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

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
----------------