The Wrecking Crew by Thomas Frank

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	• The Wrecking Crew: How Conservatives Rule Thomas Frank Metropolitan Books, 2008 - 384 pages average customer review:based on 34 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

a great and insightful book

The Wrecking Crew is one of the best books I've read this year. Many events of the last 30 years that seemed unintelligible at the time are now explained. I've been engaged in my own sphere of influence with like-minded people, paying no heed to conservative talk-shows. After reading The Wrecking Crew, much is now clear. I recommend it highly! I bought three more copies for friends and family.

Wrecking Crew

Decently researched and well written. This is a book that can make you feel it is still ok to be liberal.

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Every Man for HImself

The arrogance and completely unwarranted self-confidence with which the conservatives presided over the fall of the U. S. was always evident to anyone who could stand to look at Bush's smirky face. This self-esteem masquerading as virtue and superior intelligence runs through this account of greed and hypocrisy in high places. It's interesting to learn the details, but I don't think too many readers will be surprised. Non-readers, the vast electorate, might be, but they'll never know.

All the events that ensue from the great crash taking place now will affect a lot more people than this book or any other book but I suppose there will be some slight, fugitive pleasure in knowing how the all- knowing smug undermined our culture with their unregulated markets, delusional and self-righteous forms of Christianity and imperialistic good will.

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The Wrecking Crew by Thomas Frank

You remember Hillary Clinton talking about the vast right wing conspiracy back in the late 90's? Well in The Wrecking Crew Thomas Frank chronicles the entire 30 year, systematic and sordid affair, including all the details, names, dates, and theme songs such as "DE-FUND THE LEFT."

If you ever wondered who's systematically undermining (yes it's still going on) our government of, by, and for the people, this book clarifies things better than any book I've ever read. If you really want to know what the next President is up against, you can't afford to miss this book.

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Must Read Muckraking for 2009

One of the pomo lessons of the Bush era is this: A corruption scandal can ruin an administration; a corruption scandal every two days will only make your administration stronger. It is so hard to wrap your head around it all, especially when disbelief and outrage are blowing all your fuses. Frank gives us the intelligent encapsulation every American needs. His book should be sold at the check-out displays of every red-state WalMart in the country. This is not in-depth, follow-the-money reporting or Veblen-level analysis. But Frank is exactly the muckraker the times demand. Following the unsavory careers of Grover Norquist, Jack Abramoff, and other campus Reagan youth from their early involvements with South African racist cadres to their free market hit squads in the halls of K Street power, Frank reveals one of the more cynical, nihilistic corners of the "vast right-wing conspiracy," an entity whose existence few can now doubt. His basic premise is the way in which a libertarian philosophy and the inside destruction of government agencies are mutually reinforcing. You can enrich yourself corrupting, subverting, and looting government while at the same time demonstrating that, gee, government just doesn't work! This is a good dose of reality for any moderate liberal who believes our current crisis will somehow cast doubts on market fundamentalism or the hard right. Patriotism, for true market libertarians, is anything that effectively destroys the United States as a legal collective. By that standard, Bush is indisputably the hero of his movement, the one who smashed effective government for decades to come, grabbing an extra trillion dollars as he delivered a final kick to the stomach. Mission accomplished. In terms of values, reason, and civic concern, liberals and conservatives are just not operating on a level playing field. (To the "wing-nuts," as Frank calls them, the jailing of someone like Abramoff for some honest market payola only proves how corrupt constitutional law really is.) He also convincingly traces the connection between such formerly fringe thinking and GOP power, though not with any in-depth analysis of the psychological permutations. (Freudian death wish draped in a flag?) His villains are largely cynical, while I suspect that someone like Bush falls into the true-believer, banality end of the evil spectrum. Otherwise, great work. Highly recommended, etc. Only one qualm. Frank has a good light touch. He is not shrill, earnest, angry, or Chomskyish. But if, like me, you badly need a mental break from anger these days, you may want to wait a bit and pick it up after some time with the Vicar of Wakefield.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7

From the author of the landmark bestseller What?s the Matter with Kansas?, a jaw-dropping investigation of the decades of deliberate?and lucrative?conservative misrule

In his previous book, Thomas Frank explained why working America votes for politicians who reserve their favors for the rich. Now, in The Wrecking Crew, Frank examines the blundering and corrupt Washington those politicians have given us.

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

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

Stamped with Thomas Frank?s audacity, analytic brilliance, and wit, The Wrecking Crew is his most revelatory work yet?and his most important.

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