Reddit mentions: The best us congres, senate & legislative books

No.
Look, I've loved Bernie Sanders since he came to the Senate, but some of his presidential supporters are clearly new to politicking and quite rabid in their fervor; which can lead to blindness. To suggest DWS has had any significant impact over the primary outcomes is laughable. Believing that she could change the super-delegate rules/nomination process itself single-handedly is laughable. Believing that, even if she could, that she is going to go/should/has an obligation to go out of her way to stop the first female president from being elected is remarkably naive.
It's amazing how the Ron Paul '08 crowd has turned into the Sanders '16 crowd---I'm sure that most are not the same people but the attitudes and level of familiarity with politics and political realities is truly striking.
What is upsetting though is that after all this time it kills me to see that the younger generation still falls into BS narratives that don't match reality: "She (DWS) reversed campaign finance laws prior to the primary(,) essentially inviting special interest groups and thier money into the political process."
Wut?
Yes. Being chair of the DNC means you are more powerful than the Senate/House and Presidency. You get to single-handedly change FEC rules and election laws. Before DWS, special interests had no influence over our elections at all. Yup. That totally sounds correct.
I'd recommend anyone that actually believes that to read Larry Lessig's Republic Lost and Zepher Teachout's Corruption in America
I appreciate Sander's supporters' passion and that so many want to move portions of American government in the Socialist direction ala Nordic democracies. But please, if this is your first time understanding how the nominating process works, don't believe everything you hear, get news/fact-checks from different and varied sources.

> So you accuse me of hating Lincoln because she was "paraphrasing" him.

That's not even close to what I said. I thought she was actually backed up by a quote regarding the 13th amendment, but I was mistaken. She was still channeling Lincoln or at least believed she was. So the idea is basically the same, but I shouldn't have used the word "paraphrased".

> It's clear that you've already made up your mind about Hillary and you're working backwards from your conclusion that she's working in good faith. She literally just admitted that she lies to the public but here you are defending the merits of public servants deceiving their constituents.

No, I just realize that she's a reasonably intelligent person and she's not going to announce some evil plan like that to the world. It's clear what sort of point she's making, which is about the nature of politics in general as it has existed/been practiced across time and place: "I mean, politics is like sausage being made. It is unsavory, and it always has been that way, but we usually end up where we need to be.". She recognizes that having a public/private position is "unsavory" in some sense but it's what needs to happen to accomplish good.

She probably feels similarly about earmarks. They may be unsavory "bribes" to win votes for legislation, but they help get things done - since they were banned, everything happens on basically a straight-line partisan vote. See, e.g., City of Rivals where two former Senate Majority Leaders of both parties wrote the forewords.

All politicians have and will continue to "lie", and I'm largely fine with it. That's what she was pointing out.

> People on the right rarely cite reasons for hating her

Agreed, and that's what I've basically been saying.

> This is a legitimate reason that people on all sides of the aisle refer to because it's such an open and shut case.

Yeah, but people still hate her for no good reason when people on their side say similar "eye-opening" and "corrupt" statements (ones I would argue are worse) and they don't bat an eyelash. The Republican leadership was caught on tape with the current House minority leader saying that he thinks Putin pays Trump (and Rep. Rohrabacher who likely was compromised by Russia), laughing at it, and then having Paul Ryan swear them all to observe omerta because they're all "family". Barely disturbed the news cycle. Trump's current chief of staff and former cabinet secretary in various positions, Mick Mulvaney, was caught on tape literally saying that as a Congressman he only met with lobbyists who paid him. Republicans do not hate him and are not demanding his resignation, nor are they reproachful of Trump. A guy who attacked Hillary for being beholden to Wall Street and then proceeded to name a bunch of slimy Goldman Sachs alums to his cabinet.

They also don't care about the fact that Trump ordered a botched SEAL raid in Yemen after thinking about it for 5 minutes after being approached at dinner, and got a SEAL and an 8yo American girl killed. He also had a group of US soldiers wiped out by an ambush in Niger where they were operating without proper support. Trump told one of the soldier's mothers that "he knew what he signed up for". Yet neither of them blew up to become Trump's Benghazi.

