A groundbreaking book that challenges Americans to reevaluate our views on how corruption and private interest have infiltrated every level of society
From the Tea Party to Occupy Wall Street, however divergent their political views, these groups seem united by one thing: outrage over a system of power and influence that they feel has stolen their livelihoods and liberties. Increasingly, protesters on both ends of the political spectrum and the media are using the word corrupt to describe an elusory system of power that has shed any accountability to those it was meant to help and govern.
But what does corruption and unaccountability mean in today's world? It is far more toxic and deeply rooted than bribery. From super PACs pouring secret money into our election system to companies buying better ratings from Standard & Poor's or the extreme influence of lobbyists in Congress, all embody a "new corruption" and remain unaccountable to our society's supposed watchdogs, which sit idly alongside the same groups that have brought the government, business, and much of the military into their pocket.
Janine R. Wedel is the author of Shadow Elite and the award-winning Collision and Collusion. She has written for the Nation, New York Times, Financial Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Christian Science Monitor, Boston Globe, Politico, and Salon, among others. She is a professor in the School of Public Policy at George Mason University and has been a senior research fellow at the New America Foundation.
Pam Ward has had many incarnations, having performed in dinner theater, summer stock, and Off-Broadway, as well as in commercials, radio, and film. But she found her true calling reading books for the blind and physically handicapped for the Library of Congress Talking Books program, for which she received the prestigious Alexander Scourby Award from the American Foundation for the Blind. She now records from her studio amidst the beauty of the Southern Oregon mountains.