Download or read book On Corruption in America written by Sarah Chayes and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2020-08-11 with total page 432 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the prizewinning journalist and internationally recognized expert on corruption in government networks throughout the world comes a major work that looks homeward to America, exploring the insidious, dangerous networks of corruption of our past, present, and precarious future. “If you want to save America, this might just be the most important book to read now." —Nancy MacLean, author of Democracy in Chains Sarah Chayes writes in her new book, that the United States is showing signs similar to some of the most corrupt countries in the world. Corruption, she argues, is an operating system of sophisticated networks in which government officials, key private-sector interests, and out-and-out criminals interweave. Their main objective: not to serve the public but to maximize returns for network members. In this unflinching exploration of corruption in America, Chayes exposes how corruption has thrived within our borders, from the titans of America's Gilded Age (Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, J. P. Morgan, et al.) to the collapse of the stock market in 1929, the Great Depression, and FDR's New Deal; from Joe Kennedy's years of banking, bootlegging, machine politics, and pursuit of infinite wealth to the deregulation of the Reagan Revolution--undermining this nation's proud middle class and union members. She then brings us up to the present as she shines a light on the Clinton policies of political favors and personal enrichment and documents Trump's hydra-headed network of corruption, which aimed to systematically undo the Constitution and our laws. Ultimately and most importantly, Chayes reveals how corrupt systems are organized, how they enable bad actors to bend the rules so their crimes are covered legally, how they overtly determine the shape of our government, and how they affect all levels of society, especially when the corruption is overlooked and downplayed by the rich and well-educated.
Download or read book Corruption in America written by Zephyr Teachout and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2014-09-29 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When Louis XVI presented Benjamin Franklin with a snuff box encrusted with diamonds and inset with the King’s portrait, the gift troubled Americans: it threatened to “corrupt” Franklin by clouding his judgment or altering his attitude toward the French in subtle psychological ways. This broad understanding of political corruption—rooted in ideals of civic virtue—was a driving force at the Constitutional Convention. For two centuries the framers’ ideas about corruption flourished in the courts, even in the absence of clear rules governing voters, civil officers, and elected officials. Should a law that was passed by a state legislature be overturned because half of its members were bribed? What kinds of lobbying activity were corrupt, and what kinds were legal? When does an implicit promise count as bribery? In the 1970s the U.S. Supreme Court began to narrow the definition of corruption, and the meaning has since changed dramatically. No case makes that clearer than Citizens United. In 2010, one of the most consequential Court decisions in American political history gave wealthy corporations the right to spend unlimited money to influence elections. Justice Anthony Kennedy's majority opinion treated corruption as nothing more than explicit bribery, a narrow conception later echoed by Chief Justice Roberts in deciding McCutcheon v. FEC in 2014. With unlimited spending transforming American politics for the worse, warns Zephyr Teachout, Citizens United and McCutcheon were not just bad law but bad history. If the American experiment in self-government is to have a future, then we must revive the traditional meaning of corruption and embrace an old ideal.
Download or read book Everybody Knows written by Sarah Chayes and published by . This book was released on 2020-08-06 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: America is corrupted, and everybody knows it. In this blistering book, Sarah Chayes brings years of experience analysing corruption in the developing world to probing her home country, finding that the model fits too closely for comfort. US kleptocratic networks have bent the main government powers to serve their own interests, not the citizens', with dizzying results--from egregious Supreme Court decisions to the pillaging of the defence budget, public land grabs to Big Pharma's capture of the Drug Enforcement Administration, and the repeated financial meltdowns of the past forty years.Chayes places America's acute corruption within a broad historical context, going back to the invention of money itself. She shows that corruption today, far from just acts committed by disreputable individuals to line their pockets, is the standard mode of operation for sophisticated networks crossing political, ideological and national boundaries. Even the Trump administration's venality is more a symptom of a widespread trend than an aberration.When corruption takes hold, the results are devastating: social upheaval, terror and extremism, mass migration and environmental devastation. Searching and unflinching, Everybody Knows helps readers everywhere envision ways to pull in the reins on a rigged system, through individual, collective and political action.
