If you've ever wondered....where does the money go?

Where Does the Money Go?: Your Guided Tour to the Federal Budget Crisis by Scott Bittle

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is the book for you.  We often hear how our overspending ways will lead to our demise.  In the partisan bickering that bogs down our political system, it is difficult to figure out the extent of the real threat.  Just how bad is it?

Scott Bittle and Jean Johnson make it very clear -- it's really bad.  They move beyond the hyperbole and finger pointing to highlight the sources of our fiscal crisis and how it threatens our future.  Writing in an accessible style, the authors dispel myths about the largest categories of federal spending (spoiler alert: no, it is not welfare or defense) and show exactly why and how we're headed for trouble.  Bittle and Johnson illustrate in painful detail how push is going to come to shove once the Baby Boomers hit retirement and draw upon Social Security and Medicare benefits.

Here are six things, Bittle and Johnson think every American should know about the federal debt dilemma:

The Budget Debate: Parking-lot Version:

1. For thirty-one out of the last thirty-five years, the country has spent more on government programs and services than it has collected in taxes.

2. Every year the government comes up short, it borrows money to cover the difference. We've now built up a very big debt —roughly $9 trillion, and yes, that is trillion with a t.

3. The country will have humongous additional expenses over the next couple of decades as the baby boomers begin to retire and need more medical care.

4. There is no realistic way government can lower taxes (or even keep them at current levels), spend money on everything people want the government to do (at least according to the polls), and still end up with a balanced budget.

5. If we keep on going the way we're going, the debt will get bigger and begin to endanger the U.S. Economy and our own personal finances and plans. And the government won't have enough money to pay for Social Security and Medicare for the boomers and still do what most of us expect government to do.

6. A substantial portion of the country's debt is held in foreign countries. Right now, these foreign investors consider U.S. Government bonds one of the safest places in the world to put their money, but they could decide at some point that Europe or China or some other place is a better bet. This would be the global equivalent of a store clerk seizing your credit card and cutting it up.

Comeback America by David Walker

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

David Walker's book, Comeback America, is a good companion piece to Bittle and Johnson's work. Walker served as the seventh Comptroller General of the United States and was the CEO of the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) from 1998 to 2008. Though non-repentant Keynesians (like myself) may try to eschew the book as just another vitriolic partisan rant. Please be assured it is not. Instead, Walker lays out compelling evidence that shows how our huge national debt will limit our ability to tackle the challenges ahead -- providing health care for an increasingly aging population, quality education and future opportunities for our children. Writing in a clear and accessible style, Walker makes a strong case for our need to wake up and muster the courage needed to secure our economic future.

Despite the sobering conclusions presented, these books are not doomsday tales.  They provide an exploration of what we can change course before it is too late.  In this regard, the authors not only help us to understand our current fate, but they also point to some promising directions into a better, more secure future.  I would put both of these books on the list of the recommended readings list for all Americans.

Related links of interest:

• Click on this link to see the Bill Moyers interview with the authors:  The Debt Dilemma.  (The interview begins a couple of minutes into the video segment).
• For more information on the federal budget check out the website for the Public Agenda, "a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization working to strengthen our democracy's capacity to take on tough issues" 
• For more information on David Walker's Comeback America.
• Click on this link to see a 30 minute segment of I.O.U.S.A. -- a non-partisan documentary that explains the national debt.

Thelonious Monk...an American Original

"The piano ain't got no wrong notes!" 

-- Thelonious Monk

Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original by Robin Kelley

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Thelonious Monk:  The Life and Times of an American Original by Robin D.G. Kelley is a meticulously researched and engaging read that seeks to put the record straight without any chaser.  Popular mythology about Monk tends to cast him as untrained, childlike and eccentric.  Drawing upon a wealth of family documents, Kelley masterfully weaves a story that counters these myths and captures Monk's genius and his humanity with compassion and profound appreciation.

As an educator, I found myself drawn to the parts of the story that brought the people and local institutions that nourished Monk's musical creativity into vivid clarity.  Very early on, Monk demonstrated a keen interest and talent in music, especially the piano.  Growing up in Harlem during the early part of the twentieth century, his talents were nurtured thanks in part to his participation in an after school boys and girls club.  At this youth center, Thelonious was able to begin his musical education and develop his piano playing.  His mother, raising three children by herself, also provided a pivotal role in the young musician's life -- acquiring a piano at home and lessons to further hone his creativity.  Later on, as an adult, his wife Nellie provided a solid foundation of love and support -- emotional, financial and business.  

