Amazon.com
We live in an era where image is nearly everything, where the proliferation of brand-name culture has created, to take one hyperbolic example from Naomi Klein's No Logo, "walking, talking, life-sized Tommy [Hilfiger] dolls, mummified in fully branded Tommy worlds." Brand identities are even flourishing online, she notes--and for some retailers, perhaps best of all online: "Liberated from the real-world burdens of stores and product manufacturing, these brands are free to soar, less as the disseminators of goods or services than as collective hallucinations."
In No Logo, Klein patiently demonstrates, step by step, how brands have become ubiquitous, not just in media and on the street but increasingly in the schools as well. (The controversy over advertiser-sponsored Channel One may be old hat, but many readers will be surprised to learn about ads in school lavatories and exclusive concessions in school cafeterias.) The global companies claim to support diversity, but their version of "corporate multiculturalism" is merely intended to create more buying options for consumers. When Klein talks about how easy it is for retailers like Wal-Mart and Blockbuster to "censor" the contents of videotapes and albums, she also considers the role corporate conglomeration plays in the process. How much would one expect Paramount Pictures, for example, to protest against Blockbuster's policies, given that they're both divisions of Viacom?
Klein also looks at the workers who keep these companies running, most of whom never share in any of the great rewards. The president of Borders, when asked whether the bookstore chain could pay its clerks a "living wage," wrote that "while the concept is romantically appealing, it ignores the practicalities and realities of our business environment." Those clerks should probably just be grateful they're not stuck in an Asian sweatshop, making pennies an hour to produce Nike sneakers or other must-have fashion items. Klein also discusses at some length the tactic of hiring "permatemps" who can do most of the work and receive few, if any, benefits like health care, paid vacations, or stock options. While many workers are glad to be part of the "Free Agent Nation," observers note that, particularly in the high-tech industry, such policies make it increasingly difficult to organize workers and advocate for change.
But resistance is growing, and the backlash against the brands has set in. Street-level education programs have taught kids in the inner cities, for example, not only about Nike's abusive labor practices but about the astronomical markup in their prices. Boycotts have commenced: as one urban teen put it, "Nike, we made you. We can break you." But there's more to the revolution, as Klein optimistically recounts: "Ethical shareholders, culture jammers, street reclaimers, McUnion organizers, human-rights hacktivists, school-logo fighters and Internet corporate watchdogs are at the early stages of demanding a citizen-centered alternative to the international rule of the brands ... as global, and as capable of coordinated action, as the multinational corporations it seeks to subvert." No Logo is a comprehensive account of what the global economy has wrought and the actions taking place to thwart it. --Ron Hogan
Book Description
With a new Afterword to the 2002 edition. No Logo employs journalistic savvy and personal testament to detail the insidious practices and far-reaching effects of corporate marketing—and the powerful potential of a growing activist sect that will surely alter the course of the 21st century. First published before the World Trade Organization protests in Seattle, this is an infuriating, inspiring, and altogether pioneering work of cultural criticism that investigates money, marketing, and the anti-corporate movement.
As global corporations compete for the hearts and wallets of consumers who not only buy their products but willingly advertise them from head to toe—witness today’s schoolbooks, superstores, sporting arenas, and brand-name synergy—a new generation has begun to battle consumerism with its own best weapons. In this provocative, well-written study, a front-line report on that battle, we learn how the Nike swoosh has changed from an athletic status-symbol to a metaphor for sweatshop labor, how teenaged McDonald’s workers are risking their jobs to join the Teamsters, and how “culture jammers” utilize spray paint, computer-hacking acumen, and anti-propagandist wordplay to undercut the slogans and meanings of billboard ads (as in “Joe Chemo” for “Joe Camel”).
No Logo will challenge and enlighten students of sociology, economics, popular culture, international affairs, and marketing.
“This book is not another account of the power of the select group of corporate Goliaths that have gathered to form our de facto global government. Rather, it is an attempt to analyze and document the forces opposing corporate rule, and to lay out the particular set of cultural and economic conditions that made the emergence of that opposition inevitable.”—Naomi Klein, from her Introduction
Download Description
Once a poster boy for the new economy, Bill Gates has become a global whipping boy. The Nike swoosh is quickly losing its cachet, equated now with sweatshop labor. Teenage McDonald's workers are joining the Teamsters. What's going on? NO LOGO explains why some of the most revered brands in the world are finding themselves on the wrong end of a spray-can, a computer hack, or an international anti-corporate campaign. NO LOGO uncovers a betrayal of the central promises of the information age: choice, interactivity, and increased freedom. Instead, job security and consumer choice have been swallowed whole by companies who enlist us as their human billboards and spokesmen. Equal parts cultural analysis, political manifesto, mall-rat memoir, and journalistic expose, NO LOGO is the first book that both uncovers the sins of corporations run amok and explores and explains the new resistance that will change consumer culture in the 21st century.
Customer Reviews:
Informatively frustrating.......2007-08-17
It was well written exploring many aspects of branding, culture jamming, and production.
This book will leave you with frustration and questioning how you change change something, and what CAN you buy that isn't made from Export Processing Zones.
It does give great information but yet leaves you frustrated and feeling helpless that you can't change the current conditions or avoid buying products made in places like china, el salvador, indonesia where they treat their workers worse than dirt.
Insight into an Ad-driven culture.......2007-07-14
This book offers a deep insight on how advertising are creeping into our lives, even conveyed to us in a subliminal way. If left unchecked, the corporations would be the authors our culture. It also showcases the exploits of major corporations in employment.
However, one must be critical when reading the book, as some of the things Naomi bashes on, such as the Starbucks expansion strategy, are genuine business strategies. In some cases, we have to be realistic and not blindly adopt and anti-corporation stance.
The first 3 chapters, No Space, No Choice, and No Jobs are exceptionally informative, but the last chapter, No Logo, falls short and descends into a boring rant on countermeasures that in my opinion, are far from effective and often, impractical.
Buy the book, read the first 2, skip the last.
Anti-Corporate Handbook.......2007-05-20
What are the effects of multinational corporations in the Branding Age? Naomi Klein tackles that in this seminal work on the subject. While somewhat dated (published in 2000), it gives the most comprehensive picture of the transition corporations have undergone from providing competent products and services to providing ubiquitous branding and advertising to produce loyalty and sell peripherals. This book gives the total picture of the devastation left in the wake of total corporate dominance in the U.S., Canada, and worldwide.
As she details, what has emerged in the last half of the 20th century is a new kind of totality - an economic imperialism spearheaded by Nike, The Gap, McDonalds, Shell, and Microsoft and their lawyers, contractors, and advertising agencies. As they break open markets, crush competition, and lower wages across the globe they've gotten so powerful as to dictate to scores of countries what their trade and economic policies are going to be. These policies are always anti-Union and terrible for workers, leaving nations worse off than before they were Industrialized and Advertised - creating massive wealth gaps and uneven distributions across the board.
The four major sections of the book: No Space, No Choice, No Jobs, and No Logo, each show in example after example, case study upon study that advertising is the product now and the more money spent in that avenue, the more profitable the corporation can be while taking every opportunity away from the poor and disenfranchised, forcing horrible conditions and worse jobs on them, and decreasing their access to health care and nutrition. This is not an accident. This is a concerted policy foisted upon the world through the corporate enforcement arm of the WTO, World Bank, and U.S. Military.
Is it hopeless? Well, civil disobedience is one way to combat the trends and takeover and Klein offers many suggestions and examples in this book. However even she admits that the situation is bleak.
Good luck . . . and good read.
- CV Rick
NO LOGO will fundementally alter the way you think about the world........2006-11-04
Naomi Klien's treatise on the anti-corporate movement of the last decade provides tremendous insight into the philosophies behind today's anti-corporate culture, and more importantly, the "branded" society that has spawned it. Well written and intelligent on every level, NO LOGO carefully tracks such disturbing phenomenons as the disappearance of public space, the rise of corporate censorship, and the transformation of living wage jobs for Americans into sweatshop labor in the third world. If you are completely unfamiliar with today's cultural rebellion against corporate control, NO LOGO serves as an excellent introduction, clearly outlining the dubious marketing trend of promoting "brands not products" such that you will never be able to watch commercials the same way again. If you are a seasoned WTO protester or billboard adbuster, NO LOGO will provide you with all the philosophical and factual ammo necessary to start converting your friends away from their unthinking materialistic lifestyle. This book is a must read for anyone who considers themselves and independently thinking consumer, as well as anyone who is interested in the latest cultural rebellion taking place among today's young and disenfranchised.
