Customer Reviews

Outrage: How Illegal Immigration, the United Nations, Congressional Ripoffs, Student Loan Overcharges, Tobacco Companies, Trade Protection, and Drug Companies Are Ripping Us Off . . . and

5 star:		(55)
4 star:		(14)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

I don't know anyone who loves Dick Morris. Some people hate him and cannot hear anything he says. Just bringing up his name upsets them to the point of unreason. Yet, if one can simply consider what he has to say it is usually interesting and often worthwhile even if you strongly disagree with what he has to say. This is because he really does understand how our political emotions work and the kinds of issues that provoke the electorate to action. Whether or not he actually believes what he is saying on behalf of a politician or about an issue is not all that relevant. Personal convictions often wither under the hot sun of political campaigns. Even so, this book seems to be more about the frustrations Morris and McGann share with us about how both the Democrats and the Republicans are failing us in Congress.

His take on the immigration problem is actually quite fresh. Rather than focusing only on the border with Mexico, he points out that at least half the problem, and the more serious failure in preventing another 9/11, is the millions who overstay their visas. They come in legally, but fail to leave as required. Since we do not track who leaves the country it is all but impossible to find out who is here in violation of their visas! Morris says that we not only need to begin tracking those who leave so we can get some idea who remains, but we also need to bar all immigration from those countries that are designated as sponsors and supporters of terror.

The United Nations and its many failures and scandals are examined next. Morris and McGann show us why there is absolutely no motivation within the United Nations to behave well and how the organization's structure actually promotes human rights failures by putting the worst violators on the committees that are supposed to monitor and take action against situations such as Rwanda and Darfur. The authors also show us how Oil For Food was used by Saddam to not only line his own pockets at the expense of his people, but corrupted the political choices many of those nations who made our work in Iraq more difficult before the war, leading up to the war, during the war, and in helping Iraq build its own government.

The efforts within the ACLU to suppress public criticism by its leaders of its leadership and policies are actually quite humorous and sad. It is hypocrisy of the first order and something more people need to be aware of when dealing with this organization that views itself as the final arbiter of our rights and social order. They need to be exposed more fully and we need organizations to resist and balance them more than we have now.

Chapter four is the big biggest because it is where the authors expose the problems in Congress with travel, using family members to convert campaign contributions to cash, using family as lobbyists, and how little time they put in working on the people's business. Morris and McGann pull no punches and name names from both parties. This chapter alone makes reading this book worthwhile. However upset with Congress you are now, you will be more angry after reading and thinking about the facts presented here.

We also get chapters on how the Patriot Act and the NSA "wiretapping" (actually data mining) have helped in the War on Terror, how the teacher unions are actually hurting our efforts to educate our children (not the teachers - the UNIONS), how big pharma is spending huge money on Congress to keep their billions in profits flowing in, and how Fannie Mae is misusing its mandate and money to support many Democrat causes.

Morris and McGann then do an excellent job in going after the Republicans for the bankruptcy bill that prevents people such as those suffering from cancer and oceans of medical bills from getting a fresh start. The credit companies also basically shove credit on people they know shouldn't have it and then want to avoid the risks of these bad business practices and keep these folks more or less permanently enslaved to them. The authors also go after the terrible changes Congress made to the student loan programs.

We also get information about how insurance companies are trying to get out of the hurricane Katrina claims by saying they would pay for wind damage, but not water damage. Right. How do you get a hurricane without water damage? I have been in a hurricane. The water is a fundamental part of the storm. Why should we allow them to get away with this?

We also get a chapter on how some tobacco companies, even after all the bad exposure and supposed settlements and public humiliation are STILL raising the nicotine levels in their cigarettes. There is also a chapter on how Gerhard Schroeder and Jacques Chirac have acted in quite corrupt ways. The final chapter is how Congress yields to special interests and trade protections in the name of saving jobs. These saved jobs cost us many hundreds of thousands of dollars each. And they also drive industries out of the country. For example, any number of candy companies have moved production to Canada and elsewhere so they can buy sugar at the world price and remain competitive rather than keeping the plants and jobs in the U.S. and paying more than twice the world price for sugar.

This book should tap into the current disgust the majority of Americans rightly feel for Congress. We should be rotating even more of them out in 2008 and hope the material here gets people motivated to do just that.

The only strange thing about Outrage is that Dick Morris wrote it. I'm truly surprised and pleased. Beyond the specifics, I found his comments to be sane and not contain wild accusations. Reasoned is the word I would use.

