Author: Robert KuttnerPublisher: New York : Simon and Schuster
ISBN:
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 392
Book Description
Revolt of the Haves
Author: Robert KuttnerPublisher: New York : Simon and Schuster
ISBN:
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 392
Book Description
Mad as Hell
Author: Dominic SandbrookPublisher: Anchor
ISBN: 1400077249
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 546
Book Description
“I’m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take it anymore!” The words of Howard Beale, the fictional anchorman in 1976’s hit film Network, struck a chord with a generation of Americans. In this colourful new history, Dominic Sandbrook ranges seamlessly over the political, economic, and cultural high (and low) points of American life in the 1970s, exploring the roots of the fears, resentments, cravings, and disappointments we know so well today. From Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan to Anita Bryant and Jerry Falwell, he shows how the 1970s saw the emergence of a new right-wing populism, setting the stage for the bitter partisanship and near-total cynicism of our modern political landscape.
Front Porch Politics
Author: Michael Stewart FoleyPublisher: Hill and Wang
ISBN: 0374711089
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 434
Book Description
"Reading this book revives the spirit of civic action today for those who are unjustifiably forlorn about overcoming injustice."—Ralph Nader An on-the-ground history of ordinary Americans who took to the streets when political issues became personal The 1960s are widely seen as the high tide of political activism in the United States. According to this view, Americans retreated to the private realm after the tumult of the civil rights and antiwar movements, and on the rare occasions when they did take action, it was mainly to express their wish to be left alone by government—as recommended by Ronald Reagan and the ascendant New Right. In fact, as Michael Stewart Foley shows in Front Porch Politics, this understanding of post-1960s politics needs drastic revision. On the community level, the 1970s and 1980s witnessed an unprecedented upsurge of innovative and impassioned grass roots political activity. In Southern California and on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, tenants challenged landlords with sit-ins and referenda; in the upper Midwest, farmers vandalized power lines and mobilized tractors to protect their land; and in the deindustrializing cities of the Rust Belt, laid-off workers boldly claimed the right to own their idled factories. Meanwhile, activists fought to defend the traditional family or to expand the rights of women, while entire towns organized to protest the toxic sludge in their basements. Recalling Love Canal, the tax revolt in California, ACT UP, and other crusades famous or forgotten, Foley shows how Americans were propelled by personal experiences and emotions into the public sphere. Disregarding conventional ideas of left and right, they turned to political action when they perceived, from their actual or figurative front porches, an immediate threat to their families, homes, or dreams. Front Porch Politics is a vivid and authoritative people's history of a time when Americans followed their outrage into the streets. Addressing today's readers, it is also a field guide for effective activism in an era when mass movements may seem impractical or even passé. The distinctively visceral, local, and highly personal politics that Americans practiced in the 1970s and 1980s provide a model of citizenship participation worth emulating if we are to renew our democracy.
The Permanent Tax Revolt
Author: Isaac William MartinPublisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 0804763178
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 314
Book Description
Tax cuts are such a pervasive feature of the American political landscape that the political establishment rarely questions them. Since 2001, Congress has abolished the tax on inherited wealth and passed a major income tax cut every year, including two of the three largest income tax cuts in American history despite a long drawn-out war and massive budget deficits. The Permanent Tax Revolt traces the origins of this anti-tax campaign to the 1970s, in particular, to the influence of grassroots tax rebellions as homeowners across the United States rallied to protest their local property taxes. Isaac William Martin advances the provocative new argument that the property tax revolt was not a conservative backlash against big government, but instead a defensive movement for government protection from the market. The tax privilege that the tax rebels were defending was in fact one of the largest government social programs in the postwar era. While the movement to defend homeowners' tax breaks drew much of its inspiration—and many of its early leaders—from the progressive movement for welfare rights, politicians on both sides of the aisle quickly learned that supporting big tax cuts was good politics. In time, American political institutions and the strategic choices made by the protesters ultimately channeled the movement toward the kind of tax relief favored by the political right, with dramatic consequences for American politics today.
Loss of Confidence
Author: David Brian RobertsonPublisher: Penn State Press
ISBN: 9780271044866
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 196
Book Description
As the oil shortages, inflation, and unemployment of the 1970s disrupted American lives and the Watergate scandal rocked the presidency, faith in the future of the nation and its leaders was severely damaged. This volume, which is the product of a unique collaboration of distinguished scholars from history and political science, offers a probing analysis of the causes, processes, and consequences of this erosion of faith in public solutions to our country's problems. At the beginning of the decade, a confident American public and its leaders still embraced the government activism that was the legacy of the New Deal. But grave doubts about the efficacy of public policy&—fueled by Watergate, Vietnam, stagflation, energy crises, and intensely controversial social policies&—undermined this public trust as the decade wore on, until by the end tax revolts were breaking out across the country. Describing government as the problem, not the solution, Ronald Reagan broke with tradition to set a political and policy agenda that has been dominant ever since. These experts from two disciplines bring their special insights to bear in dissecting the key developments of this decade that have transformed American politics in the last quarter of the century. The contributors are Ballard C. Campbell, Joseph Hinchliffe, J. David Hoeveler, Sidney M. Milkis, Alice O&’Connor, Paul J. Quirk. David Brian Robertson, and John T. Woolley. Like the other titles in Issues in Policy History, this book reprints a special issue of The Journal of Policy History.