The Third World has always existed for the comfort of the First.......2006-11-03
Naomi Klein sketches perfectly the major shift in corporate strategy today: transnational companies are not interested in production anymore, only in branding: products are made in factories, brands in the mind. Branding creates big margins, production in home countries meager earnings.
This strategy causes monstrous layoffs in the First World and creates EPZ (Export Processing Zones) in the Third World.
In the First world, corporations transformed themselves in `engines of wealth growth' for their shareholders, instead of `engines of job growth'. `CEO's of the 30 companies with the largest announced layoffs saw their total compensation increase by 67%.'
The jobs they need are predominantly outsourced, or are McJobs (no `adult wages') and temporary stop-jobs.
The First World stirs fierce competition between Third World countries in order to get rock-bottom prices for their `branded' products, creating colossal margins in the home countries.
Wages in EPZs are so low that most of the money is spent on shared dorm rooms and basic food. Workers cannot afford the consumer goods they produce.
Another aspect of our branded world is the sheer size of the (trans)national corporations created by relentless mergers and acquisitions. Their size permits them to decide what items (also magazines, DVDs) should be stocked in a store, in other words, they create a new kind of censorship.
Big mergers in the media landscape allow conglomerates to produce their own news and in this sense jeopardize basic civil liberties.
While Naomi Klein's analysis of our consumer planet is very revealing, the remedies she proposes are rather innocent, epidermic, symptom healing or too general: ad and brand busting, radical ecology (Reclaim the Streets), anti-globalization and anti-corporate mass protests, boycott, building greater critical social consciousness. Individual actions like attacking in court (Shell in Nigeria), revealing Nike's sweatshops or denouncing McDonald's food are ultimately not more than temporary needle pricks in elephant skins.
What the world needs is a global vision, which we can find in the works of Joseph Stiglitz or (for a view from the South) Walden Bello.
Highly recommended.
Book Description
Each week the oil and gas fields of sub-Saharan Africa produce well over a billion dollars' worth of oil, an amount that far exceeds development aid to the entire African continent. Yet the rising tide of oil money is not promoting stability and development, but is instead causing violence, poverty, and stagnation. It is also generating vast corruption that reaches deep into American and European economies. In Poisoned Wells, Nicholas Shaxson exposes the root causes of this paradox of poverty from plenty, and explores the mechanisms by which oil causes grave instabilities and corruption around the globe. Shaxson is the only journalist who has had access to the key players in African oil, and is willing to make the connections between the problems of the developing world and the involvement of leading global corporations and governments.
Customer Reviews:
Poisoned Wells.......2007-06-11
Of the current crop of "what is wrong with Africa" books including "The Shackled Continent", "The White Man's Burden" and "The Trouble with Africa", Nicholas Shaxson's analysis and prescriptions for change are the most radical and on-the-money. Shaxson's book should be widely read and discussed. Unfortunately, too much invested in the status quo by all concerned to see much likelihood of change within the next few decades.
Book Description
Imagine two worlds.
One is an upside down world where people feel frenzied and fearful, their thoughts fragmented, their lives in disarray.
The other is a world that is right side up. People know that in this ever-more connected global landscape their individual choices affect the lives of everyone.
Neither of these worlds is difficult to imagine because both of them exist today. Humanity stands on a bridge in between these worlds and we must make a choice to go in one or the other direction. Which side do you choose?
The Flip reveals that tens of millions of people have already made the choice to embrace the right-side up world. As a result, a stunning change is underway: a major transformational shift from a broken, outmoded paradigm where the natural world has been sacrificed for convenience to an interconnected world where millions of people value a holistic lifestyle of natural products, sustainable living and spiritual transcendence.
Customer Reviews:
Informative and Factual.......2007-08-01
I would reccommend this book to anyone concerned about the environment, both physical and socio-economic. It is eye-opening. What is especially valuable is that the book empowers the reader.
The Flip---An awesome book.......2007-05-18
I found this book to be one of the best I've read. It puts so many things into perspective as we go through these changing times.
I'm buying this for my mom and sisters!
Again, it's awesome!!!!
Kathy
Spokane, WA
Quietly engaging, unblinkingly provocative.......2007-02-22
Like a friend who says, "Let's go for a walk," this engaging book persuades with a conversational ease, inviting you to walk through gardens you think you know so well. You are given simple facts and numbers, without any strident rhetoric. And you are startled by the leaves and petals you just now really see, in such clear light.
THE FLIP persuades because it resonates with what you know deep within to be true, but unrealized because you think them distant, perhaps irrelevant.
Before you know it, you have traversed from your little room, explored issues such as the sustainability of our world, and returned to face the metaphysical questions of your life and values- and all these, while on an easy stroll with a new friend.
As you move from garden to garden, THE FLIP stops at bridges where you meet fascinating people who tell you of their choices. The book has a spare, consistent chapter layout, giving you a web link to explore the topic yourself, and offering a quick list of practical actions.
What do you do with those precious six free hours you have of the daily twenty-four? Look at a leaf, and you see the world. Look at the choices made, and you see the values held.
This book begins, and leaves you with a softly spoken challenge: what choices do you make?
If you wish to follow a 'greener' route..........2006-09-24
THE FLIP provides visionary wisdom for a new world, offering a chatty guide which rebels against materialism and offers 'Flip Tips' for making spiritual, physical and environment-sustaining changes for work, home life, entertainment and more. If you wish to follow a 'greener' route, THE FLIP is for you, offering insights from a range of disciplines and writers, from political and social change to flipping channels, burgers, values and more.
Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch
Thought provoking, life changing, A must read!.......2006-08-24
I read this book because I am a fan of David Rippe's writing, and I was told this would be a good book for me to read, because right now I am living an "upside down" life. I'm not much into reading self help books, which I thought this book was but I thought I would give it a try. I personally don't think this is a self help book. This is a book that doesn't tell you what you have to do to change your world, it is a book that gives you choices on how you can change your world. You can either to choose to live in a world where everything is chaotic and out of control. You can choose to continue to walk through life as a robot settling for what you have or have been given, or you can choose to change those things and live in a more harmonious life and making decisions...choices for yourself.
This book takes you through everything from your thinking, emotions, entertainment, the way we eat and the medications we take, politics, war, religion etc....In every chapter there are several interviews with well known celebrities, leaders, writers, investment advisors, doctor's and so forth. Also you are given those choices you can make to live in an up-right world.
After reading this book I have chosen to flip my life around and live in an up-right world and will take what I have learned from the book to make that happen. It might not happen over night but it will happen. I definitely recommend this book to anyone living in and upside down world. You will not regret it. In fact you will want to thank both David Rippe and Jared Rosen for helping to change your life.
Amazon.com
This is the David-and-Goliath story of how an American bureaucrat took on the tobacco industry--and helped topple it. David Kessler, head of the Food and Drug Administration for seven years under Presidents Bush and Clinton, earned the nickname "Eliot Knessler" from The Washington Post--a pun meant to evoke the memory of the Prohibition-era gangbuster--because he rejuvenated a moribund agency. The FDA regulated, in Kessler's words, "one quarter of every dollar Americans spent--from the food they eat to the drugs they take to the cosmetics they wear." Yet it lacked the courage to take on the country's most lethal product: cigarettes. So did Kessler, at least initially. He agreed with aides and others that Big Tobacco was too powerful a force in Washington, D.C. "The industry perceived threats everywhere, and responded to them ferociously," he writes. Moreover, challenging the industry would waste important resources that could have a more tangible benefit for consumers if they were spent elsewhere. Even before making the choice to go after cigarettes, Kessler was a figure of controversy, and this only intensified when he became one of the few Republican holdovers in the Clinton administration.
