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Author: Fred Smoller
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781516539543
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 276
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Book Description
From Kleptocracy to Democracy: How Citizens Can Take Back Local Government provides students with a critical examination of the large-scale political corruption that looted Bell, California between 1993 and 2010. For 17 years, some city officials paid themselves more than a million dollars a year, using the police department as a "for profit" vehicle for collecting fines, and issuing over $100 million in bonds. They turned the city into their own private cash machine. Residents of the poor, immigrant community are still struggling to repay the city's exorbitant debt. The book draws on interviews with more than 50 people connected to the Bell scandal to provide a compelling, in-depth look at how waves of factory closings, economic shifts, and immigration pressures gutted the structures that are essential to civic health, opening the way for grifting politicians. The book analyzes the seemingly minor breakdowns in civic life that invite corruption, and offers students and interested citizens tools for analyzing the health of their own communities. Apathy killed democracy in Bell for almost two decades, but the press--and the dogged political activism of young Latinos and Muslims in the Dreamers generation-- brought it back. The book makes a clear connection between civil complacency and the resulting damage to American democracy. It demonstrates how citizens can actively resist political corruption by remaining involved and informed in local government. From Kleptocracy to Democracy inspires informed citizenship. It is an excellent supplementary resource for courses in local government, public administration, sociology, Chicano studies, urban politics, law and society, and ethics studies. Fred Smoller, a frequent contributor to the Los Angeles Times and the Orange County Register, earned his Ph.D. from Indiana University, Bloomington, his M.A. from the University of Texas at Austin, and his B.A. from State University New York, College of Fredonia. He is an associate professor of political science at Chapman University in Orange, California, where he teaches courses on public administration and state and local politics. His key area of professional interest is American politics, with a specific emphasis on media and politics, local government, and public administration.
Author: Fred Smoller
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781516539543
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 276
Get Book Here
Book Description
From Kleptocracy to Democracy: How Citizens Can Take Back Local Government provides students with a critical examination of the large-scale political corruption that looted Bell, California between 1993 and 2010. For 17 years, some city officials paid themselves more than a million dollars a year, using the police department as a "for profit" vehicle for collecting fines, and issuing over $100 million in bonds. They turned the city into their own private cash machine. Residents of the poor, immigrant community are still struggling to repay the city's exorbitant debt. The book draws on interviews with more than 50 people connected to the Bell scandal to provide a compelling, in-depth look at how waves of factory closings, economic shifts, and immigration pressures gutted the structures that are essential to civic health, opening the way for grifting politicians. The book analyzes the seemingly minor breakdowns in civic life that invite corruption, and offers students and interested citizens tools for analyzing the health of their own communities. Apathy killed democracy in Bell for almost two decades, but the press--and the dogged political activism of young Latinos and Muslims in the Dreamers generation-- brought it back. The book makes a clear connection between civil complacency and the resulting damage to American democracy. It demonstrates how citizens can actively resist political corruption by remaining involved and informed in local government. From Kleptocracy to Democracy inspires informed citizenship. It is an excellent supplementary resource for courses in local government, public administration, sociology, Chicano studies, urban politics, law and society, and ethics studies. Fred Smoller, a frequent contributor to the Los Angeles Times and the Orange County Register, earned his Ph.D. from Indiana University, Bloomington, his M.A. from the University of Texas at Austin, and his B.A. from State University New York, College of Fredonia. He is an associate professor of political science at Chapman University in Orange, California, where he teaches courses on public administration and state and local politics. His key area of professional interest is American politics, with a specific emphasis on media and politics, local government, and public administration.
Author: Fred Smoller
Publisher: Cognella Academic Publishing
ISBN: 9781516539550
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :
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Book Description
From Kleptocracy to Democracy: How Citizens Can Take Back Local Government provides students with a critical examination of the large-scale political corruption that looted Bell, California between 1993 and 2010. For 17 years, some city officials paid themselves more than a million dollars a year, using the police department as a "for profit" vehicle for collecting fines, and issuing over $100 million in bonds. They turned the city into their own private cash machine. Residents of the poor, immigrant community are still struggling to repay the city's exorbitant debt. The book draws on interviews with more than 50 people connected to the Bell scandal to provide a compelling, in-depth look at how waves of factory closings, economic shifts, and immigration pressures gutted the structures that are essential to civic health, opening the way for grifting politicians. The book analyzes the seemingly minor breakdowns in civic life that invite corruption, and offers students and interested citizens tools for analyzing the health of their own communities. Apathy killed democracy in Bell for almost two decades, but the press--and the dogged political activism of young Latinos and Muslims in the Dreamers generation-- brought it back. The book makes a clear connection between civil complacency and the resulting damage to American democracy. It demonstrates how citizens can actively resist political corruption by remaining involved and informed in local government. From Kleptocracy to Democracy inspires informed citizenship. It is an excellent supplementary resource for courses in local government, public administration, sociology, Chicano studies, urban politics, law and society, and ethics studies.