There's something different about Hillary that makes them utterly loathe her. I think it's the fact that she's a woman, either directly or indirectly. It doesn't mean there aren't reasons to dislike her, but her gender casts her in a different light than a (white) man who had done the same thing.

> You pretend that there's no option C which is "I don't agree with this position but my district seems to overwhelmingly support it. I will vote in line with your opinion but I will not stop trying to change your minds". It's been used many times before but that actually takes some degree of nuance.

Sure, that's an option that is also deployed in some circumstances. But that doesn't necessarily buy you voters' respect. And sometimes your voters are simply wrong and you need to do the right thing against their wishes. Which is where we get to scheming. Basically every controversial measure that passes by one vote usually has a ton of people who voted 'no' only after vigorous political gamesmanship so they can avoid voting for something unpopular and tell their constituents they disapprove of it so they can protect their seat, while still getting it done. This can be abused, obviously, but it's a legitimate strategy. Very often the voters are just not paying sufficient attention or are not smart enough to notice when this is happening - so it becomes a necessary strategy, or else someone else who is better at playing the game will come along and implement it anyway.

> I have no words. You've gotten to the point where not only is this not an admission of guilt, it's a positive aspect of her.

I do see it as positive in a way. Time after time we have politicians who think they're going to walk into Congress or the presidency and reform the entire system, but they never even come close. That's because there are laws to politics almost like physical laws, and they only accommodate certain strategies. It's almost impossible to change or break these laws because a lot of them owe their existence to human nature.

So it'd be nice to have someone like Hillary who's not naive who doesn't think like Bernie or Warren or Trump that they're going to get elected president and remake the entire government in their image. It'd be nice to have someone who would sit down with McConnell in a smoke-filled room and do what needs to be done to achieve as many of our priorities as possible, while making necessary compromises and ensuring our side comes out the better, saying and doing anything within reason to achieve that end.

> That aside, this is another inaccurate analogy. This would only applicable if he was secretly AGAINST the bill in private while publicly supporting the bill.

Well, it's kind of the reverse. He supported the bill in public, while privately opposing it in the presence of certain senators and making it seem like he was on their side but merely pursuing a tactic to keep black people from getting too "uppity".

Republic Lost by Lawrence Lessig.

>In an era when special interests funnel huge amounts of money into our government-driven by shifts in campaign-finance rules and brought to new levels by the Supreme Court in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission-trust in our government has reached an all-time low. More than ever before, Americans believe that money buys results in Congress, and that business interests wield control over our legislature.

>With heartfelt urgency and a keen desire for righting wrongs, Harvard law professor Lawrence Lessig takes a clear-eyed look at how we arrived at this crisis: how fundamentally good people, with good intentions, have allowed our democracy to be co-opted by outside interests, and how this exploitation has become entrenched in the system. Rejecting simple labels and reductive logic-and instead using examples that resonate as powerfully on the Right as on the Left-Lessig seeks out the root causes of our situation. He plumbs the issues of campaign financing and corporate lobbying, revealing the human faces and follies that have allowed corruption to take such a foothold in our system. He puts the issues in terms that nonwonks can understand, using real-world analogies and real human stories. And ultimately he calls for widespread mobilization and a new Constitutional Convention, presenting achievable solutions for regaining control of our corrupted-but redeemable-representational system. In this way, Lessig plots a roadmap for returning our republic to its intended greatness.

>While America may be divided, Lessig vividly champions the idea that we can succeed if we accept that corruption is our common enemy and that we must find a way to fight against it. In REPUBLIC, LOST, he not only makes this need palpable and clear-he gives us the practical and intellectual tools to do something about it.

>About the Author

>Lawrence Lessig is the Roy L. Furman Professor of Law and Leadership at Harvard Law School, and director of the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard University. Prior to rejoining the Harvard faculty, Lessig was a professor at Stanford Law School, where he founded the school's Center for Internet and Society, and at the University of Chicago. He clerked for Judge Richard Posner on the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals and Justice Antonin Scalia on the United States Supreme Court.

I'll take number 4.

My favorite intro book on media and politics is Media Politics: A Citizen's Guide by Shanto Iyengar. It's a great textbook for teaching undergrads and covers pretty much everything.

