Reddit mentions: The best us national government books

But it probably is a union hack think tank. I don't see why highlighting the partisan motivation of a group means I'm automatically backing another group.

I can post something more holistic if you want me to. Maybe someone will wander through the wasteland of this comment chain and learn something from it:

1.
> More than a dozen prominent Washington research groups have received tens of millions of dollars from foreign governments in recent years while pushing United States government officials to adopt policies that often reflect the donors’ priorities, an investigation by The New York Times has found.

2.
> Even putting aside the legal issue, though, the article does an effective job of calling into question the idea that think tanks operate in an environment of scholarly independence. Through good old-fashioned detective work, the authors trace $92 million in donations from 64 foreign governments to 28 think tanks. The real total, they say, “is certainly more” — and I would add that if the discussion were expanded to include money from foreign industries as well, the picture would become even more spectacular. Consider just one example: the Heritage Foundation’s Asian Studies Center, a division started in 1983, thanks in part to what Heritage’s then-president Edwin Feulner, Jr. called “substantial support from the private sector in both Korea and Taiwan.” Internal records from the period show that Heritage executives made fundraising trips to Asia, accepted donations from trade associations like the Far Eastern Textile Group and the Federation of Korean Industries, and attended a private dinner party at the home of Korean Prime Minister Shin-yong Lho (who gave a speech at Heritage in 1986).

3.
> There are close to 1,800 think tanks in the United States that employ over 20,000 scholars and executives who are dedicated to independent analysis of the major policy challenges facing the country. They do this, day in and day out, to help policymakers and the public make informed decisions on a wide range of policy problems. Sure there are those advocacy-oriented think tanks that engage in opinion mongering and advocacy, but the vast majority of the think tanks in the United States are committed to producing evidence-based, policy-relevant research. Moreover, they are the envy of the world – and other countries are constantly trying to learn from the American experience. I know because I have been approached numerous times by foreign countries seeking advice on establishing and growing think tanks.

4.
> These days, Heritage has a different crusade. The foundation’s president, the confrontational former Senator Jim DeMint, spent the last month touring the country, drawing cheering crowds as he demanded that Republican politicians insist that Obamacare be defunded—and denouncing those who wouldn’t go along. “Republicans are afraid,” DeMint told NPR. “And if they are, they need to be replaced.” The foundation’s three-year-old activism arm, Heritage Action, spent half a million dollars on online ads targeting 100 Republican House members who didn’t sign on to the defund crusade (“Tell Representative Tom Cole to Stop Funding Obamacare”).

5.
> We found at least 49 people who have simultaneously worked as lobbyists for outside entities while serving as top staff, directors or trustees of 20 of the 25 most influential think tanks in the United States, as ranked by the Think Tanks and Civil Societies Program at the University of Pennsylvania.

6.
> Corporate lobbyists are everywhere in Washington. Of the 100 organizations that spend the most on lobbying, 95 represent business. The largest companies now have upwards of 100 lobbyists representing them. How did American businesses become so invested in politics? And what does all their money buy? Drawing on extensive data and original interviews with corporate lobbyists, The Business of America is Lobbying provides a fascinating and detailed picture of what corporations do in Washington, why they do it, and why it matters. Since the 1970s, a wave of new government regulations and declining economic conditions has mobilized business leaders, and companies have developed new political capacities. Managers soon began to see public policy as an opportunity, not just a threat. Ever since, corporate lobbying has become more pervasive, more proactive, and more particularistic. Lee Drutman argues that lobbyists drove this development by helping managers see the importance of politics and how proactive and aggressive engagement could help companies' bottom lines. Politics is messy, unpredictable, and more competitive than ever, but the growth of lobbying has driven several important changes that have increased the power of business in American politics. And now, the costs of effective lobbying have risen to a level that only larger businesses can typically afford.

Unity comes when people within the party know their leader cares for them.

Do you honestly think that Hillary (and Bill) Clinton care about you AT ALL?

Reality check: SHE DOESN'T. (AND HE DOESN'T.)

She'll do whatever to make it SEEM like she cares, but SHE DOESN'T CARE ABOUT US (99% of Americans).

She's in this presidential election to win so her rich donors can get their federal appointments on boards and commissions and their interests lobbied and heard in DC, and implement laws that will ONLY benefit them.

