Third World America: How Our Politicians Are Abandoning the Middle Class and Betraying the American Dream (9780307719966): Arianna Huffington: Books

1) there has to be a more accessible/successful way to petition the national government in a national crisis; 2) taking meetings with lobbyists at the coffee shop so they don't appear on the White House visitors' log is hardly transformational transparency; 3) as you note in Third World America, there is no transparency in the legislative process when the work is done, the cake is baked long before the floor debate begins. No transparency, no accountability. No accountability ends in tyranny.


http://www.amazon.com/Third-World-America-Politicians-Abandoning/dp/0307719960%3FSubscriptionId%3D0JJEH4PKQM4ZHS8QY102%26tag%3Dthehuffingtop-20%26linkCode%3Dxm2%26camp%3D2025%26creative%3D165953%26creativeASIN%3D0307719960
 What became clear while writing this book is that the decline of the middle class was no accident. It was the result of tricks and traps. Tricks in the ways we financed our homes. Traps in the ways credit card companies used hidden fees and fine print and skyrocketing interest rates to get their hands on our money, driving more and more people into debt. So, yes, the game is rigged. Our financial system has become a bad carnival game where the rich always get the grand prize and the average American walks away empty-handed. We've gone from an economy where we make things to an economy where we make things up: default credit swaps, derivatives, CDOs and the like have turned Wall Street into a casino. Actually, a casino is fairer: at least you know the odds going in. And for me, the answer to the question of how we got here has to start in Washington, where special interests run the show--and where lobbyists outnumber elected officials 26 to 1. Unfortunately, there are no lobbyists for the American Dream. Now, I know you played a lobbyist on HBO ... so I'm curious what your take on the role special interests now play in Washington. For me, this is one of those questions that is beyond the right vs. left framing the media loves to apply to every issue in Washington. I think both sides are under the influence of a small financial elite.

Mary: In his many eloquent works, Michael Novak notes, whatever its sharp and messy edges, no system has better served humanity than capitalism. It raises up the poor, it protects human rights, it is a necessary condition for democracy. It doesn't know right/left, red/blue. But it does rest absolutely on virtue. As we all know, our founders' overwhelming concern about staging a representative republic was "are we virtuous enough?" One of the silver linings of this tumultuous time is the astounding back-to-basics effort of millions of Americans: studying their own history; being shocked and awed by their own heritage; reassessing their own virtue of citizenship.