Download or read book Squandered written by David Craig and published by Constable. This book was released on 2009-06-01 with total page 362 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Over the last ten years, New Labour has boosted public spending by around a trillion pounds - that's £1,000,000,000,000 of our taxes - over £50,000 for every household in Britain. But what have we got for our money? Effective and responsive public services that are the envy of the world? Or the creation of a vast, self-serving bureaucracy that has presided over the greatest waste of money in British history? With so much money, a tsunami of extra cash, being thrown at public services - health, education, policing, defence, social services and public administration - there have been some successes. Nevertheless, the results of the Government's tidal wave of extra spending have been worse than pitiful. In department after department, it is the same sorry story - a triple whammy of incompetence, cover-up and cuts that have all but decimated public services, while those responsible have lavished money and honours on themselves. David Craig exposes the sometimes tragic, sometimes comic story of how New Labour's years of mismanagement have led to a bureaucratization of Britain that has squandered almost unimaginable amounts of taxpayers' money, caused irreparable damage to all our lives and rewarded the man responsible with the keys to Number 10.
Download or read book Squandered Opportunity written by Thomas Juneau and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2015-05-19 with total page 291 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Islamic Republic of Iran faced a favorable strategic environment following the US invasions of Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003. Its leadership attempted to exploit this window of opportunity by assertively seeking to expand Iran's interests throughout the Middle East. It fell far short, however, of fulfilling its long-standing ambition of becoming the dominant power in the Persian Gulf and a leading regional power in the broader Middle East. In Squandered Opportunity, Thomas Juneau develops a variant of neoclassical realism, a theory of foreign policy mistakes, to explore the causes and consequences of Iran's sub-optimal performance. He argues that while rising power drove Iranian assertiveness—as most variants of realism would predict—the peculiar nature of Iran's power and the intervention of specific domestic factors caused Iran's foreign policy to deviate, sometimes significantly, from what would be considered the potential optimal outcomes. Juneau explains that this sub-optimal foreign policy led to important and negative consequences for the country. Despite some gains, Iran failed to maximize its power, its security and its influence in three crucial areas: the Arab-Israeli conflict; Iraq; and the nuclear program. Juneau also predicts that, as the window of opportunity steadily closes for Iran, its power, security, and influence will likely continue to decline in coming years.
Download or read book Squandered Fortune written by Lisa Rebecca Gubernick and published by Avon Books. This book was released on 1992-08-01 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A biography of the sole heir to the A&P supermarket empire describes Hartford's upbringing; his life of excess; his womanizing; his relationships with Nixon, Howard Hughes, Lana Turner, Hugh Hefner, and others; and his fall. Reprint. NYT. K.
Download or read book How We Squandered the Reich written by Reinhard Spitzy and published by . This book was released on 1997 with total page 410 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Squandered Victory written by Larry Diamond and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2007-04-01 with total page 420 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: America's leading expert on democracy delivers the first insider's account of the U.S. occupation of Iraq-a sobering and critical assessment of America's effort to implant democracy In the fall of 2003, Stanford professor Larry Diamond received a call from Condoleezza Rice, asking if he would spend several months in Baghdad as an adviser to the American occupation authorities. Diamond had not been a supporter of the war in Iraq, but he felt that the task of building a viable democracy was a worthy goal now that Saddam Hussein's regime had been overthrown. He also thought he could do some good by putting his academic expertise to work in the real world. So in January 2004 he went to Iraq, and the next three months proved to be more of an education than he bargained for. Diamond found himself part of one of the most audacious undertakings of our time. In Squandered Victory he shows how the American effort to establish democracy in Iraq was hampered not only by insurgents and terrorists but also by a long chain of miscalculations, missed opportunities, and acts of ideological blindness that helped assure that the transition to independence would be neither peaceful nor entirely democratic. He brings us inside the Green Zone, into a world where ideals were often trumped by power politics and where U.S. officials routinely issued edicts that later had to be squared (at great cost) with Iraqi realities. His provocative and vivid account makes clear that Iraq-and by extension, the United States-will spend many years climbing its way out of the hole that was dug during the fourteen months of the American occupation.
