires them to earn a decent salary, thus preventing them from protesting or other activities that students in the 1960s and 1970s did instead of working.

While Johnston doesn't explicitly state this conspiracy theory as Chomsky did back in 2003, he is equally harsh in his criticisms of the student loan industry (which has come under fire recently for kickbacks paid to universities).

Personally, I think the whole college / university system has gone mad. In recent years, tuition has skyrocketed at most colleges and admission rates have plummeted. Parents are grooming their kids at ever younger ages to get them into the "right" college.

It all seems crazy to me.

Free Lunch: How the Wealthiest Americans Enrich Themselves at Government Expense (and Stick You with the Bill) by David Cay Johnston

I've just started reading Free Lunch: How the Wealthiest Americans Enrich Themselves at Government Expense (and Stick You with the Bill) by David Cay Johnston (click here to read Jonathan Chait's New York Times review of this book titled "Other People's Money" and published in February 2008).

Johnston is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist for the New York Times whose best seller Perfectly Legal won the 2004 Investigative Book of the Year award (I've checked that out of the library as well but haven't started it yet).

Free Lunch is really a fascinating book!

I didn't know that the average income of the bottom 90% of Americans (what Johnston calls the "vast manjority") was just $29,000 in 2005 (down from $33,000 in 1973). To be in the top 10% of Americans in 2005, you only had to make $100,000 per year and to be in the top 0.1% just $1.7 million per year. Johnston wrote about this and more about income inequality in Chapter 2, Mr. Reagan's Question, named for Ronald Reagan's famous campaign question from nearly 30 years ago "Are you better off now than you were four years ago?" [Corrected May 27, 2008.]

I'm in the middle of Chapter 9, Goin' Fishin, which describes the subsidies that Cabelas, Bass Pro Shops, Wal-Mart and other large national chains receive from local governments. I'd heard much about the sins of Wal-Mart and reading this book finally made those comments hit home.

Most distressing was Chapter 3, Trust and Consequences, in which I learned that Amtrak -- while government owned -- uses privately owned tracks and has signed contracts to be financially responsible for all claims arising from Amtrak passengers, even if CSX or other parties are at fault for negligence. Since Amtrak is owned by the government, that results in taxpayers paying for all such claims even if a private company is at fault.

I will write more when I finish this shocking book!

Click here to view the table of contents and read a few excerpts from the author's website for this book.

The Forbes Book of Great Business Letters: Best of the Best

I finished reading The Forbes Book of Great Business Letters: Memos, Missives, Pitches, Proposals and E-Mails (edited by Erik Bruun) last week and I want to share some of my favorite letters from this book with you.

There were many fantastic letters (especially some of the ones that are copyrighted) so I've chosen some that I believe to be in the public domain. Some of the letters in The Forbes Book of Great Business Letters were several pages long but the ones I've listed here were all one page letters.

This letter offers wonderful advice on how to be a good businessman (and a good doctor).

Dr. Benjamin Rush to William Claypoole (Advice)

July 29, 1782

The following short directions to Dr. Claypoole were given as the parting advice of his friend and master. If properly attended to, they will ensure him business and happiness in North Carolina.

1. Take care of the poor. By becoming faithful over a few, you will become a ruler over many. When you are called to visit a poor patient, imagine you hear a voice sounding in your ears, "Take care of him, and I will repay thee."
2. Go regularly to some place of worship. A physician cannot be a bigot. Worship with Mohamitans rather than stay at home on Sundays.
3. Never resent an affront offered to you by a sick man.
4. Avoid intimacies with your patients if possible, and visit them only in sickness.
5. Never sue a patient, but after a year's service get a bond from him if possible.
6. Receive as much pay as possible in goods or the produce of the country. Men have not half the attachment to these things that they have to money.
7. Acquire a habit of visiting your patients regularly at one certain hour.
8. Never dispute a bill. Always make reductions rather than quarrel with an old and profitable patient.
9. Don't insert trifling advice or services in a bill. You can incorporate them with important matters such as a pleurisy or the reduction of a bone.
10. Never make light (to a patient) of any case.
11. Never appear in a hurry in a sickroom, nor talk of indifferent matters till you have examined and prescribed for your patient.

Yours sincerely,
Benjamin Rush

This satirical letter from a Texan farmer to his congressman pokes fun of the irrationality of federal farm subsidies.

