Enlightened Office Politics Review

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(More customer reviews)What are the forces in the workplace that can make or break your career? How can one deal effectively with situations ranging from water-cooler chats to conferences in your boss' office? How can one navigate more smoothly office politics and power plays? What is the difference between lying and spin-doctoring? These are some of the questions authors Michael and Deborah Dobson attempt to answer in this book which is loaded with career survival tips. Here are a few of their postulates: "Deal with the way things are, not the way you think they ought to be"; "Live your principles and life, not everyone else's"; "Be honest, or be quiet"; "Respect those who oppose you".Read the book, and step more confidently over those subtle and not so subtle traps in the corporate battle arena. The book illustrates much of what you may encounter, and is a helpful tool in preparing you for those experiences. After reading this book, continue your enlightenment with, "How To Master Change in Your Life" by Mary Carroll Moore. Both books contain practical and timely information.

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Office politics are often seen as the unethical manipulations of ruthless people. This text sheds light on office politics and shows readers how to keep up by using them in powerful, approriate ways that will keep their integrity intact.

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Lee's Law: How Singapore Crushes Dissent Review

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(More customer reviews)Like most Americans, I knew a few odd things about Singapore and nothing much about its history, politics, or the manner of life of its citizens. This terrific reporting done by Chris Lydgate reveals a lot to me that the strange episode of the kid getting caned for vandalism did not.
I did not know of the one party rule in that city-state and the ruthless and extreme measures taken to keep that power in the hands of the PAP. Small states in hostile areas often justify their need for police state measures because of their size and context in the nations around them. However, in nearly all those cases the threat never ends and the police powers are the normal way of life. In Singapore dissent was crushed by torture and long imprisonments (decades) without ever being charged with anything. This kind of brutality is beyond the comprehension of Americans. Why? Why the need to keep power by any means? This kind of government corrupts the fabric of the society it claims to protect.
Mr. Lydgate brings us the story of one Joshua Benjamin Jeyaretnam. He is a person who has given everything to the fight for social justice and political plurality in Singapore. Mr. Jeyaretnam is a man of talents and strength who led the opposition party (the Workers Party) to the PAP. The PAP used EVERY means to drive Jeyaretnam out of government including the courts. Singapore apparently has very strange laws about defamation and the PAP influence on the courts makes these strange laws subject to even stranger interpretations. For example, the suit that finally broke Mr. Jeyaretnam happened because he mentioned that an associate had placed a report on the podium in front of him. Somehow that constituted an endorsement of what was in the report! This subjected him to hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines and court costs.
This kind of abuse of the legal system to break anyone who would speak out is obscene to Americans. As are the threats of the prime minister to not refurbish the government-subsidized buildings in districts that voted for the opposition. These naked power plays seem something out of America's Tammany Hall days.
Singapore suffers from being a country that is really a huge city. The Prime Minister is a mayor with too much power over the other aspects of government. It isn't big enough to have sufficient other structures to dilute his power. While Singaporeans justly resent outside influence and recommendations for improvement, I think the advanced democracies need to work to make Singapore a more open and free society in terms of the rights of speech and freedom from government harassment for raising questions.
Mr. Jeyaretnam is the hero of this book and yet in his old age he is reduced to selling books from a stand on the street and is still harassed by hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines and court costs. Lovers of freedom and pluralism in the west should reach out and help the aged warrior. There must be some agency that could put together a fund to help him live the dignified life he deserves.
Thanks to Mr. Lydgate for bringing our attention to this important story and this hero of Singapore.

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The perils of dissent in Singapore are at the heart of this poignant story of the country's most prominent opposition politician, J. B. Jeyaretnam. Following the career of this ambitious lawyer, prosecutor, and judge, the book traces his subsequent disenchantment with the system, his stunning political breakthrough at Anson in l981, and the devastating consequences of his direct opposition to Lee Kuan Yew and the ruling government. A chilling insight into Singapore's politics, the book also raises questions about Singapore's brand of "Asian democracy."

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Blinded By the Right; the Conscience of an Ex-Conservative Review