Download or read book Squandering Aimlessly written by David Brancaccio and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2000-02-16 with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Poor, misguided fellow. David Brancaccio, host of public radio's rambunctious and eclectic business program Marketplace, used to think the big problem with money was getting some. Didn't he understand that during a time of bounty the big problem is knowing what to do with money once you have it? It took a conversation with one of the richest guys in America to set him straight. "I think Warren Buffett's got the problem and Gates has the problem and Bloomberg's got the problem," the billionaire said. "And the problem doesn't just have to be at our level. It can be with people who have just a couple of million bucks." It was the second "just" in that sentence that made tears well up in Brancaccio's eyes. Most of us once thought the problem was getting some money. Now what? Squander: to spend or use something precious in a wasteful way. Squandering ranks even below "leaving it in a passbook savings account" on the list of the greatest personal finance sins of our age, according to Brancaccio, who hit the road to determine the right answer to the question of what to do with money. Brancaccio gets this question from Marketplace listeners all the time: What does one do with a lump sum, perhaps the proceeds from some stock options, the profit on the sale of a house, an inheritance, a bonus, a settlement, or even a modest accumulation in a savings account? A natural storyteller, Brancaccio has a clear, intelligent, and delightfully offbeat way of explaining to his listeners the complexities of business, investing, and the economy. He has access to rivers of market information that should help answer this question of what to do with money. But data do not necessarily equal wisdom, so Brancaccio hit upon the idea of venturing out on a random "walk" to acquire some street smarts. Imagining a windfall of his own and haunted by his own checkered history with money, Brancaccio embarked on a funny and irreverent personal finance pilgrimage. His travels took him from Minnesota's Mall of America to New York City's Wall Street to one of the poorest towns in the West. He encountered entrepreneurs in California, homeowners in New York, retirees in Arizona, and some folks following their lifelong dreams in Texas. A drifter in a desert offered advice. So did a U.S. secretary of the treasury. Along the way, Brancaccio was challenged by a cascade of practical and philosophical issues: If consumption drives the economy, is there something wrong with saving? Is there such a thing as a socially responsible investment? Is charity an investment? If you can't beat a Las Vegas casino, can you beat the stock market? While Brancaccio's journey was a personal one, his eye-opening adventures reveal a great deal about attitudes toward money in America at the dawn of the new century -- and they provide entertaining lessons about how best to spend, invest, and save.
Download or read book The Age of Illusions written by Andrew Bacevich and published by Metropolitan Books. This book was released on 2020-01-07 with total page 144 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A thought-provoking and penetrating account of the post-Cold war follies and delusions that culminated in the age of Donald Trump from the bestselling author of The Limits of Power. When the Cold War ended with the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Washington establishment felt it had prevailed in a world-historical struggle. Our side had won, a verdict that was both decisive and irreversible. For the world’s “indispensable nation,” its “sole superpower,” the future looked very bright. History, having brought the United States to the very summit of power and prestige, had validated American-style liberal democratic capitalism as universally applicable. In the decades to come, Americans would put that claim to the test. They would embrace the promise of globalization as a source of unprecedented wealth while embarking on wide-ranging military campaigns to suppress disorder and enforce American values abroad, confident in the ability of U.S. forces to defeat any foe. Meanwhile, they placed all their bets on the White House to deliver on the promise of their Cold War triumph: unequaled prosperity, lasting peace, and absolute freedom. In The Age of Illusions, bestselling author Andrew Bacevich takes us from that moment of seemingly ultimate victory to the age of Trump, telling an epic tale of folly and delusion. Writing with his usual eloquence and vast knowledge, he explains how, within a quarter of a century, the United States ended up with gaping inequality, permanent war, moral confusion, and an increasingly angry and alienated population, as well, of course, as the strangest president in American history.
