Control Freaks: 7 Ways Liberals Plan to Ruin Your Life Review

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Control Freaks: 7 Ways Liberals Plan to Ruin Your Life ReviewThis is a perfect book for the times. Terrence Jeffrey clearly explains what Obama, Pelosi, and Reid are trying to accomplish and demonstrates why their policies, actions, and legislative tactics are against our Constitution, our heritage as a nation, and the will of the majority of Americans. (Of course, I hope we correct this in 2010 and 2012.)
Chapter One shows how Obama, our disgraceful transportation secretary Ray LaHood (a nominal Republican from Illinois) are using the force of government to manipulate markets to force us out of our cars and even our homes to live in the "high density" housing environments they preferred we would inhabit. You see, they are not about enabling us to fulfill our dreams and live in freedom and liberty, but as far as they are concerned we exist to allow them to fulfill their dreams and visions.
The second chapter focuses on the lies that were used to create social security and why it is collapsing today. Mr. Jeffry shows why would all be better off caring for our own retirement and how to do it than allowing the control freaks to keep ripping us off. And no, none of this is about breaking our promises to those in or near retirement. The rip offs have gone on from the beginning. Did you now that Ida May Fuller, the first recipient of social security, retired at 65 after paying a 1% tax on her $900 salary as a secretary. She had paid in $49.50 from 1937 until her retirement in 1939. By the time she died in she had collected payments from 1940 until 1975. By her third check she had recouped everything from her "trust fund" and when on to collect a total of $22,888.92 of other people's money.
We next explore the way our Federal Constitution has been tortured and ignored by Congress, abetted by "living Constitutionalists" in the judiciary to accomplish an expansion of government to intrude into every aspect of our lives. "Freedom, what freedom? We just want the illusion of security! No matter if we ruin the country as long as I get mine!" is what too many of seem to be saying with our votes and inattention to what our government is really doing to us. It cannot and won't go on, my friends. Not much longer, anyway.
I found the chapter on the perversion of "public use" into "public purpose" and an analysis of the "Kelo" decision by the Supreme Court to be most interesting and useful. I think you will to. This is a huge threat to our lives and property. Of course, the Left doesn't much like the idea of Private Property. To them, everything belongs to the state and they allocated it as the 535 demigods in Congress, the Chosen One in the White House, and the 9 great priests in the Supreme Court see fit. What was it the Declaration says about government existing to protect our natural rights and what we should do if the government fails to protect us in our rights?
The chapter on the way the Left strives to control political speech is exasperating and yet we know from what we see on the news and read in the paper that it is absolutely true. They act as if our Founders wrote the First Amendment to protect pornography rather than political speech. Another chapter on health care and our right to life is also a very important read. Obama pretends that the notion of when life begins is "above his pay grade" when he is a candidate, but when he is in office as a state legislator, a federal Senator or our President, no one is more pro-Abortion than he. Wait until some bureaucrat decides you aren't worth the healthcare sources they would have to allocate to treat you. Even if you have your own money, they will withhold it from you. We have to fight this, folks. Seriously fight it and repeal it.
Which leads us to the culture war the Left wants to fight while preventing the opposition (you and me) from resisting their efforts to "fundamentally transform" our culture and our nation.
An excellent book and you will find you can read it quickly while getting good information you can look up and verify if you want to.
Please get and read this book.
Reviewed by Craig Matteson, Saline, MI
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One Nation Under Contract: The Outsourcing of American Power and the Future of Foreign Policy Review

