(Part 2) Best us national government books according to redditors
We found 168 Reddit comments discussing the best us national government books. We ranked the 53 resulting products by number of redditors who mentioned them. Here are the products ranked 21-40. You can also go back to the previous section.
An interesting tidbit is that some early states actually made firearm ownership mandatory (for white male landowners, of course). They were afraid that they wouldn't able to assemble a proper militia if needed. Plus it offloaded the cost of common defense onto private citizens in those days of no standing army.
The Politics of Gun Control is a good read on the subject. To be fair, some of those early state legislators also promoted gun ownership as a bulwark against possible tyranny from the federal government, so it's not like that argument is entirely ahistorical. It's just more complicated than most realize.
>There is also the issue of whether we can trust the Mayday PAC to stay as focused as they claim
Given the primary name behind it, I'm standing behind them (I donated some btc to the cause). Given Lawrence Lessig's history, he can stay pretty darn focused.
Take some time to read up on him, and the uphill (some would say Sisyphean) battles he's fought over the past couple of decades.
> whether their criteria for determining who the Mayday PAC will support ends up correlating to other political issues
That's kind of the point - it doesn't really need to correlate to other political issues. The only issue they're focused on is campaign finance reform. All other points, to them, are moot - because when the reform is in, a real discussion on those points can finally happen. They might support a pro-life pro-death penalty anti-immigration candidate in an election against another pro-life pro-death penalty anti-immigration candidate ... as long as the former candidate is for finance reform, and the latter is not.
Because until the (aboveboard, but no less) corruption is debrided, a real discussion on those topics, free from corrupting influences, cannot happen.
> an issue that everyone has strong opinions about despite the fact that most people only have an extremely limited understanding of the details.
That's right. A lot of what they're going up against is public ignorance - I have a feeling they will be spending just as much, if not more, on public education of the issue in battleground districts/states than on direct candidate endorsement.
> That's great, but let me know when you have drafted the motherhood and apple pie bill so I can actually understand what this means.
But the bill cannot be drafted until the candidates are in. You're putting the cart before the horse, here, to torture another analogy.
Some resources:
https://www.ted.com/talks/lawrence_lessig_we_the_people_and_the_republic_we_must_reclaim
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mWfCqsFP05A
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aavBn_1llpc
http://www.amazon.com/Republic-Lost-Money-Corrupts-Congress--/dp/0446576441/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1406230329&sr=8-1&keywords=lawrence+lessig
http://www.amazon.com/Lesterland-Corruption-Congress-Books-Book-ebook/dp/B00C3LLYM2/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1406230329&sr=8-3&keywords=lawrence+lessig
And something not really about politics and campaign finance, but his (enlightened) views on intellectual property (also covers the SCOTUS case he lost - and why he thinks he lost - in re perpetual copyrights):
http://www.amazon.com/Free-Culture-Nature-Future-Creativity-ebook/dp/B000OCXHM2/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1406230329&sr=8-4&keywords=lawrence+lessig
I actually ran the numbers. If the government were reduced to a constitutional size, we could be debt-free and almost completely tax-free within about 8-9 years.
It could be much faster. In this idea I actually reduce the socialism programs by 10% per year for 10 years, but if we're OK with people having to become responsible overnight, probably more like 6 years.
At the end, the only remaining tax would be 7% on offshore drilling on the continental shelf, in waters which are not claimed by any state.
This is, on its face, typical cronyism. Bolick is a right-wing extremist even compared to right-wing extremists, and he uses his position as vice president of lititgation for the far-right Goldwater Institute to bully, harass, and legally vex anyone they disagree with. He holds your typical radical-right views, including championing the defunding of public schools in the name of vouchers for more easily-controlled private schools; the gradual devolution and destruction of government, including at the local level, in the name of private interest; the end of affirmative action; and last, but not least, the general libertarian ideal of capitalism as the meaning of life.
Did I mention he has no judicial experience whatsoever?
"The Eagle flies at midnight"
but there's quite a few books. some read better than others, as they're accounts of events. Others were textbooks.
luckily i bought 95 percent of my books through amazon.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00B4FJB1O/ref=kinw_myk_ro_title
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00J107GUW/ref=kinw_myk_ro_title
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0076M4S7Q/ref=kinw_myk_ro_title
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00D6US62A/ref=kinw_myk_ro_title
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00DYWBXXE/ref=kinw_myk_ro_title
https://www.amazon.com/Fighting-War-Ideas-like-Real/dp/0615144632
That's a few books that I had and gives a round idea of the subjects. I was focused more on the intelligence side of the curriculum, but there's also some that deal with foreign policy and also immigration, as well as FEMA.
read this book written by a conservative judge spelling out exactly how the Bush administration was shredding the Constitution and the people went along with it. .. then look at how much of that (The Patriot Act for example) has changed since the Democrats got the majority in Congress and the white house. ....