Author: Casey Michel
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
ISBN: 1250274532
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 232
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Book Description
A remarkable debut by one of America's premier young reporters on financial corruption, Casey Michel's American Kleptocracy offers an explosive investigation into how the United States of America built the largest illicit offshore finance system the world has ever known. "An indefatigable young American journalist who has virtually cornered the international kleptocracy beat on the US end of the black aquifer." —The Los Angeles Review of Books For years, one country has acted as the greatest offshore haven in the world, attracting hundreds of billions of dollars in illicit finance tied directly to corrupt regimes, extremist networks, and the worst the world has to offer. But it hasn’t been the sand-splattered Caribbean islands, or even traditional financial secrecy havens like Switzerland or Panama, that have come to dominate the offshoring world. Instead, the country profiting the most also happens to be the one that still claims to be the moral leader of the free world, and the one that claims to be leading the fight against the crooked and the corrupt: the USA. American Kleptocracy examines just how the United States’ implosion into a center of global offshoring took place: how states like Delaware and Nevada perfected the art of the anonymous shell company, and how post-9/11 reformers watched their success usher in a new flood of illicit finance directly into the U.S.; how African despots and post-Soviet oligarchs came to dominate American coastlines, American industries, and entire cities and small towns across the American Midwest; how Nazi-era lobbyists birthed an entire industry of spin-men whitewashing trans-national crooks and despots, and how dirty money has now begun infiltrating America's universities and think tanks and cultural centers; and how those on the front-line are trying to restore America's legacy of anti-corruption leadership—and finally end this reign of American kleptocracy.
Author: Larry Jay Diamond
Publisher:
ISBN: 0525560629
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 370
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Book Description
Larry Diamond, a lifelong scholar of democracy, examines the history of its struggles and its future. The defence of democracy has relied for decades on U.S. global leadership, including its alliances with advanced democracies in Europe and Asia. But, he warns, if America does not reclaim its traditional place as the keystone of democracy, today's global authoritarian trend will accelerate. But there is hope - Diamond offers concrete, deeply informed suggestions for policymakers and citizens alike to turn the tide and usher a new age of democratic renewal.
Author: Frank Vogl
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
ISBN: 9781538162828
Category : Corruption
Languages : en
Pages : 224
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Book Description
Authoritarian regimes in many countries, and the men that lead them, depend on the international management of licit and illicit funds under their control. Frank Vogl shows that curbing their activities for their kleptocratic clients is critical to secure democracy, enhance national security, and ensure international financial stability.
Author: Karen Dawisha
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1476795207
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 464
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Book Description
The raging question in the world today is who is the real Vladimir Putin and what are his intentions. Karen Dawisha’s brilliant Putin’s Kleptocracy provides an answer, describing how Putin got to power, the cabal he brought with him, the billions they have looted, and his plan to restore the Greater Russia. Russian scholar Dawisha describes and exposes the origins of Putin’s kleptocratic regime. She presents extensive new evidence about the Putin circle’s use of public positions for personal gain even before Putin became president in 2000. She documents the establishment of Bank Rossiya, now sanctioned by the US; the rise of the Ozero cooperative, founded by Putin and others who are now subject to visa bans and asset freezes; the links between Putin, Petromed, and “Putin’s Palace” near Sochi; and the role of security officials from Putin’s KGB days in Leningrad and Dresden, many of whom have maintained their contacts with Russian organized crime. Putin’s Kleptocracy is the result of years of research into the KGB and the various Russian crime syndicates. Dawisha’s sources include Stasi archives; Russian insiders; investigative journalists in the US, Britain, Germany, Finland, France, and Italy; and Western officials who served in Moscow. Russian journalists wrote part of this story when the Russian media was still free. “Many of them died for this story, and their work has largely been scrubbed from the Internet, and even from Russian libraries,” Dawisha says. “But some of that work remains.”
Author: Matt Qvortrup
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110713438
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 259
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Book Description
Putting the current crisis of democracy into historical perspective, Death by a Thousand Cuts chronicles how would-be despots, dictators, and outright tyrants have finessed the techniques of killing democracies earlier in history, in the 20th Century, and how today’s autocrats increasingly continue to do so in the 21st. It shows how autocratic government becomes a kleptocracy, sustained only to enrich the ruler and his immediate family. But the book also addresses the problems of being a dictator and considers if dictatorships are successful in delivering public policies, and finally, how autocracies break down. We tend to think of democratic breakdowns as dramatic events, such as General Pinochet’s violent coup in Chile, or Generalissimo Franco’s overthrow of the Spanish Republic. But this is not how democracies tend to die – only five percent of democracies end like this. Most often, popular government is brought down gradually; almost imperceptibly. Based in part on Professor Qvortrup’s BBC Programme Death by a Thousand Cuts (Radio-4, 2019), the book shows how complacency is the greatest danger for the survival of government by the people. Recently democratically elected politicians have used crises as a pretext for dismantling democracy. They follow a pattern we have seen in all democracies since the dawn of civilisation. The methods used by Octavian in the dying days of the Roman Republic were almost identical to those used by Hungarian strongman Viktor Orbán in 2020. And, sadly, there are no signs that the current malaise will go away. Death by a Thousand Cuts adds substance to a much-discussed topic: the threat to democracy. It provides evidence and historical context like no other book on the market. Written in an accessible style with vignettes as well as new empirical data, the books promises to be the defining book on the topic. This book will help readers who are concerned about the longevity of democracy understand when and why democracy is in danger of collapsing, and alert them to the warning signs of its demise.