Much of the book deals with the routine business of the FDA: orange-juice seizures, a fight to restrict the sale of body tissues from foreign sources, how he responded to complaints that syringes were found in Pepsi cans, and so on. But the driving force behind Kessler's narrative is how he slowly woke up to the possibility of regulating cigarettes. "It is too easy to be swayed by the argument that tobacco is a legal product and should be treated like any other," he writes. "A product that kills people--when used as intended--is different. No one should be allowed to make a profit from that." His story is a lesson in Washington power politics--a game he played with naiveté when he started but was expert at by the end of his tenure.
To say Kessler and his team of FDA regulators "defeated" Big Tobacco is an overstatement: they were part of a broader effort that included trial lawyers, consumer groups, and crusading journalists, and the industry hasn't exactly gone away. But they were instrumental in forcing tobacco companies to admit that nicotine is addictive and cigarettes cause cancer, and in bringing about a sea change in the industry's legal and popular standing. Kessler now believes in regulation so tight it will strangle Big Tobacco forever: "If our goal is to halt this manmade epidemic," he writes, "the tobacco industry, as currently configured, needs to be dismantled." A Question of Intent is a well-told muckraker. It unfolds deliberately, like a good detective story. Admirers of Jonathan Harr's A Civil Action, especially those with a taste for public policy, won't be disappointed. --John J. Miller
Book Description
Now in paperback: former FDA commissioner David Kessler's non-fiction legal thriller about his agency's fight with Big Tobacco. Dubbed "Eliot Knessler" by The Washington Post, due to the way he resurrected a moribund government agency, FDA Commissioner David Kessler launched a carefully considered, thorough, and aggressive assault against the previously unassailable tobacco industry. His attempt to regulate tobacco as a drug was met with all of the industry's now notorious practices: legal stonewalling, manipulation of "bought" elected officials, intimidation, and outright lies. Kessler tackled all of these challenges with the vigor of a man perhaps outgunned but not outmaneuvered. At the height the FDA's legal battle, U.S. News and World Report called Kessler "somebody you can tell your children about" and compared him to the protagonists of Mr. Smith Goes to Washington and To Kill a Mockingbird. Like those classic American stories, A Question of Intent is about the search for truth, the choices people make, and right and wrong. It is about moral courage.
Customer Reviews:
An Educating and Entertaining Read.......2007-04-25
David Kessler in A Question of Intent: A Great American Battle with a Deadly Industry provides readers with an entertaining and educating read that serves as a guide for organizations while showing an detailed view of bureaucracy, the media, and government organizations. He effectively displays the numerous benefits of affiliation between organizations and their leaders when trying to change the regulation over tobacco. Kessler also does a great job showing the role of a President and the effect he or she can have on organizations when they get to choose the leading personnel. Where Kessler falls short though is in providing a well organized story, free of excess personal narratives, and repetition. Do these errors tend to negate the quality of the book as a whole? No, but it makes me question his editor and the intentions he or she had in the scattered layout and whether included memoir aspects were entirely necessary.
By bringing the reader directly into the Food and Drug Administration's everyday happenings, Kessler is able to display the decision process of a government organization, while adding an element of suspense. His emphasizes the importance of connections and affiliation and teaches readers the scope and impact that lobbyists can have on the outcome of policies. He often describes that "too late" he realized that he had been "sandbagged by...lobbyists" and "overlooked [the] key tactical step" of lining up more support and connections (Kessler, 48). He shows that it was only through the support of his older staff and political connections that he was able to move forward in his fight for tobacco regulation.
The involvement of the reader in the processes Kessler and his team had to go through to get government attention on the regulation of tobacco could easily serve as a guide for other struggling organizations. He shows in detail how they used the media and were careful about their timing when making decisions. For instance, Kessler asked credible journalists to downplay stories to the New York Times to the extent that newspapers wouldn't even write about events such as the American Red Cross' bad blood supply. This manipulation of the media was useful to the organization by downplaying bad press and avoiding un-needed fear and panic. For other organizations who find themselves in the heat of the media, they might want to take notes from Kessler and his experiences
Another positive aspect of Kessler's book was his ability to show the vital role of the President. Most readers, like myself, would be surprised to learn that the President can have such a vital effect on issues such as food labeling. Kessler describes the difficulty and "maneuvering" it took to get amendments on the underage purchases of cigarettes on the Presidents desk (Kessler, 98). Once they got there, he describes how a Congressional hearing was crucial in how the media framed the issue - eventually leading to the impression the American public got on the topic. Overall, his book gives a great overview of what it takes to get an issue to the desk of the President, and how the steps taken after that can shape public opinion and determine the fate or success of a proposed amendment.
In the end, Kessler and his editor could have improved on the organization of the book. The subject of each 3-7 page chapter skips from topic to topic. It gets tedious when the reader has to continually shift his or her focus from tobacco to fresh food labels to the AIDS drug progression then back to tobacco - all with a little autobiographical information thrown into the mix. At the same time, Kessler consistently switches between using character's first and last names. One minute he's calling a successful reporter "Jim," like they're best friends, the next referring to him as "O'Hara" who had a "reputation among reporters for credibility" (Kessler, 92). The inconsistency is unnecessary and confusing.
Another detail that distracted from a smooth read from a trustworthy author, is his insistence on showing he "did not know" what he was doing, or that he "should have realized" that many of his decisions would have negative effects. Readers already understand no person is perfect, there is no reason to keep reminding them up to two or three times a page.
For readers who want an entertaining, yet educational read, Kessler's book provides both. While it does have its minor errors and editorial mishaps, his ability to produce a book that readers like a thriller yet explains the inner-workings of bureaucracy in a simple-to-understand way is uncanny. Lessons can be learned by regular readers seeking more information on a much debated topic - the regulation of tobacco - or big organizations looking to revitalize their strategies to achieve greater success in their goals.
great expose of an evil industry.......2005-10-01
America, for all its faults, is the battlefield on which many of the world's most important health questions are being fought. None of those is more important than the questions this excellent book addresses. Is nicotine a narcotic? Are America's major cigarette companies, collectively known as Big Tobacco, deliberately turning their customers into nicotine addicts?
They were the key questions David Kessler tackled when he was Commissioner of America's Food and Drug Administration (FDA) from 1990 to 1997. Kessler, who is now Dean of the Yale University Law School, fought a tenacious battle with Big Tobacco and its powerful allies on Capitol Hill during those years. The battle was so tough and Big Tobacco so ruthless that Kessler and his small team were often compared to Elliot Ness and his small band of Untouchables who slugged it out with Al Capone's army of gangsters and corrupt politicians during the Prohibition years.
Certainly, the tenacity of Big Tobacco in the face of overwhelming evidence that damns its product can only remind the reader of Al Capone and America's Organized Crime, whose sole god is ill gotten money. Big Tobacco practiced, for example, the code of Omerta and, if Kessler is to be believed, former employees who gave evidence against them lived in fear of their lives. Big Tobacco had armies of lawyers and US Congressmen in their corporate pockets. All they seemed short of was organizing the gangland-style hits that were Capone's specialty.
Indeed, the specters of Ness and Capone are never too far away. Kessler hired special investigators trained by America's elite combat forces to interrogate witnesses. One member of Kessler's squad trawled all of America's seaports to uncover key evidence that Big Tobacco had illegally imported genetically modified tobacco into the United States. The book is, in many ways, a classic detective story needing only Humphrey Bogart, Jimmy Cagney, Tom Hanks or some other celluloid figure to bring it to life. It races along from the very first page to the final denouement.
Big Tobacco's four-pronged counter-strategy against the FDA is also equally fast-paced. Working with military precision, it used, as page 169 tells us, frontal assaults, surgical strikes, allied attacks and air cover to overwhelm the offices and efforts of Kessler and his team. Like Organized Crime, Big Tobacco knew what side its bread was buttered on. Like Organized Crime, Big Tobacco's bosses proved themselves to be ruthless and cynical competitors with pitiless cash registers for hearts. Their proud boast was that they had more money than God.