Download or read book Dirty Little Secrets written by Larry Sabato and published by Crown. This book was released on 1996 with total page 456 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Political corruption in America is worse today than it has been since the Watergate era. Americans know it, and the politicians have known it for years. Urgent calls for reform have become standard fare, but nothing changes. A Democrat President and a Republican Congress were both elected on the strength of their promises of reform. Neither has delivered. Americans contemplate the tottering remains of our ethically bankrupt political system with despair. Fact: The Christian Coalition's 1994 voter guides appear to have been skewered to favor Republican candidates in key congressional races across the country, in direct contravention of federal election law. The truth is, the politicians couldn't be happier dickering over the remains of the welfare state. Because, as you'll learn in Dirty Little Secrets, there is probably not a politician in America who does not benefit directly, personally, and continually from the status quo. Fact: The state Democratic party in Tennessee paid sums in excess of six figures to a number of groups and organizations for various political services in 1994. The problem? None of the groups actually exist, except on paper. Our Politicians, from those in the highest reaches of the Republican and Democratic parties to those in the humblest state congressional districts, evade, massage, and even break the law in order to hold on to power. But instead of merely unmasking corrupt politicians in every region of the country, Dirty Little Secrets analyzes why corruption persists in American politics, despite scandal after scandal, and in spite of periodic bursts of reform. Fact: On the eve of the 1994 elections, mock "pollsters" called up thousand ofvoters in one Wisconsin congressional district to ask whether their electoral decisions would be influenced if they knew one of the candidates was a lesbian. Most politicians want to do the right thing. But they also want to be reelected, and the system is far stronger than any honest man or woman. The influence of money and the intricacies of the levers of power make it easier for politicians to ignore the law than to obey it. In Dirty Little Secrets you will read of the conservative movement's hidden manipulations in 1994, and learn the truth about Newt Gingrich's twenty-year program of political destabilization. The history of the corrupt House the Democrats built with the help of liberal interest groups stands revealed. And Larry J. Sabato and Glenn R. Simpson expose the corrupt and illegal tactics both parties have used for decades to protect and promote their own power. Fact: In 1994, in Alabama, one local election was decided by three hundred votes. Seventeen hundred ballots cast in that election were illegally admitted absentee ballots, some of them submitted by dead people. Sabato and Simpson's fresh reporting and thousands of hours of background research include interviews with influential politicians, consultants, and political operatives, Freedom of Information Act requests, and thousands of pages of obscure campaign reports. They prove corruption is not about bad apples or colorful local traditions. And they offer a completely original plan for reform--Deregulation Plus--that will frighten both parties and make the American electorate smile for the first time in years. Dirty Little Secrets pulls together the corruption story from all parts of the country sooverwhelmingly that no one--from the White House to your house--will be able to deny that political reform must be one of the key issues of the 1996 election campaign.
Download or read book Corruption and Reform written by Edward L. Glaeser and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2007-11-01 with total page 398 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Despite recent corporate scandals, the United States is among the world’s least corrupt nations. But in the nineteenth century, the degree of fraud and corruption in America approached that of today’s most corrupt developing nations, as municipal governments and robber barons alike found new ways to steal from taxpayers and swindle investors. In Corruption and Reform, contributors explore this shadowy period of United States history in search of better methods to fight corruption worldwide today. Contributors to this volume address the measurement and consequences of fraud and corruption and the forces that ultimately led to their decline within the United States. They show that various approaches to reducing corruption have met with success, such as deregulation, particularly “free banking,” in the 1830s. In the 1930s, corruption was kept in check when new federal bureaucracies replaced local administrations in doling out relief. Another deterrent to corruption was the independent press, which kept a watchful eye over government and business. These and other facets of American history analyzed in this volume make it indispensable as background for anyone interested in corruption today.