For general theories of how political elites interact with the media, I would recommend Cook's Governing with the News, Patterson's Out of Order, and Zaller's A Theory of Media Politics (It's an unpublished manuscript, so just Google it and it'll come up.)

There's a ton of great work on the concept of media bias, but I'll give you two older works that I think capture the intersection of journalistic norms and coverage really well. Check out Gans's Deciding What's News and Schudson's Discovering the News. There's also work that looks at how economic forces lead to bias. See Hamilton's All the News That's Fit to Sell for an intro to that.

On media effects on behavior, start with Iyengar and Kinder's News that Matters. Beyond that, I'm partial to Graber's Processing the News, Soroka's Negativity in Democratic Politics, and Ladd's Why Americans Hate the Media and How it Matters.

If you're interested in how recent changes to the media environment (cable TV, internet, etc.) have affected things, I would recommend Prior's Post-Broadcast Democracy, Arceneaux and Johnson's Changing Minds or Changing Channels, Levendusky's How Partisan Media Polarize America, and Hindman's The Myth of Digital Democracy.

Finally, I'd be remiss if I didn't recommend some Lippmann or some Edelman. Those are for more high-minded/theory-driven thinking about how the media constructs our realities.

I know that's a lot, but there's a ton of stuff I'm cutting out as is (nothing about selective exposure or motivated reasoning, barely touching on the framing literature). If you have any more specific questions about American media, I can probably narrow it down some more.

Oh, and a couple quick recommendations on the other questions (which aren't really my specialty). I really liked Democracy for Realists by Achen and Bartels. Frances Lee's new book on political messaging in Congress is pretty interesting. And I'm a subscriber to the legislative subsidy school of thought on interest groups.

Regarding your 2: there are five different scandals linked on that linked page alone, just from the time Bill was President. There have also been many scandals she's faced since that time. You don't consider that a problem, seriously? They say that whenever you see one cockroach you should conclude that there are several nearby. So what then should we conclude when we see several cockroaches, if not that there's an infestation?

I can see three main possibilities: either she is an innocent person and keeps getting accused of illegal actions due to the worst luck in the universe, or there's a far reaching conspiracy focusing on manufacturing false claims against her specifically (much more often than against any other potential target), or she is guilty but calls in favors and destroys relevant evidence in order to get away with things she shouldn't be able to get away with.

Which seems the most probable to you: a corrupt politician getting away with it, a powerful conspiracy against a politician existing but somehow failing over and over and over again to get rid of her, or someone innocent of all wrongdoing repeatedly facing scandals for absolutely no reason?

If you don't think it's a big deal when politicians break laws in order to make themselves and their friends money, I'm astonished. Corruption is the ultimate form of rent seeking, and the proximate cause of highly extractive institutions. Additionally, when someone who's corrupt is in power, they'll tend to bring other rent seekers in their wake. They are likely to sympathize with their friends promoting special interest groups, rather than to dispassionately evaluate the costs and benefits of policies for the average citizen. I think the laws that we do have are permissive enough as it is. I'd much prefer a candidate who seeks to strengthen and broaden these laws in order to give government policymakers good incentives, over a candidate who prefers to weaken them, circumvent them, or break them.

The cattle controversy is the one I'm most familiar with. She got a hundred fold return shorting the cattle futures market during a time when the cattle futures market was rising. Expert economists, using a model "stated to give the hypothetical investor the benefit of the doubt... concluded that the odds of such a return happening were at best 1 in 31 trillion." Whatever the justice system might or might not require, I don't need any more evidence than that. An exact description of how she did it seems unnecessary, in my view, when such an implausible outcome occurring without corruption is essentially impossible. I am very much inclined to think that if she were a normal person, rather than a rich white ex first lady who has lots of friends and knows lots of secrets, one of these scandals would have landed her in jail by now. Politicians are corrupt all the time, and get away with it all the time, and she shows every possible sign of being typical in that regard.

I am not saying that because she is corrupt, she's automatically worse than any other possible candidate running for the presidency. I'd prefer Clinton to Trump, certainly, and am essentially indifferent between her and Sanders. However, I do think that it's shameful to our legal system that someone like that is allowed to walk free, and shameful to democracy in general that she's the best candidate our electoral system has managed to produce for us this year. It has become mainstream for people to mock and insult the Republicans for having Trump leading the polls, and the Republicans deserve it, but if the world made sense the Democrats would be receiving similar insults too, and just as frequently, but they are not.