Hillary Clinton is a puppet that's being manipulated by corporate interests.
ie. Clinton Cash

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7LYRUOd_QoM

https://www.amazon.com/Clinton-Cash-Foreign-Governments-Businesses/dp/0062369296/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1469736845&sr=8-1&keywords=clinton+cash

If it comes down to Trump and Hillary, I am NOT voting for the lesser of the two evils that are Trump and Hillary.

Progress will only be made with someone like Jill Stein of the Green Party, who shares the most similar values and beliefs as those of Bernie Sanders.

If you are a true Bernie Sanders supporter, you would vote for Green Party's Jill Stein in 2016.

The only reason Bernie endorsed Hillary is to save his political career.
If Bernie had held out until the very end and refused to endorse Hillary at the Democratic National Convention, then establishment Democratic politicians would not like him, and this would further impede his influence and progress in the Senate, where establishment Democrats make up a good amount of the Senate seats.

So the next best thing we can do is to elect progressive leaders to Congress to impede Trump or Hillary from furthering their top 1% interests and fighting for the 99% (the American people).

A Little History of Science, by William Bynum. (Link) It's a little newer than Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything, but on par with it in most respects. Covers the histories of medicine, astronomy, chemistry, the discovery of plate tectonics... pretty much all areas of science. Highly entertaining (particularly the section on anatomy and how early artists were painters by day and grave-robbers by night).

I also liked The Blogger Abides, by Chris Higgins (Link), which is an extremely practical guide to managing a freelance career. It's written for writers but is applicable to most freelance professions (photographers, consultants, etc.), and includes sections that most "be a writer" books wouldn't, like how to manage self-employment taxes and give pesky publicity people the brush without looking like an asshole.

For more traditional nonfic, I liked Deep State (link) about the government's secrecy industry; Agent Garbo (link), about a farmer who just decides to be a spy and ends up helping the Allies bring down the Nazis (it's insane); and literally anything written by Mary Roach -- even her tweets are great.

http://vanityfair.com/online/eichenwald/2013/06/prism-isnt-data-mining-NSA-scandal

>Now, anyone who discusses this process without also mentioning minimization procedures is also either very uninformed or intentionally hyping the story. Minimization is a term of art in the world of NSA intercepts which essentially means “stay out of American citizen’s business.” If information about specific Americans (or even foreigners inside the United States) is captured, those details must be removed from all records and cannot be shared with any other entity in the government unless it is necessary to understand and interpret related foreign intelligence or to protect lives from criminal threats. But passing intelligence information to criminal investigators requires several layers of review and is not easily approved; minimization procedures are meant to insure that information collected by the NSA isn’t used in routine criminal investigations.

https://twitter.com/kurteichenwald/status/347888405981569025

>Sigh. These last 2 stories have been little more than boilerplate recitation of Sec 702. I doubt ill persuade u, but so be it... are anonymized, meaning the info has been run through an algorithm that spits out an anonymous designator, such as XDSVC...

Marc Anbinder

Deep State: Inside the Government Secrecy Industry

http://www.amazon.com/dp/1118146689/ref=cm_sw_r_an_am_ap_am_us?ie=UTF8

https://twitter.com/marcambinder/status/348144189378281472

>as I said, I think the programs are good. Transparency by/ trust in USG lacking



Joshua Foust

http://prospect.org/article/three-guiding-principles-nsa-reform
>Yet, to even begin the discussion of reform, we have to grapple with why things got to where they are. One document published in the Guardian shows a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court order for Verizon, the telecommunications giant, to hand over phone metadata (telephone numbers, call length, and location). The Supreme Court ruled in 1979 that the Fourth Amendment does not protect such metadata. Similarly, the PRISM data-mining program, which automates access to Internet company databases, was, misreporting aside, publicly discussed as a software platform used by the military and intelligence community for many years

http://joshuafoust.com/can-the-nsa-search-for-americans-who-knows

>The Committee report says the IC and DOJ requested additional queries authorities, which the Committee considered then rejected while studies of existing capabilities were finished. While Marcy is correct that this passage shows the Intelligence Community requested the ability to search on this data, the text of the report also shows that the Committee rejected that request and made the Intelligence Community and Department of Justice reaffirm that any queries adhere to the letter of the law and not circumvent “the general requirement to obtain a court order.

Bob Cesca

http://bobcesca.thedailybanter.com/blog-archives/2013/06/greenwalds-latest-snowden-leak.html?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=facebook&utm_campaign=greenwalds-latest-snowden-leak

>But here’s the most revealing part of Greenwald’s article: the program was stopped by the Obama administration in 2011. As Charles Johnson tweeted yesterday, the article’s headline could actually be “Obama discontinued NSA email program started under Bush.”