Download or read book Profiles in Corruption written by Peter Schweizer and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2020-01-21 with total page 325 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER! Washington insiders operate by a proven credo: When a Peter Schweizer book drops, duck and brace for impact. For over a decade, the work of six-time New York Times bestselling investigative reporter Peter Schweizer has sent shockwaves through the political universe. Clinton Cash revealed the Clintons’ international money flow, exposed global corruption, and sparked an FBI investigation. Secret Empires exposed bipartisan corruption and launched congressional investigations. And Throw Them All Out and Extortion prompted passage of the STOCK Act. Indeed, Schweizer’s “follow the money” bombshell revelations have been featured on the front pages of the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, and regularly appear on national news programs, including 60 Minutes. Now Schweizer and his team of seasoned investigators turn their focus to the nation’s top progressives—politicians who strive to acquire more government power to achieve their political ends. Can they be trusted with more power? In Profiles in Corruption, Schweizer offers a deep-dive investigation into the private finances, and secrets deals of some of America’s top political leaders. And, as usual, he doesn’t disappoint, with never-before-reported revelations that uncover corruption and abuse of power—all backed up by a mountain of corporate documents and legal filings from around the globe. Learn about how they are making sweetheart deals, generating side income, bending the law to their own benefits, using legislation to advance their own interests, and much more. Profiles in Corruption contains tomorrow’s headlines.
Download or read book Battling Corruption in America s Public Schools written by Lydia G. Segal and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2005 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Exposes decades of rampant fraud, waste, and abuse in America's largest public school districts, analyzes how the widespread corruption has crippled schools and impeded learning, and offers a bold blueprint for reform.
Download or read book Thieves of State Why Corruption Threatens Global Security written by Sarah Chayes and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2015-01-19 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the 2015 Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Current Interest. "I can’t imagine a more important book for our time." —Sebastian Junger The world is blowing up. Every day a new blaze seems to ignite: the bloody implosion of Iraq and Syria; the East-West standoff in Ukraine; abducted schoolgirls in Nigeria. Is there some thread tying these frightening international security crises together? In a riveting account that weaves history with fast-moving reportage and insider accounts from the Afghanistan war, Sarah Chayes identifies the unexpected link: corruption. Since the late 1990s, corruption has reached such an extent that some governments resemble glorified criminal gangs, bent solely on their own enrichment. These kleptocrats drive indignant populations to extremes—ranging from revolution to militant puritanical religion. Chayes plunges readers into some of the most venal environments on earth and examines what emerges: Afghans returning to the Taliban, Egyptians overthrowing the Mubarak government (but also redesigning Al-Qaeda), and Nigerians embracing both radical evangelical Christianity and the Islamist terror group Boko Haram. In many such places, rigid moral codes are put forth as an antidote to the collapse of public integrity. The pattern, moreover, pervades history. Through deep archival research, Chayes reveals that canonical political thinkers such as John Locke and Machiavelli, as well as the great medieval Islamic statesman Nizam al-Mulk, all named corruption as a threat to the realm. In a thrilling argument connecting the Protestant Reformation to the Arab Spring, Thieves of State presents a powerful new way to understand global extremism. And it makes a compelling case that we must confront corruption, for it is a cause—not a result—of global instability.
Download or read book The Great Deformation written by David Stockman and published by Public Affairs. This book was released on 2013-04-02 with total page 770 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A former Michigan congressman and member of the Reagan administration describes how interference in the financial markets has contributed to the national debt and has damaging and lasting repercussions.
Download or read book Corruption in Latin America written by Robert I. Rotberg and published by Springer. This book was released on 2018-10-19 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is the newest and one of the very few existing examinations of the full nature of corruption throughout Central and South America. In detailed chapters written by experts with extensive in-country experience, it reveals the political and economic roots and consequences of corruption in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, and Peru. The editor’s introduction and conclusion texts synthesize their work and provides an over-arching view of corrupt practices and anti-corruption initiatives throughout Latin America. Corruption in Latin America shows the extent to which corrupt practices engulf each of the countries discussed, the involvement of political and corporate entities in the pursuit of ill-gotten gains, and the drag on development caused by corruption in each political entity. The book will be of interest for social scientists, political actors and social activists involved in the fight against corruption in Latin America by providing in-depth analyses of the topic and discussing how best to pursue anti-corruption efforts through civil society actions, judicial endeavors, legal shifts, or elections.