However, to highlight the people who nurtured Monk's musicality is not to detract in any way from his sheer genius.   Kelley makes clear that for many years Monk did not receive the accolades he richly deserved.  His style of playing discordant notes formed the basis of what would become BeBop, popularized by two other jazz greats -- Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker. While their names are most often associated with the emergence of BeBop, Monk's compositional mastery was foundational to this new form of jazz.

While the book follows the twists and turns of the history of jazz, it is much more than your usual musical biography.  Kelley's book stands as a tribute to Monk's humanity.  Even as a budding jazz musician, he took an active role in caring for his children, while Nellie worked outside the home to provide financial support for the family.   He pursued his profound sense of social justice by supporting civil rights organizations such as the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) among others.  He courageously struggled with manic-depression, made even more acute due to alcohol and drug usage.  Clearly, there was more to the man that his mind-blowing musical virtuosity.

Reading Kelley's book deepened my appreciation for Monk and his contributions to modern jazz, the Civil Rights movement and social justice, in general.  Highly recommended for those interested in the history of jazz and the development of a true American original.

See comments by the author, Robin Kelley, on Thelonious Monk:



To see the original in action, check out this video clip of Monk performing one of his classics, Blue Monk:

"It's the end, the end of the Seventies"...or is it?

The Seventies: The Great Shift in American Culture, Society, and Politics by Bruce J. Schulman


My rating: 4 of 5 stars

"It's the end, the end of the Seventies/

It's the end, the end of the Century"

-- The Ramones

The Seventies is often dismissed as an era of leisure suits, bad hair, disco music and cheesy TV shows.  Yet, historian Bruce J. Schulman argues that these images fail to capture the era's real significance.

 Schulman gives the Seventies its due as a time period worthy of scholarly consideration.  According to popular characterizations of the 1970s, it represents nothing more than the "in-between" decade nestled between the radical 1960s and the Reagan Revolution of the 1980s.  The author dispels this misconception, arguing that: 

The Seventies transformed American economic and cultural life as much as, if not more than, the revolutions in manners and morals of the 1920s and 1960s.  The decade reshaped the political landscape more dramatically than the 1930s.  In race relations, religion, family life, politics and popular culture, the 1970s marked the most significant watershed of modern U.S. history, the beginning of our own time. (p. xii)

 Throughout the book, Schulman skillfully weaves together a wealth of evidence into a highly engaging analysis of the key political, cultural and economic shifts in the American landscape during this critical period of our history.  During the 1970s, the center of political and economic power shifted from the industries of the Northeast to the Sunbelt (the southern and western regions of the United States).  And, our nation has never been the same since.

As Schulman highlights, these changes brought about a "thoroughgoing southernization of American life."  Religion, especially personal expression of faith, have become commonplace in our politics and public life.  Country music, NASCAR and "a kind of wide-open libertarian boosterism" have become mainstays in our national culture.   The roots of what has come to be called the "New Right," and more recently the so-called "Teabag Movement" can be traced to the tumult of the 1970s. 

Schulman concludes:  "The long, gaudy, depressing Seventies reinvented America.  We live in their shadows." (p. 257)  For those seeking a better understanding of this transformation and the shadow it casts on us today, The Seventies is highly recommended. 

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The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 by Lawrence Wright


My rating: 4 of 5 stars

 "Wherever you are, death will find you,

even in the looming tower."

With these words, quoted from a passage from the fourth sura of the Quran,  bin Laden "sent an obvious signal to the hijackers who were on their way" (p. 350).

Today's headline announcing the most recent hijacking attempt illustrates the relevance of Lawrence Wright's The Looming Tower:  Al-Qaeda and The Road to 9/11.  For those seeking to understand the philosophical underpinnings and motivations behind these kinds of terrorist attacks, Wright's book provides a highly readable and informative primer on the sources of the most pressing conflicts of our time.

Wright's book traces the emergence of Al-Qaeda ("The Base") from a rag-tag bunch of largely uneducated religious zealots who got their first taste of jihad fighting against the Soviets in the late 1970s and early 1980's to the highly disciplined force capable of executing international acts of terror such as embassy bombings, an attack on the USS Cole and the destruction of the World Trade Center towers and the death of thousands.

