Covers ground already chronicled in the memoirs of the principals, to say nothing of the Mueller Report—but still worth a...
Is there a deep state? If there is, writes New York Times columnist Stewart (Tangled Webs: How False Statements Are Undermining America: From Martha Stewart to Bernie Madoff, 2011, etc.), then Donald Trump is definitively a member.
James Comey was a good foot soldier for the FBI. Yet, when the 2016 election was heating up, he made one tactical error after another, especially by planting the suggestion that Hillary Clinton had engaged in illicit behavior when using a private server for official emails. We now know that the State Department has exonerated Clinton, but in 2015, the jury was still out. Meanwhile, other actions on the parts of FBI officials were consternating: Andrew McCabe’s wife, for instance, was running for office in Virginia as a Democrat and had received a sizable donation from that party, causing a Republican stalwart to fulminate that it could not be interpreted as “anything other than a down payment to influence the FBI’s criminal investigation into Hillary Clinton’s private email server.” After Trump entered office, Comey presented him with uncomfortable evidence linking him to prostitutes—evidence inconveniently videotaped by Russian intelligence. McCabe was not long in falling himself after suggesting that he knew that Trump had lied about his reasons for firing Comey. This is all well known to anyone who followed matters as they were happening, heavily reported in papers. A value added is that Stewart looks closely at questions surrounding the affair, asking whether Comey’s actions cost Clinton the election and answering that her “decades of obfuscation…led some voters to doubt Clinton’s integrity and truthfulness, including her claims about the emails.” Granted, Comey departed from policy by criticizing her handling of the matter while not recommending charges against her. Was Comey a Trump foe, as Trump so loudly complained? No, for the FBI’s case file concerned not Trump but, initially, four of his associates who proved to have direct ties to Russia—three of whom “ended up being indicted or pleading guilty to crimes.”
Covers ground already chronicled in the memoirs of the principals, to say nothing of the Mueller Report—but still worth a look.Pub Date: Oct. 8, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-525-55910-8
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Penguin Press
Review Posted Online: Oct. 21, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.
“Quality of life means more than just consumption”: Two MIT economists urge that a smarter, more politically aware economics be brought to bear on social issues.
It’s no secret, write Banerjee and Duflo (co-authors: Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way To Fight Global Poverty, 2011), that “we seem to have fallen on hard times.” Immigration, trade, inequality, and taxation problems present themselves daily, and they seem to be intractable. Economics can be put to use in figuring out these big-issue questions. Data can be adduced, for example, to answer the question of whether immigration tends to suppress wages. The answer: “There is no evidence low-skilled migration to rich countries drives wage and employment down for the natives.” In fact, it opens up opportunities for those natives by freeing them to look for better work. The problem becomes thornier when it comes to the matter of free trade; as the authors observe, “left-behind people live in left-behind places,” which explains why regional poverty descended on Appalachia when so many manufacturing jobs left for China in the age of globalism, leaving behind not just left-behind people but also people ripe for exploitation by nationalist politicians. The authors add, interestingly, that the same thing occurred in parts of Germany, Spain, and Norway that fell victim to the “China shock.” In what they call a “slightly technical aside,” they build a case for addressing trade issues not with trade wars but with consumption taxes: “It makes no sense to ask agricultural workers to lose their jobs just so steelworkers can keep theirs, which is what tariffs accomplish.” Policymakers might want to consider such counsel, especially when it is coupled with the observation that free trade benefits workers in poor countries but punishes workers in rich ones.
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-61039-950-0
Page Count: 432
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: Aug. 28, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
A forceful, necessarily provocative call to action for the preservation and protection of American Jewish freedom.
Known for her often contentious perspectives, New York Times opinion writer Weiss battles societal Jewish intolerance through lucid prose and a linear playbook of remedies.
While she was vividly aware of anti-Semitism throughout her life, the reality of the problem hit home when an active shooter stormed a Pittsburgh synagogue where her family regularly met for morning services and where she became a bat mitzvah years earlier. The massacre that ensued there further spurred her outrage and passionate activism. She writes that European Jews face a three-pronged threat in contemporary society, where physical, moral, and political fears of mounting violence are putting their general safety in jeopardy. She believes that Americans live in an era when “the lunatic fringe has gone mainstream” and Jews have been forced to become “a people apart.” With palpable frustration, she adroitly assesses the origins of anti-Semitism and how its prevalence is increasing through more discreet portals such as internet self-radicalization. Furthermore, the erosion of civility and tolerance and the demonization of minorities continue via the “casual racism” of political figures like Donald Trump. Following densely political discourses on Zionism and radical Islam, the author offers a list of bullet-point solutions focused on using behavioral and personal action items—individual accountability, active involvement, building community, loving neighbors, etc.—to help stem the tide of anti-Semitism. Weiss sounds a clarion call to Jewish readers who share her growing angst as well as non-Jewish Americans who wish to arm themselves with the knowledge and intellectual tools to combat marginalization and defuse and disavow trends of dehumanizing behavior. “Call it out,” she writes. “Especially when it’s hard.” At the core of the text is the author’s concern for the health and safety of American citizens, and she encourages anyone “who loves freedom and seeks to protect it” to join with her in vigorous activism.
A forceful, necessarily provocative call to action for the preservation and protection of American Jewish freedom.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-593-13605-8
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 22, 2019
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