Here's another book written during the Bush administration.. same thing.. read it and see how much of it still applies today.
That will help you understand why Ron Paul Republicans are so upset with the government. Other Republicans?? Who knows...
It's one of the main topics in Faliures of Imagination https://www.amazon.com/Failures-Imagination-Deadliest-Threats-Homeland/dp/1101905417
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rCldQRaPXwo
The louder people like you shout down fraud allegations the more sure I am about it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hDc8PVCvfKs
https://www.amazon.com/Dead-Always-Vote-Democrat-Troops-ebook/dp/B0092KET0G/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1486475145&sr=8-1&keywords=Dead+vote+Democrat
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/oct/17/no-voter-fraud-isnt-myth-10-cases-where-its-all-to/
https://www.amazon.com/White-House-Special-Handbook-Century/dp/0875865151
The fight against the size of government since the 70s and 80s. The number of federal employees has stayed at just over 2 million maximum since then. Yet we're fighting wars and need all these extra services. What do we do then? We hire contractors. Fewer employees, a lot of them are retired or reserved military (though probably not as much in the NSA). Paul Light dedicates an entire chapter to this issue in his book A Government Ill-Executed.
You're totally right. In his book, Reclaiming Our Democracy, Sam Daley-Harris talks about choosing just one or two problems that you care about to focus on solving. It doesn't mean you don't also care about other problems, it just means acknowledging that as one person you can't do everything.
I also really liked this podcast from the 80,000 hours project. After listening to it, I switched my Amazon Smile charity to the Center for Election Science, which is a small thing, because I don't buy much stuff, but it's something. That initiative they talk about in Fargo passed by a landslide, and it was mostly run by this one guy who volunteered for it when he wasn't working his full time job. So, one person really can make a difference.
Wasn't this list devised 10 years ago, to describe the Bush administration?
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2007/apr/24/usa.comment
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B005OCTIXE/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1
There is a book that im reading for my political science class that explains alot about american politics from an unbiased viewpoint.
This'll make you shit:
http://www.amazon.com/Michele-Bachmann-Will-Presidency-2012/dp/1463509146/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1313880393&sr=8-1
Hey, genuinely curious is this the book you're referring to? https://www.amazon.com/Primary-Politics-Everything-Presidential-Candidates/dp/0815727755
Many libertarians are utilitarian consequentialists. We have no problems with what you listed. We oppose agricultural subsidies, bailouts, wars in the middle east, the mortgage interest deduction, and drug prohibition. Here is a good book on slashing the government programs that help big business and wealthy elites.
http://www.amazon.com/Downsizing-Federal-Government-Chris-Edwards/dp/1930865821/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1375422386&sr=1-1&keywords=downsizing+the+federal+government
If you want to learn more about it, and so much more, I really recommend the book That Used to Be Us. I learned so much, and it was easy to read!
>Yeah, because there totally aren't companies with more employees than local or state governments. Or, for that matter, entire federal agencies. NASA, for example, has 18,000 employees. There are obviously no corporations anywhere that have more employees than that...
a government agency is no more a single entity than a single wal-mart is. In fact, they are often considerably less independent than individual walmarts, particularly when it comes to personnel policy.
>Like...?
they are more centralized on paper, more hierarchical, have vastly more rigid personnel policies, less discretion for managers. their policies, expenditures, priorities, and methods are often fixed by law and extremely difficult to change. the difference is so stark it is easily quantifiable. and I haven't even gotten to the more subtle reasons yet, like the lack of price/profitability feedback that private companies have.
>Private arbitration is growing quickly because large corporations are forcing customers to use it before they can go to the courts as part of their contracts.
an excellent demonstration of your total lack of knowledge of the subject. wear your ignorance proudly!
He cheated search IER and look into how the bedroom tax disenfranchised people and obviously the poll tax.
And here's an entire book on various things he's done to rig elections.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/David-Cameron-Fixed-2015-Election/dp/1517060796