Download or read book The Squandered written by David Putnam and published by Oceanview Publishing. This book was released on 2016-02-02 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Best-selling author of the Bruno Johnson Crime Series Can Bruno ignore his inmate brother's plea? Not if children are at risk. The Squandered propels Bruno into an emotionally charged high-speed chase as he and Marie leave their rescued kids in Costa Rica and risk returning to the U.S. at the request of Bruno's terminally ill father. Bruno's estranged and incarcerated brother needs Bruno to help rescue his abducted young grandchildren—children that Bruno didn't know existed. Bruno cannot deny his father, and Marie will not let Bruno go alone. As fugitives, they return to the U.S. to face not only imminent arrest, but also to confront ruthless kidnappers, drug dealers, and government agents who will stop at nothing to keep a secret from the past buried forever. Glimpses of Bruno's law enforcement past shed light on the mayhem they encounter once they are discovered in L.A. It seems that Bruno's brother, Noble, has inadvertently kicked a hornet's nest of criminals, both in and out of prison, and among various law enforcement agencies looking to find a long missing load of nine million dollars' worth of cocaine. And Noble's grandchildren are caught in the crosshairs. The chase, the brutality, and the emotional stress tests Bruno and Marie's relationship and forces them to define family—what's okay to forgive, and what should never be forgotten. Armed with a new moral code, will they live long enough to put it into practice? Perfect for fans of Robert Crais and Michael Connelly While all of the novels in the Bruno Johnson Crime Series stand on their own and can be read in any order, the publication sequence is: The Disposables The Replacements The Squandered The Vanquished The Innocents The Reckless The Heartless The Ruthless (coming February 2021) The Sinister (coming February 2022)
Download or read book Wasted written by Byron Reese and published by Crown Currency. This book was released on 2021-06-01 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Wasted is a riveting exploration of the complicated, and often surprising, ways that waste occurs in our businesses, our communities, and our lives “A smart, unconventional book that takes readers far beyond what they think they know about a complex subject.”—Kari Byron, former cast member of MythBusters Waste. We spend a great deal of energy trying to avoid it, but once you train your eyes to look for it, you’ll see it all around you—in your home, your business, and your everyday life. In Wasted, futurist Byron Reese and entrepreneur Scott Hoffman take readers on a fascinating journey through this modern world of waste, drawing on science, economics, and human behavior to envision what a world with far less of it—or none of it at all—might look like. Along the way, they explore thought-provoking issues such as • why the United States got a higher proportion of its energy from renewable sources in 1950 than it does today • whether the amount of gold in unused mobile phones can be extracted for profit • how switching to water fountains on a single route from Singapore to Newark could prevent the use of 3,400 plastic bottles—on each flight • whether the amount of money you save buying goods in bulk is offset by the amount you lose when some spoil. Ultimately, the question of reducing waste is scientific, philosophical, and, most of all, complex. According to Reese and Hoffman, the rush toward simple answers has often led to well-meaning efforts that cause more waste than they save. The only way we can hope to make progress is to treat waste as the complicated issue it is. While the authors don’t promise easy answers, in this compelling book they take an important step toward solutions by examining the questions at play, giving actionable steps, and ensuring that you’ll never see the world of waste the same way again.
Download or read book Squandering the Blue written by Kate Braverman and published by . This book was released on 1991 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Paradise Squandered written by Alex Stefansson and published by . This book was released on 2012-09-09 with total page 146 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Insightful, provocative and bold, Paradise Squandered is Alex Stefansson's take-no-prisoners debut novel about a cynical teenager's naive artistic aspirations, and his pining love for a girl he is too afraid to actually talk to. It is a raw, powerful portrait of a disaffected generation in an empty, consumer-culture world. It is the story of Andrew Banks, a recent graduate of Puget Sound Prep and quite possibly the most directionless member of his graduating class. This is a story of what it is like to aimlessly trudge along that strange and uncharted course that is life after high school. Andrew returns home from a long-promised graduation trip to Hawaii and re-enters a bland, suburban landscape of privilege and indifference feeling alone and empty. The house he grew up in doesn't feel like home anymore. His mother seems more interested in desperately clinging to youth than being a mother. His sister only cares about playing the role of dutiful daughter. His brother disappeared years ago. His dad died when he was ten. Talented but uninspired, Andrew knows he wants to pursue his art, but he has no idea how. He resigns himself to going through the motions of his own life, until he overhears the disturbing truth of his father's death. He instantly decides he has to leave his childhood home forever, and a darkly hilarious odyssey ensues. Andrew moves to a new city with his best friend, David, who is going to college in the fall and has big plans for his future. Andrew's plans are less academic. He meets Steven, a highly ambitious artist with questionable motives, and a mysterious and alluring young woman who keeps him coming back to the same coffee shop, day after day. Andrew eventually discovers that some things are actually worth pursuing.