It's not just Hillary I think is corrupt, though, lest you think this is all coming from a place of partisan bias. Karl Rove belongs in jail too. As do many other "respectable" people who've helped guide our country, in both the major political parties, whose names are too numerous and controversial for me to list here.

Peter Schweizer was a foreign policy advisor to Sarah Palin. He works with Andrew Breitbart and has authored several books with titles such as Makers and Takers: Why conservatives work harder, feel happier, have closer families, take fewer drugs, give more generously, value honesty more, are less materialistic.

But I don't bring this up to discredit the man. I think it's great to see a person of his character addressing such a pertinent issue like insider trading in Congress. The fact that it is him delivering this message encourages unity between conservatives and liberals so that we can more effectively confront the extensive corruption within our state and corporate systems.

Edit: This story was also covered well by Newsweek. Peter Schweizer's new book, on this topic and based on his independent research, is Throw Them All Out.

from time to time they do, getting 'primaried' is a thing recently, and it's one of the biggest threats the tea party especially has used in recent years; but on the whole rates aren't up very significantly, and are still within a sort of normal range. It's an interesting situation.

The book Getting Primaried is pretty fun reading on the subject. Fun if you like reading about political minutiae that is.

The analysis of the stock transactions was put forward in a book by Peter Schweizer, a fellow at the conservative Hoover Institution at Stanford University.

The book, entitled "Throw Them All Out", and subtitled How Politicians and Their Friends Get Rich Off Insider Stock Tips, Land Deals, and Cronyism That Would Send the Rest of Us to Prison, was featured in a recent "60 Minutes" investigation that gained a lot of attention.

In it, Schweizer said McDermott "bet big" by buying 2,000 shares in ID Biomedical of Quebec for $10 apiece in June 2004. That was six weeks before the House of Representatives passed the $5.6 billion bill dubbed Project Bioshield. Shares in the company subsequently tripled before McDermott sold them in September 2005.

Asked if he was accusing Rep. McDermott of insider trading, book author Schweizer said, "it is highly unethical to purchase stock in a bill you are supporting and then enjoy the profits when the corporate recipients see their stock climb."

Also named in the book as beneficiaries of cronyism and insider tips are Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., and House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio.

That's a big myth, but it's only "capitalism all the way" if it benefits corporations -- things tend to get very pampered, protective and socialist if a regulation helps corporations. Great books on the subject: The Conservative Nanny State: How the Wealthy Use the Government to Stay Rich and Get Richer, and Republic, Lost.

Gore won the popular vote by only half a million people.

Not to marginilize their votes, but in a country of 300 million, half a million isn't all that much. Its not the "large margin" you speak of.

Granted, I do believe that there was a mistake in the manner it was handled, and Gore deserved to win, but he wasn't exactly this savior figure who was loved by the entire country, that's simply what we perceive him as after 8 years of Bush.

Also, the phenomenon you're speaking of is party polarization, whereby an area that is heavily democratic will vote in very liberal people, while a heavily republican are will vote in a very conservative person. This is because in the area no one wants to seem out of place, so not supporting the very conservative person in the republican area for example could lead to being ostracized from the community for being "unpatriotic" or something like that.

Sadly, its a trend that is spreading nationwide. So many congressmen live in extremely safe districts because of this, meaning that people that are not moderate in any sense of the word will continue to be elected, leading to a lack of compromise or civility in congress as a whole.

Also, is this the book you're talking about?

> First Past the Post is what has lead to the dichotomous relationship between the two parties,

No, safe districts did that. Before widespread safe districts the most conservative democrats and most liberal republicans overlapped each other. TLWR; Safe districts where only one party can win change the election from being two sides competing over as much of the whole voting population as possible to two candidates from a single side trying to out-flank each other by going further to their respective side.

If that doesn't quite make sense here's a more thorough explanation. Here's a graph of the entire voter base of any given area. There's the left, right, and the center.