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(More customer reviews)Though nowhere near the importance or writing quality of a Koestler book, nevertheless Brock's book blows the lid off the moral emptiness of movement "conservatives."
I'm "anonymous" for a reason: I witnessed a lot of the events that Brock portrays accurately in his book, and I am a conservative who was also a first-hand witness to the Gingrich revolution. I bought the book with the mindset that Brock was a scam artist and opportunist; I finished the book with the mindset that he has done this country, and true conservatives, a great service. Take it from me: though Brock may have lied in the past, in the service of his paymasters, he is NOT lying now.
Brock describes so accurately how hypocritical a lot of conservatives are. No one is flawless, but it's sickening to read Brock's chronicle, and to remember my own recollections, of how movement conservatives would attack others for the same behavior they themselves engage in.
Hypocrisy is just the tip of the iceberg. Brock accurately cites the bigotry that pervades the movement, especially sexual bigotry like homophobia. Movement conservatives' obsession with sex, which culminated in the constitutional bonfire of the Clinton impeachment, did not just cause the undoing of some conservative politicians' careers (Livingston, Gingrich), but is a particular epidemic of the movement. Washington is Sodom and Gomorrah rolled up into one, at least on the conservative side.
Sex, as well as disregard for the rule of law and common sense, is why conservatives went after Clinton. I was no fan of Clinton when he was in office, and my only beefs with him were legal (lying before a grand jury) and political, not personal. Still, I became sickened as the impeachment process wore on, but I laughed at the same time, because many Clinton critics' own personal lives would put Monica Lewinsky's to shame. And I remember being in Washington, and watching Hillary Clinton attacking a "vast right-wing conspiracy." Though I knew of many coordinated efforts to "get the Clintons," I was not aware of how vast this extra-constitutional effort really was. Brock is so incredibly precise in explaining the machinations, fueled by far right-wing money, of movement conservatives trying to undermine a sitting president.
I can't say enough about Brock's book. As a conservative, I am appalled at how the party of Reagan and Lincoln has been taken over by hucksters, charlatans and confidence men, posing as principled members of the right. With both political extremes showing themselves capable of pursuing their aims at all costs, I fear for our nation, because one day our system may break from the stress of yet another hypocritical witchhunt. Or, maybe Brock's book will touch enough people and change enough minds, like it did mine, and we will become less destructive in our politics.

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Bad Money: Reckless Finance, Failed Politics, and the Global Crisis of American Capitalism Review

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(More customer reviews)For those who have read Kevin Phillips' American Theocracy: The Peril and Politics of Radical Religion, Oil, and Borrowed Money in the 21stCentury, many of the themes in the current work will sound familiar. In this book, as well as American Theocracy, he reminds us that previous empires such a 17th century Spain, 18th century Holland, and the late 19th and early 20th century Britain all succumbed to financialization as their global power reached its peak. He argues the the United States is now in a similar position. In the last 30 years financial services have grown from 11% of GDP to 21%, and manufacturing has declined from 25% to 13%. A reversal of roles that Phillips sees as very unhealthy.
This huge growth of the financial sector was not without adverse consequences: in the last 20 years public and private debt has quadrupeled to $43 trillion. How this came about has been expertly explained in another book called The Trillion Dollar Meltdown: Easy Money, High Rollers, and the Great Credit Crash by Charles Morris. There was easy money as the Federal Reserve was lending money at less than the rate of inflation. Money was risk-free for the lender since they collected fees up front and sold the securitized loans to investors. When this process was repeated millions of times, one ends up with hard-to-value securitized debt throughout the global economy. Then when housing prices start to decline and homeowners start to default on their mortgages on a grand scale, you have a global crisis of American capitalism. (Bear Stearns alone was estimated to be holding $46 billion worth of bad money.)
As in American Theocracy, Phillips writes that the oil industry is another component of the current crisis. In the US oil production peaked in the 1970s, on a global level it is peaking right about now. And with the ravenous appetite for oil from newly industrialized countries such as China and India, prices will continue to go up. The US still gets "cheap" oil relative to Europe since oil is priced in dollars, but that advantage may soon disappear. The weakening dollar is forcing OPEC countries to move to Euros and other currencies. And some oil producing countries such as Iran and Venezuela are moving to other currencies for reasons other than economic.
The author began his career as a Republican strategist, but he has long since disavowed them. Having a monetary policy of free money, a fiscal policy of tax cuts and increased spending, and an ideology of unregulated market fundamentalism, the Republicans have lost most of their credibiltiy. This does not mean Phillips has gone over to the Democratic side. He believes that Bill Clinton was instrumental in the financialization of the economy, and that currently Hillary and Obama are beholden to investment bankers and hedge fund managers. What used to be the vital center in Washington is now the "venal center."
The conclusion of this volume is very gloomy. Phillips believes that we are at a pivotal moment in American history when the economy has been hollowed out, we are saddled with trillions of dollars of debt, and our political leaders are dishonest, incompetent, and negligent. Given that all that may currently be the case, it may be instructive to further meditate on the empires of the past. Spain, Holland, and Britain all managed to survive and even thrive, hopefully the US will do the same.

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Jeannette Rankin, America's Conscience Review

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(More customer reviews)This book was composed by a friend of the subject some twenty years ago but not published till 2002. But it is not hagiographical even though the author, now deceased, knew Jeannette Rankin. Most people know that Rankin voted against war twice--even though she only served two terms in the House, having been elected in 1916 to her first term--the first woman elected to Congress--and then elected to her second term in 1940. So when Pearl Harbor was bombed she was the only person who voted against war--though a few days later she voted for war against Germany. She was somewhat eccentric and was active in the anti-war movement during the Vietnam era though not in full sync with the moving spirits in that endeavor. She lived on till she was almost 93, active and forceful till the end. While the book has no footnotes and is kind of amateurishly written it tells an interesting story, and gives a fuller picture of an amazing woman than most folks have had hitherto.

