Product Description

Mark Green is coauthor with Eric Alterman of the recent New York Times bestseller The Book on Bush: How George W. (Mis)Leads America. In Losing Our Democracy he takes on a larger subject, revealing in chilling detail how the far and religious right, a coalition of big business and, most shockingly, President Bush and his White House are in the process of sabotaging our democracy. With careful reasoning and brilliant style, the author provides anecdotes and extensive evidence demonstrating that our liberty is under attack.

This is not, however, just another Bush-bashing book, this is a call-to-arms to all the people in America who cherish our freedom and who are sick and tired of seeing rich, born-again, politicians line their pockets so that special interests can have whatever they want at the America people’s expense. Subjects include voter suppression, religious, corporate, and legislative tyranny, so-called tort reform, the problem of purchased politicians and the far right’s Stone-Age approach to race and civil rights.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1006301 in Books
• Published on: 2006-08-07
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 448 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Green (The Book on Bush), president of the New Democracy Project and currently a candidate for New York State attorney general, delivers a "Democracy Audit" that takes to task the Bush administration and the right wing of the Republican Party, and though well-documented, his case suffers from staleness. As readers might already suspect, the state of American democracy is grim: the 43rd president has undermined the rule of law and ushered in a "new authoritarianism" characterized by corporate malfeasance, religious intolerance, voter intimidation and media "self censorship." Politicians, meanwhile, conduct business "Tony Soprano-style" and bully lobbyists into hosting fundraisers and hiring staffers. He bolsters his analysis with copious, albeit well-trod, evidence, culminating in 27 examples of Bush's "deceptions," most of them concerning Iraq and domestic anti-terrorism tactics. But Green's remedies to "save democracy" aren't new or innovative, and range from the practical (elections should be held on Saturday) to the obvious ("Presidents should obey the law"). Green mostly spares his audience the gutter-sniping that sometimes passes for political analysis, but while Bush detractors will relish this well-crafted indictment, others may find their attention wandering mid-way through these familiar charges.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Review
"A must-read for anyone who cares about America finding its true self again." -- Arianna Huffington, nationally syndicaed columnist, author, and co-founder and editor of the Huffington Post

"Mark Green's Losing Our Democracy is a must-read book." -- Senator John Kerry

From the Inside Flap
Mark Green is the author or editor of 20 other books, including the #1 New York Times bestseller, Who Runs Congress? (4 editions) and What We Stand For: A Program for Progressive Patriotism. He has written numerous articles for newspapers and magazines like the New York Times, the Washington Post, The Nation and the New Republic. He has appeared over 200 times as a regular host on CNNís Crossfire and as the ìExaminerî on PBSís Firing Line with William F. Buckley, and more recently on a weekly news program on NY1 with Ed Koch and Al DíAmato.

Mark Green was elected New York Cityís first public advocate, a position he held from 1994 to 2001, and was the cityís 2001 Democratic nominee for mayor. He currently is president of the New Democracy Project, teaches at New York University and is seeking the office of New York State Attorney General.

Author photo by
Timothy Greenfield-Sanders.

Customer Reviews

Good Summary!
"Losing Our Democracy" begins with a wry observation: "Much has been written about Bush's war for democracy abroad, but what about his war on democracy at home?" Green goes on to observe that while Bushites may question evolutionary Darwinism, they love Social Darwinism. But because of imperfect information, oligopoly power, corruption, deception, laissez isn't always fair.

Republicans have been brilliant in marketing their brand. Per Thomas Frank: "Vote to stop abortion; receive a rollback in capital gains taxes. Vote to make our country strong again; receive deindustrialization. Vote to stand tall against terrorists; receive Social Security privatization." How do the Republicans do it? Serial manipulation of information has confused and misled millions of Americans. Then there's the disproportionate influence of corporate dollars (1% give move campaign dollars than the other 99% and receive 40% of all recent tax cuts). Another distortion is created by the fact that 45% of Americans (eg. low population Red states such as Wyoming) elect 55% of our Senators.

Gerrymandering (plus enhanced fundraising ability) results in 98% of House members being re-elected. Other abuses include the Republicans running Congress basically without Democrat input, threatening Republican members with primary opposition and lack of funding if they vote against the President (House members do so 84% of the time), holding votes without allowing members time to read the proposed bill, and totally rewriting bills in conference committee with little member input.

Green then goes on to list abuses in other areas. The 2005 "Consume Fairness Act" moved class actions from state to federal courts, resulting in them being much more likely to be thrown out as "unmanageable." Then there is corporate accounting fraud (Enron), grossly biased stock evaluators (Henry Blodget)

Giving up essential freedom, is it really for security?
Mark Green touches upon how Bush is condemning the true notion of democracy in its birthplace while hypocritically proclaiming of his efforts to spread democracy to the rest of the world. The book is eloquently written and allows the readers to logically follow through Mark Green's reasoning of how Bush had sabotaged people's freedom in the US. Losing our democracy must be read if you want to know the current situation of our government and how it had led to the prevalence of cronyism in our country.

Not just what, but why.
Green neatly encapsulates the essential struggle we face as Americans, and sets a clear direction for what we need to do if America is to remain truly free. Many of his points will resonate with those made by authors like Thom Hartmann, and Green's perspective both pragmatic and compelling.

Reading this book I found it both frustrating and frightening how accepting greedy corporations have made us to the precursors of the destruction of our democracy. We are now a country that has been conditioned to accept with a disinterested shrug the change from representative democracy (one person, one vote) to "corporatocracy" (one dollar, one vote). We have co-mingled democracy (a political system) with capitalism (a form of economic organization). As citizens we've been weaned away from having a "say" to merely having a "voice" and are now, thanks to the power of corporate "free speech" well on the path to not being heard at all.

Read Green's book. He brings forth the simple truth that core American values (honesty, fairness, faith in facts and reason, tolerance, belief in the commons and the common good, preservation of nature and preserving for the future, and shared sacrifice for the well being of our fellow man (or woman)) are all being displaced by the one value that out of control global corporations and crony government can understand -- the dollar value.

If you're at all curious as to why after 9/11,the best presidential advice we received was that that we all "keep shopping" lest the terrorists win, this book is for you! Bravo, Mark Green.