Stifling Political Competition examines the history and array of laws, regulations, subsidies and programs that benefit the two major parties and discourage even the possibility of a serious challenge to the Democrat-Republican duopoly. The analysis synthesizes political science, economics and American history to demonstrate how the two-party system is the artificial creation of a network of laws, restrictions and subsidies that favor the Democrats and Republicans and cripple potential challenges. The American Founders, as it has been generally forgotten, distrusted political parties. Nowhere in the U.S. Constitution are parties mentioned, much less given legal protection or privilege. This provocative book traces how by the end of the Civil War the Republicans and Democrats had guaranteed their dominance and subsequently influenced a range of policies developed to protect the duopoly. For example, Bennett examines how the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971 (as amended in 1974 and 1976), which was sold to the public as a nonpartisan act of good government reformism actually reinforced the dominance of the two parties. While focused primarily on the American experience, the book does consider the prevalence of two-party systems around the world (especially in emerging democracies) and the widespread contempt with which they are often viewed. The concluding chapter considers the potential of truly radical reform toward opening the field to vigorous, lively, contentious third-party candidacies that might finally offer alienated voters a choice, not an echo.

Stifling Political Competition: How Government Has Rigged the System to Benefit Demopublicans and Exclude Third Parties (Studies in Public Choice, 12)

History

Bennett, James T.

Americas

Springer

Discusses charitable organizations, explaining how they use the money they raise and how much of each dollar raised goes to administrative and other hidden costs

Unhealthy Charitites: Hazardous To Your Health And Wealth

Business & Money

Finance

Basic Books

Unhealthy Charities: Hazardous To Your Health And Wealth

World

A study of the long-term decline of the labour movement in America, exploring the outlook for labour and unions in the 21st century. There are insights from contributors from a range of backgrounds - academic and non-academic, domestic and foreign, pro- and anti-union.

The Future of Private Sector Unionism in the United States (Issues in Work and Human Resources)

Kaufman, Bruce E.

Economics

Routledge

A study of the long-term decline of the labour movement in America, exploring the outlook for labour and unions in the 21st century. There are insights from contributors from a range of backgrounds - academic and non-academic, domestic and foreign, pro- and anti-union.

The Future of Private Sector Unionism in the United States (Issues in Work and Human Resources (Paperback))

Public Health Profiteering

The diet industry feeds on the hopes and the fears of those who need-or think that they need-to lose weight. Since the publication of the first known diet book in 1864, a host of sanctimonious preachers and self-proclaimed experts-often overweight themselves-have stoked fears of obesity effectively for both profit and political power, none more so than former surgeon general C. Everett Koop. In Public Health Profiteering, James T. Bennett and Thomas J. DiLorenzo offer a scathing and irreverent assessment of Koop's public and private career showing how a brilliant pediatric surgeon has evolved into a self-seeking and hypocritical public scold. During his term as Surgeon General under the Bush administration, Koop, enamored of the military trappings of title and uniform, saw himself as leading an army of public health administrators against an enemy. As often as not, the enemy took on the disquieting countenance of the American people. In Koop's view they were stupid, improvident, feckless, unable to make the simplest decisions about their lives. As Bennett and DiLorenzo show, he used his position as a bully pulpit for intemperate attacks on the tobacco and alcohol industries and to irresponsibly exaggerate the dangers of obesity. While taking a prohibitionist line, Koop himself smoked a pipe, drank martinis, and weighed in at a hefty 210 pounds. Although Koop claimed that he would never cash in on his office, his subsequent career tells a far different story. He has lobbied, hawked, and endorsed products for a host of firms: Wyeth Ayerst (makers of the dubious diet drug Fen-Phen), Weight Watchers, Jenny Craig, Intel, Neurocrine, Kelloggs, BioPure, and many others. Lively in style and carefully researched, Public Health Profiteering will be of interest to health policy specialists, political scientists, economists, and media analysts. James T. Bennett is professor of economics at George Mason University. He is founder and editor of the Journal of Labor Research and has authored many books and articles, including Health Research Charities: Image and Reality and Official Lies: How Washington Misleads Us, co-authored with Thomas DiLorenzo. Thomas DiLorenzo is professor of economics at the Sellinger School of Business and Management at Loyola College in Baltimore. He has co-authored many books and is widely published in academic journals as well as the popular press, including the Wall Street Journal and USA Today.

Health, Fitness & Dieting

DiLorenzo, Thomas J.