Their vast war chests poisoned public debate in America for many years just as their product continues to poison the bodies of their fellow Americans. As well as the armies of hired lawyers who were central to their strategy, they employed mercenary academics to rubber-stamp their products with a scientific sheen of respectability. The aura of scientific impartiality these academics bartered away helped Big Tobacco's bosses accumulate their almost limitless wealth, buy their way into Capitol Hill and jam the world's hospital cancer wards full with cigarette smokers. Although Kessler names some of these contemptible researchers, he goes much further. By exposing their mercenary motives, he discredits them and Big Tobacco, which paid them their ultimately puny pieces of silver.
The book, despite its topicality, starts off with a quote from the Odes of Horace, which tells us that "The guilty have a head start, and retribution is always slow of start, but it catches up." Fortunately, the net is finally beginning to close in on Big Tobacco and its tainted allies. Thanks to people like Kessler and his team of Untouchables, the nicotine debate is starting to be aired out into the open.
Sometimes, of course, the cure is worse than the disease. Kessler's comments about nicotine nasal sprays should be enough to make anyone feel pity for the nicotine abuser and disgust at the companies which can conceive, let alone peddle such an obnoxious product.
No sympathy whatsoever can be spared for Kessler's villains. Though bloodied, Big Tobacco is far from bowed. It continues to ensnare American schoolchildren with its product and to export its deadly product to the four ends of the earth. Despite Big Tobacco's enviable revenues, its feet of clay and the tissues of lies it surrounds itself with have both been well exposed by this great book, which President Jimmy Carter and a host of other luminaries endorse. The hope must now be, as Kessler puts it, that Big Tobacco will eventually be drummed out of business altogether. Their demise would not only make the air we breathe cleaner. It would also help clean up the corridors of power, which Big Tobacco so thoroughly infected with its own insatiable addiction to the profit motive.
A Breath of Fresh Air.......2004-03-25
Thank you, Dr. Kessler, for pursuing the tobacco dragon and for writing this book. It should be required reading for every medical and divinity school student.
Civics lesson that reads like a thriller.......2002-08-05
Wow. Who would have thought a book on the history of the FDA's handling of tobacco regulation would read like a spy novel? I grabbed this book off the new books shelf at the library, and picked it up expecting to skim through it. Kessler begins with how he was chosen to head the FDA, and introduces several of his staff including the one who started him toward taking on the tobacco industry. Then we get plenty of background including the history, marketing, and laws concerning tobacco.
With all the press on Big Tobacco, I expected them to be shown as fiendish. I've been a member of Americans for Non-Smokers Rights for 20 years, and I've read all about the Industry's dirty tricks, and I fully expected to read about them again here. What I didn't expect to find was the thoroughness in Big Tobacco attempted to discredit the FDA, and Kessler takes us through the political campaigns and counter-campaigns. He shows how Big Tobacco created fake advocacy groups on several issues, leading to their attempt to muzzle the FDA and cut off all their government funding. If you remember the '94 Contract with America and the movement against Big Government, you'll be surprised to find how Big Tobacco co-opted it to fight the FDA, one of the more admired agencies.
If you weren't already cynical about how the US government operates, this book will get you there, even with its descriptions of some of the good guys continually outmaneuvered by the bad ones. Several congress members are shown to be captives of Big Tobacco, doing their dirty work with scripts written by their lobbyists and lawyers.
And speaking of lawyers, one of the most amazing revelations to me ok is how the tobacco industry became captives of their law firms! Yes, instead of working for their clients, the law firms ended up calling all the shots, and the CEOs would read statements prepared by them. The book covers how this came to be.
If you love looking of source material, you'll be busy. Kessler leaves plenty of footnotes in this meaty book for your review. My only complaint is that the book jumps around in places, as the story moves forward or back depending on the topic being covered. But this is a small beef, as the material is so compelling. Find out not only how cigarette's nicotine content was manipulated but how the industry tried to hide this obvious fact from FDA visitors to their manufacturing facilities. Enjoy the victories and despair over the setbacks; this is a policy-wonk's book as written by a Tom Clancy wanna-be.
A Govenment Policy Thriller.......2002-06-24
This is an excellent book. Kessler's story reads like a thriller, but is non-fiction. In addition to the fascinating narrative, Kessler provides along the way many insights into how Washington REALLY works. The most disheartening thing about the book is the extent to which Kessler documents how our political culture is awash with tobacco money; the tentacles of the tobacco companies seemingly reach everywhere. Kessler reveals that many "think tanks" and other public policy mouthpieces--even senators--have been bought by big tobacco and are literally reading from scripts the companies have provided trying to shift tobacco issues into ideological issues involving freedom and democracy. Unfortunately, the tobacco companies usually win with such strategies. Kessler is quite non-partisan in his approach to his topic, so politicians are judged purely by their stance on tobacco. Clinton comes out as wishy-washy, Gore as rock solid, while Dennis Hastert, Newt Gingrich and assorted others come out as shills for big tobacco. A very enlightening and enjoyable book; it will make you yearn for true campaign finance reform.
Book Description
New from Management Concepts, the second edition of Practical Ethics in Public Administration is an excellent text for courses in applied and professional ethics - and essential preparation for future public administrators.
Practical Ethics in Public Administration is a skillful blend of theory and practice, with many case examples taken from daily public service. Students will be introduced to historical ethical theories - and how they combine in a unified ethical approach that can be applied to everyday situations. They'll learn the ethical nature of questions such as whether to fire an employee…how to allocate departmental funds…how to rate an employee on a yearly evaluation…policies of confidentiality…and more.
The new second edition features updated examples, guidelines, and hypothetical cases…two new chapters, one on how to address conflict by applying the unified ethic and a second on the ethics involved in leadership development…and new discussions of personal and professional issues such as new public management and creating public value.
Book Description
Guerrillas in government are all around us. They can be as high profile as "Deep Throat," or as low profile as the bureaucrat who belligerently slows the processing of an application for a driver's license. Their dissent stems from dissatisfaction with the actions of public organizations they work for, but they strategically choose not to go public with their concerns. Instead, they work against the wishes--either implicitly or explicitly communicated--of their superiors and run the spectrum from anti-establishment liberals to fundamentalist conservatives, from constructive contributors to deviant destroyers. Typically guerrilla government is undetected as it is woven into the fabric of the everyday, often mundane, world of bureaucracy.
Rosemary O'Leary shows that the majority of guerrilla government cases are the manifestation of inevitable tensions between bureaucracy and democracy, which yield immense ethical and organizational challenges that all public managers must learn to navigate. To illustrate these tensions and challenges, O'Leary presents three in-depth case studies and 21 mini case studies that showcase the range of guerrillas from an official at a regional EPA office to a doctor at a medical school to the director of planning in a county office. O'Leary's fresh analysis, combined with great story-telling, underscores the importance of dissent and presents strategies for ways public servants can decide ethically to engage in guerrilla activity, while offering ways public managers can learn to tap into the potentially insightful, creative ideas and energy of dissenters in order to make constructive changes in the system.
Customer Reviews:
Not a Bad Read........2006-11-10
I got this book cuz my grad professor had it on his reading list. Although some of the reading at te beginning of the book was hard to follow, later readings were actually easy to digest. I thought the author presented an important topic in government that really hasn't been explored much. I think she may be a little biased towards the guerrillas - however, in most of the cases she presented, I think you'll find it reasonable to see why.
Even if you are not in this field at all, but want to understand more of what goes on in the background of policy - namely, by the "little guy," then I think anyone will enjoy the topics O'Leary presents for your ponder. But I wouldn't take her suggestions at the end of the book, on how to "manage" guerrilas, as the sure-fire soultions.
Administrative Discretion and Guerrilla Government.......2006-03-12
Review by H. George Frederickson, Distinguished Professor, University of Kansas, published in PA TIMES, February, 2006, page 11
Sixty-five years ago Herman Finer and Carl Friedrich framed one of the classic debates in public administration-Finer arguing that democracy is dependent on tight legalistic controls over bureaucracy, Friedrich countering that effective administration requires bureaucratic expertise and the discretion to apply that expertise. Over the years public administrators have inclined rather strongly in the direction of Friedrich's position, favoring granting a broad range of discretion to bureaucrats. These days the positions of Finer and Friedrich tend to be debated in terms of multiple forms of accountability: accountability to elected officials, the constitution and the laws, one's public service profession, the greater good, one's conscience-and public administrators still favor Friedrich's position believing they should have the discretion to make tough choices and to be held accountable for those choices.