The litany of abuses that he exposes are wide ranging and sweeping in their implications. Corruption in Congress seems to be rampant and occuring on both sides of the aisle. Corporate misconduct seems to be increasing and as an adjunct instructor in Business at a University, I'm glad Morris lays it out the way he does.

The question I'm asking after reading Outrage is where is the vaunted news media on these issues? It seems that the attention given to the war and to Bush bashing on the part of the major news organizations has meant that many of these abuses have been ignored. Regardless of where you are on the Bush popularity scale, as Americans we should all be concerned about these abuses. We should be demanding that they be investigated.

It is only my opinion but Morris' greatest recommendation is to ban immigration from widely known terrorist countries. Racist? Hardly. We didn't allow immigration from Japan, Germany, nor Italy during WWII. Perhaps the greatest generation knew something we didn't.

Outrage is well researched and dead-on target. It matters not that it was written by a former Clinton insider.

I highly recommend.

There was a lot about this book that I didn't really like, and I still gave it 4 Stars. Here's why.

Yes, this is another rant book, which seems to be a new and popular US literary genre, but this book goes way beyond the rant by popping the lid on the names of the "wrongdoers", providing very specific behind-the-scenes information, and proposing myriad ways to fix what's broken. Many of the authors' suggestions seem doable and would correct the specific misuses of power that this book reveals. In addition, and this is the amazing part, the authors give the names of individuals involved in the "outrageous" behavior covered in this book and very specific details. You will not have to read between the lines with this book. So, it's kind of a Rant/Tell-All book, which redeems the rant aspect of this book for me. I can't help but wonder whether the politicians mentioned here will be elected again next year, and what hoops they'll have to jump through to undo the damage that this book will cause them. And the next time you're shopping for homeowners insurance, whether the information in this book will affect your decision. And so on. Let me say, I hope so. Even with internet access, much of the information revealed in this book is not available to most of us, and therein, for me lies a huge part of the value of this book. This is information Americans need to make better decisions in the future.

This is an unusual book, in that there may be a lot you won't like about what the authors have to say, but you will learn a lot of valuable insider information about the way the cookie crumbles here in the US and why. In addition, OUTRAGES may well pave the way for legislative changes that will correct these particular abuses.

I'm really glad to see that this book is doing so well- because people need to hear this and more. I was concerned more with the financial aspects of Morris' argument than the political or moral side, but I was intrigued and scared by most of what he and coauthor had to say.

Most notable is the corruption in Washington. We are funding politicians and their inflated pensions (that's common knowledge), but we're also funding their spouses (who are on their payroll) and relatives who get paid to lobby their big-shot nepotists in DC.

I love the bit on the UN too- can we say a little outdated bureaucracy? The former Clinton advisor (Morris) is hard-hitting and straightforward and alerts us to a ton of waste that we're paying for.

Other books I recommend along these lines areHow to Take Advantage of the People Who Are Trying to Take Advantage of You by Morse which shows you how to turn the tables on government (and more) and The Fair Tax Book, which lays out a revolutionary, yet thoughtful and prudent, way we should be taxed.

Keep reading!

Shocking! How can anyone, after reading this, ever again have no interest in monitoring and participating in our government at all levels. Unfortunately, very few citizens ever read anything deeper that a magazine taken from a checkout rack at the local grocery store. The 20/80 rule is alive and well and a stiff price will eventually be paid for the ignorance pervading this land.

I really was expecting a strong Republican book from Dick Morris and that's not what it was at all. I was pleasantly surprised that he was fairly fair. ;-) He wrote on several issues that concern our country today such as what to do with the illegal immigrates that are already here and how the school unions are hurting our children. Not every topic did I agree with and not every solution did I think would work, but it was enlightening to me to read about how he sees the problems and the solutions he came up with. I felt the book was very well put together and that he was concise in his chapters. A lot of it was wrote how Dick Morris speaks if you have ever seen an interview of him; however, some of it you could tell that Ms. McGann had to have written. I really did enjoy his statistics and listings of which politicans were on the take from lobbyists and their backgrounds with them. I would highly recommend this book to anyone that was to hear some different ideas from either side of the aisle.

I live in a part of the country where most people seem to view politics as some sort of old Saturday morning super hero cartoon show where there are "good guys" (Democrats) and "bad guys" (Republicans) and as each episode in the drama that is politics plays out they always side with the "good guys". There are surely parts of the country where the roles are reversed. Of course, each side has media outlets that reinforce this black-and-white "us or them" mentality over and over, day after day.