Download or read book The Great Disappointment written by Salman Anees Soz and published by Ebury Press. This book was released on 2019 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government completes its current term ahead of the General Elections 2019, it is time to evaluate its performance, specifically in terms of its management of the economy. This book is a critical assessment of five years of the brand of economics Prime Minister Narendra Modi has championed, often referred to as 'Modinomics'. Brought into power with the biggest political mandate in almost three decades, did the NDA government succeed in gainfully transforming India's economic trajectory or did it squander a once-in-a-generation opportunity? The book conjectures it is the latter, and analyses why the Modi government's stewardship of the economy is a 'great disappointment'.
Download or read book Hill of Squandered Valour written by Ron Lock and published by Casemate. This book was released on 2011-10-25 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Battle of Spion Kop was fought during the campaign to relieve Ladysmith, South Africa, after the Boers of the Transvaal and Orange Free State had gotten a jump on the British Empire and besieged a British army in the town. It was the single bloodiest episode in the campaign, as well as a harbinger of the bitter and desperate fighting still to come in the Second Boer War. Spion Kop, just northeast of Ladysmith, was the largest hill in the region, being over 1,400 feet high, and it lay almost exactly at the center of the Boer line. If the British could capture this position and bring artillery to the hill they would then command the flanks of the surrounding Boer positions. On the night of 23 January 1900, a large British force under Major General Edward Woodgate was dispatched to secure the height, with Lt. Colonel Alexander Thorneycroft selected to lead the initial assault. However, the Boers refused to give up the position and a bitter two days of fighting ensued. In the initial darkness the British mistakenly entrenched at the center of the hill instead of the crest, and suffered horribly from Boer marksmen clinging to the periphery. Suffering badly themselves, the Boers were finally inclined to admit defeat when they discovered that the British had retreated, leaving behind their many dead. Yet, in light of the devastation wrought on both sides, the British were finally able to rally and relieve Ladysmith four weeks later. Ron Lock, esteemed author of many Zulu warfare histories, brings to life this bitter and previously overlooked campaign in vivid and complete detail, with supporting sources including then-journalist Winston ChurchillÕs battle report, as well as many previously unpublished illustrations and 6 newly commissioned maps. His account will be valuable to both historians and strategists wanting to better understand this difficult and devastating conflict.
Download or read book Classical Me Classical Thee Squander Not Thine Education written by Rebekah Merkle and published by Canon Press & Book Service. This book was released on 2017-08-22 with total page 110 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Everyone is so busy giving the classical education to the students that I'm not sure people have taken the time to actually tell them why it matters..." Rebekah Merkle knows which high school classes you like and which you roll your eyes at, which books you enjoy and which you kinda skim. That's because she went through this whole thing called classical education, too: She was a guinea pig in one of the very first classical Christian schools in the country. Written for students by a (former) student, Classical Me, Classical Thee is lighthearted and--most importantly for you busy high-schoolers--very short. It has a simple goal: to explain why you students are doing what you do in class. (SPOILER: Grades aren't the point--you won't use your knowledge of the Iliad Book 5 every year until you die.) What you do in class is a drill -- and nobody drills for the sake of the drill. You do drills so that you can win the game. The real tragedy, though, would be if you didn't know you were doing drills... or didn't know there was a game at all. Grades aren't the point. So drill to win.