Download or read book Corruption by Design written by Melanie Manion and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2009-07-01 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book contrasts experiences of mainland China and Hong Kong to explore the pressing question of how governments can transform a culture of widespread corruption to one of clean government. Melanie Manion examines Hong Kong as the best example of the possibility of reform. Within a few years it achieved a spectacularly successful conversion to clean government. Mainland China illustrates the difficulty of reform. Despite more than two decades of anticorruption reform, corruption in China continues to spread essentially unabated. The book argues that where corruption is already commonplace, the context in which officials and ordinary citizens make choices to transact corruptly (or not) is crucially different from that in which corrupt practices are uncommon. A central feature of this difference is the role of beliefs about the prevalence of corruption and the reliability of government as an enforcer of rules ostensibly constraining official venality. Anticorruption reform in a setting of widespread corruption is a problem not only of reducing corrupt payoffs, but also of changing broadly shared expectations of venality. The book explores differences in institutional design choices about anticorruption agencies, appropriate incentive structures, and underlying constitutional designs that contribute to the disparate outcomes in Hong Kong and mainland China.
Download or read book Solidarity for Sale written by Robert Fitch and published by PublicAffairs. This book was released on 2006-01-23 with total page 432 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: American labor unions have been, it turns out, shot through with corruption from their very inception. They never really had a Golden Age. From "Big Jim" Colosimo, the patron saint of Chicago's Mafia, to Brooklyn's Sammy "The Bull" Gravano a century later, organized crime has controlled huge swaths of the mainline labor movement. It still does. Impassioned, revelatory, prodigiously researched and reported, and thoroughly convincing, Solidarity for Sale shows how the American labor movement's decent ends are continually undermined by its tawdry means — a diet of daily corruption longer than the menu at a Long Island diner. By telling the untold histories, uncovering the covered-up scandals, and even recommending a way forward, Robert Fitch builds a devastating indictment and goes beyond it to show that union corruption, stagnation, and decline are not our national destiny. Labor could regain its needed place in American life. But it would require a set of reforms deeper than anything now being proposed; nothing less than a revolutionary overthrow of its culture of corruption and its replacement by a civic culture of accountability and consent.
Download or read book Corruption and American Politics written by Michael A. Genovese and published by . This book was released on 2011-06-01 with total page 408 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: ..". this timely and fascinating book ... is a handbook for those interested in gaining perspective on the appearance of and actual corruption in the American system, and ... can be read cover to cover to great profit ... it will find its way into classrooms. Scholars will use it as a means to engage and extend many of its provocative findings. However it is used, the effort is well worth the time invested." - Presidential Studies Quarterly"This volume, edited by two well-respected professors of US politics, represents the fine effort of nearly a dozen scholars to tackle this challenging subject ... Several of the essays are especially illuminating ... an important contribution to the study of political corruption in the US. Recommended."- CHOICE
Download or read book Proof of Corruption written by Seth Abramson and published by St. Martin's Press. This book was released on 2020-09-08 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the third volume of his Proof series, New York Times bestselling author Seth Abramson takes readers on a deep dive into the Ukraine scandal, revealing it to be more sinister, complex, and transnational than previously thought. Abramson’s research on Trump administration corruption positions the Ukraine scandal as the foreseeable culmination of years of clandestine machinations involving scores of players, from Beijing to Budapest, Ankara to Caracas, Warsaw to Jerusalem, Kyiv to Riyadh, and Moscow to D.C. While many know about the July 2019 telephone call that ignited the Ukraine scandal, most don’t know about the concurrent attempts by members of Trump’s inner circle to take over Ukraine’s national gas company and bolster dangerous pro-Kremlin Ukrainian oligarchs—moves that would have benefited Putin and destabilized Ukraine’s government and economy. In Beijing, Trump’s dealings with the Chinese government not only enriched him and his family, but also culminated in him successfully seeking 2020 election interference from Xi Jinping in the form of closely held information about Joe Biden. In Venezuela, many of the actors involved in the Ukraine scandal engaged in similarly secretive, Kremlin-friendly negotiations that undermined U.S. policy. In Syria and Iraq, Trump’s personal indebtedness to autocrats in Turkey, Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE cost untold lives. And Abramson brings the story back to an increasingly fractured and depleted United States, where the COVID-19 pandemic exposes the staggering domestic consequences of the Trump administration’s foreign machinations. In Proof of Corruption, Seth Abramson lays bare Trump’s decades-long pattern of corruption. This globe-spanning narrative is an urgent warning about the unprecedented threat posed by a corrupt president and his administration.
