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by: Kevin Phillips  List Price: $18.99 Amazon.com's Price: $17.09 You Save: $1.90 (10%)Prices subject to change. Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
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Binding: PaperbackDewey Decimal Number: 320 EAN: 9780316706025 ISBN: 0316706027 Label: Back Bay Books Manufacturer: Back Bay Books Number Of Items: 1 Number Of Pages: 320 Publication Date: September 01, 1995 Publisher: Back Bay Books Studio: Back Bay Books Related Items:
Browse for similar items by category: Click to Display Editorial Review: Product Description: Everyone knows that Washington is completely out of touch with the rest of the country. Now Kevin Phillips, whose bestselling books have prophesied the major watersheds of American party politics, tells us why. Washington - mired in bureaucracy, captured by the money power of Wall Street, and dominated by 90,000 lobbyists, 60,000 lawyers, and the largest concentration of special interests the world has ever seen - has become the albatross that Thomas Jefferson and our other Founding Fathers feared: a swollen capital city feeding off the country it should be governing. Throughout most of our history, the genius of American politics was that ballot revolutions every generation swept out failed establishments and created new ones. Now that can no longer happen. Feared and even hated by a majority of the citizenry, "Permanent Washington" has dug in. Using history as a chilling warning, Kevin Phillips parallels the present atrophy to that of formerly mighty and arrogant capitals like Rome, Madrid, and Amsterdam. Unchecked, Washington will - like other great powers before it - lead the country to its inevitable decline and fall. To work again, Washington must be purged and revitalized. In his unique blueprint for a political upheaval, Kevin Phillips puts Washington on notice by sounding a cry for immediate action, offering us a wide variety of remedies - some quasi-revolutionary, others more moderate, but all sure to be controversial. Average Rating:
 Rating:  - America's Decline in the 1990sKevin Phillips provides lessons in history on the decline of the Dutch and British that parallel the decline in Washington D.C. that was evident in the 1990s. He also explains the Jeffersonian idea that Washington must be periodically "attacked and purged" in a political, electoral sense- a "populist" process of American electoral "realignment and renewal." He provides some stunning numbers while documenting the explosive growth in the staffing of congressional and senatorial ... Read More Rating:  - 4.5 stars-A more nuanced study than " Boiling Point".Phillips's book get closer to identifying what the core problem facing the USA is than he did in his earlier "Boiing Point".The problem has been building ever since President Jimmy Carter embarked on his ill advised decision to deregulate and privatize the financial sector of the economy.This simply let the speculative genie out of the bottle.It will be very difficult to rein him in.Phillips correctly goes to the heart of the matter in his recommendation number 7, presented on pp.201-204. "During ... Read More Rating: - An Angry Call For Radical Reforms To Shake Up WashingtonThe author Kevin Phillips is an exemplary example of a frequent Washington type: the former insider turned angry, prophetic outsider. Trained as an attorney, experienced as a a Republican Congressional aide at the modern lowpoint of Republican strength in Washington, acclaimed as a key strategist in Richard Nixon's 1968 Presidential comeback, the author has long been given to gathering masses of data and reaching bold new conclusions with a stunning certainty that is only partially vindicated by subsequent ... Read More Rating: - History is repeating itself, unfortunately !This has to be one of the best books on contemporary politics. Kevin Phillips did extensive research into the historical pattern of rise and subsequent decline of great powers and found uncanny similarity to where America is today. However, he did suggest 10 solutions that hopefully would arrest the decline of this nation and hoped those would be carried out in the 90s (this book was written in 94). Guess what ? None of his 10 solutions was implemented even to the slightest degree. If anything the problems ... Read More Rating: - A little off the markThis book came out in 1994 and its eminently readable today, especially today. Phillips is one of those tireless workers today in America much like the other crusaders like Nader and Michael Moore who keep the truth front and center of what is being done to this country by our so called representatives in Washington. There is one problem with the Phillips prognostication in this book. In 2003 with 20/20 hindsight it becomes clear that Phillips was far too optimistic in his expectation that the body politic here ... Read More 
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