In Defense of Populism
Author: Donald T. CritchlowPublisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 0812252764
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 232
Book Description
Contrary to warnings about the dangers of populism, Donald F. Critchlow argues that grassroots activism is essential to party renewal within a democratic system. Grassroots activism, presenting a cacophony of voices calling for reform of various sorts without programmatic coherence, is often derided as populist and distrusted by both political parties and voters. But according to Donald T. Critchlow, grassroots movements are actually responsible for political party transformation, both Democratic and Republic, into instruments of reform that reflect the interests, concerns, and anxieties of the electorate. Contrary to popular discourse warning about the dangers of populism, Critchlow argues that grassroots activism is essential to party renewal within a democratic system. In Defense of Populism examines movements that influenced Republican, Democratic, and third-party politics—from the Progressives and their influence on Teddy Roosevelt, to New Dealers and FDR, to the civil rights, feminist, and environmental movements and their impact on the Democratic Party, to the Reagan Revolution and the Tea Party. In each case, Critchlow narrates representative biographies of activists, party leaders, and presidents to show how movements become viable calls for reform that get translated into policy positions. Social tensions and political polarization continue to be prevalent today. Increased social disorder and populist outcry are expected whenever political elites and distant bureaucratic government are challenged. In Defense of Populism shows how, as a result of grassroots activism and political-party reform, policy advances are made, a sense of national confidence is restored, and the belief that American democracy works in the midst of crisis is affirmed.
The Rebels
Author: Joshua GreenPublisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0525560246
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 353
Book Description
“One of the best and most readable overviews of the Democrats’ evolution on economic issues over the past half-century.” — The Wall Street Journal “Fast-paced, sober, yet hopeful . . . Green is a first-rate journalist.” — The Atlantic One of Politico’s 10 books we’re looking forward to in 2024 From the author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Devil’s Bargain comes the revelatory inside story of the uprising within the Democratic Party, of the economic populists led by Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. In his classic book Devil’s Bargain, Joshua Green chronicled how the forces of economic populism on the right, led by the likes of Steve Bannon, turned Donald Trump into their flawed but powerful vessel. In The Rebels, he gives an epic account of the long struggle that has played out in parallel on the left, told through an intimate reckoning with the careers of the three political figures who have led the charge most prominently. Based on remarkable inside sourcing and razor-sharp analysis, The Rebels uses the grand narrative of a political party undergoing tumult and transformation to tell an even larger story about the fate of America. For many years, as Green recounts, the Democrats made their bed with Wall Street and big tech, relying on corporate money for electioneering and embracing the worldview that technological and financial innovation and globalization were a powerful net good, a rising tide lifting all boats. Yes, there were howls of pain, but they were written off by most of the elites as the moaning of sore losers mired in the past. There were always some Democratic politicians representing the old labor base who resisted the new dispensation, but these figures never made it very far on a national level. For one thing, they didn’t have the money. But as income inequality ballooned, widening the gulf between the wealthy elite and everyone else, pressures began to build. With the 2008 crisis, those forces finally erupted into plain sight, turning this book’s protagonists into national icons. At its heart, The Rebels tells the riveting human story of the rise and fight of Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez from the financial crisis on, as outrage over the unfairness of the American system formed a flood tide of political revolution. That same tide that would sweep Trump into office was blunted on the left, as the Democratic party found itself riven by culture war issues between its centrists and its progressives. But the winds behind economic populism still howl at gale force. Whether the Democrats can bridge their divisions and home in on a vision that unites the party, and perhaps even the country, in the face of the most violently deranged political landscape since the Civil War will be the ultimate test of the legacies of all three characters. A masterful account of one of the defining political stories of our age, The Rebels cements Joshua Green’s stature at the first rank of American writers explaining how we’ve arrived at this pass and what lies ahead.
The Dynamics Of War And Revolution
Author: Lawrence DennisPublisher: Pickle Partners Publishing
ISBN: 1786256142
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 229
Book Description
Lawrence Dennis presents his analysis of the political and economic situation that led to the Second World War. He introduces his theories on Dynamism and the decline of Capitalism throughout the world which he believes will be accelerated by world war. Originally published in 1940.—Print Ed.
Reaganland
Author: Rick PerlsteinPublisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1476793069
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 1120
Book Description
"From the bestselling author of Nixonland and The Invisible Bridge comes the dramatic conclusion of how conservatism took control of American political power"--
It Seemed Like Nothing Happened
Author: Peter N. CarrollPublisher: Rutgers University Press
ISBN: 9780813515380
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 456
Book Description
"This is the single best book on the 1970s." --Leo Ribuffo, George Washington University "A compelling and persuasive challenge to the journalistic characterization of the '70s as the 'Me Decade.'" --Ruth Rosen, University of California, Davis The title of Peter Carroll's book, It Seemed Like Nothing Happened, ironically reveals the message. The decade of the '70s was far from our common impression of the calm following the turbulent '60s. Instead, it was a time filled with dramatic events and changes. In this unique, comprehensive history of the 1970s, we learn about international developments: the war in Cambodia, Nixon's trip to China, the oil embargo and resulting gas shortage, the Mayaguez incident, the Camp David accords, the Iranian capture of the U.S. embassy and the taking of hostages, and the ill-fated rescue mission. All this signaled a decline in American power and influence. We also learn about domestic politics: Kent State, the Pentagon Papers, Haynsworth and Carswell, the Eagleton affair, the rise of ticket splitting, the Saturday night massacre, Nixon's resignation, the conservative shift in the Democratic Party, and the Reagan electoral landslide. Carroll reminds us of tragedies and occasional moments of levity, bringing up the names Patricia Hearst, George Jackson and Angela Davis, Wilbur Mills and the Argentina Firecracker, Wayne Hays and Elizabeth Ray, Harvey Milk and Mayor George Moscone. Peter N. Carroll has taught at the University of Illinois, the University of Minnesota, and Stanford University. He is the author of The Odyssey of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade: Americans in the Spanish Civil War.