>Furthermore, Greenwald wrote: “It did not include the content of emails.” The NSA only collected metadata, authorized by bulk FISA court warrants. The program, like everything else, sought overseas communications, and those communications might have inadvertently included some data from US persons connected with the overseas emails. And, again, reminder: any data from US persons that’s inadvertently collected is anonymized, encrypted and destroyed. It’s only decrypted with an individual warrant.



And from the comments sections of the last:

>Just before that article went up, Glenn and Ackermann had another one go up, "How the NSA is still harvesting your online data". Now when you read that you instantly think any email we send here in the U.S. is going to the NSA. Well there's nothing but speculation in that article about that, but the kicker they are focusing on is that the NSA bragged about processing their "trillionth" piece of metadata in 2012. In 2009 it was estimated the 294 billion emails were sent globally every single day, so that trillion is hardly anything, when you consider that 294 billion per day translates to about 90 trillion PER YEAR.


Another Edit:

Just found a great AMA!

http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1h6r3v/iama_former_nsa_agent_turned_educatorauthor_amaa/

Also FYI I have posted this comment multiple times because I think there is a lot of misinformation out there.

Disclosure I also work on the helpdesk for a gov agency that is no way affiliated with anything military etc....

Thanks for the comment, very interesting stuff. Like all these other comments it's making me really look forward to reading the rest of Against the Day.

In general I am the same in that I don't generally feel the need to discuss it, and forums like these are incredibly restrictive for such things. My thinking with this post and the other I did was to give people who haven't read his stuff much a bit of a starting point and save them some time -- it took me five reads of Gravity's Rainbow before I felt I really had a decent understanding of what's going on, let alone the surrounding material/psychoanalysis/science/history, and I'm very aware that most people don't have anything like the time to do that.

It's the political/historical importance of some of his work that makes me feel most obliged to make these posts (hence my username) because I think too many people, especially somewhat complacent critics who write the reviews, are far too quick to say "conspiracy theory" without delving fully into some of the really nasty and real history it refers too. Of course his use of things like Hollow Earth/UFOs/Atlantis is a little different, but I do think it's crucially important for people to read and spread proper history books like The Devil's Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA and the Rise of America's Secret Government or The CIA as Organized Crime not only to help them understand Pynchon's work better, but also actually do their bit in doing something about the bad stuff going on in the world.

After all that term "conspiracy theory" was heavily promoted by the CIA to begin with, it's the definition of a weaponised term, and I think the more we can get away from phrases like that the better (not saying we should accept ridiculous lizard people stuff or anything of course).

Along with the Byron the Bulb stuff in GR, there's some little bit in Bleeding Edge about "secret anarchist code messages" and later on, the Global Consciousness Project. And I think people are generally becoming more conscious of all this hidden history. Though perhaps this is just a way for me to rationalise spending so much time reading him, by convincing myself that it's politically useful.

I've rambled as well. Here are the rest of the letters in that set, since you liked that one. It was a collection someone posted on 4chan a while ago as I recall.

https://imgur.com/r/ThomasPynchon/P1Cwr

"The Eagle flies at midnight"

but there's quite a few books. some read better than others, as they're accounts of events. Others were textbooks.

luckily i bought 95 percent of my books through amazon.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00B4FJB1O/ref=kinw_myk_ro_title

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00J107GUW/ref=kinw_myk_ro_title

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0076M4S7Q/ref=kinw_myk_ro_title

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00D6US62A/ref=kinw_myk_ro_title

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00DYWBXXE/ref=kinw_myk_ro_title

https://www.amazon.com/Fighting-War-Ideas-like-Real/dp/0615144632

That's a few books that I had and gives a round idea of the subjects. I was focused more on the intelligence side of the curriculum, but there's also some that deal with foreign policy and also immigration, as well as FEMA.

I've got dozens of friends who grew up in this neighborhood. I used to party in houses all around this area, then we'd walk to Politics and Prose or American City Diner for hangover food in the morning (long before Comet came around). This whole thing is so fucking stupid.

I was reading Casey, about Reagan's director of the CIA, last weekend. After Carter and the Church hearings dismantled the CIA due to the insane over reach and corruption that was taking place, William Casey rebuilt it with Reagan's blessing. It tripled(ish) in size in the early 80's to something like 15,000 employees. There's a quote in there somewhere in which Casey says something like, "Now the CIA would be in the top 5% of all corporations in the US, given the budget and number of employees." That's entirely due to GOP policy and GOP politics.

