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Public Policy Hooligan - Rollicking and Wrangling from Helltown to Washington by [Bovard, James]

Public Policy Hooligan - Rollicking and Wrangling from Helltown to Washington Kindle Edition

by James Bovard (Author)

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Public Policy Hooligan is the rollicking true story of a good American boy gone to the dark side. James Bovard was raised in the mountains of Virginia near a hamlet formerly known as Helltown. But within a few years of becoming an Eagle Boy Scout, he was busted on trumped-up armed robbery charges, entangled in heroin smuggling, and even worked as a highway department flagman. His record also included stints as a Santa Claus and census taker.

The trouble really began when he decided to become a writer. After he moved to Washington, his articles were publicly denounced by the director of the FBI, the Postmaster General, the Secretary of HUD, and the heads of the DEA, FEMA, and EEOC - and even the Washington Post. Public Policy Hooligan reveals how Bovard heisted damning documents from World Bank headquarters, raced around East Bloc regimes one step ahead of the secret police, and was ejected from the Supreme Court for an alleged apparel atrocity. Readers may enjoy the collisions between Bovard’s rustic ways and the Beltway’s kowtowing protocols.

This book is also the chronicle of one person striving to better understand liberty and Leviathan. His rabble-rousing in Playboy, New York Times, and elsewhere exposed how cherished constitutional rights were depreciating into mere bureaucratic asterisks and how the nation was turning into an Attention Deficit Democracy. The Wall Street Journal labeled him “the roving inspector general of the modern state,” and Hooligan divulges some of the capers behind his most controversial exposes.

Two vignettes from the book (the Santa Claus confessions and the shiftless highway department worker story) have been excerpted by the Wall Street Journal.

Like Bovard’s earlier books, Hooligan is chockful of epigrams. Here are a few samples:

* Expecting uplift from politicians is like expecting burglars to leave Gideon’s Bibles in every house they plunder.

* Truth delayed is truth defused.

* I had always heard that “you can’t fight City Hall.” But maybe it was possible to intellectually demolish it.

* The more good deeds people supposedly commit, the more deluded they sometimes become.

* I have spent decades trying to turn political dirt into philosophic gold. I have yet to discover the alchemist’s trick, but I still have fun with the dirt.

* It was nuts to permit politicians to control prices when there was no way to control politicians.

* I did not recognize the FBI’s prerogative to re-write the facts on its killings.

* Regardless of how many crimes a government commits, it will have legions of apologists among intellectuals, pundits, bankers, and politicians.

* The less scrutiny federal agencies receive, the more absurd their rulings become.

* I smelled a policy rat.

* Economic common sense never had a chance inside the Beltway.

* Washington editors claim a droit du seigneur to screw any prose they published.

* I had no faith in shaming the perpetrators. I preferred to awaken the victims.

Length: 372 pages

Word Wise: Enabled

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Product details

File Size: 1593 KB
Print Length: 372 pages
Publisher: Sixth Street Books (December 7, 2012)
Publication Date: December 7, 2012
Sold by: Amazon Digital Services LLC
Language: English
ASIN: B00AKZH97W
Text-to-Speech: Enabled

X-Ray:

Not Enabled

Word Wise: Enabled
Lending: Enabled
Enhanced Typesetting: Not Enabled

Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,124,179 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
- #416 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Humor & Entertainment > Humor > Political
- #1346 in Books > Humor & Entertainment > Humor > Political
- #15220 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Biographies & Memoirs > Memoirs

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Top customer reviews

Essential, Compelling Reading for Limiting Government, Great Comedy

ByP. Manningon April 4, 2013

Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase

"Public Policy Hooligan" is a compelling boy's own story, a journey into the heart of Big Government with Jim Bovard. If you have not encountered Bovard directly you certainly have indirectly: a fearless, stubborn journalist that unravelled most of Washington's big spending money burners from the fiasco of US Farm policy to the National Endowment For Humanities, including the wonderful revelation that US Government now regards asking potential employees about a prison record as racist discrimination. His exposure of the vast waste, fraud & enforced inefficiency in US Government has made every US citizen better off. Bovard was targetting deficit reduction before anyone else knew there was a deficit problem.