J. B. Lee, Jr., to Congressman Ed Foreman (Business and Government)

March 20, 1963
The Honorable Ed Foreman
House of Representatives
Congressional District # 16
Washington 25, D.C.

Dear Sir,

My friend over in Terebone Parisk received a check for $1,000 check from the government this year for not raising hogs. So I am going into the not-raising hogs business next year.

What I want to know is, in your opinion, what is the best kind of farm not to raise hogs on and the best kind of hogs not to raise? I would prefer not to raise Razorbacks, but if that is not a good breed not to raise, I will just as gladly not raise any Berkshires or Durocs.

The hardest work in this business is going to be in keeping an inventory of how many hogs I haven't raised.

My friend is very joyful about the future of the business. He has been raising hogs for more than 20 years and the best he ever made on them was $400, until this year when he got $1,000 for not raising hogs.

If I get $1,000 for not raising 50 hogs, then will I get $2,000 for not raising 100 hogs? I plan to operate on a small scale at first, holding myself down to about 4,000 hogs which means I will have $80,000 coming from the government.

Now, another thing; these hogs I will not raise will not eat 100,000 bushels of corn. I understand that you also pay farmers for not raising corn. So will you pay me anything for not raising 100,000 bushels of corn not to feed the hogs I am not raising?

I want to get started as soon as possible as this seems to be a good time of year for not raising hogs.

One more thing, can I raise 10 or 12 hogs on the side while I am in the not-raising-hogs-business just enough to get a few sides of bacon to eat?

Very truly yours,

J. B. Lee, Jr.

Potential Hog Raiser

This one from Clyde Barrow to Henry Ford is amusing. It was written six weeks before being gunned down with Bonnie Parker.

Clyde Barrow to Henry Ford (Compliments and Complaints)

Tulsa Okla
10th April [1934]
Mr. Henry Ford
Detroit Mich.

Dear Sir:--

While I still have got breath in my lungs I will tell you what a dandy car you make. I have drove Fords exclusively when I could get away with one. For sustained speed and freedom from trouble the Ford has got ever[y] other car skinned, and even if my business hasn't been strickly legal it don't hurt enything to tell you what a fine car you got in the V8.

Yours truly,

Clyde Champion Barrow

This letter from Andrew Carnegie just after he sold Carnegie Steel to J. P. Morgan for $480 million marks the beginning of Carnegie's second career as a philanthropist.

Andrew Carnegie to Henry Phipps Jr. (Deals)

5 West 51st Street
Sunday eve.

My dear H.P.

Mr. Stetson has just called to tell me it is closed, all fixed -- big times on Stock Exchange tomorrow.

Well, this is a step in my life -- a great change, but after a time, when I get down to new conditions, I shall become I believe a wiser and more useful man, and besides live a dignified old age as long as life is granted, something few reach.

Yours,
A. C.

Sinclair Lewis (first American to win the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1930) received a letter from one woman offering to work as his secretary ("Dear Mr. Lewis," she wrote, "I'll do everything for you -- and when I say everything I mean everything") and Lewis's wife Dorothy Thompson replied on behalf of her husband.

Dorothy Thompson to an Admirer of Her Husband (Employment)

My dear Miss--:

My husband already has a stenographer who handles his work for him. And, as for "everything" I take care of that myself -- and when I say everything I mean everything.

Dorothy Thompson
(Mrs. Sinclair Lewis to you.)

The Kentucky Distillers’ Co offer to sell its list of customers to the Keeley Institute, the widely known alcoholics’ sanatorium is another one that makes me laugh:

Kentucky Distillers to Alcoholic's Sanitorium (Marketing)

Kansas City, Mo.
Dec. 3, 1913.
Keeley Institute
Dwight, Illinois

Gentlemen: Our customers are your prospective patients. We can put on your desk a mailing of over 50,000 individual consumers of liquor. The list is the result of thousands of dollars of advertising.

Each individual on the list is a regular user of liquor. The list of names is new, live and active. We know this because we have circularized it regularly. We furnish this list in quantities at the prices listed below. Remittance to accompany each order.

40,000 to 50,000 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $400
20,000 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $300
10,000 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $200

We will not furnish this list in lots less than 10,000. Discontinuance of business January 1, is the occasion for selling our mailing list.

Yours truly,
Kentucky Distillers' Co
W. Franklin, President

Hope you enjoy these as much as I have!