Author: Tom Burgis
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 0063236133
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 452
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Book Description
A Washington Post Notable Book of the Year • An Economist Book of the Year “A must-read for anyone wanting to better understand what has already happened here in America and what lies ahead if Trump is reelected in November…. A magisterial account of the money and violence behind the world’s most powerful dictatorships.” –Washington Post In this shocking, meticulously reported work of narrative nonfiction, an award-winning investigative journalist exposes “capitalism’s monster”—global kleptocracy—and reveals how it is corrupting the world around us. They are everywhere, the thieves and their people. Masters of secrecy. Until now we have detected their presence only by what they leave behind. A body in a burned-out Audi. Workers riddled with bullets in the Kazakh Desert. A rigged election in Zimbabwe. A British banker silenced and humiliated for trying to expose the truth about the City of London. They have amassed more money than most countries. But what they are really stealing is power. In this real-life thriller packed with jaw-dropping revelations, award-winning investigative journalist Tom Burgis weaves together four stories that reveal a terrifying global web of corruption: the troublemaker from Basingstoke who stumbles on the secrets of a Swiss bank, the ex-Soviet billionaire constructing a private empire, the righteous Canadian lawyer with a mysterious client, and the Brooklyn crook protected by the CIA. Glimpses of this shadowy world have emerged over the years. In Kleptopia, Burgis connects the dots. He follows the dirty money that is flooding the global economy, emboldening dictators, and poisoning democracies. From the Kremlin to Beijing, Harare to Riyadh, Paris to the White House, the trail shows something even more sinister: the thieves are uniting. And the human cost will be great.
Author: Anne Applebaum
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0385545819
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 166
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Book Description
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • "How did our democracy go wrong? This extraordinary document ... is Applebaum's answer." —Timothy Snyder, author of On Tyranny The Pulitzer Prize–winning historian explains, with electrifying clarity, why elites in democracies around the world are turning toward nationalism and authoritarianism. From the United States and Britain to continental Europe and beyond, liberal democracy is under siege, while authoritarianism is on the rise. In Twilight of Democracy, Anne Applebaum, an award-winning historian of Soviet atrocities who was one of the first American journalists to raise an alarm about antidemocratic trends in the West, explains the lure of nationalism and autocracy. In this captivating essay, she contends that political systems with radically simple beliefs are inherently appealing, especially when they benefit the loyal to the exclusion of everyone else. Elegantly written and urgently argued, Twilight of Democracy is a brilliant dissection of a world-shaking shift and a stirring glimpse of the road back to democratic values.
Author: Sarah Chayes
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0525654860
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 432
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Book Description
From the prizewinning journalist and internationally recognized expert on corruption in government networks throughout the world comes a major work that looks homeward to America, exploring the insidious, dangerous networks of corruption of our past, present, and precarious future. “If you want to save America, this might just be the most important book to read now." —Nancy MacLean, author of Democracy in Chains Sarah Chayes writes in her new book, that the United States is showing signs similar to some of the most corrupt countries in the world. Corruption, she argues, is an operating system of sophisticated networks in which government officials, key private-sector interests, and out-and-out criminals interweave. Their main objective: not to serve the public but to maximize returns for network members. In this unflinching exploration of corruption in America, Chayes exposes how corruption has thrived within our borders, from the titans of America's Gilded Age (Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, J. P. Morgan, et al.) to the collapse of the stock market in 1929, the Great Depression, and FDR's New Deal; from Joe Kennedy's years of banking, bootlegging, machine politics, and pursuit of infinite wealth to the deregulation of the Reagan Revolution--undermining this nation's proud middle class and union members. She then brings us up to the present as she shines a light on the Clinton policies of political favors and personal enrichment and documents Trump's hydra-headed network of corruption, which aimed to systematically undo the Constitution and our laws. Ultimately and most importantly, Chayes reveals how corrupt systems are organized, how they enable bad actors to bend the rules so their crimes are covered legally, how they overtly determine the shape of our government, and how they affect all levels of society, especially when the corruption is overlooked and downplayed by the rich and well-educated.