{}D==========C==========R[]

A politician seeks election/reelection by getting 51% or more of potential votes. In a non-safe district either side has a reasonable possibility of getting elected, meaning the competition is between the Democrat and Republican candidate during the general election and the best path to victory is to capture the largest overall share of the population. The best way to do that is to capture as much of your side and the middle as possible. On a rough level the idea is that a Democrat (curly brackets) or Republican (square brackets) tries to get as much of the line (representing the voting public) inside their brackets as possible.

Here's an example of the Democrat candidate capturing less of the left but more of the center and even center-right votes, while the Republican captured more of the right but less of the center and no center-left:

{}D===={======C[===}======]=R[]


What happens if there's no chance in hell of the other side ever winning though? Instead of a Democrat and Republican competing by trying to combine their side with as much of the middle as possible it's now a Republican versus another Republican. Everything left of the midpoint no longer exists. So how do you increase your share of the vote? You capture more of the side you're on.

In this case two Republicans compete to see who can capture more of the Right wing voters... and the only way to do that is to go further right:

C={======[===}==========]R{}[]

Curly bracket Republican captured a lot of the center-right, but none of the left or center-left. Square bracket Republican captured less of the center-right but a lot more overall votes by going to the far right.

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

Sorry if this is a little obtuse but reddit's format doesn't really work well for this sort of thing. If anyone wants I can throw together some shitty mspaint graphics to try and illustrate a bit more clearly.

Or if you've got time I really recommend seeing if your library/uni has Sean Theriault's Party Polarization In Congress. It's a very short and extremely accessible little booklet that goes over the history and development of party polarization and its main driving factors.

All benefits go really rich people and corporations.

Why? Because really rich people and corporations are getting better and better at buying off our political system. (Link.)

It kind of seems like your understanding of how Congressional lobbying and interest group politics actually works comes from watching House of Cards and not actual research.

"Something that everyone already knows." If you're talking about private interests have a disproportionate influence on policy agenda or political outcomes, most data suggests that this has been massively overblown, and there is no correlation between money donated to the political sphere and the success of lobbying efforts. I recommend reading Lobbying and Policy Change by Baumgartner et al, its a fantastic piece of work that really helps explain the current state of Congressional lobbying.

Here are all the local Amazon links I could find:


amazon.co.uk

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amazon.co.jp

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There are plenty of ways to start fixing these problems. Minimum wage increase, tax code reform, infrastructure investment, domestic manufacturing incentives, etc. The politicians know about these things, but won't implement them because of our campaign finance system. They are beholden to wealthy contributors funding their campaigns. Republic Lost by Lawrence Lessig is a great explanation of how bad campaign finance law causes corruption that prevents us from solving any issues important to us.

Two terrific books on the subject:

• With Liberty and Justice for Some: How the Law Is Used to Destroy Equality and Protect the Powerful (Glenn Greenwald)
  http://www.amazon.com/Liberty-Justice-Some-Equality-Powerful-ebook/dp/B00603PI3U/
  
• Republic, Lost: How Money Corrupts Congress--and a Plan to Stop It (Lawrence Lessig)
  http://www.amazon.com/Republic-Lost-Money-Corrupts-Congress--/dp/0446576441/
  
  Obligatory link to Wolf PAC: http://www.wolf-pac.com

>There is also the issue of whether we can trust the Mayday PAC to stay as focused as they claim

Given the primary name behind it, I'm standing behind them (I donated some btc to the cause). Given Lawrence Lessig's history, he can stay pretty darn focused.

Take some time to read up on him, and the uphill (some would say Sisyphean) battles he's fought over the past couple of decades.

> whether their criteria for determining who the Mayday PAC will support ends up correlating to other political issues

That's kind of the point - it doesn't really need to correlate to other political issues. The only issue they're focused on is campaign finance reform. All other points, to them, are moot - because when the reform is in, a real discussion on those points can finally happen. They might support a pro-life pro-death penalty anti-immigration candidate in an election against another pro-life pro-death penalty anti-immigration candidate ... as long as the former candidate is for finance reform, and the latter is not.

Because until the (aboveboard, but no less) corruption is debrided, a real discussion on those topics, free from corrupting influences, cannot happen.

> an issue that everyone has strong opinions about despite the fact that most people only have an extremely limited understanding of the details.