This week a vivid description of the extremes of the long-standing debate over what ought to be the proper range of administrative discretion has reached my desk; Rosemary O'Leary's splendid new book The Ethics of Dissent: Managing Guerrilla Government (Washington, D. C.: CQ Press, 2006). Although the title, The Ethics of Dissent, is lofty and grand, it is the subtitle, Managing Guerrilla Government, that best describes what the book is all about. Guerrilla government is O'Leary's term for "the actions of career public servants who work against the wishes-either implicitly or explicitly communicated-of their superiors. Guerrilla government is a form of dissent typically carried out by those who are dissatisfied with the actions of public organizations, programs, or people but who typically, for strategic reasons, choose not to go public with their concerns. . ." (p. xi). Based on more than three dozen actual cases-the cases are mostly rather brief first-person accounts and stories-which include the names of the guerrillas, what they did, and how they did it, O'Leary provides a powerful and very readable empirical base for her findings and generalizations.
O'Leary's guerrillas include Mark Felt, the "Deep Throat" of Watergate fame and Chiune Sugihara, the Japanese diplomat stationed in Lithuania, who, in the summer of 1940, against the policies of the Japanese government, issued visas to over 10,000 Jews, enabling them to escape the Holocaust. Unlike Felt and Sugihara and other high-profile guerrillas, most of O'Leary's guerrillas are garden variety nameless and faceless civil servants. There are more bureaucratic guerrillas than one might think, and guerrilla warfare in the bureaucratic trenches is far more common than one might think. Indeed, "guerrilla government happens all the time in the everyday, often mundane world of bureaucracy. Sometimes guerrillas fail to correct superiors' mistakes and let them fall. Sometimes guerrillas fail to implement orders they think are unfair. At times guerrilla government manifests itself as the ghostwriting of letters and testimony for interest groups. At other times it may mean forging secret links with nongovernmental organizations. It may mean leaking information to the news media. There are as many variations of guerrilla government as there are variations in guerrillas" (p. 3). The guerrilla repertoire also includes these familiar tactics: going over your supervisor's head, and over that supervisor's head, and so forth; filing a lawsuit; obeying in public, disobeying in private; cultivating the media; leaking to the media; creating or arrange for the creation of documentaries, scientific studies, and scientific papers that support a particular position; forging links with professional, nongovernmental, and citizen organizations; lobbying; testifying; contacting the White House of the State House; stalling; holding clandestine meetings; tying your cause to a crisis or event; raising funds. It is clear that guerrilla government is not bean-bag or tiddly-winks; it is, instead, a rough game played by tough policy partisans.
As O'Leary puts it, "all guerrilla activity is not created equally." She describes, for example, the guerrilla who had a long-running battle with superiors that began when a consultant refused a reimbursement for a five-dollar hamburger and the guerrilla then "waged a clandestine war to have the consultant barred from future state contracts and his supervisor fired." But most of O'Leary's cases are about serious matters associated with policy differences, questions of fairness, and interpretations of laws and regulations and how they should be implemented. She reports the results of a survey of Fellows of the National Academy of Public Administration who almost unanimously agreed that "dissent, when managed properly, was not only positive but essential to a healthy organization" (p. 104). Sean O'Keefe, the former administrator of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, indicated to O'Leary that "embracing dissent means inviting diversity of opinion from the people around you. My first rule is to never surround myself with people who are just like me. My second rule is always to insist upon someone voicing the dissenting opinion" (p. 104). At their best, guerrillas are the canaries of government, the early warning system. "Instead of discussing guerrillas as problematic and plotting how to get rid of them, we can think of guerrillas as messengers coming to tell a manager something important about the organization, the policies, and the way of operation. . . . The real challenge is to see if we can listen to the guerrillas' messages, sift through the canaries and the zealots, really hear them and take them to heart, that is, make the connection to the broader reality of public management and policy challenges at hand more fully" (pp. 104-108).
O'Leary's primary findings and conclusions are grounded in a synthesis of her cases and are these: (1) guerrilla government is here to stay; (2) guerrillas can do it to you in ways you will never know; (3) all guerrilla activity is not created equal; (4) most public organizations are inadequately equipped to deal effectively with guerrilla government; (5) the tensions inherent in guerrilla government will never be resolved. These findings will disappoint those looking for breakthroughs or easy answers, but they are a clear-eyed and accurate description of how bureaucratic dissent actually works.
Having made these findings and conclusions, O'Leary turned to the pros for advice. In summary form that advice is: (1) create an organizational culture that accepts, welcomes, and encourages candid dialogue and debate; (2) listen; (3) understand the formal and informal organization; (4) separate the people from the problem; (5) create multiple channels for dissent; (6) create dissent boundaries and know when to stop. Based on her survey of the pros, O'Leary's advice is at once simple and profound. Welcoming dissent, listening, separating people from problems, and allowing multiple dissent channels may be simple and profound, but are not easy for managers. They are skills that must be learned and are most often learned by experience, a notoriously expensive way to learn. O'Leary's advice is a little scholarship to those who should learn these skills while avoiding the high cost of learning everything by experience.
If we favor the special place of expertise in the civil service and broads grants of discretion to apply that expertise, and we do, with that discretion comes accountability in all its forms. That accountability includes the management of dissent in one's agency and responsibility for the bureaucrats in one's agency who choose to be guerrillas. Rosemary O'Leary has written an excellent handbook for public administrators with such responsibilities, for those who aspire to such responsibilities, and for those who study and teach those who aspire to such responsibilities. I agree with Donald F. Kettl's observation in the book's foreword that The Ethics of Dissent: Managing Guerrilla Government "stands as one of the most insightful works on the real world of bureaucracy ever written."
Other reviews from the back cover of the book:
WHAT OTHER PEOPLE ARE SAYING
Norma Riccucci
"Rosemary O'Leary's Ethics of Dissent is exquisitely written and provides one of the most compelling analyses and syntheses of the implications of guerrilla government to democracies. The book has exceptional pedagogical features and would be very suitable in a variety of course in not only public administration, but public affairs and public policy as well."
- Rutgers University - Newark
Don Kettl
"The book stands out as one of the most insightful works on the real world of bureaucracy ever written.... It is also an imaginary and path breaking approach to the always-difficult issue of ethics in the public service."
- University of Pennsylvania
Frances S. Berry
"This important book delves into an under-discussed topic - managers as guerrilla fighters - through rich case studies. The author has a wonderful writing style that is very engaging and accessible."
- Florida State University
Steven Maynard-Moody
"The Ethics of Dissent is a lively, well-written book. It covers a range of literature, and the cases provide an essential glimpse into the real workings of government. Combining extended cases with theoretical discussion makes for more interesting classes and connects theory and practice. Books, like O'Leary's, that connect the two are rare. "
- University of Kansas
FROM THE PUBLISHER:
Guerrillas in government are all around us. They can be as high profile as "Deep Throat," or as low profile as the bureaucrat who belligerently slows the processing of an application for a driver's license. Their dissent stems from dissatisfaction with the actions of public organizations they work for, but they strategically choose not to go public with their concerns. Instead, they work against the wishes-either implicitly or explicitly communicated-of their superiors and run the spectrum from anti-establishment liberals to fundamentalist conservatives, from constructive contributors to deviant destroyers. Typically guerrilla government is undetected as it is woven into the fabric of the everyday, often mundane, world of bureaucracy.
Rosemary O'Leary shows that the majority of guerrilla government cases are the manifestation of inevitable tensions between bureaucracy and democracy, which yield immense ethical and organizational challenges that all public managers must learn to navigate. To illustrate these tensions and challenges, O'Leary presents three in-depth case studies and 21 mini case studies that showcase the range of guerrillas from an official at a regional EPA office to a doctor at a medical school to the director of planning in a county office. O'Leary's fresh analysis, combined with great story-telling, underscores the importance of dissent and presents strategies for ways public servants can decide ethically to engage in guerrilla activity, while offering ways public managers can learn to tap into the potentially insightful, creative ideas and energy of dissenters in order to make constructive changes in the system.