Download or read book A Republic No More written by Jay Cost and published by Encounter Books. This book was released on 2016-07-12 with total page 408 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: After the Constitutional Convention, Benjamin Franklin was asked, “Well, Doctor, what have we got—a Republic or a Monarchy?” Franklin’s response: “A Republic—if you can keep it.” This book argues: we couldn’t keep it. A true republic privileges the common interest above the special interests. To do this, our Constitution established an elaborate system of checks and balances that disperses power among the branches of government, which it places in conflict with one another. The Framers believed that this would keep grasping, covetous factions from acquiring enough power to dominate government. Instead, only the people would rule. Proper institutional design is essential to this system. Each branch must manage responsibly the powers it is granted, as well as rebuke the other branches when they go astray. This is where subsequent generations have run into trouble: we have overloaded our government with more power than it can handle. The Constitution’s checks and balances have broken down because the institutions created in 1787 cannot exercise responsibly the powers of our sprawling, immense twenty-first-century government. The result is the triumph of special interests over the common interest. James Madison called this factionalism. We know it as political corruption. Corruption today is so widespread that our government is not really a republic, but rather a special interest democracy. Everybody may participate, yes, but the contours of public policy depend not so much on the common good, as on the push-and-pull of the various interest groups encamped in Washington, DC.
Download or read book The Republic for which it Stands written by Richard White and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017 with total page 964 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The newest volume in the Oxford History of the United States series, The Republic for Which It Stands argues that the Gilded Age, along with Reconstruction--its conflicts, rapid and disorienting change, hopes and fears--formed the template of American modernity.
Download or read book Stealing from America written by Nathan Miller and published by Marlowe & Company. This book was released on 1996 with total page 431 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Insider trading, pork-barrel projects, and corrupt politicians may all sound contemporary, but, as Nathan Miller shows in this romp through the underbelly of history, larceny and greed crossed the ocean with smallpox, prospered in the New World, and have become the bedrock of American politics. In colonial New York and Charleston, governors extended open hands to pirates that were gladly filled in exchange for a safe haven to unload booty. The Revolutionary War was fought by ill-equipped and hungry soldiers freezing on battlefields like Valley Forge while merchants and speculators sat down to sumptuous 169-dish dinners in Philadelphia, their warehouses full of supplies they sold at 2,000 percent markups. Even George Washington amassed one of the largest fortunes in America through highly dubious land speculation practices." "This thievery continued through the nineteenth century with land swindles and railroad giveaways that ripped off both Native Americans and settlers; with the great robber barons, men like Cornelius Vanderbilt who made nine million during the Civil War outfitting completely unseaworthy vessels for huge profits; and with New York's Boss Tweed and his Forty Thieves. Casting his seasoned eye over this century's boondoggles, Nathan Miller uncovers the scams of Harding and the Teapot Dome in the twenties, the New Deal, World War II, and the Cold War. With Iran-Contra, HUD, and the Savings and Loan debacle in tow, the Reagan-Bush legacy follows in grand tradition. It promises to be remembered as one of the greatest eras of free-for-all plunder of the nation's coffers and threatens to put to shame, in terms of dollars pocketed, the money-grabbing greed of its illustrious predecessors. Stealing from America shows that greed, more so than notions of democracy and freedom, has been the fuel on which the engine of American government runs."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved
