Product Description

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #478 in Books
• Published on: 2009-07-27
• Released on: 2009-07-27
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 256 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9781596981096
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
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From the Inside Flap
The era of hope and change is dead....and it only took six months in office to kill it.

Never has an administration taken office with more inflated expectations of turning Washington around. Never have a media-anointed American Idol and his entourage fallen so fast and hard. In her latest investigative tour de force, New York Times bestselling author Michelle Malkin delivers a powerful, damning, and comprehensive indictment of the culture of corruption that surrounds Team Obama's brazen tax evaders, Wall Street cronies, petty crooks, slum lords, and business-as-usual influence peddlers. In Culture of Corruption, Malkin reveals:

* Why nepotism beneficiaries First Lady Michelle Obama and Vice President Joe Biden are Team Obama's biggest liberal hypocrites--bashing the corporate world and influence-peddling industries from which they and their relatives have benefited mightily
* What secrets the ethics-deficient members of Obama's cabinet--including Hillary Clinton--are trying to hide
* Why the Obama White House has more power-hungry, unaccountable "czars" than any other administration
* How Team Obama's first one hundred days of appointments became a litany of embarrassments as would-be appointee after would-be appointee was exposed as a tax cheat or had to withdraw for other reasons
* How Obama's old ACORN and union cronies have squandered millions of taxpayer dollars and dues money to enrich themselves and expand their power
* How Obama's Wall Street money men and corporate lobbyists are ruining the economy and helping their friendsIn Culture of Corruption, Michelle Malkin lays bare the Obama administration's seamy underside that the liberal media would rather keep hidden.

From the Back Cover
Praise for Culture of Corruption

"Culture of Corruption, by my good friend and intrepid reporter Michelle Malkin, reveals all the sordid details the Obama Administration would rather you not know--the sleaze, corruption, and self-dealing of the Chicago Machine that lets no `crisis' go to waste. A powerful and necessary indictment of what `hope and change' really means."
--Mark Levin, author of the New York Times bestsellers Liberty and Tyranny and Men in Black

"Dogged, fiercely independent, and with a brilliant eye for the telling detail, Michelle Malkin has now turned her formidable skills to the bright new dawn of the Obama era, and the ever widening gulf between the hopey-changey rhetoric and the murkier reality. Her riveting portrait of unsavory cronies parceling out the spoils of government is somewhat at odds with the impression you may have gained from the besotted Tiger Beat correspondents of the mainstream media. I will leave it to the reader to decide which view is more persuasive, but let's just say that, if more journalists were like Michelle Malkin, American newspapers might still have a future."
--Mark Steyn, author of the New York Times bestseller America Alone

About the Author
Michelle Malkin is the author of three bestselling books, including the New York Times bestseller Invasion. She is the founder of two of the Internet's top conservative blogs, MichelleMalkin.com and HotAir.com. Malkin has worked in daily newspaper journalism since 1992, penned a nationally syndicated column for Creators Syndicate since 1999, and served as a FOX News Channel contributor since 2001. While working as an editorial writer/columnist for the Seattle Times, she won the Council on Governmental Ethics Laws (COGEL) national award for outstanding service for the cause of governmental ethics and leadership, and for investigative columns that exposed campaign finance abuses and corruption by Washington State Democrats, Republicans, and political organizations. After nearly a decade, Malkin escaped the Beltway swamp and now lives a much healthier, happier, uncorrupted life with her husband and two children in Colorado.

Customer Reviews

Should Have Been Titled "Cesspool of Corruption"!
Before I proceed with my review, it is clear from the polar opposite 1-star reviews that there are many libs commenting on the book, so let me go ahead and mention the "drone" talking points so they won't get distracted - "Bush lied, people died", "Cheney/Halliburton", "Scooter Libby", "Karl Rove caused Katrina", "Blackwater", "9/11 was in inside job", blah, blah, blah.

Having said all of that, Michelle Malkin did an excellent job of laying out a coherent, well-researched, and systematic roadmap of corruption, self-serving favors, and criminal activity -- all linked to our President and his network of thug insiders. She clearly lays out the proven links between the players and the overwhelming evidence of the role of money and corruption on how things get done in Washington. I had heard of many of these players through other research and reading, but Ms Malkin brought to light NUMEROUS relationships between these players I was not aware of, and which cause an even greater disgust for business as usual. President Obama has somehow convinced all the drones that he's above "Politics as Usual", but the sheer weight of the evidence clearly shows he's neck deep in the "cesspool", but his lips are still moving.

After reading all of the negative reviews on the book, one would hope the detractors could at least debunk the book with facts and evidence, but of course if the allegations are true then that's not possible..........so, on to Plan B! Attack the author as a right-wing hack, and paint all the readers as ignorant right-wing talk radio heads who can't think for themselves.