That's right. A lot of what they're going up against is public ignorance - I have a feeling they will be spending just as much, if not more, on public education of the issue in battleground districts/states than on direct candidate endorsement.

> That's great, but let me know when you have drafted the motherhood and apple pie bill so I can actually understand what this means.

But the bill cannot be drafted until the candidates are in. You're putting the cart before the horse, here, to torture another analogy.

Some resources:

https://www.ted.com/talks/lawrence_lessig_we_the_people_and_the_republic_we_must_reclaim

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mWfCqsFP05A

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aavBn_1llpc

http://www.amazon.com/Republic-Lost-Money-Corrupts-Congress--/dp/0446576441/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1406230329&sr=8-1&keywords=lawrence+lessig

http://www.amazon.com/Lesterland-Corruption-Congress-Books-Book-ebook/dp/B00C3LLYM2/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1406230329&sr=8-3&keywords=lawrence+lessig

And something not really about politics and campaign finance, but his (enlightened) views on intellectual property (also covers the SCOTUS case he lost - and why he thinks he lost - in re perpetual copyrights):

http://www.amazon.com/Free-Culture-Nature-Future-Creativity-ebook/dp/B000OCXHM2/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1406230329&sr=8-4&keywords=lawrence+lessig

Prior to Quantitative Easing 1 (QE1), "there were 18 Federal Reserve Board members who were previously high-level executives of the “too big to fails” that were in line to receive the bailouts, according to a GAO report. And 76 percent of Fed board members also own or owned stock in those same institutions."

"Those (top 6 financial) entities spend billions of dollars to lobby Congress and finance Congressional campaigns and buy Presidents (they own both Barack Obama and Mitt Romney)."

Source

Sounds like plenty of corrupt breathing down of throats already.

If you haven't read Throw Them All Out, I highly recommend it. Both sides are corrupt as the day is long, and the Federal Reserve is just another tool of that corruption.

https://www.amazon.com/Throw-Them-All-Out-Politicians/dp/0547573146

This book is incredible, it probably has a Republican bias to some extent but well worth reading. The legal standard for insider trading among US politicians is completely different from what you’d find in business.

If by 'best journalism on TV' you mean they read Peter Schweizer's book Throw Them All Out.

http://www.amazon.com/Throw-Them-All-Peter-Schweizer/dp/0547573146

You would say that, but you have absolutely nothing to prove it. Marijuana is not one of those things which many corporate interests are putting money behind, because most don't care. I suggest instead of making generalized claims on what lobbying and money does and doesn't do, you read more academic literature on the issue. A good place to start would be Lobbying and Policy Change.

One of the first things I've used my bitcoin for! So cool to pay with my phone and see it instantly verified on the site. Anyways, if you haven't had the chance to read Lessig's book, Republic Lost: How Money Corrupts Congress, I highly recommend getting a copy. I'd consider it one of the most important political books I've ever read. Quick read too!

It was front page news several weeks ago, and the man who wrote the book about all of this is enjoying a few weeks on the bestseller's list.

Good point. But given the way politicians shower their contributors with billions of dollars in government grants, why should what Romney does matter?

Edit: I made my post less focused on Obama, because the problem of political handouts is bipartisan.

> Name some of the countries where the legislative body has no limits to what it can pass into law

A good place to start would be to read about the Fish-Kroenig Parliamentary Powers Index. Those two guys are political scientists who scored every country in the world by how much power the legislature has.

I can't find a good free source of the whole text, but start at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legislature#Power and if you'd like you can check out their study in book form at https://www.amazon.com/Handbook-National-Legislatures-Global-Survey/dp/1107602475

The unlimited powers are a matter of interpretation, court decisions, and informal practice. There is of course no country where the constitution reads "the legislature can do literally whatever it wants".

> and where the absence of a law on a specific act makes it illegal by default.

As I explained in my edit, this is a very literal and incorrect reading of my claim. From my edit: "Yes, it's legal everywhere to stand on one foot in your bathroom on Tuesday at 8 pm while singing happy birthday with a pencil up your nose. And it's also legal at 8:01 pm."

> The government now serves the will of the rich lobbyist groups.

You are not the only one to say that!

This book was written in 2012-- have you read it?

