Review: Throw Them All Out by Peter Schweizer

[Valin]

The American Thinker:

Matthew May

December 17, 2011

 

Want to get rich quick? Forget those insipid real estate infomercials that air in the dark hours of the early morning; just get yourself elected to Congress!

 

In his new book Throw Them All Out: How Politicians and Their Friends Get Rich Off Insider Stock Tips, Land Deals, and Cronyism That Would Send the Rest of Us to Prison, author Peter Schweizer notes that Thomas Jefferson claimed in a letter to Count Jules Diodati that "I have the consolation of having added nothing to my private fortune during my public service, and of retiring with hands as clean as they are empty."

 

So wrote the principal author of the Declaration of Independence in words that could well be inscribed in gold at his memorial by the Tidal Basin in Washington. Yet read those words aloud to a group of contemporary congressmen and they would probably burst out laughing: Jefferson! What a fool!

 

Schweizer exhaustively and frighteningly details how members of Congress have exempted themselves from insider-trading rules, smoothed the way for Wall Street donors, and earmarked themselves competitive advantages that have brought them windfalls they would have otherwise never seen. Schweizer reminds readers that the method is not novel at all -- it is straight from the playbook of New York City's Tammany Hall impresario George Washington Plunkitt, who coined the phrase "honest graft" and made it a way of life. Plunkitt, not Jefferson, is the standard in Congress in the early 21st century.

 

(Snip)

 

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Throw Them All Out - Heritage Foundation

 

[Geee]

@Valin - yes this is soon true. I used to spend a lot of time on Muckety but #1 it was depressing and #2 it got you no where. Some up the people that were supposed political enemies are at the same foundations, law firms, businesses, or boards - raking in bucks together. Usually with taxpayer money.

 

I fully expect that at this very minute there are a myriad a people combing through every facet of the Bush equivalent of the Clinton Foundation to dig up any thing they can, to play the "every body does it" card. I really hope they don't find anything. I actually read many good things that Bush's Foundation does all over the world. I believe I read somewhere. that in addition to all of the things that are being dug up, only 15% of the Clinton money actually gets back out to help anyone.

[Valin]

@Geee

 

The underlying problem is the Federal Government is just to large. You get a 1,000 page bill x 10 with the regs, and who knows what goodies are hidden away.

 

A problem I have is way too many of those talking about this come across as scolds, always ranting and raving, most people don't respond well to that....Mark Levin comes to mind.

[Geee]

@Geee

 

The underlying problem is the Federal Government is just to large. You get a 1,000 page bill x 10 with the regs, and who knows what goodies are hidden away.

 

A problem I have is way too many of those talking about this come across as scolds, always ranting and raving, most people don't respond well to that....Mark Levin comes to mind.

Term limits would also be very helpful. People in Washington too long get too powerful and we know that "absolute power corrupts absolutely" !!

[Valin]

 

@Geee

 

The underlying problem is the Federal Government is just to large. You get a 1,000 page bill x 10 with the regs, and who knows what goodies are hidden away.

 

A problem I have is way too many of those talking about this come across as scolds, always ranting and raving, most people don't respond well to that....Mark Levin comes to mind.

Term limits would also be very helpful. People in Washington too long get too powerful and we know that "absolute power corrupts absolutely" !!

 

 

 

That and 1. sending better people 2. primary those who don't do what they ran on.

[Valin]