Book Description
A stinging indictment, from two distinguished conservative scholars, of how American foreign policy is mismanaged, and an urgent call for a return to sanity
What has happened to American foreign policy? Stefan Halper and Jonathan Clarke argue that the members of what used to be called the foreign policy establishment are no longer doing the job of keeping our foreign policy informed and rational. Instead, hungry to coin the next Big Idea, they are in the business of advancing simplistic, glib mythologies. The result is that Americans are often presented with a fantasy world of nightmare scenarios rather than with explanations that lead to rational choices. Taking to task such well-known figures as Samuel Huntington, Noam Chomsky, and Jeffrey Sachs, Halper and Clarke argue for a revival of integrity within our foreign policy elite so that America's standing in the world can be restored.
A book that pulls no punches, The Silence of the Rational Center is both a penetrating diagnosis and a stirring call to reform in what is possibly the most important area of American political life.
Customer Reviews:
It's a pick for both college-level collections strong in political science and general-interest holdings alike........2007-04-19
While many are calling for alternatives to a buildup of troops in Iraq, few understand where such proposals come from and who shapes them. THE SILENCE OF THE RATIONAL CENTER: WHY AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY IS FAILING examines career professionals - academics, journalists, scholars and retired politicians - who are the real gatekeepers for foreign policy information. Public debate has taken second place to behind-the-scenes actions and influences: THE SILENCE OF THE RATIONAL CENTER seeks to examine these influences and consider how public voice can again help influence policy direction in the international community. It's a pick for both college-level collections strong in political science and general-interest holdings alike.
Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch
Amazon.com
Fearless investigative journalists Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber (Toxic Sludge Is Good for You! and Mad Cow U.S.A.) are back with a gripping exposé of the public relations industry and the scientists who back their business-funded, anti-consumer-safety agendas. There are two kinds of "experts" in question--the PR spin doctors behind the scenes and the "independent" experts paraded before the public, scientists who have been hand-selected, cultivated, and paid handsomely to promote the views of corporations involved in controversial actions. Lively writing on controversial topics such as dioxin, bovine growth hormone, and genetically modified food makes this a real page-turner, shocking in its portrayal of the real and potential dangers in each of these technological innovations and of the "media pseudo-environment" created to obfuscate the risks. By financing and publicizing views that support the goals of corporate sponsors, PR campaigns have, over the course of the century, managed to suppress the dangers of lead poisoning for decades, silence the scientist who discovered that rats fed on genetically modified corn had significant organ abnormalities, squelch television and newspaper stories about the risks of bovine growth hormone, and place enough confusion and doubt in the public's mind about global warming to suppress any mobilization for action.
Rampton and Stauber introduce the movers and shakers of the PR industry, from the "risk communicators" (whose job is to downplay all risks) and "outrage managers" (with their four strategies--deflect, defer, dismiss, or defeat) to those who specialize in "public policy intelligence" (spying on opponents). Evidently, these elaborate PR campaigns are created for our own good. According to public relations philosophers, the public reacts emotionally to topics related to health and safety and is incapable of holding rational discourse. Needless to say, Rampton and Stauber find these views rather antidemocratic and intend to pull back the curtain to reveal the real wizard in Oz. This is one wake-up call that's hard to resist. --Lesley Reed
Book Description
The book that unmasks the sneaky and widespread methods industry uses to influence opinion through bogus experts, doctored data, and manufactured facts.
"Finally a long-overdue exposé of the shenanigans and subterfuge that lie behind the making of experts in America." (Jeremy Rifkin)
"If you want to know how the world wags, and who's wagging it, here's your answer." (Bill Moyers)
"Meticulously researched . . . Rampton and Stauber's documentation of PR campaigns proves that they are the real 'experts.' " (Brill's Content) AUTHOBIO: John Stauber is the founder and director of the Center for Media & Democracy. He and Sheldon Rampton write and edit the quarterly PR Watch: Public Interest Reporting on the PR/Public Affairs Industry.
Customer Reviews:
The Death of Capitalism.......2007-09-04
Capitalism - market economy - free enterprise - these are the jewels in the crown of civilization which, since the renaissance, have brought unprecedented wealth, prosperity and freedom to large parts of the world. Capitalism has struggled and eventually triumphed over its historical adversaries; in earlier times, popes and kings and in our time socialism and communism. In the 21st century, since the collapse of the Berlin Wall, international corporate capitalism is bursting, like fireworks, in triumph; merging, globalizing and buying governments. What puny opposition remains is easily dispatched with a broad range of powerful weapons which have been developed over the years. Today the only real threat to capitalism is capitalism!
Socialists may practice socialism and Christians may practice Christianity but if by capitalism we mean a competitive market driven economic system, then capitalists do not practice capitalism. Theorists notwithstanding, capitalism is not an ideology, it is merely a description. Capitalists are not trying to implement some philosophy, they are only trying to make a buck any way they can. To a capitalist the biggest enemy is not socialism or labor unions or liberals or environmentalists, or even big government, the biggest enemy is risk. Risk of not making money. Risk of losing money.
Making money and avoiding risk in doing so is what capitalism is all about. But it is precisely in the risk taking that society draws its benefits from capitalism. That is the dilemma. Risk promotes wise investment resulting in efficiency, innovation and the creation of wealth, not just for the capitalist but for society as a whole. But a lot of capitalists fall by the wayside in the process. It is in the capitalist's interest to eliminate risk and society's interest to prevent them from doing so. The way to avoid risk is to control the market and to do that they must also control the government. This struggle has been going on for hundreds of years: capitalists forming monopolies, oligarchies and trusts and society breaking them up.
So long as society can keep pace with all the tricks and turns that capitalists take to avoid risk, the world would continue to reap the blessings of capitalism. But for the capitalists to succeed in eliminating risk, they would have to eliminate competition resulting in a monopoly of corporations with as much efficiency and innovation as any government bureaucracy. The ultimate risk-free climax would be monopoly and oligarchy and the corporate-run government necessary to keep it that way -- functionally indistinguishable from a Mafia run state or a Stalinist one. Capitalism, instead of an engine which pumps wealth to society and makes some capitalist wealthy in the process, would become an engine which sucks the wealth out of society, making a handful wealthy by impoverishing the rest.
We see this process going on in third world countries today and we are seeing the beginnings of it at home, in America. All three branches of government are increasingly under the control of corporations. Both political parties are addicted to corporate financing. Mergers, acquisitions and globalization, all techniques for eliminating risk, are rampant. The media is being merged and taken over by corporations and increasingly being used as public relations outlets for the corporations.
Right now society is not keeping pace. The tricks and turns that corporate capitalists use to avoid risk have gotten trickier and twistier. Just as a mosquito injects an anesthetic so that you will not feel it is sucking your blood, corporations are coopting the very processes by which people recognize what is going on so that more and more we are living in a virtual reality without realizing it. Sort of like a Potemkin village or like the movie The Truman Story where a boy is born and raised on a television set without knowing it. And as corporations merge and grow larger, they have even bigger budgets to build even more elaborate and convincing "sets". But this is not science fiction. The "sets" are being built around us as you read this.
Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber of the Center for Media & Democracy have been documenting this process for years. Their publications include a quarterly newsletter, PR Watch, and several books including: Toxic Sludge Is Good For You: Lies, Damn Lies and the Public Relations Industry, Mad Cow USA: Could the Nightmare Happen Here?, and now Trust Us, We're Experts. While flippant and amusing, these books and articles tell a very chilling story of corporate public relations manipulation and spin control growing exponentially in size, audacity and sophistication.
The "father of public relations", Rampton and Stauber point out in Trust Us, is Edward L. Bernays, son in law and disciple of Sigmund Freud. By following Bernays' philosophy one can see the road map to the future. Here are some of his ideas [pp 42 - 44]:
** scientific manipulation of public opinion is necessary to overcome chaos and conflict in society
** In almost every act of our lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons ... who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind.