Republic, Lost: How Money Corrupts Congress--and a Plan to Stop It

Yes, you are correct. That's a big issue.

I haven't read the book yet, but I really should.

Something like http://www.amazon.com/Throw-Them-All-Out-Politicians/dp/0547573146?

> He was a senior fellow for 8 months in 2013, I don't know what to make of it or if he is still connected to Brock.

It was a LOT more than that.

Before he was a Senior Fellow for 8 months, he was Executive Vice President/Senior Advisor for Media Matters for nearly 2-1/2 years.

And before that, he was Vice President for Research and Communications for Media Matters for 1-1/4 years.

He co-authored two books with David Brock: The Benghazi Hoax and The Fox Effect.

And he co-authored Lies, Incorporated: The World of Post-Truth Politics with Media Matters as recently as April 2016.

Just as Nixon's henchmen informed the young Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney, Brock will have informed the thinking of Ari Rabin-Havt in ways he may not even fully realize himself. But if he's looking for forgiveness, he should step out of politics and find another line of work. He is definitely not someone who should have Bernie's ear.

I don't have any off the top of my head, but I own (have yet to do any substantial reading of) a book called Fight Club Politics that goes back to pre-Lewinsky era Gingrich and talks about how this poison has been seeping through Congress for a long time. There's also a similar book called It's Even Worse Than It Looks which I haven't read, but I'm lead to understand (by reviews and, among other things, the title) that despite the American electorate believing collectively that on some level all of this is just political theater, that this is actually really really bad partisanship.

Those might not be exactly what you're looking for, but they're surely in the right vein. The other thing when it comes to Obama to remember is that he's black. I'm not saying that everyone who opposes him is an old-fashioned, biological racist. Many are what's referred to sometimes in microaggression theory as "symbolic" racists (whereas when conservatives accuse liberals of being "the real racists" they're accusing them of being "aversive" racists. It's a different thing).

When Obama got elected, he ran on a platform of "hope and change". I think this scared a lot of white people, because for white people, they don't need much hope and they don't want change because things have been going pretty well for them. If you don't recall (I'm not sure how old you are), the rhetoric coming from the right was not far off the shaking in the boots that we're seeing Linsey Graham doing now over ISIS. Obama was going to come for your guns, and then give all your money to the (lazy) black people, and that's based on socialism. Etc. etc. etc... Worse, socialism takes away FREEDOM and, in modern practices has involved DICTATORS, which is likely how people came to a lot of these crazy conclusions.

I'm not sure exactly where in the last 25 or so years--I'm sure it talks about in the books that I mentioned--the word liberal became this weird pejorative. It's funny to me, because I'm a dyed-in-the-wool lefty so I'm proud to call myself liberal and progressive, but whenever someone starts saying "The liberals" or better yet "those libs", I know they're about to spout some baller-level ignorance. My point is, somehow liberals became un-American to the true patriots.

In fact, watch Jon Stewart's clip from last week ripping Fox News for the latte-salute while followed immediately by the awful boobs-on-the-ground joke. "Fuck your false patriotism" he says. It's pretty powerful, and he doesn't pull any punches.

So yeah, I'm sure someone has done better research on it than me, but combine all those toxic elements and you've got the people convinced that Obama is the Antchrist.

> US Government: Congress, President and Courts, 4th Edition

Amazon link: https://www.amazon.com/U-Government-Congress-President-Courts/dp/0536670943

> You're not going to get money out of politics

lolwut.
of course you can remove money from politics. reform campaign finance and you have removed the largest part of private entities transferring money into politics. why would politicians have a reason to back private interests if they are not providing them money to get re-elected? they wouldn't since there is no direct benefit for them protecting their interests and any backhand, behind the counter deals would be seen as a breach of public service and would cost them their jobs and credibility.

term limits does nothing to fix the problem of corrupt politicians, it just brings the same amount into the system within a shorter time period. when the baby boomers start to die off is when we have a different set of politicans coming in. change the money flow to these new campaigns and you remove the desire for these soon-to-be politicians to reach out to the private entities for their support.

http://www.amazon.com/Legislative-Labyrinth-Congress-Campaign-Finance/dp/1568025688/ref=wl_it_dp_o_pC_nS?ie=UTF8&coliid=I3FAQ7WQ3P3HE4&colid=1ZWJ7XLH6W4PE

europe does not have a campaign finance disaster like we do, public funds are not the primary use for campaigns there either.

