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Title: Democracy for the few
WonderClub
Item Number: 9780312193553
Number: 1
Product Description: Democracy for the few
Universal Product Code (UPC): 9780312193553
WonderClub Stock Keeping Unit (WSKU): 9780312193553
Rating: 2.5/5 based on 2 Reviews
Image Location: https://wonderclub.com/images/covers/35/53/9780312193553.jpg
Weight: 0.200 kg (0.44 lbs)
Width: 0.000 cm (0.00 inches)
Heigh : 0.000 cm (0.00 inches)
Depth: 0.000 cm (0.00 inches)
Date Added: August 25, 2020, Added By: Ross
Date Last Edited: August 25, 2020, Edited By: Ross
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$99.99 | Digital |
| WonderClub (9295 total ratings) |
Frederick Hutchinson
reviewed Democracy for the few on August 29, 2015Read this paragraph and then think about it for a minute before reading on (from Chapter 16):
In the wake of the 9/11 attack, Bush Jr. issued a host of executive orders supposedly to enhance national security, one of which rescinded certain labor protections required of federal contractors. When a federal court revoked Bush’s decision, the president ignored the court decision, justifying his action as a response to “national emergency.†Executive Order 11000 allows the government to mobilize civilians into work brigades under government supervision; 11002 designates the Postmaster General to operate a national registration of all persons; and 11004 allows the government to designate residential areas to be abandoned and move whole populations to new locations.
Does it sound familiar? I remembered hearing about it but it was a conspiracy theory about Obama that I read about and then checked out on Snopes (here is the link to the Snopes piece that proves Obama didn't issue these Executive Orders). That said, Bush didn't issue them either. From what I could find, they were all issued by JFK:
I attempted to check Parenti’s reference on this one and could not locate the Washington Post article but did eventually find the Whitehouse news release (although the original link is no longer active since it has been a few years since the 2011 edition I read was published). Here is the link to the press release:
A national emergency exists by reason of the terrorist attacks at the World Trade Center, New York, New York, and the Pentagon, and the continuing and immediate threat of further attacks on the United States.
NOW, THEREFORE, I, GEORGE W. BUSH, President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States, I hereby declare that the national emergency has existed since September 11, 2001, and, pursuant to the National Emergencies Act (50 U.S.C. 1601 et seq.), I intend to utilize the following statutes: sections 123, 123a, 527, 2201(c), 12006, and 12302 of title 10, United States Code, and sections 331, 359, and 367 of title 14, United States Code.
This proclamation immediately shall be published in the Federal Register or disseminated through the Emergency Federal Register, and transmitted to the Congress.
This proclamation is not intended to create any right or benefit, substantive or procedural, enforceable at law by a party against the United States, its agencies, its officers, or any person.
IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this fourteenth day of September, in the year of our Lord two thousand one, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and twenty-sixth.
GEORGE W. BUSH
Still no mention of those executive orders, but this is when Bush declared a state of emergency (mentioned in the quoted paragraph from the book) which would allow him to use the powers in those orders. So, a rebuttal to me might be that even though that was all one paragraph, I the reader misconstrued what the author meant and he never technically stated that Bush was the ones who is responsible for those orders. Okay I disagree with that but I can see where someone would be coming from if they made that argument. So let’s move on to an example which still has an active webpage and which was the one that originally set off my spider sense.
In Chapter 13, Parenti states:
The Internet also offers progressive websites that provide information and opinion rarely accommodated by mainstream media. By its nature the Internet provides for individual transmission and commentary by just about anyone who has a computer and an opinion, bringing us some of the best and worst, but also providing new opportunities for networking and organizing, and for gathering information. Some giant telephone and cable companies began pressuring Congress to limit the number of Internet servers, in an effort to establish high-fee monopoly control. Their goal has been to create the electronic equivalent of an expensive“fast lane,†while relegating all nonpaying users to slower, more limited, and less reliable access.
Now, I'm pro-Net Neautrality and had obviously heard about, and been worried about, internet "fast lanes" but this was the first I had heard of the telecoms trying to get Congress to limit the number of internet servers. So I couldn't wrap my head around this one. Not just why I hadn't heard about this before, which would be understandable, but I couldn't understand whose internet servers he was talking about. So I checked out the reference for this one () and found that the source is a call-to-action from MoveOn to contact your representatives to support net neutrality but it never mentions anything about limiting servers. So since I am reading the 2011 edition I thought that maybe the information on the page has changed since he used it. Using Internet Archive's Wayback Machine I looked at a copy from 2008 ( ) and found that although there are small wording differences, it still makes no reference to limiting servers (which I still don't understand whose servers he's talking about. The telecoms? If so why didn't they just limit them instead of going to Congress). So for this example I still won't say that I am 100% sure he is wrong, partially because I may have missed something and partially because I may be misunderstanding what he is saying, but here is an example where I know he was incorrect.
In the chapter about the U.S. military (Chapter 11), he writes:
Corporate contractors enjoy these special features of military spending:
[...]
Almost all contracts are awarded at whatever price a corporation sets without competitive bidding. That means the defense firm can name its own price and the Pentagon pays up.
I understand what no-bid (aka sole-source) contracts are and how their usage went up drastically during the Iraq war but I was pretty sure it was not even the majority of contracts, let alone “almost all.†Now there was no reference for this so I did some googling of my own and found an article from The Center for Public Integrity that another news agency was quoting. ( ) From the article:
And despite repeated pledges to reform the process, non-competitive contracts are a hard habit to break. According to federal data, the Pentagon’s competed contracts, based on dollar figures, fell to 55 percent in the first two quarters of 2011, a number lower than any point in the last 10 years since the terrorist attacks of 9/11.
Like I said, I was reading the 2011 edition, so if the awarding of no-bid contracts was highest in 2011 at 45%, then it was not most, and definitely not "almost all", when my edition was revised. GAO also released a report in 2014 ( ) that found that
In fiscal year 2013, the Department of Defense (DOD) awarded contracts for about $308 billion for products and services, of which 43 percent was awarded without competition. In addition, DOD accounted for over 80 percent of government-wide obligations that used noncompetitive contracts.
further debunking the claim that “almost all†military contracts are no-bid.
To be honest I did not fact check everything he wrote nor do I plan to, so this list is not comprehensive. It was only a few items I found extremely interesting or thought were incorrect that I went on to read more about elsewhere. That is not to say I think the book is full of incorrect data or assertions and if I had to make a guess, I would say that the majority of the book is true based on the fact that I have seen much of these same claims in other sources. Still these few issues completely ruined the book for me, which up until the point that I noticed them, I had thought I was going to rate the book 5 stars. I mean it really is an extremely engaging book in my opinion, I loved Parenti’s writing style, and I believe his overall thesis is correct. Some people might dislike it because it is not “unbiased†(code for an ideology different from their own), but I think this is perfectly acceptable especially when you take into consideration the fact that most of the news and history books we are exposed to is extremely pro-capitalist, pro-federal government, pro-expansionism, etc, without any mention that there might be a different side to the story. Still, I think a 1 star rating is justified since these errors made me question everything else I learned from the book.
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