So is it possible that there are a large number of people affiliated with the CIA in one of DC's nicer neighborhoods in the NW quadrant favored by well paid government workers? Sure. Does that have anything to do with Comet Ping Pong? No.

I eagerly wait their reply. The movie was narrated and based on the book Clinton Cash: The Untold Story of How and Why Foreign Governments and Businesses Helped Make Bill and Hillary Rich. I mean the title sounds like the book has already made up the author's mind, and I guess it has... I have not read the book, but it is on my list now. I'd like to see the counterpoints, but the way it is portrayed in the video, the evidence is pretty damning.

Most of the situations the film covers involve the Clinton Foundation or Bill Clinton getting massive speaking fees from foreign countries or businessmen who have an issue being debated by the State Dept. and soon after a check arrives, they get an agreement approved. It's A LOT of that. As the author states in the film: one or two times...OK, maybe coincidence, but it seems to happen A LOT. Beyond that, the deals she agrees to are part and parcel against the progressive values she spews out of her mouth (i.e. human rights, woman's rights, environment, etc.) ....all things she claims she fights for but then proffers favors for shady characters in exchange for cold hard cash.

>No, what I'm saying is the means are totally justified, and the ends will be what they are.

Wow. This is some truly terrifying, Nazi level rhetoric.

>I think Donald Trump is in hock to the Russians.

So much for innocent until proven guilty.

>After what Trump did in the 1990s, no American bank wanted to work with him and he had to go to Russia to get cash.

You mean while he was a democrat?

>If he's capable of separating that from his duties as Commander in Chief, god bless him

He literally just outlined out his plans for doing this.

>And, frankly, his views on Russia are extreme in the American political landscape, so my expectations for him in the investigations aren't so high right now.

Oh, so now the democrats are the hawks? Interesting.

> I care far more about good results than I do about good process.

Glad to hear you are for stop and frisk! Worked in NY!

>Hasn't always been that way, but then I got into international business at the executive management level, and I got a family. In short, I grew up.

Please. You're middle management material...

>This is me being a patriot and wanting to make sure that my government isn't, in fact, a puppet to a foreign power.

Ever stop to think that YOUR reaction is actually the one the Russians want to invoke?

Go read a book from one of the foremost experts on the subject - the highest ranking Soviet Intelligence Officer ever to defect to the US:

https://www.amazon.com/Disinformation-Strategies-Undermining-Attacking-Promoting-ebook/dp/B00D99V2RY

A patriot, you are not. Soldiers who defend the president/country, regardless of political persuasion are patriots. Are you nothing close to the person you imagine yourself to be.

Besides, Clinton is already in Russia's pocket. The UraniumOne deal proved that.

https://www.amazon.com/Clinton-Cash-Foreign-Governments-Businesses/dp/0062369296

Here is the book I had in second year (semester 3 and 4):
American Government: Power and Purpose, Tenth Brief Edition https://www.amazon.com/dp/0393931218/ref=cm_sw_r_awd_P2YRub082C47D


It's honestly a cool book. If you look up the writers' background it might give you more context. Unfortunately I don't have my notes because my apt. was flooded and most of my notes were thrown away. All I have left is my 4th semester Civilization study summary for the finals which if you want I can scan and send you (year two focus on comparing the British and the American models).

They are titled: The Power and Limits of the Executive in Britain and the United State, Powers of the Legislative in Britain and in the USA Some Comparative Notions, National Elections in Britain and in the USA Some Comparative Notions.

Edit: not getting you started on American education, but I love to point out that my major was Applied Foreign Languages (English/Spanish) and that I was the best of my prom in English, but literally within the 5 worst in Spanish (translation). In California, I was the best in my Spanish class... Go figure...

I'm assuming you're American.

The Basics of American Politics together with Politics in Action and some regular political news reading would be a firm introduction to politics.

If you want to dig deep, then buy some books on economics and history. One thing I haven't seen in the answers yet is philosophy. It may not sound important, but it very much is. I would recommend Justice by Michael Sandel. It is a great introduction to different moral theories and ties them together with politics quite well. I left the book finally understanding why conservatives and liberals think the way they do.

Those 3 books should also introduce you to more resources that will take you down as far as you'd like to go.