This book is exactly the right book at the right time, and without going over the content of the book, I can just say that the outrage I felt wasn't so much toward the people whose names are named in the book but rather at the media outlets who are supposed to be telling us stuff like this, but instead just promote the political agendas of whatever side they're on.

Isn't this what reporters are supposed to do? But now the reporters are "journalists" promoting their own ideologies, and it's left to bloggers and the occasional rogue author to write about the bad stuff that that people do not because they are Democrates or Republicans, Conservative or Liberal, but because they are flawed human beings who have huge amounts of money and other perks dangled in front of them that they can help themselves to without being held accountable by anyone.

I came away thinking that there's just too much lawmaking at the federal level and too much money in Washington D.C. I can't say for sure how I would behave in such an environment. The take home lesson is that power can corrupt anyone, regardless of ideology. I'm glad I turned off the "cartoons" and read this book. It's an eye opener of the kind we need more of.

A protest/treatise book that actually offers solutions? That is exactly what Dick Morris and Co. are attempting to do with "Outrage".



Is there anything new or unbelievable? Not really, it's all public knowledge, but none of this is publicized to the extent that it should be. Paris Hilton's jail time seems to be a much more globally important topic of conversation in our mainstream media.



Some of the issues brought up are covered in Amazon's book description, such as the ACLU and free speech, illegal immigrants, bribes from pharmaceutical companies, Katrina insurance, special interest groups/lobbyists, and the UN. The list goes on, but these are the major topics addressed, and some are given a discourse in several different chapters as they affect/ are affected other issues. The allegations are pointed and detailed, and I doubt that there's anyone out there who could read this without, at some point, sitting back and saying, "Oh wow, I didn't know that!"



As I said, solutions are offered for each of the reported problems. Are they relevant or realistic? They're all mostly relevant (not so much the on the teacher's union), but only about 2/3 of them are realistic.



I won't go in to detail on how Dick Morris plans on saving America from itself, but suffice to say he could have used a little editing before going to print; and not just to correct the typos (few and far between), but to introduce the concepts of brevity and conciseness. At times, the book seemed to be all over the place, but they managed to pull it all together, and it read pretty well, overall.



The Bottom Line: An interesting perspective and good delivery are what really sell this book. It's not the best in world, and will probably be all but forgotten in a few years, but for now, it's definitely an eye opener that I'd recommend to anyone who'd like to see America shine the way it should.

I prefer Dick Morris books where he actually has firsthand knowledge -- just like his several biographies of the Clintons. This book, on the other hand, was a bunch of facts with a lot less analysis that one would be used to seeing in a Morris work.

All right, so you don't agree with all of Dick Morris and Eileen McGann's outrages. Too many! But there is enough tomfoolery going on "out there" today that deserves a good public skewering, so certainly the list must have a few that everyone would rousingly cheer on. Since the skewers fly out all over the political and social spectrum in "Outrage," the book has to be the year's best nonpartisan "take that, Scoundrel" award. The research is good enough to at least admit that the authors always have a point. In the end, the authors probably want us readers to go do some more digging for ourselves. A minor weakness of the book is that the authors needed a slightly more thorough editor. An incomplete sentence, which is a no-no, no matter how small, shows up in one of the later chapters. Often one senses a slight shift in style, making it obvious that the primary author has changed. These are not killing problems, just minor distractions.

The piece-de-resistance, of course is a long listing of almost-crooks from both parties in Congress: why let them continue in office? Why indeed. There are other chapters showing us little-known information, such as the financial shenanigans of Germany's Gerhard Schroeder and France's Jacques Chirac. Also, there are some of the more unknown, but serious details about the lax United Nations oversight, or rather the lack of it built into the organization in the first place. Then there are the largely unpublished shady workings of Fannie Mae and the scoundrels helping themselves to the taxpayers' gravy train.

Other chapters cover more widely known things, but more information is fleshed out, such as the Oil for Food scandal at UN, teachers union hamstringing of public education, tobacco companies and the uploading of extra nicotine into their products, and Congress' naïve dealings with the Patriot Act.

On a personal note, some things do not seem like good outrage material (student loans, the ACLU - interesting but minor, and drug companies). Nevertheless, the authors made a good case, and presented more evidence for it than most polemicists do. Buy it. Read it.