By analyzing the intersections of radical Islamic thought, Middle Eastern political developments and the rigidity of the U.S. intelligence and investigative bureacracies in the post-Cold War global context, Wright helps to explain how America came to be the target of Al-Qaeda's struggle against "The West" and how the very agencies charged with our public safety let us down.  In so doing, he provides details on how these developments culminated in the global conflict we find ourselves engaged in today.

Wright's narrative make a crucial distinction between more traditional Islamic laws -- against murder (especially of innocent bystanders) against suicide, etc. -- and the ways bin Laden and other radical Islamists twisted teachings from the Quran to justify killing and mass destruction.  Like adherents of fundamentalist Christianity who espouse a so-called "Pro-Life" position, yet see no contradictions in the bombing of abortion clinics or the murder of doctors who provide safe procedures for women, the advocates of radical Islam engage in similar contortions of logic fueled by religious zealotry.

As Wright makes clear, the central contradiction of Al-Qaeda's actions on 9/11 is that while they sought to strike at "the head of the snake" (the source of the evil of The West) by attacking a symbol of American dominance, they left a vast array of humanity in their wake:

"In so many ways, the Trade Center dead formed a kind of universal parliament, representing sixty-two countries and nearly every ethnic group and religion in the world....The manifold ways in which they attached to life testified to the Quranic injunction that the taking of a single life destroys a universe.  Al-Qaeda had aimed its attack at America, but it struck all of humanity."  (p. 368)

The Looming Tower connects the legacy of Al-Qaeda's attacks on 9/11 with our ever deepening military entanglements in Afghanistan.  Wright's analysis provides much needed historical context to help us understand why more troops and more expenditures in a misguided attempt to gain control of this region will not make us more secure.  Wright explains that through Al-Qaeda's terrorist strikes:  "Bin Laden wanted to lure the United States into Afghanistan, which was already being called the graveyard of empires" (emphasis added mine -- p. 272).

If the United States is not to end up buried in "the graveyard of empires", we would do well to read and draw lessons from the history Wright so articulately presents.

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What's wrong with America's Health Care System...

Money-Driven Medicine: The Real Reason Health Care Costs So Much by Maggie Mahar


My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Maggie Mahar's fascinating and compelling book, Money-Driven Medicine:  The Real Reason Health Care Costs So Much, contributes much to our understanding of the current health care crisis.  Mahar takes the reader behind the hysterical ranting about "pulling the plug on grandma" and "socialized medicine."  In doing so, she provides the reader with a clear and accessible analysis of why we pay more, for less. 

The disciples of the "free market" would have us believe that competition between insurance companies serves to dampen soaring prices.  Unfortunately, as Mahar shows, the fiercely competitive health care arena pits doctors against doctors and hospitals against hospitals.  In the current system, everyone gets paid on a piece rate basis.  The more procedures, prescriptions, surgeries provided, the higher the profit.  The problem with this kind of arrangement is that often times, more is not necessarily better.  That is, more treatment does not result in better health outcomes for patients.

Mahar is at her best when she presents strong evidence for the failure of more treatment to foster greater health.  She details examples of how the flurry of unproven treatments, unnecessary tests, and defective medical devices actually threatens patients' well-being. 

Money-Driven Medicine should be required reading for every member of Congress as well as all Americans.  We need to move beyond distracting and obfuscating hyperbole toward a thorough accounting of exactly how our health care system works and doesn't work.  Only then will we be able to develop more rational and effective policy options to ensure the health and well-being for all. 

For those interested in seeing the film based on Mahar's book, go to the link www.moneydrivenmedicine.org for more information.

Smoke gets in your...

The Cigarette Century: The Rise, Fall, and Deadly Persistence of the Product That Defined America by Allan M. Brandt


My rating: 4 of 5 stars

It is difficult to find a person who has not been touched in some way by the all-encompassing reach of the tobacco industry -- from the carefully crafted marketing manipulations to the well-documented health risks associated with smoking and second hand smoke.  The cigarette has featured prominently in our culture, politics, legal system and public health debates for more than a century. 

In The Cigarette Century:  The Rise, Fall and Deadly Persistence of the Product that Defined America, Allan Brandt draws upon an exhaustive array of historical documents (i.e., secret in-house memos, court records, advertisements, government reports, scientific research, etc.) to illustrate "how the cigarette reflects the most powerful cultural and political debates of our time." 