** while most people respond to their world instinctively, without thought, there exist an intelligent few who have been charged with the responsibility of contemplating and influencing the tide of history
** public relations is an applied science, like engineering, through which society's leaders could bring order out of chaos
** being herd like also made people remarkably susceptible to leadership.
Of course that "leadership" can only be exercised by those who can afford the price of the Hill & Knowltons and APCOs of this world.
Here are some cases of virtual reality cited in their latest book. Big contributions, free junkets and the promise of future jobs are the more obvious ways of corrupting legislators but less obvious and more subtle is the use of public relations to actually manipulate the "facts". A typical example of how this works is illustrated on page 14.
"In the Fall of 1997, Georgetown University's Credit Research Center issued a study which concluded that many debtors are using bankruptcy as an excuse to wriggle out of their obligations to creditors. Lobbyists for bank and credit card companies seized on the study as they lobbied Congress for changes in federal law that would make it harder for consumers to file for bankruptcy relief. Former U.S. Treasury Secretary Lloyd Bentsen cited the study in a Washington Times opinion column, offering Georgetown's academic imprimatur as evidence of the need for `bankruptcy reform'. What Bentsen failed to mention was that the Credit Research Center is funded in its entirety by credit card companies, banks, retailers, and others in the credit industry. The study itself was produced with a $100,000 grant from Visa USA and MasterCard International Inc. Bentsen also failed to mention that he himself had been hired to work as a credit-industry lobbyist."
Coopting and distorting the very sources of knowledge and information which informed people, legislators, scientists, government officials, the press, etc. rely on as being objective and scientific is one of the most clever and the most egregious techniques for creating virtual reality. As an EPA employee I have seen many examples of self-serving corporate sponsored "scientific" studies being foisted off on EPA and used to justify weak ineffective regulations or no regulations at all. The fraud, if discovered at all, is rarely discovered by EPA. In the absence of high level support there is very little incentive for science bureaucrats to look closely at studies with powerful backers.
From p. 199: If you want to know just how craven some scientists can be, the archives of the tobacco industry offer a treasure trove of examples. Thanks to whistle-blowers and lawsuits, millions of pages of once-secret industry documents have become public and are freely available over the Internet. In 1998, for example, documents came to light regarding an industry- sponsored campaign in the early 1990s to plant sympathetic letters and articles in influential medical journals. Tobacco companies had secretly paid 13 scientists a total of $156,000 simply to write a few letters to influential medical journals. One biostatistician, Nathan Mantel of American University in Washington, received $10,000 for writing a single, eight-paragraph letter that was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Cancer researcher Gio Batta Cori received $20,137 for writing four letters and an opinion piece to the Lancet, the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, and the Wall Street Journal - nice work if you can get it, especially since the scientists didn't even have to write the letters themselves. Two tobacco-industry law firms were available to do the actual drafting and editing. All the scientists really had to do was sign their names at the bottom."
If the virtual reality created by public relation firms were only limited to selling toothpaste and deodorant we might not get too concerned about it. Falsifying medical research to defend harmful and dangerous products is a troublesome escalation. But there appears to be no limits to the uses of PR and no concern by the users of its ultimate impact. The issue of global warming, which could possibly plunge humanity into a new dark age, is being surrounded by the fog of virtual reality by the practitioners of PR as if the stakes were no more important than the selling of mouthwash.
Rampton and Stauber point out in pp 267-288 of Trust Us that PR firms hired by the major industrial emitters of greenhouse gasses have created dozens of influential sounding front organization such as "The Advancement of Sound Science Coalition", "The Global Climate Information Project", "The Information Council for the Environment" and "The Greening Earth Society" which have saturated the media, Congress and the public with industry spin so as to make their case by sheer volume and noise. Since the facts and the scientific community are so overwhelming against them, the object of the public relations onslaught has been to slow down, confuse and defuse public clamor for resolute action. Friends of the Earth International calls this "lobbying for lethargy".
There is legitimate scientific debate about the source and rate of global warming and a lot of the spin addresses that, but a lot doesn't. Some of the dirtier tricks played are:
** An attempt to stimulate anti Kyoto Treaty email to President Clinton by promising to enter writers' names in a $1000 sweepstakes drawing.
** Appealing to anti-abortion activists with the claim that "Al Gore has said abortion should be used to reduce global warming."
** Touting phoney petitions of scientists discrediting the theory of global warming.
** Circulating phoney "scientific" papers made up to look like they had appeared in reputable peer reviewed scientific journals.
** Some industry flacks claim the Earth is actually cooling while other claim that global warming is a good thing.
The scary thing is that lobbying for lethargy is working.
The book is very idealistic/ unrealistic.......2007-04-13
One thing that the authors don't think about is that: Most people are not only not educated enough to understand the specialist jargon that goes with many industrial products, but that if they did try to interpret it *based on their limited information/ understanding* disaster would result.
The authors also don't get into what happens when a well meaning government agency overregulates an industry SO MUCH that it ends up being of benefit to no one. Examples abound-- that were not dealt with in the book.
1. The FDA has such tight regulations on drugs that they end up costing 2-3 times more to produce/ sell to the American public than what they should. And much of this cost is legal fees, excessive testing, and clinical trials.
2. The trucking industry is also something that is heavily regulated. There is a chronic shortage of truck drivers in the industry because there are so many regulations that many people who would be perfectly competent truck drivers can't get a chance at working. (For reference, automobiles kill 40,000+ Americans per year, and trucks kill about 900. An average truck driver might drive 55 hours per week compared to the single digit hours that are driven by a passenger car.)
3. Everyone is whining about the price of gas, but no one knows whether the high cost is because of refineries operating at peak capacity or because of insufficient existing oil supplies. No one will ever be able to test this, since a single refinery has not been built in the last 30 years in the United States.
If people were able to regulate industries by the political process (say, by referenda or voting for candidates that would pass strict legislation), whatever came along after what currently exists would be FAR WORSE.
These authors need to pick up some books on Economics-- specifically ones that deal with information asymmetry (as in, how corporations have a better idea of what they are doing than third party observers).
Other than that, the book is very well written with lots of good examples. It's worth picking up-- in spite of my low rating thereof.
If Everybody Believes Something, It's Probably Wrong.......2006-12-29
If everybody believes something, it's probably wrong! We call that Conventional Wisdom. "Trust Us We're Experts" is one of the few books that I recommend to all of my patients that enter my office. The information in this book has the power to potentially save your life, since it provides the reader with the tools to spot propaganda that's regularly disseminated to the masses.
Americans are the most conditioned, programmed beings on the planet. Not only are our thoughts and attitudes continually being shaped and molded; our very awareness of the whole design seems like it is being subtly and inexorably erased! It is an exhausting and endless task to keep explaining to people how most issues of conventional wisdom are scientifically implanted in the public consciousness by a thousand media clips per day. I feel that Stauber and Rampton do an excellent job at guiding the reader through the PR industry and expert deception that is propagated daily. My recommendation is to buy this book today then kill your TV!
Dr. Matthew J. Loop
- Author of "Cracking the Cancer Code"
Take critical thinking one step further..........2005-11-19
...and use the techniques in this book on the book itself. Sadly, a book with so much promise falls victim to its own PR machine all too often. Face it, if you're going to use critical thinking, use it consistently. If you use it against what you don't like, but cast a blind eye on things you are passionate about, how critical is that, really?
Beware of "Experts" -- Follow the Money! .......2005-07-02
John Stauber tells it like it is, and I wish this book were a bestseller. Readers who can accept these truths may also want to read a highly detailed yet fascinating expose of a huge and profitable industry that has been manipulating science and gambling with your health -- "The Whole Soy Story:The Dark Side of America's Favorite Health Food" by Kaayla Daniel, The fact that you are probably thinking, "No, we all know that soy is healthy for us" is proof of how thoroughly you've been conned. I was too, but no longer. "Fluoride Deception" by Christopher Bryson is another good one. Thanks to John Stauber, I'm wary of experts and now know enough to follow the money.