Diets & Weight Loss

Tax-funded Politics

The past two decades have seen the growth of well-coordinated networks of political activists who have managed to obtain hundreds of millions of taxpayers' dollars for political lobbying. Although federal regulations prohibit such activities, loopholes in the law allow these monies to be masked as private resources. State and federal taxpayers, monies fund the lobbying efforts of private advocacy groups on both the political left and the right. In Tax-Funded Politics, James Bennett argues that governmental agencies, rather than combating theses abuses, aid and abet them in order to increase their own size and scope. Drawing on a broad range of examples, Bennett shows how the ideals of the nation's Founding Fathers have been subverted by molding and manipulating the will of the people through government-orchestrated propaganda. Government agencies, far from being indifferent to self-aggrandizement and the consolidation of wealth and power, are concerned with their own self-interest, whether it is enhancing their budget or supporting a particular political agenda. Likewise, nonprofit entities claim to operate solely in the "public interest" but also engage in political advocacy and lobbying activities. But when charities do the lobbying, blatant self-interest is wrapped in the halo of the "public interest." Tax-Funded Politics exposes dozens of mutually beneficial arrangements between government and charities involving hundreds of millions of dollars. It then explores their implications. Groups that receive government funds are loath to criticize failed government programs and are advocates for the expansion of the agencies that provide their support. Even charities learn not to bite the hand that feeds them. Although the vast majority of the funds are directed to nonprofit groups on the left of the political spectrum, so-called conservative organizations have also sought and received taxpayers' funds, despite promise to get government off our back and out of our pockets.

Homeland Security Scams

A direct consequence of the War on Terror launched after the attacks of September 11, 2001 is an awareness of the need for homeland security. This war is being used to justify a huge expansion of government powers and spending, but funds allocated for homeland security are often for programs far removed from anything that might be termed "defense" or "security." In Homeland Security Scams, James T. Bennett shows that this government spending is doing very little to make us safer, but a great deal to make us poorer, less free, and more dependent on the federal government. Regardless of the color of the "security alert" issued by the Homeland Security czar, the spending light is always green as pork barrel dollars are showered on programs of dubious worth. Lobbyists lobby for homeland security grants and contracts; corporations and state and local governments are becoming ever more dependent on federal subsidies; the vested interest in prolonging and intensifying the concern about homeland security increases; and lobbyists press for ever more money. As Bennett makes clear, with government money comes government control. Law enforcement and emergency response agencies at all levels of government are being effectively "nationalized." Police power is being concentrated, and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) envisions a "surveillance" state that the East German State Police under Communism would have envied. In this hard-hitting critique, Bennett argues that all the spending and surveillance will not win the War on Terror or preserve us from natural disasters. The foe cannot be beaten (we're having trouble even finding the enemy), cannot surrender, and still has awesome powers to lay waste to American cities and citizens. He argues that we should view terrorism as just one of many other serious threats to individuals and to nations. More sternly, he warns that the War on Terror is also a War on Privacy and a War on Liberty.

Information Technology and the World of Work

Information technologies have become both a means and an end, transforming the workplace and how work is performed. This ongoing evolution in the work process has received extensive coverage but relatively little attention has been given to how changing technologies and work practices affect the workers themselves. This volume specifically examines the institutional and social environment of the workplaces that information technologies have created. Compilations of scholarly essays are often written by members of a particular school of thought, whose purpose is to flesh out an area of theory or methodology. Information Technology and the World of Work takes a different approach: these essays are written by diverse voices, unified in their interest in the common theme of technology and the changing workplace. The authors' goals are to present perspectives that raise as many questions as they answer, and which are accessible to a broad audience of managers, union leaders, students, and academic readers. The chapters are organized into three specific topical areas that represent aspects of workers' social and political experiences of work that are affected by technology. Part 1 addresses how information technologies affect workers' unions. Part 2 examines how information technology affects individual employees, specifically in terms of employees' sense of power and identity. Chapters in this section examine the social and psychological reactions of workers within the system. Part 3 focuses on one of the most contentious outcomes of this changed workplace, reviewing emerging policy and privacy issues that new technologies have created. Written with the intent of beginning an important discussion of these issues, this volume should provide an impetus for others to make their own contribution to the emerging dialogue on technology in the modern workplace.

Townsend, Anthony M.

Taras, Daphne Gottlieb

Management & Leadership

Unfair Competition is an in-depth investigation of the commercial activities of nonprofit organizations. Nonprofits have been granted many special privileges by the government, including exemption from taxation and subsidized postal rates. These privileges lower operating costs so nonprofits may carry out their public service mission more efficiently. The authors argue that the special privileges nonprofits enjoy give them an unfair advantage over for-profit firms, and they propose a solution to this escalating problem which has serious economic implications.

Unfair Competition: The Profits of Nonprofits

University Press of America

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