Brandt sheds light on the tobacco industry and its masterful efforts, at the turn of the twentieth century, to capitalize on Edward Bernays's (Sigmund Freud's nephew) insights from the budding field of public relations or "the science of 'group mind' and 'herd reaction.'"

Long before the latest health insurance industry staged "town hall" fiascoes, Bernays's approach called for the manipulation of public opinion by "staging" public events that could then generate news that could be tainted to serve the self-interests of the corporation.

Under the guidance of the PR expert, the tobacco industry initiated a campaign to solicit new female smokers by planting photos and news items in local papers connecting cigarette use with women, beauty and smoking accessories. Thus, the new science of public relations delivered a fresh new group of consumers upon which to profit.

When scientific evidence, supporting a connection between cigarette smoking and disease, began to accumulate in the 1940's and 1950's, the industry shifted tactics.  Industry representatives began to raise questions about the basis for research findings that established a link between smoking and chronic illnesses like cancer.   Tobacco companies hired their own scientists to create a smokescreen that effectively hid the mounting truth about the health impact of cigarettes behind a shroud of "controversy". 

Throughout the latter part of the twentieth century, as these strategies effectively shielded the industry from accountability, tobacco executives managed to deftly dodge a variety of efforts to limit the potential harm of cigarette smoking through efforts to bring forward civil lawsuits and governmental regulation.

Even in the moment when it looked like the weight of whistle-blowers' disclosures of previously hidden documents, class action lawsuits and punitive damages would bring the industry to its knees, cigarette manufacturers demonstrated a keen persistence in "cultivating" new markets in the developing world for its deadly products.

As Brandt makes painfully clear, the tobacco industry has employed a variety of tactics to explicitly market and profit from the sale of a product that caused death and disease for millions for over a century.  They conducted this campaign largely beyond the scope of public scrutiny and government regulation.

In documenting this sinister history, Brandt has provided us with an important, well-researched and engagingly written analysis of exactly how corporate greed and power have come to take precedence over our health and well-being.

Check out this video segment of Jon Stewart's interview with Allan Brandt on The Daily Show.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Allan Brandt
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Health Care Crisis

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Republican Gomorrah...tales from the dark side

Republican Gomorrah: Inside the Movement That Shattered the Party by Max Blumenthal


My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Max Blumenthal has done what few contemporary commentators have managed to do. He has sifted through the extreme rhetoric of the Right Wing of the Republican Party to analyze the underlying conditions that have fueled their assault on our democracy. Republican Gomorrah helps to cast a bright light on the dark side of Fundamentalist Christianity and its bigotry.

In doing so, his book goes a long way toward helping those seeking to understand why ordinary Americans often align themselves with the interests of the rich and powerful against their own well-being. It is a familiar strategy -- divide and conquer -- that wraps itself in the flag and twisted interpretations of the Bible.

Blumenthal has provided a well-written and richly documented account of the tendency toward authoritarianism in American politics. Highly recommended.

You can see a video segment on Republican Gomorrah with Max Blumental below.



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Shock and Awe...

The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism by Naomi Klein


My rating: 5 of 5 stars
While other writers have documented the growth of corporate power, the rise of the military-industrial complex and the shredding of our constitution in the expediency of protecting us from international terrorists, few have managed to piece the shards together to provide a crystal clear view of the major crises facing our country and the world. 

Drawing upon documentary evidence of the CIA's use of shock therapy to remold human beings, Klein makes a striking comparison with the use of extreme tactics as part of the "Shock Doctrine" to remake nations along the lines of privatization schemes.

To support her case, Klein paints a grim portrait of what she calls "disaster capitalism" -- the self-reinforcing cycle of corporate pillage and neglect of the public sector, the environment, etc. that then feeds the recurring pattern of natural and political disasters which in turn, create the need for lucrative governmental contracts.  In the process, corporations enrich themselves on the public largess.  Their actions are not part of some sinister plot cooked up in back rooms, but rather the result of the pursuit of neo-conservative free market ideology.  And so it goes.  

Klein's book is profoundly unsettling in a way only true stories can be.  Yet, do not be frightened away.  In the pages of The Shock Doctrine, the reader will find a way to put together the fragments so that one can begin to make sense of the ecological, economic and political crises we face. 