Download or read book 3 Summers written by Lisa Robertson and published by Coach House Books. This book was released on 2016-09-26 with total page 122 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Recite your poem to your aunt. I threw myself to the ground. Where were you in the night? In a school among the pines. What was the meaning of the dream? Organs, hormones, toxins, lesions: what is a body? In 3 Summers, Lisa Robertson takes up her earlier concerns with form and literary precedent, and turns toward the timeliness of embodiment. What is form's time? Here the form of life called a poem speaks with the body's mortality, its thickness, its play. The 10 poem-sequences in 3 Summers inflect a history of textual voices — Lucretius, Marx, Aby Warburg, Deleuze, the Sogdian Sutras — in a lyricism that insists on analysis and revolt, as well as the pleasures of description. The poet explores the mysterious oddness of the body, its languor and persistence, to test how it shapes the materiality of thinking, which includes rivers and forests. But in these poems' landscapes, the time of nature is inherently political. Now only time is wild, and only time — embodied here in Lisa Robertson’s forceful cadences — can tell. "Robertson proves hard to explain but easy to enjoy. . . . Dauntlessly and resourcefully intellectual, Robertson can also be playful or blunt. . . . She wields language expertly, even beautifully."—The New York Times "Robertson makes intellect seductive; only her poetry could turn swooning into a critical gesture."— The Village Voice Lisa Robertson's books include Cinema of the Present, Debbie: An Epic, The Men, The Weather, R's Boat and Occasional Works and Seven Walks from the Office for Soft Architecture. Lisa Robertson's Magenta Soul Whip was named one of The New York Times' 100 Notable Books. She lives in France.
Download or read book The Pig Book written by Citizens Against Government Waste and published by St. Martin's Griffin. This book was released on 2013-09-17 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The federal government wastes your tax dollars worse than a drunken sailor on shore leave. The 1984 Grace Commission uncovered that the Department of Defense spent $640 for a toilet seat and $436 for a hammer. Twenty years later things weren't much better. In 2004, Congress spent a record-breaking $22.9 billion dollars of your money on 10,656 of their pork-barrel projects. The war on terror has a lot to do with the record $413 billion in deficit spending, but it's also the result of pork over the last 18 years the likes of: - $50 million for an indoor rain forest in Iowa - $102 million to study screwworms which were long ago eradicated from American soil - $273,000 to combat goth culture in Missouri - $2.2 million to renovate the North Pole (Lucky for Santa!) - $50,000 for a tattoo removal program in California - $1 million for ornamental fish research Funny in some instances and jaw-droppingly stupid and wasteful in others, The Pig Book proves one thing about Capitol Hill: pork is king!
Download or read book Proust His Banker written by Gian Balsamo and published by Univ of South Carolina Press. This book was released on 2017-04-19 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study explores the surprising relationship between Proust’s creative genius, his financial extravagance, and the steady hand that kept him afloat. What Marcel Proust wanted from life most of all was unconditional requited love, and the way he went after it—smothering the objects of his affection with gifts—cost him a fortune. To pay for such extravagance, he engaged in daring speculations on the stock exchange. The task of his cousin and financial adviser, Lionel Hauser, was to make sure these speculations would not go sour. In Proust and His Banker, Gian Balsamo examines this vital, complex relationship and reveals that the author’s liberal squandering of money provided the grist for many of the fictional characters and dramatic events he wrote about. Focusing on hundreds of letters between Proust and Hauser among other archival and primary sources, Balsamo provides a fascinating window into the writer’s creative process, his financial activities, and the surprising relationship between the two. Successes and failures alike provided material for Proust’s fiction, whether from the purchase of an airplane for the object of his affections or the investigation of a deceased love’s intimate background. Over the course of their fifteen-year collaboration, the banker saw Proust squander three-fifths of his wealth. To Hauser the writer was a virtuoso in resource mismanagement. Nonetheless, Balsamo shows, we owe it to the altruism of this generous relative, who never thought twice about sacrificing his own time and resources to Proust, that In Search of Lost Time was ever completed.