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Social worker, suffragist, first woman elected to the United States Congress, and a lifelong peace activist, Jeannette Rankin is often remembered as the woman who voted "No" to United States involvement in both world wars. Rankin's determined voice for change shines in this biography, written by her friend, Norma Smith.

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Deer Hunting With Jesus: Dispatches from America's Class War Review

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(More customer reviews)As a progressive who grew up in exactly the kind of town the author describes, I found "Deer Hunting With Jesus" to be a chilling and dead on accurate account of modern day America. Unless you've had the experience of seeing the house you grew up in only 20 years ago boarded up and sold at a HUD auction, or turned into a crack house as my best friend from high school's house recently was (we were solidly middle class by small town standards), you really can't appreciate what the author is trying to describe.
That said, this is no biased political rant, as the author's staunch defense of gun ownership demonstrates. It is instead a desperate warning to all Americans just how perilously close we are to seeing our way of life destroyed by our own misguided collective actions. The author believes that progressives and the white working class (rednecks as he calls them) ought to be able to find political common ground based upon economic interest. He's also realistic enough to realize that it is unlikely to happen in time to rescue America from the precipice we seemed so determined to fling ourselves over.
Be forewarned, it is depressing as hell and in no way conforms to the Republican OR Democratic narratives of what America needs to do to preserve our way of life. It is the kind of truth-telling book that could only be written by someone who has seen enough of living on both sides of the red-blue divide to truly understand what ails this country.
In all, a perfect antidote to what the author calls the "American Hologram" of our mass media culture.

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Barnstormers: Game 3 Review

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(More customer reviews)In August 1899, Griffith, Ruby and Graham Payne and the Travelin' Nine leave behind their winning ways in Louisville, Kentucky, and take a train to Chicago, Illinois. The Travelin' Nine baseball team includes the children's mother, Elizabeth, and eight Spanish-American War veterans who fought side by side with the younsters' late father, Guy. The team is barnstorming across the United States, challenging local "ballists" to winner-take-all games in order to repay Guy's debt.
On the train ride from Louisville, Elizabeth confides in Griffith and Ruby, the two older kids, details about the substantial debt owed by their father and Uncle Owen. If the Paynes can't repay $10,000, Elizabeth fears she could lose her children. Griffith believes he knows who is behind their troubles. Yet his mother refuses to listen to talk about the evil Chancellor and his men, who followed the family in Louisville. Griffith suspects she knows more than she's admitting and can't shake the feeling that they're still being watched.
The movement of the train and his mother's talk upset Griffith. Unable to sleep, he takes a late-night stroll and bumps into one of the Chancellor's goons. The man grabs Griffith by the collar and tells him that the Chancellor wants what he has, adding that the Chancellor "always gets what he wants."
In Chicago, while passing out flyers in Jackson Park, Ruby runs into a stranger who says his name is Preacher Wil. Instead of being afraid of the dark-skinned man with wire-rimmed glasses and two different colored eyes, she feels safe. He calls her "Angel" and promises their paths will cross again.
At the ballpark, Graham does his best to be part of the team. Ruby tries to focus on the game but becomes distracted by events on the field and searching the crowd for Preacher Wil. Griffith also looks for him but with a feeling of dread because he fears he might see the Chancellor and his men.
On game day, "Chicagoland rooters" cheer from the stands, bizarre creatures appear on the field, a beloved member of the Travelin' Nine falls ill and the Payne children's magical baseball heats up the action. Game 3 is a must-win for the Travelin' Nine, but at what cost?
The short chapters, graceful illustrations, eye-appealing layout and fascinating historical tidbits about the game of baseball enhance this young-reader-friendly novel. The suspenseful third installment of the New York Times bestselling series has characters to root for and will enchant young readers who love America's favorite pastime.
--- Reviewed by Donna Volkenannt

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PREGAME RECAP As the Travelin' Nine head to Chicago, the team is filled with hope and optimism. After a disappointing loss in Cincinnati at the start of their baseball tour, the heroes of the Spanish-American War bounced back in Louisville. Doc and Woody came through with timely fielding, Crazy Feet and Tales smacked clutch hits, and champion horses provided that extra kick, helping the barnstormers to their come-from-behind victory. By the end of the thrilling contest, there was no doubt in the minds of Griffith, Ruby, and Graham that the baseball their Uncle Owen had given to them on the night of their father's funeral was magical. Indeed, the mysteries surrounding their baseball, which their uncle had urged them to keep secret, were deepening. And as excited as they were by the barnstormers' win, the Payne siblings' fears and worries continued to grow. Uncle Owen's tattered, bloody letter had warned them about the Chancellor. What's more, they'd seen the Chancellor's men lurking at the Louisville game. Griffith and Ruby now realized that their adventure was about far more than raising money to pay off a family debt. But what exactly was it about? After the Louisville match, Griffith confronted his mother. She denied that the Chancellor could be involved, but she promised to answer all of Griffith's questions on the train to Chicago...

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