This book seems to have been very quickly written. It seems sloppy and lacking clarity at times. At the same time, the first half of the book at least, is very well researched.
The first half of the book is devoted to Howard Dean. Frank quotes an official at a right wing Vermont think tank who remarked during Dean's presidential campaign that the candidate's populist liberal persona was quite different from the persona of Howard Dean the Governor of Vermont from 1991-2003. Dean instituted welfare reform in Vermont and enthused over Clinton's national version of it. On law and order issues, he was a typical demagogue,. In 1999, as governor he blocked the provision for Vermont of 115,000 dollars in federal grants for legal representation for mentally ill defendants.
He praised Newt Gingrich's schemes for medicare. He repeatedly declared himself against any government run health program, a position which he seemed to reverse during his campaign. As governor he postured as a fiscal conservative in the usual fraudulent ways of politicians. He cut 7 million dollars in funds for state education and teacher's retirement, 4 million in health care for the elderly, 2 million in welfare benefits for the disabled and 1.2 million in medicare. Of course while he cut funds for the working class and the most vulnerable in the relatively small population of Vermont, he appropriated 30 million for new prisons (and for the pockets of prison contractor corporations and the rest), seven million for a low interest loan program for businesses and cut the state income tax by eight percent. By 2002, Dean had increased funding for Vermont's prisons by 150 percent but for it's colleges and universities, only increased 7 percent.
Dean is a strong supporter of Israel's oppression and apartheid in the Occupied territories. He supported the first Gulf War and said in February 2003 that he would support a unilateral U.S. attack on Iraq if Saddam failed to comply with UN resolutions (or at least if the U.S. claims that he hasn't complied with them)within a one or two month deadline.. Even more to the right, Frank notes, "anti-war" Wesely Clark, a war criminal and convert to the Democratic party apparently when Bush wouldn't appoint him to any position in the War on Terror, wrote in the British press in April 2003 that Bush and Blair should be proud of themselves for their "liberation." Frank writes that Norman Solomon gave 1500 dollars to Clark's campaign.
Dean aroused the fervent opposition of Vermont grassroots activists with his environmental policies. He continually sided with big agricultural interests against persons complaining that pesticides were causing cognitive disorders, producing noise, dust, flies, reducing property, etc. His administration was notorious for issuing permits for virtually any development permit and the result was massive sprawl, strip malls, the elimination of small farms, etc.
It is ironic that while during his presidential campaign, he denounced tax havens in the Carribean, but as governor only a few years before he had declared that he wanted Vermont to become the a "little Bermuda." He was able to give tax shelter to certain insurance companies, including an Enron laundering operation and reduced the insurance premiums that corporations like Dupont were supposed to pay by 60 percent. Dean supported NAFTA and the WTO. He said that NAFTA had helped Vermont. Frank notes that in reality, after NAFTA, Vermont's exports declined by 38 percent and 6,000 plus jobs lost in the state's relatively small workforce.
Real wages at the height of the Clinton "boom ", Frank writes were still 10 percent below the Nixon-Ford era, even though U.S. economic productivity in 2000 was 50 percent higher than in 1974. The rich absorbed the vast majority of the gains in wealth during that time. The poverty rate declined by 4 percent, reversing its increase since the Reagan years but it only climbed back down to the level it was in 1974. The poor acquired such tiny benefits during Clinton's regime however the GDP at the end of Clinton's term was 74 percent higher than in 1974, the stock market increased by 600 percent in value, etc. The rich got almost all the gains in wealth during that time. Measured in 2001 dollars, Frank writes, the amount of money needed by the average impoverished family to move across the poverty line went from $1538 in 1993 to $1620 in 1999.
He writes about how establishment environmental groups like the Sierra Club serve as covers for destruction of the environment by endorsing Democratic politicians like Ron Wyden and Max Baucus who have nice rhetoric on behalf of the environment but are heavily funded by environmentally destructive industries and push forward highly destructive actions like Clinton's salvage rider bill. Then there was the destruction of 2.5 million acres of old growth forests in Oregon under the Fire Prevention Bill. Frank notes Fox river case in Wisconsin. It was recommended that the Fox River be reduced to .25 ppm's of PCB's in sediments in the river. The Sierra Club brokered a compromise whereby the sediment level would be reduced to only 1 ppm PCB's, ninety percent higher than concentrations of ppm PCB's that are fully protective of human health. The river is a heavy source of fish, so people consuming the latter are at a high risk for cancer and other things. Then the club endorsed a plan in Montana which allowed for timber sales and clear cutting on 14,000 acres. Frank writes that the annual board feet of clear cutting of forests was vastly greater under Clinton than under Bush so far, as bad as Bush is.
Frank writes of the interesting episode in 2000 when Richard Holbrooke and Paul Wolfowitz came together at a function at John Hopkins University. Holbrooke played a leading role as under secretary of state for Asian affairs in the late 70's in. sending U.S. weapons to Indonesia as it slaughtered many tens of thousands of people in its occupation of East Timor. Wolfowitz was once ambassador to Indonesia and a Suharto apologist. Holbrooke said something interesting at the function about keeping the issue of East Timor out of the 2000 campaign.