• Economics in One Lesson, by Henry Hazlitt
  
  
• The Law, by Frederic Bastiat
  
  
• A Theory of Socialism and Capitalism, by Hans-Hermann Hoppe
  
  
• Human Action, by Ludwig von Mises
  
  
• The Ethics of Liberty, by Murray N. Rothbard
  
  
• The Free Market Reader: Essay in the Economics of Liberty, by Llewellyn H. Rockwell, ed.
  
  
• Capitalism and Freedom, by Milton Friedman
  
  
• Atlas Shrugged, by Ayn Rand
  
  
• The Wealth of Nations, by Adam Smith
  
  
• The Constitution of Liberty, by F. A. Hayek
  
  
• Basic Economics: A Citizens Guide to the Economy, by Thomas Sowell
  
  
• Democracy in America, by Alexis de Tocqueville
  
  
• Anthem, by Ayn Rand
  
  
• A Nation of Sheep, by Andrew P. Napolitano
  
  
• Meltdown, by Thomas E. Woods
  
  
• Liberalism, by Ludwig von Mises
  
  
• A Foreign Policy of Freedom, by Ron Paul
  
  
• Rules for Radicals, by Saul Salinsky
  
  
• Blowback, by Chalmers Johnson
  
  
• Liberty Defined, by Ron Paul
  
  
• With Liberty and Justice for Some, by Glenn Greenwald
  
  
• We Who Dared to Say No to War, by Murray Polner and Thomas E. Woods, Eds.

> I do believe that the initial reason Trump garnered so much attention and then continued to garner attention was because he given massive amounts of media coverage.

This is definitively true for the primaries. [This book] (https://www.amazon.com/Everything-Think-About-Politics-Youre/dp/0465036279) is a publishing of the results of a university-backed study of every US election since like 1948, and they claim that every single Presidential candidate to ever win their primaries also got more media coverage.

The second I saw Trump getting so much media coverage, I knew he was going to win the primaries.

That book, however, also found that media coverage did very little to help them in the general election, so I'm sure it wasn't just that. He obviously has a base that truly believes in him, and Clinton has an anti-base, and then lots of people think he's funny or just entertaining.

Also a lot of people were like "Hmm, we should give this shit a try and see how it goes..." Lots of people have wild fantasies about "What would it be like if we put a John Everyman into the oval office?!" (not that Trump is a John Everyman, but closer to it than any trained politician anyway), and with such bad competition they probably felt "this is the best time to try, an opportunity like this will never come again!"

Lots of shit, no doubt.

Stellar Wind called for the very Utah data center the NSA is in the process of finishing. Not closing. Not turning into a warehouse for outdated office equipment. Nor is the government re-purposing all the storage and computing power for some serious online gaming.

The Program is now called Ragtime or Ragtime-P. Status is operational. As is X-Keyscore. This may have been a redesign of Stellar Wind to meet metadata provisions put forth by Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel.

== Source ==

Deep State: Inside the Government Secrecy Industry Details Ragtime-A US-based interception of all foreign-to-foreign, Ragtime-B intercepts from foreign governments that transits through the US, Ragtime-C counterproliferation actvities and Ragtime-P which is all domestic.

Elliot Spitzer's use of prostitutes, General Petraeus or just mundane chit-chat that has not been flagged. Not PRISM alone, it's Ragtime.

>Faulk described the personal nature of many of the calls, and how he and his colleagues would encourage each other to listen into a call where “there’s good phone sex” or “some colonel making pillow talk.”

I didn't realize it did! Actually this is a difficult question to answer. The government is so complex that writing a book about its underlying function is problematic. Do you have a specific function you're interested in learning more about? As far as the basic workings of government is concerned, I would recommend Parties and Policies as a decent starting point but remember, it focuses on party systems and policies rather than where much of the real power lies, which is the agencies. Good luck to you!

Here are all the local Amazon links I could find:


amazon.co.uk

amazon.ca

amazon.com.au

amazon.in

amazon.com.mx

amazon.de

amazon.it

amazon.es

amazon.com.br

amazon.nl

amazon.co.jp

amazon.fr

Beep bloop. I'm a bot to convert Amazon ebook links to local Amazon sites.
I currently look here: amazon.com, amazon.co.uk, amazon.ca, amazon.com.au, amazon.in, amazon.com.mx, amazon.de, amazon.it, amazon.es, amazon.com.br, amazon.nl, amazon.co.jp, amazon.fr, if you would like your local version of Amazon adding please contact my creator.

