Free Lunch - David Cay Johnston

I don't tend to recommend books until I've actually finished reading the book. =) However, I am in chapter 3 of David Cay Johnston's Free Lunch: How the Wealthiest Americans Enrich Themselves at Government Expense (And Stick You With the Bill). This book is excellent so far.

I feel the wealth disparity is enormous in this country and we can point to certain inequities and policies that foster this. However, this book has really boiled down, with specifics, many of these policies in the collusion of the wealthy with our government policies and some politicians.

One of the eye opening moments for me was where he discusses our economic structure is most like the countries of Brazil, Mexico, and Russia - countries many of us know have extreme corruption that feeds a rich few, impoverished masses, and virtually no or a shrinking middle class. I think for me, though I understand the disparity in our country, when you say we are no better than Mexico, that really opened it up for me.

Also, in this time of economic crisis in our country where we have seen terms like "deregulation" bandied around, this book appears prescient, but really it's what we've put into place and are now paying the reaper for.

I don't know what the rest of the book is going to say, but I recommend it highly from what I've read so far.

Here are some of the editorial notes on this book.
“If you’re concerned about congressional earmarks, stock options (especially backdated options), hedge fund tax breaks, abuse of eminent domain, subsidies to sports teams, K Street lobbyists, the state of our health-care system, to say nothing of the cavernous gap between rich and poor, you’ll read this fine book—as I did—with a growing sense of outrage. Free Lunch makes it clear that it’s high time for ‘We the People’ to stand up and be counted.”
—John C. Bogle, founder and former chairman, The Vanguard Group

The bestselling author of Perfectly Legal returns with a powerful new exposé.

How does a strong and growing economy lend itself to job uncertainty, debt, bankruptcy, and economic fear for a vast number of Americans? Free Lunch provides answers to this great economic mystery of our time, revealing how today’s government policies and spending reach deep into the wallets of the many for the benefit of the wealthy few.

Johnston cuts through the official version of events and shows how, under the guise of deregulation, a whole new set of regulations quietly went into effect— regulations that thwart competition, depress wages, and reward misconduct. From how George W. Bush got rich off a tax increase to a $100 million taxpayer gift to Warren Buffett, Johnston puts a face on all of the dirty little tricks that business and government pull. A lot of people appear to be getting free lunches—but of course there’s no such thing as a free lunch, and someone (you, the taxpayer) is picking up the bill.

Johnston’s many revelations include:
• How we ended up with the most expensive yet inefficient health-care system in the world
• How homeowners’ title insurance became a costly, deceitful, yet almost invisible oligopoly
• How our government gives hidden subsidies for posh golf courses
• How Paris Hilton’s grandfather schemed to retake the family fortune from a charity for poor children
• How the Yankees and Mets owners will collect more than $1.3 billion in public funds

In these instances and many more, Free Lunch shows how the lobbyists and lawyers representing the most powerful 0.1 percent of Americans manipulated our government at the expense of the other 99.9 percent.

With his extraordinary reporting, vivid stories, and sharp analysis, Johnston reveals the forces that shape our everyday economic lives—and shows us how we can finally make things better.

Thanx to DiaLogic for writing about it, otherwise I may not have known of its existence!

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Reading Lolita in Tehran

While I was down in California, I borrowed the book Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books by Azar Nafisi. Here's the Amazon editorial review:

An inspired blend of memoir and literary criticism, Reading Lolita in Tehran is a moving testament to the power of art and its ability to change and improve people's lives. In 1995, after resigning from her job as a professor at a university in Tehran due to repressive policies, Azar Nafisi invited seven of her best female students to attend a weekly study of great Western literature in her home. Since the books they read were officially banned by the government, the women were forced to meet in secret, often sharing photocopied pages of the illegal novels. For two years they met to talk, share, and "shed their mandatory veils and robes and burst into color." Though most of the women were shy and intimidated at first, they soon became emboldened by the forum and used the meetings as a springboard for debating the social, cultural, and political realities of living under strict Islamic rule. They discussed their harassment at the hands of "morality guards," the daily indignities of living under the Ayatollah Khomeini's regime, the effects of the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s, love, marriage, and life in general, giving readers a rare inside look at revolutionary Iran. The books were always the primary focus, however, and they became "essential to our lives: they were not a luxury but a necessity," she writes.

Threaded into the memoir are trenchant discussions of the work of Vladimir Nabokov, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Jane Austen, and other authors who provided the women with examples of those who successfully asserted their autonomy despite great odds. The great works encouraged them to strike out against authoritarianism and repression in their own ways, both large and small: "There, in that living room, we rediscovered that we were also living, breathing human beings; and no matter how repressive the state became, no matter how intimidated and frightened we were, like Lolita we tried to escape and to create our own little pockets of freedom," she writes. In short, the art helped them to survive. --Shawn Carkonen

I personally didn't really care for the book. I found it a bit disjointed as she jumps from her "class" to literary examination to various times in her personal history. She is an English Literature professor and I know some folks disagreed with her interpretation of some of the works, but my personal view is that there is no right or wrong on interpretation and that's the beauty of literature. I did enjoy the glimpses into the effects on women of the Iranian Revolution. However, in my opinion, this doesn't go very deep except to correlate the women to Nabokov's Lolita as trapped victims. That's all good, but it didn't go beyond that. My other main issue with the book is how the author views herself, her role, and her own perceptions. It may have been unintended, but it seemed to me that she constantly remembered situations with herself as the heroine or only maverick in a field of sheep. The best take away from the book for me was one quote from Nabokov - "Curiosity is insubordination in its purest form".

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