Check out online interviews with Naomi Klein. http://www.naomiklein.org/shock-doctrine/video-audio

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Tales of postsuburban sprawl...and how it got to be that way

Inventing Autopia: Dreams and Visions of the Modern Metropolis in Jazz Age Los Angeles by Jeremiah B.C. Axelrod


My rating: 5 of 5 stars
As a former resident of Southern California who has often wondered how L.A. area got to be so congested, so disorganized, and so bogged down with freeways, Jeremiah B.C. Axelrod's fascinating new book, Inventing Autopia:  Dreams and Visions of the Modern Metropolis in Jazz Age Los Angeles provided me with some answers. 

Contrary to popular belief, the sprawl that characterizes the L.A. area did not just spring up in a haphazard fashion.  Instead, as Axelrod argues, this pattern of development resulted from the process of conflict over competing visions of the possible. 

Going back to the early 20's, planners in L.A. were divided between two camps.  One group sought a concentric model of L.A. with a downtown business zone and outlying areas devoted to suburbs (think of a target with the bull's eye as the downtown region and the series of circles spreading out).  This model dominated the major Eastern metropolis such as Chicago and New York City.

The other model, based on utopian visionary Ebenezer Howard's notion of "the garden city", offered a different view of urban development.  Howard proposed the garden city as an alternative to the alienation of the modern city "to disrupt and debunk the concentric emphasis on the city by replacing it with an ideal of self-contained towns ordered on a more human scale."  In this way, "the garden city would be tailored to promote social familiarity and community interaction instead of alienation and impersonality endemic to the metropolis."  This vision of L.A. sought to provide residents with a more humane balance to the onward march of modernity.

Axelrod's analysis traces how the social and political clash of these competing ideologies resulted the establishment of Southern California as a "postsuburban region."  Rob Kling, Spencer Olin and Mark Poster characterize this pattern of development as "the fundamentally decentralized spatial arrangement...in which a variety of commercial, recreational, shopping, arts, residential, and religious activities are conducted in different places, linked primarily by private automobile transportation." (p. 221)  

For a detailed analysis of this phenomenon readers are encouraged to check out their book, Postsuburban California: The Transformation of Orange County since World War II.

The impact of these changes are still being experienced today, not only in Southern California, but across the country.   Axelrod has provided us with a highly readable and informative analysis to help us better understand how "postsuburbia" became the dominant model for communities.  Recommended for those who struggle each day with lengthy commutes, congested communities and seemingly never-ending development.  If you've ever wondered how did it get this way, this is the book for you.

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A glimpse behind the wall of sound -- the life and times of Phil Spector

Tearing Down the Wall of Sound: The Rise and Fall of Phil Spector by Mick Brown


My rating: 4 of 5 stars
As a kid, I remember listening to AM radio while riding in the car with my parents.  Invariably, we would be serenaded by catchy pop confections -- Da Do Run Run, Be My Baby, -- to name just a few.  The music found a place deep in my soul.  When I stumbled upon Mick Brown's Tearing Down the Wall of Sound  I was intrigued -- it combined two of my favorite things -- biographies and musical history.  Brown did not disappoint.

Tearing Down the Wall of Sound is a well written and engaging biography of the arc of Phil Spector's life and musical career.  Brown tears down the wall of sound, exposing the multiple layers and complexity of the man behind the music.  The book begins with his early days in tragic detail giving the reader a glimpse of the musical genius as a wounded child of an absent father (who committed suicide when Spector was a boy) and an overbearing mother.

Brown is at his finest when he traces the early history of rock 'n roll and the music industry.  Through Spector's life story, the reader gets a tour through the inner sanctum of the Brill Building and its cadre of songwriters and into the recording studio's where Spector crafted what came to be known as "the Wall of Sound" -- a bigger than life ensemble of layered sound that characterized his contribution to pop music.

The last third of the book follows Spector's spiral into madness and ultimately up to the moment a young actress, Lana Clarkson, is found dead of a gunshot to the face in his home.  It stops short of the resolution of the trial and sentencing. 

Overall, this book is highly recommended.  It is filled with behind-the-scenes tidbits and anecdotes of the history of pop music in the second half of the twentieth century as seen through the lens of "the rise and fall of Phil Spector." Those seeking a glimpse behind the wall of sound will find much to enjoy.

One of Spector's most well-known hits featuring the "Wall of Sound":  "By My Baby" by the Ronettes (1965) -- for your listening pleasure.



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