>How could changing the outcome of an election not lead to impeachment?

Putin probably cannot be impeached

>Hillary Clinton would have won 2016 had the Russians not intervened.

and asked Hillary to sell them the uranium which was exposed in

Clinton Cash: The Untold Story of How and Why Foreign Governments and Businesses Helped Make Bill and Hillary Rich

which helped Trump win

I'm not quite done with it yet, but I was listening to Clinton Cash over the weekend. In addition to this, they raise the question of why all of these foreign entities need to funnel money through the Clinton Foundation at all rather than simply donating the money to local charities.

I'm only on chapter 7 or 8 so far, but they also discuss how much the Clintons' income for speeches increased during Hillary's tenure as SoS and how she used a special rule that had previously been used to employ experts like scientists to allow operatives to work for the State Department and the Clinton Foundation simultaneously.

It's pretty disgusting. It's as nakedly corrupt as you could possibly want without a full-throated admission of guilt. This is the Clintons' stock in trade. I cannot fathom how all of the liberals who bitched about the war crimes of the Bush administration and the foul influence of money in politics (typically vis a vis the Koch brothers) can possibly support this woman. If I had to dream up a character that embodied corruption I would never be able to supply you with a sketch more on the nose than Hillary Clinton.

I think Scott Adams is right. The only thing potentially stopping Trump is the "crazy racist" charge. If he can neutralize that, he wins in a landslide. There's simply no reason to support Hillary Clinton on the merits and a mountain of objective reasons to oppose her every holding any public office ever again.

yes. read his book "A Nation of Sheep".. it has a lot of examples of how the Bush administration helped erode rights and liberties through things like The Patriot Act. He was on FOX attacking Bush in '07.. and on the radio attacking him for years before that.

The issues he details in his books haven't changed much since Obama took office, and it's interesting to see a Judge spell out clearly how the federal government has overstepped its bounds.

>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

If you want to learn more about it, and so much more, I really recommend the book That Used to Be Us. I learned so much, and it was easy to read!

Andrew Bacevich The Limits of Power. A blunt, concise, and brilliant look at American imperialism from the mid-20th century until now. I would vote for this guy as a presidential candidate regardless of party.

The amount spent on lobbying each year is 5 billion, if you estimate the undisclosed lobbying (current disclosure laws are pretty weak) as being about equal to disclosed expenses. (Which is a good estimate according to "The Business of America is Lobbying".) EVERY YEAR. And it's worth every penny.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1510703365

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0997287012

It's not a grand conspiracy that capitalist nations and their ruling classes and rich people seek to demonize socialism with all means available, including convincing everyone of what should normally seem to be absurd lies -- it's what you'd expect, and they of course own all of these news media. That the the state department, CIA, and other foreign policy organs of imperialism promotes false information expecting it to get uncritically reported by the mass media is plainly visible once you understand how it works and it's also completely unsurprising.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0CQK1sKv8Y

http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2016/09/21/former-haitian-senate-president-world-trusted-clintons-help-haitian-people-deceived/

(you should read this) https://www.amazon.com/Clinton-Cash-Foreign-Governments-Businesses/dp/0062369296/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1474489652&sr=8-1&keywords=clinton+cash

(you should watch this) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rmMe-2qaSss

Now I feel that it bears mentioning that I did say IIRC because I was on my phone and didn't feel like finding sources. As a result my statement wasn't completely accurate. They didn't STEAL 14.2 billion, they siphoned it. They lined their pockets with it while supplying "aid". So I guess in that sense, you're right. Congrats. Worth stalking me for a couple days?

But you know what? Even if you can prove definitively that they didn't directly steal 14.2 billion from the Haitian relief fund, there is simply too much blood on their hands and too much mud in the water for me to possibly concede that they aren't evil. The child trafficking, the e-mails, Bill's countless rape allegations, Project Veritas, voting fraud, her seizures, her shady af past, Lolita express, her ties to Saudi Arabia AND Russia (uranium deal), her collusion with MSM during the election, her collusion with the DNC to steal the election from Bernie, her ties to pedophiles and suspected pedophiles.

So yeah good job bud, you won an argument based on a technicality.

We done here?