I am a well-educated senior executive in business, and I observe every day that "relationships matter", and who a person associates with tells a lot about that person. It is often said that "integrity is what you do when nobody's looking", which I heartily endorse. Based on the contents of this book, if the players are this flagrant in their "visible behavior", can you imagine what they are capable of when nobody's looking?

This was a riveting book which I wasn't able to put down, and well worth the time. I applaud Michelle Malkin for the hard work and thorough research that obviously went into this body of work!

Read the Book
I'm a Libertarian. Did not vote for Bush. Did not vote for Obama. Loved this book. A very important read. So very few of the one-star reviewers appear to have actually read it. The facts are very well documented and footnoted in the book. I'm open to a refutation--I just haven't seen one that involves well-researched information or facts.

It seems if you consider yourself "conservative" you're predestined to like this book. If you're "liberal" predestined to hate it. However, for someone like me, who reads a lot on both sides of the aisle to find a bit of sense somewhere, this is a great and informative read.

This is not pleasant reading
I learned quite a bit about two women named Michelle from this book.

Michelle Malkin is someone I had only known as a blogger. But she's been a working journalist since 1992, and a syndicated columnist since 1999. She's also a prize-winning muckraker: she won the COGEL national award while working for the Seattle Times. (That's the Council on Governmental Ethics Laws, and she won the prize for exposing corruption in the state of Washington -- among Democrats, Republicans, and political organizations. To sum up: she's not a lightweight, and she's not a beginner. She is among the very best investigative journalists we have.

Michelle Obama --- well, she's not a lightweight, or a beginner, either. Despite her constant complaints about being kept on the "periphery" of events, this poor, poor woman went to Princeton and then to Harvard Law School. She served a brief, inglorious term in her chosen profession (the law) but quickly advanced to a series of patronage positions, including a job especially created for her at the University of Chicago Medical Center. She was soon pulling down $500,000 per year as a ...medical administrator?? Do people generally go to Harvard Law so they can make a fortune in hospital administration? Well, Michelle O. has her own way of doing things, like wearing those $540 Lanvin sneakers while "helping out" at a food bank.

A sketch of the book's contents: Chapter One is the tale of all those Obama nominations that went down in flames due to problems with unpaid taxes, charges of corruption, and general political crookedness. Chapter Two is about Michelle O --- whom Michelle M calls "First Crony."

Chapter Three is about Joe Biden, and it's a big surprise. I had no idea Biden and his family were so corrupt. I don't really follow politics that closely, in normal times, so I just assumed that Joe Biden was Bozo the Clown. "Our foreign policy expert," no less. Well, he may be Bozo, but this Clown has his fingers in pockets all over the place. Hope & Change? Joe Biden represents the very opposite; he personifies "Beltway Business as Usual." Chapter Four introduces us to the Obama Cabinet --- and a sad lot they are. The saddest of them all seemed to be the new Labor Secretary, a complete union loyalist & fanatic who co-sponsored the infamous "Card Check" bill, which seeks to eliminate the secret ballot in union elections!! (When she was asked about this bill --- the one she co-sponsored --- she managed to duck and weave and avoid offering any definite opinion about what she might do. Oh, Hope & Change!!)

Chapters Seven and Eight contain an awful lot of the dirt about SEIU and ACORN. These chapters have a renewed relevance right now, when the corrupt ACORN gang has been caught red-handed encouraging seriously criminal activity, including underage prostitution. (ACORN just appointed "an independent panel" to look into things, and you can find most of the members of that panel right here in this book. One of those "independent" investigators is the head of SEIU. Really, you can't make stuff like this up!)

Reading this book is slow going because it is so amazingly depressing. More truth in reviewing: I didn't vote for Obama, because he worried me from his first campaign speeches (which I stopped listening to). It was clear to me that Barack Obama never saw a government program he didn't like. So I hoped that he would grow into the job and govern from the center. "Hope" didn't accomplish much.

Reading this book is not a jolly experience, it is a painful duty.

Two closing remarks: first, a lot of Obama supporters brush this book off because "it was written in less than six months." That's not right. Malkin has been covering Barack Obama since he appeared on the national scene, and has been continuously blogging about him and his cronies since then. When he won the election, I imagine she shifted into high gear. There's no question that the book was produced quickly, because it contains a number of trivial typographical errors and oversights, such as a long citation which lacks a footnote. But the BOOK does not lack footnotes. On the contrary, it has 75 pages of source documentation! Like so many other things in life, the "luck" of Michelle Malkin grew out of a huge amount of hard work over a period of two years or more. None of the little goofs in the book are substantive in any way.

Second -- well, I'll let Ralph Waldo Emerson say it: "As we are, so we associate. The good, by affinity, seek the good; the vile, by affinity, the vile. Thus, of their own volition, souls proceed into heaven, into hell."

Michelle Malkin deserves a Pulitzer prize for this book. But I hope nobody is naive enough to think that she'll even come close to getting it.