Archive for June 2013

[Previous message][Next message][Back to index]

[ecrea] Dollarocracy—a new book by John Nichols & Robert W. McChesney

Thu Jun 27 17:03:02 GMT 2013




Dollarocracy—a new book that explains crisis of our times…
View this email in your browser
Dollarocracy is the most important political book of the year, maybe of our times. This is exactly the book every concerned American needs to read, because the process of understanding what exactly is going on and taking America back from the corporations starts here.

—Thom Hartmann

When President Barack Obama was reelected, some pundits argued that, despite unbridled campaign spending, here was proof that big money couldn’t buy elections. The exact opposite was the case. The 2012 election was a quantum leap: it was America’s first $10 billion election campaign. And it solidified the power of the fabulously wealthy individuals and corporations who are radically redefining our politics in a way that, failing a dramatic intervention, signals the end of our democracy. It is the world of Dollarocracy.

This summer my new book with John Nichols, Dollarocracy: How the Money and Media Election Complex is Destroying America, is being published. The book is the result of years of research John and I have done on the commercialization of elections and their ignominious consequences in the United States. It is the most important book of our careers.

U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders wrote the book’s foreword. “With this book,” he writes, “John Nichols and Bob McChesney invite Americans to examine the challenges facing America in new ways, and to fully recognize the threat that the combination of big money and big media poses to the promise of self-government. They paint a daunting picture, rich in detail based on intense reporting and groundbreaking research.”

Former FCC commissioner Michael Copps says: “Dollarocracy gets at what's ailing America better than any other diagnosis I've encountered. Plus it prescribes a cure. What else could a reader—or a citizen—ask? To me, it's the book of the year.”

Dollarocracy includes research and analysis of the following topics:

* a history of the development of election laws and campaign finance since the beginning of the republic through Citizens United. * an accounting of the $10 billion spent on the 2012 election campaigns—where it came from and what it was spent on—nearly twice what was spent in 2008. And we explain why it is only going to get worse. * an examination of what big funders get by bankrolling election campaigns; basically they remove the general population from having any meaningful influence over government policies. * a review of the Supreme Court’s extraordinary 40 year path to overturn all legislation on campaign spending and make unlimited, anonymous and unaccountable individual and corporate campaign spending not only possible, but rational. * a detailed examination of the growth, nature and impact of political advertising, and the media corporations that benefit by it as they discontinue actual campaign journalism. These media giants profit mightily by the dreadful election system and are to campaign finance reform what the NRA is to gun control. * how the collapse of journalism and the lack of meaningful public media have accelerated the crisis; this is as much an issue of dreadful news media as it is an issue of campaign finance and election laws. * there is now a “money-and-media election complex.” This complex is built on a set of commercial and institutional relationships connecting wealthy donors, corporations, lobbyists, politicians, coin-operated “think tanks,” massive media conglomerates, beltway pundits, and now super-PACS. These relationships are not just eviscerating democratic elections, they are benefitting by that evisceration. * a trailblazing chapter on how the Internet has been incorporated into the “money-and-media election complex.” The NSA has nothing on the politicians who data mine, surreptitiously monitor and manipulate voters in a manner that has made Madison Avenue and Silicon Valley corporate giants envious. * a conclusion on how Americans are beginning to fight back and the inspiring grassroots movements to establish the constitutional right to vote and to eliminate corporate campaign spending.

“As Nichols and McChesney’s new book shows,” writes Thomas E. Patterson, Bradlee Professor of Government and the Press at Harvard University, “the robber barons of the late 19th century were pikers compared with today’s moneyed interests. They have hijacked our elections at all levels, and nothing short of the sweeping reforms called for in Dollarocracy can fix the problem. The book is a must read for anyone who cares about the integrity of our democratic system.”

You can find excerpts and reviews or learn more about the book at the Dollarocracy website here; or click here if you wish to purchase a copy.

And if you do have a chance to read Dollarocracy, please let me know what you think of it. I can be reached at (rwmcchesney /at/ gmail.com).

Thanks,

Bob McChesney

"This is the black book of politics-as-industry, an encyclopedic account of money's crimes against democracy. The billionaires have hijacked our government, and anyone feeling complacent after the 2012 election should take sober note of Nichols' and McChesney's astonishing finding: It's only going to get worse."

—Thomas Frank
"John Nichols and Bob McChesney make a compelling, and terrifying, case that American democracy is becoming American dollarocracy. Even more compelling, and hopeful, is their case for a radical reform agenda to take power back from the corporations and give it to the people."

—Naomi Klein
Powell's Books




----------------
ECREA-Mailing list
----------------
This mailing list is a free service from ECREA.
---
To unsubscribe, please visit http://www.ecrea.eu/mailinglist
---
ECREA - European Communication Research and Education Association
Postal address:
ECREA
Université Libre de Bruxelles
c/o Dept. of Information and Communication Sciences
CP123, avenue F.D. Roosevelt 50, b-1050 Bruxelles, Belgium
Email: (info /at/ ecrea.eu)
URL: http://www.ecrea.eu
----------------

[Previous message][Next message][Back to index]