America is going to have a hard time doing it again, honestly. It definitely can't do whatever it wants. Those days are over and there's even a book about that.

https://www.amazon.com/Limits-Power-American-Exceptionalism-Project/dp/0805090169

If you are interested in more the function of politics rather than its subject matter of policy, then here is a decent list of foundational texts to get you started:

On theory:

The Federalist and Anti-Federalist Papers


Democracy in America


On Campaigning:

What it takes


Game Change


Campaigns and Elections- American Style


On Legislating/Governing:

Congress- The Electoral Connection


Party Politics in America


Political Polarization of American Politics


Interest Group Politics


Obviously this is quite a bit to read- but renting or using library resources will soften the blow to your wallet.

If I have misread your question, and you are interested in policy rather than politics, more recommendations can be provided depending on both your political persuasion and your specific interests.

PS: Assumed you meant American politics. If not- can provide other texts.

The linked tweet was tweeted by @ggreenwald on Mar 20, 2018 11:26:53 UTC

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Many Democrats have been led to believe this term was invented and popularized last year by Sean Hannity to help Trump. It's actually been something that serious foreign policy and government secrecy experts have discussed and analyzed for many years https://www.amazon.com/Deep-State-Government-Secrecy-Industry/dp/1118146689 https://twitter.com/Morning_Joe/status/976045546946232320

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^• Beep boop I'm a bot • Find out more about me at /r/tweettranscriberbot/ •

An interesting tidbit is that some early states actually made firearm ownership mandatory (for white male landowners, of course). They were afraid that they wouldn't able to assemble a proper militia if needed. Plus it offloaded the cost of common defense onto private citizens in those days of no standing army.

The Politics of Gun Control is a good read on the subject. To be fair, some of those early state legislators also promoted gun ownership as a bulwark against possible tyranny from the federal government, so it's not like that argument is entirely ahistorical. It's just more complicated than most realize.

> "Deep State" is Russian talk. Kremlin talk. It didn't exist before it besides on Infowars

https://www.amazon.com/Deep-State-Government-Secrecy-Industry/dp/1118146689

https://web.archive.org/web/20140102073615/http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/22/opinion/sunday/a-wordnado-of-words-in-2013.html

Actually it came from discussions of Egyptian politics and was used by people on the left for years. I must be a Russian shill collecting paycheques from Putin by pointing this out though. Or is the shill joke only funny when liberals are making fun of paranoid morons and not leftists?

Here's one and the other is all the shit Comey said.

This is, on its face, typical cronyism. Bolick is a right-wing extremist even compared to right-wing extremists, and he uses his position as vice president of lititgation for the far-right Goldwater Institute to bully, harass, and legally vex anyone they disagree with. He holds your typical radical-right views, including championing the defunding of public schools in the name of vouchers for more easily-controlled private schools; the gradual devolution and destruction of government, including at the local level, in the name of private interest; the end of affirmative action; and last, but not least, the general libertarian ideal of capitalism as the meaning of life.

Did I mention he has no judicial experience whatsoever?

FWIW my post was mostly a synopsis of this book:

The Limits of Power

I read it in 2008 before the "Financial Crisis". It probably had a lot more impact back then because it predicted the mess we're in now before it was common knowledge - I'm always impressed by books that predict the immediate future.

It's still worth reading IMO.

One of the most interesting aspects of this book is that the author is a self-proclaimed conservative who vilifies Reagan as a "Fraud Conservative".

He makes a very convincing case that so many of the problems we have today are due to the fact that Republicans talk like fiscal conservatives but spend like drunken sailors.

In other words, fiscal conservatism is scientifically and historically the most defensible aspect of conservative ideology.

And it is precisely this aspect of conservatism that modern "conservatives" militantly ignore.

She already did stuff - its well documented. In fact, there is a book about it.

https://www.amazon.com/Clinton-Cash-Foreign-Governments-Businesses/dp/0062369296

Liberals don't care about it.

Why would I care about a Trump surrogate trying to make money?

The biggest threat facing our country is globalism and that is why Trump literally saved our country.

Clinton Cash is a better choice.

https://www.amazon.com/Clinton-Cash-Foreign-Governments-Businesses/dp/0062369296

https://www.amazon.com/Clinton-Cash-Foreign-Governments-Businesses/dp/0062369296?tag=nypost-20
There's even a book about various tracked and checked governments and countries that have done what every proper government would do, and in which the US are true masters.

I would recommend reading Andrew J. Bacevich's book, “The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism,” or at least a review. One of the striking things about his 2008 book is that he refers to the "imperial president" which now seems prescient.