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One Nation Under Contract: The Outsourcing of American Power and the Future of Foreign Policy Review"The American homeland is the planet." - 9/11 Commission Report
Very rarely do I read a "policy wonkish" book in which I so clearly agree with the diagnosed problem, but feel like the solutions offered leave me completely at sea.
Allison Stanger's One Nation Under Contract: The Outsourcing of American Power and the Future of Foreign Policy is such a book.
Stanger is no slouch. She is Middlebury College's Russell Leng `60 Professor of International Politics and Economics, and directs the college's Rohatyn Center for International Affairs. Her clear, concise, and thoughtful new book is "blurbed" by some high-powered people, including USMC General Anthony Zinni (who calls Stanger's analysis "a superb work on government outsourcing and contracting"); Canadian Liberal Party leader Michael Ignatieff ("a clarion call to bring the business of government under more effective public control"); and Harvard University professor Joseph Nye ("well-reasoned").
But her book's conclusions left me scratching my head.
Stanger sets out to answer a big and crucially important question: In an age in which governments around the world have "outsourced" nearly everything to private for-profit corporations, how do citizens reestablish effective oversight over private-public partnerships? This outsourcing problem is so vast and extensive that even the Establishment New York Times, an overexuberant cheerleader for U.S. foreign policy if ever there was one, referred to contractors as a "fourth branch of government" in 2007, a sign of just how troublesome things have become.
Stanger's extended case-study is the United States, a "republic-turned-Empire" (to her credit, Stanger is willing to entertain the use of the term "empire" to describe U.S. activities abroad) of 300 million citizens that has emerged over the past several decades as the richest, most powerful, most influential nation in the world, with as many as 1,000 military bases networked across more than 130 countries across the planet, 10,000 nuclear warheads, and an annual "defense" budget (read: "war-making") larger than the next twenty countries combined.
Her conclusions?
What once was considered public oversight (the domain of Congress, the State Department, and other somewhat-publicly-accountable government organizations) for maintaining this emerging global "Empire of Bases" is increasingly being governed by the dictates of private for-profit corporate interests. In her book, Stanger examines what she calls "the evolution of military outsourcing," including the privatization of U.S. matters diplomatic (which she rightly traces to the 1947 Congressional passage of the National Security Act), a process that has emerged in full dysfunctional flower with the 2001 creation of the so-called Department of Homeland Security, as well as the "slow death" of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).
Stanger is at her best when chronicling the waste, fraud, and abuse that has accompanied ongoing outsourcing. The U.S. government's six year invasion and occupation of Iraq is the most recent reminder of just how nasty things can get: more than 1 million Iraqi lives lost, billions of dollars "disappeared," U.S. tax-supported private corporate armies waging a mercenary war against entire Mesopotamian cities (Fallujah, anyone?) while U.S. diplomats hole up inside the so-called "Green Zone," home to the new U.S. embassy in downtown Baghdad: the largest, most extensive, and most expensive embassy compound the world has ever seen.
And Iraq is just the tip of the "outsourcing" iceberg.
While I appreciated her diagnosis of the "outsourcing" problem, I have two big issues with Stanger's book.
The first is her continual acceptance (not unusual for a U.S. scholar/policy wonk) of the U.S. government's officially stated "party line" on all matters diplomatic. When she asserts, for example, that the U.S.'s primary interest in invading and occupying Iraq was to help bring "democracy" to the Middle East, I found myself scrawling the word "nonsense" in the book's margin. Her unwillingness to push beyond presidential rhetorical rationales for U.S. actions abroad - Oil? Support for Israel? Profit for "Defense" Corps like Halliburton and KBR? - deeply undercuts the credibility of her argument.
Second, and more troubling, are her "solutions," packed into the last few pages of the book, which seem utopian to the extreme, even for this idealist. She speaks of "cultivating an emerging market for virtue" built on the "creativity of free individuals"; of "radical transparency in all government financial transactions" (and oddly, points to Wall-Street-Bankster-Backscratcher President Obama as a model here); of "loosening the grip of special interests on American politics" (yawn); and more to the point, of "restricting the use of no-bid contracts" and "demilitarizing U.S. foreign policy," both wonderful ideas that any D.C. insider will be the first to tell you will never happen.
In short, to this decentralist reader, Stanger's book is right in its diagnosis of what ails the United States, but wrong on the cure. Only a radical devolution of political and economic power away from the center (Washington, D.C. and Wall Street) and towards the periphery (Main Street and individual states, with Vermont leading the way, perhaps) will be able to stanch the "outsourcing" and the complete collapse of this once-great constitutional republic at the hands of those wringing a profit from its ruin.
To explore that phenomenon, however, Ms. Stanger may have to write another book.One Nation Under Contract: The Outsourcing of American Power and the Future of Foreign Policy Overview

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Seven Rules for Sustainable Communities: Design Strategies for the Post Carbon World Review

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Seven Rules for Sustainable Communities: Design Strategies for the Post Carbon World ReviewI was impressed by the straightforward way Patrick Condon presents his arguments. This is a book that is easily accessible to anyone - no need to be an expert in climate change, urban design, transportation or development issues. There is enough hard data and references to make a convincing case without overwhelming a reader not intimately familiar with the points presented.
I was pleased that the emphasis to transform urban structure was based on transportation systems - the streetcar and the interconnected road system. From personal experience working on large scale master planned projects I had become convinced of the need for effective, efficient public transit and road networks if truly sustainable communities are to be achieved so it is compelling to see an historical North American urban form (the streetcar city) analyzed and demonstrated as a solution to current and future issues. In combination Condon's proposal addresses greenhouse gas production, scarce land availability, affordable housing, diverse housing mix, neighbourhood employment, excessive VMT.
Imbedded in this approach are two essential points ' ease of transit access and continuous corridor development. Condon convincingly argues that the streetcar city works because it operates at human scale and provides what people want in close proximity ' the retail, commercial, entertainment and business base located along the transit corridors. While the 5 minute walk has been generally accepted for nodal based urban development approaches Condon demonstrates how continuous corridor development provides greater utility for this concept. It matches our basic physical capability, addresses our consumer and employment needs and provides convenience that supercedes private auto use.
Condon's proposal addresses the hierarchy of public to private spaces from the street to the private home identified by Jane Jacobs through a simple, pragmatic approach ' the historical Vancouver city block, lane and small lot land arrangement. The key characteristics of street oriented housing, lane based parking and multiple housing type possibilities is also shown to address the need for diverse, affordable housing that can support a range of family types and incomes.
Finally, Condon does a good job a presenting the value and critical importance of designing with respect to watershed function. As the effects of climate change increase this point cannot be overemphasized.
By providing a comparison to 50 years of urban change between 1950 and 2000 and the potential for equally significant but enhanced urban change by 2050 Condon offers a vision of an achievable sustainable future.
This book would be an excellent primer for government officials, staff, design professionals and concerned citizens who are struggling with finding a direction for city development that addresses the multiple, interrelated, complex issues we face. While it is primarily a design based approach it is clear that it has the flexibility and adaptive qualities necessary to complement, and integrate with, a robust community planning process. Real potential for community building exists in this approach - something that is a fundamental component of successful sustainable cities.Seven Rules for Sustainable Communities: Design Strategies for the Post Carbon World Overview

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