Amazon.com
America is divided into two camps, according to U.S. News and World Reports writer and Fox commentator Michael Barone. No, not Red and Blue, though one suspects Barone may taint the two groups in the hues of the 2000 presidential election. Barone's divided America is one part Hard, one part Soft. Hard America is steeled by the competition and accountability of the free market, while Soft America is the product of public school and government largesse. Inspired by the notion that America produces incompetent 18 year olds and remarkably competent 30 year olds, Barone embarks on a breezy 162-page commentary that will spark mostly huzzahs from the right and jeers from the left. Certainly the unforgiving nature of the marketplace can sharpen skills in upstarts, but what's softer than the landing of a CEO with a golden parachute? And one would assume Barone would favor toughening up coddled kids by retaining, if not drastically raising, the inheritance tax, but the subject never comes up. Still, the Washington, D.C.-based pundit's premise is provocative, his arguments are nuanced, and his writing is sharp. Ultimately, Barone forecasts "a Harder America on the horizon." Would that be what they used to call "hard times"? --Steven Stolder
Book Description
A peculiar feature of our country today, says Michael Barone, is that we seem to produce incompetent eighteen-year-olds but remarkably competent thirty-year-olds. Indeed, American students lag behind their peers in other nations, but America remains on the leading edge economically, scientifically, technologically, and militarily.
The reason for this paradox, explains Barone in this brilliant essay, is that “from ages six to eighteen Americans live mostly in what I call Soft America—the parts of our country where there is little competition and accountability. But from ages eighteen to thirty Americans live mostly in Hard America—the parts of American life subject to competition and accountability.” While Soft America coddles, Hard America plays for keeps.
Educators, for example, protect children from the rigors of testing, ban dodgeball, and promote just about any student who shows up. But most adults quickly figure out that how they do depends on what they produce.
Barone sweeps readers along, showing how we came to the current divide—for things weren’t always this way. In fact, no part of our society is all Hard or all Soft, and the boundary between Hard America and Soft America often moves back and forth. Barone also shows where America is headed—or should be headed. We don’t want to subject kindergartners to the rigors of the Marine Corps or leave old people uncared for. But Soft America lives off the productivity, creativity, and competence of Hard America, and we have the luxury of keeping part of our society Soft only if we keep most of it Hard.
Hard America, Soft America reveals:
• How the American situation is unique: In Europe, schooling is competitive and demanding, but adult life is Soft, with generous welfare benefits, short work hours, long vacations, and state pensions
• How the American military has reclaimed the Hard goals and programs it abandoned in the Vietnam era
• How Hardness drives America’s economy—an economy that businesses and economists nearly destroyed in the 1970s by spurning competition
• How America’s schools have failed because they are bastions of Softness—but how they are finally showing signs of Hardening
• The benefits of Softness: How government programs like Social Security were necessary in what was a harsh and unforgiving America
• Hard America, Soft America is a stunningly original and provocative work of social commentary from one of this country’s most respected political analysts.
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A peculiar feature of our country today, says Michael Barone, is that we seem to produce incompetent eighteen-year-olds but remarkably competent thirty-year-olds. Indeed, American students lag behind their peers in other nations, but America remains on the leading edge economically, scientifically, technologically, and militarily.
The reason for this paradox, explains Barone in this brilliant essay, is that "from ages six to eighteen Americans live mostly in what I call Soft America—the parts of our country where there is little competition and accountability. But from ages eighteen to thirty Americans live mostly in Hard America—the parts of American life subject to competition and accountability." While Soft America coddles, Hard America plays for keeps.
Educators, for example, protect children from the rigors of testing, ban dodgeball, and promote just about any student who shows up. But most adults quickly figure out that how they do depends on what they produce.
Barone sweeps readers along, showing how we came to the current divide—for things weren't always this way. In fact, no part of our society is all Hard or all Soft, and the boundary between Hard America and Soft America often moves back and forth. Barone also shows where America is headed—or should be headed. We don't want to subject kindergartners to the rigors of the Marine Corps or leave old people uncared for. But Soft America lives off the productivity, creativity, and competence of Hard America, and we have the luxury of keeping part of our society Soft only if we keep most of it Hard.
Hard America, Soft America reveals:
- How the American situation is unique: In Europe, schooling is competitive and demanding, but adult life is Soft, with generous welfare benefits, short work hours, long vacations, and state pensions
- How the American military has reclaimed the Hard goals and programs it abandoned in the Vietnam era
- How Hardness drives America's economy—an economy that businesses and economists nearly destroyed in the 1970s by spurning competition
- How America's schools have failed because they are bastions of Softness—but how they are finally showing signs of Hardening
- The benefits of Softness: How government programs like Social Security were necessary in what was a harsh and unforgiving America
Hard America, Soft America is a stunningly original and provocative work of social commentary from one of this country's most respected political analysts.
Customer Reviews:
I expected more from Michael Barone........2007-02-28
I disliked Michael Barone's Hard America, Soft America, which is sad really, because Michael Barone is one this nation's better political commentators. His knowledge of the American political landscape is encyclopedic, as evidenced by his annual Almanac of American Politics (a sort of dungeon master's guide for political science nerds like me), and from his appearances on Fox News we know he's not a rabble-rousing showman, but rather intellectual in manner. More George Will than Ann Coulter.
Which is probably why I found Hard America, Soft America so disappointing. Barone's encyclopedic mind is apparent in full force here, but it serves an incredibly simplistic thesis. Hard America, Soft America asks, "why does America continue to produce incompetent 18-year-olds but remarkably competent 30-year-olds?" The answer is the dichotomy between the Soft world of education and the Hard world of business ("Hard" and "Soft" are always capitalized). Soft worlds are worlds free of competition and accountability, where failure is tolerated, understood, and dealt with in a compassionate manner. Education theories are the best example of a Softness in America today. Hard worlds are worlds of accountability, punishment for wrongdoing, risk and reward; the world of the entrepreneur. Barone shows how law enforcement, big business, and the military went from Soft to Hard over the past generation, and hopes that education will do the same.
So this book is about another book about "two Americas"- conservative and liberal, red and blue, Hard and Soft. Barone is smart enough to recognize that both Hard and Soft environments are necessary for the country to survive (which I suppose puts him above most of his colleagues), but the whole thing is rather simplistic and, for my money, the labels "Hard" and "Soft" have too much of a David Brooks-like cuteness to them (I think Brooks would have come up with better labels than Hard and Soft though. "Bobos" is rather clever). In the end, Hard America, Soft America is book of pop sociology from a guy who is capable of far more.
"[W]hile we act reasonably in keeping parts of American life Soft, we depend for our prosperity...on the parts...that are Hard.".......2006-10-17
"Welfare dependency, like crime, approximately tripled in the ten years between 1965 & 1975 and remained at high levels until well into the 1990s." "We tried to provide more for the poor and produced more poor," instead, as "[w]elfare dependency and crime built on each other." "The great mass of well-meaning Americans who wanted a Softer response to crime and welfare dependency had in fact increased and perpetuated misery." In particular, the post-war economic boom in America (as well in Europe), Barone argues, made us susceptible to complacency, in imagining "...that the problem of maintaining low-inflation economic growth indefinitely had been solved. The important question, therefore, was not production of wealth but distribution of wealth;" instilling doubts on the idea that the Hard aspects of competition and accountability actually are the foundation and are the necessary requisite for growth, wealth creation, and alleviating poverty. "At the opening of the 20th century, American life seemed too Hard, and the nation used some of the prosperity that was the product of a Hard economy to make life Softer. At midcentury, it seemed that everything was fated to get even Softer, and many things did. The Big Unit private sector was laced with Softness, the country (spurred by the success of the civil rights movement) was turning toward Softness in criminal justice and welfare dependency, and the Hardening of education in response to Sputnik turned out to be only temporary;" as academic requirements were abandoned, absenteeism increasingly tolerated. "Grade inflation and social promotion became commonplace," as a result. It had happened before too. "[W]ith rising enrollment of black and hispanic students in the 1970s and 1980s, teachers lowered expectations and reduced requirements, as they had with the rising enrollment of the children of immigrants in the 1920s and 1930s." Conclusion: Coddling doesn't help the folks who need to learn to compete in a capitalist economy. That's the central point of this book; "that Soft America lives off Hard America, that while we act reasonably in keeping parts of American life Soft, we depend for our prosperity and our advancement and our existance on the parts of America that are Hard." "All of these efforts to Soften life for black Americans, and for Am
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