>She already did stuff - its well documented. In fact, there is a book about it.
>
>https://www.amazon.com/Clinton-Cash-Foreign-Governments-Businesses/dp/0062369296
>
>Liberals don't care about it.

Because it's plain and simply put not true. There's not a good damn thing about any of those claims that has been verified. At all.

>The biggest threat facing our country is globalism and that is why Trump literally saved our country.

Globalism is what made America rich.

You don't honestly think we did this by ourselves, do you?

The FBI was tipped off by a (NYT bestselling) book?

Ok. That explains a lot

There is literally evidence a simple google search away, but I guess it's easier to sit there with your fingers in your ears and going la la la.

Selling tainted blood

Uranium One was Clinton turning over control of most of USA uranium deposits to the Russians. It's akin to Obama selling control of our ports to the Chinese. While not illegal, it's a bit fucked.

Haiti Under Clinton: $1,300,000,000 in aid. 0.6% went to Haitian Organizations. 9.6% to the government. During this time Hilary's brother tried to open a gold mine using funds from The Clinton Foundation. Instead of rebuilding, they spent millions on a fee based system where you can use cell phone credits to pay for goods.

Would you like to know more?

There's no end to their corruption.

I have no idea how you managed to get that from that presentation.

1. XKeyscore was not a secret before the release. It was described in a fair amount of detail in a book published in April of this year, before Snowden even came on the scene. This one to be precise.
   
   
2. XKeyscore is a front end database access program. It doesn't have anything to do with the collection of information, only the presentation of it. Here is the author of that book describing it. He emphasizes that someone can only be targeted if the NSA has already targeted them for information gathering.
   
   
3. They most likely are storing metadata around internet usage. There was nothing that suggests they are storing records of everyone's activity or communications.

https://www.amazon.com/Clinton-Cash-Foreign-Governments-Businesses/dp/0062369296/

Follow the money. The Clintons have hundreds of millions from Russia but they just seem to get a pass.

These books might illuminate the situation https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/review/0190215518/RMKYXO6Z660PM/ref=cm_cr_dp_mb_rvw_1?ie=UTF8&cursor=1

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/1576753190/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1523259802&sr=8-1&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_FMwebp_QL65&keywords=gangs+of+america&dpPl=1&dpID=51NUhDNA2XL&ref=plSrch

As far as sources go, this book is replete with them. https://www(dot)amazon(dot)com/Clinton-Cash-Foreign-Governments-Businesses/dp/0062369296

Here is where all of the "proof" comes from

Then read this

https://www.amazon.com/Clinton-Cash-Foreign-Governments-Businesses/dp/0062369296

https://www.amazon.com/Clinton-Cash-Foreign-Governments-Businesses/dp/0062369296

We are a Nation of Sheep

Also read http://www.amazon.com/Limits-Power-End-American-Exceptionalism/dp/0805088156

Here's one to start with Clinton Cash: The Untold Story of How and Why Foreign Governments and Businesses Helped Make Bill and Hillary Rich

Here's a good book to start with.

Edit: The only thing people can say is "hur dur right wing" because facts and morals do not matter to these scumbags.

The term originated in Turkey, actually, and has been used a lot by academics. I'm not sure when it first worked its way into US political discourse -- at least by 2013 when this book came out.

There’s a book about the CIA is Organized Crime.

https://www.amazon.com/CIA-Organized-Crime-Illegal-Operations/dp/0997287012/ref=nodl_

Yeah.. I can kind of see that so I sort of lean more towards war breaking out between other countries (with maybe a little covert help from the US to get things kicked off).

I've heard that the people of the US are more heavily armed than any military in the world (including the US military) if you're just going by the number of small arms. If true (and I don't doubt it much) then that's something to consider.

Britain is too well armed. No country would be crazy enough to go to war against Britain - especially a small number of little rag tag colonies (and many of the people in those colonies support Britain).

Also, we're to believe that despite the US being so heavily armed that nobody messes with us...... a tiny number of thugs hiding in caves half way around the world is such a threat to the US that we need to shred our Constitution and spend trillions trying to blow them up.

All I see are Uncle Sam's Yanqui-Doodle Martyrs Brigade.

Kinda funny how these "protesters" are shooting people with arrows, beaning people with bricks, setting shit on fire and attacking anyone who disagrees with them, even after obtaining their stated goals of stopping the extradition bill.

It's almost as if the Yanqui Doodle Regime Change You Can Believe In Machine decided to double-down, having zero fucks to give about its "shina" pawns.