Or read his book.

As stated in this segment, it is based research done in this book, http://www.amazon.com/Throw-Them-All-Peter-Schweizer/dp/0547573146/?tag=wwwbreitbartc-20 . The book probably should be required reading.

There are plenty of ways. This book goes into several of them The author points out that it seems that everybody in D.C. is in on this game, regardless of political affiliation.

The truth is much more complicated than this 6 minute video lets on.

I highly recommend reading Lobbying and Policy Change by Baumgartner Et al.

The short and thick of it is that lobbying isn't just a money game. Entrenched interests beat all but the most massive sums of money backed by the most organized lobbying groups. Even when you can array the money, intellectual capital, and manhours towards an issue you want to change the issue is only partially reframed around 5% of the time. You can ban the money tomorrow and it is unlikely to solve our problems.

I'll leave this here:

https://www.amazon.com/Republic-Lost-Version-Lawrence-Lessig/dp/1455537012

Toilet cleaning should be a privilege for these jackals. They deserve to be on a chain gang turning big rocks into smaller rocks. Read "throw them all out" by Peter Schweizer to learn about how nearly all of our elected officials are straight up criminals, via insider trading and other shady deals they all conduct.

You really shouldn't, technically all game as cultural works should be going into libraries, but corporations have broken their end of the bargain with infinite IP law extension. So don't ever feel immoral for ripping off corporations that have renegged on the deal of games going public domain.

https://www.amazon.com/Republic-Lost-Version-Lawrence-Lessig/dp/1455537012

https://www.amazon.com/Free-Culture-Technology-Control-Creativity/dp/1594200068/

For more info google Lawrence Lessig for his books and works.

That's an awesome list. I'd echo that the two very best sources to learn about the exact crimes committed leading up to the financial crisis are The Untouchables and
Inside Job.

And I'd add a third:
Predator Nation (written by the guy who made Inside Job)

If people just want a single source, The Untouchables is where they should go. It shows how banks sold products they knew were defective. That is fraud, and it is criminal. Simple as that. The executives were knowingly selling those products (and there were many) should be in jail.

Here's a fuller list of selections I can recommend from a reading list at TooBigHasFailed.org. Any of these sources are good for learning what was going on leading up to the crash.

Podcasts

NPR: The Giant Pool of Money |
NPR: Return to the Giant Pool of Money |
NPR: Another Frightening Show about the Economy |
EconTalk interview w/ Simon Johnson

Documentaries

Addendum to Inside Job |
PBS: Money, Power, & Wall Street |
Aljazeera: Meltdown |
60 Minutes: The Speed Traders |
Quants: The Alchemists of Wall Street

Books

I.O.U. - John Lanchester |
Griftopia - Matt Taibbi |
Infectious Greed - Frank Partnoy |
All the Devils are Here - Joe Nocera & Bethany McLean |
Traders, Guns, and Money - Satyajit Das |
Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission Report

ETA: I see that a moderator here is requesting academic sources. Here are three good ones: Fault Lines - Raghuram Rajan | Republic, Lost - Lawrence Lessig | This Time Is Different - Reinhart & Rogoff

To be honest, most of the academic sources I've read don't focus on criminality on Wall Street. I'd love to find more that do, though.

I remember when that book came out detailing the insider trading and horrible corruption going on in the halls of Congress. As I recall, 75% of the politicians mentioned negatively in the book are Democrats with the remainder obviously being Republicans. Guess who /r/politics ragged on . . .

If you really want to lose your mind at how bad it is, read this book. It’s insane what they’re legally allowed to get away with.

https://www.amazon.com/Throw-Them-All-Out-Politicians/dp/0547573146

The problem with the world is, there are way too many people that have been apathetic for too long about political corruption. It's start to demand change at every level of Government, which means kicking out all incumbants and anyone that was so much affiliated with anyone participating in any type of Fraud, Waste, or outright Abuse. Anytime anyone in government commits fraud, they should immediately be forced to resign, or should be voted out in the next election cycle.