There is little to which to compare Public Policy Hooligan, few can write this kind of honest memoir & no one has Bovard's 33 year grasp of Washington's messy waste. It is a unique American classic,an odd, wonderful road trip with a great writer, at once intensely personal but also hugely informing. Public Policy Hoologan made me go read anything else by Bovard I could get.

This book is a memoir so it is both his story and the story of his investigations into Federal Government long off the rails. James Bovard is not just a relentless, courageous investigative journalist, he is a wonderful writer with an scalding honesty and self deprecating humour that makes PPH oddly laugh out loud and deeply touching. Bovard's own story, his struggle to become a writer is inspiring and, for me, hugely educational. Few have witten with such care or honesty about the difficulty of teaching oneself to write and write well; and Jim Bovard does write very, very well.

Not that writing well has won him friends inside the beltway, Bovard's exposures of fraud, waste & pork made both donkeys and elephants of Washington very unhappy. In afflicting the theiving comfortable Jim Bovard racked up an enemy list that would have made a musketeer proud and would have finished a less capable or pugnacious journalist. If Public Policy Hooligan did nothing more than re-ignite the idea of real, investigative journalism it would have done the us all some service but Bovard's brand of outsider journalism is a galaxy away from the preening, fawning, uninformed fashion poseurs who infest TV & print today. Burly, bearded, cigar chomping Bovard may be the last of his kind and anyone who reads Public Policy Hooligan will realise how much poorer we are for that.

I would have liked more about Bovard's relationship with his parents in their declining years: once the Washington investigative years take on they are somehow avoided, perhaps the scalding honesty would be to hard for family and himself but it is pity someone with Bovard's talent avoided that essential human story. That is not to take from this magnificent hugely readable & very entertaining book, just I would have liked more. Bovard's writing does make one greedy that way.

I felt I knew Jim Bovard when I finished this memoir and I certainly knew vast amount more about US Government's waste & public fraud.

Public Policy Hooligan is a book that should be bought and read by every US conservative, libertarian, GOP activist or plain John or Jane Citizen: this is how your country works and this is how it got to $16 trillion deficit.

0Comment 3 people found this helpful. Was this review helpful to you?YesNo

Enjoyed learning more about an authored who has both entertained ...

BySteve Fleischeron August 2, 2014

Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase

Mr. Bovard has been an indefatigable defender of American's rights - many of them lost because of our indifference to government encroachment.

After a lifetime of fighting the labyrinth of government agencies, he is visibly getting tired of butting his head against the system. That comes through loud and clear in the book.

I knew much of what Bovard described (by reading his previous books and those of other defenders of the Bill of Rights), but I was shocked by the laziness, complacency, and partisanship of the press.

I got two very clear messages from the book.

We are not being well served by the fourth estate - supposedly the ultimate guardian of our rights.

We Americans are not doing enough to protect our freedoms. We allow ourselves to be stampeded by government engendered fears - terrorism, corporations, unfairness, etc, Basically we have come to fear life itself and look to the government to protect us - the enormous cost to us is becoming apparent.

Enjoyed learning more about an authored who has both entertained and educated me.

0Comment One person found this helpful. Was this review helpful to you?YesNo

Memoirs of A(nother) Superfluous Man

ByKindle Customeron February 6, 2014

Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase

It's always a joy and personally helpful to read the memoirs and realization of the imperative for individual liberty from someone who's been at the center of the storm. Such books are not as common as I would like, but I love them when I find them. (Hence, my lifting the title of Albert Jay Nock's brilliant autobiography). From his time as a Boy Scout to his travels with the great books (and his discovery of Thoreau) to his travels to Eastern Europe behind the Iron Curtain (which he excerpted today in an essay), you see the wheels turning and find yourself thinking Yes, I agree, Yes I know that feeling, Yes, he's right.

I can't say that Bovard would appreciate the allusion to Nock, but it is interesting in that I think I first read his essays in The Freeman (back in the 80s or 90s) and maybe when the Future of Freedom Foundation got started in the 90s, and I see that the struggle for liberty is always (or at least seems to be) an uphill battle, if not a matter of banging ones head against the wall, and so there is a feeling of superfluity in much of it. But like Nock said, the important ideas need to be hung out there for people to do with them what they will. Bovard's done this consistently over the years. This is the first of his books I've read (I'm embarrassed to admit) though I will buy Attention Deficit Democracy next.

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man's development is very interesting and fun. The first part of the book is about ...

ByWilliam Herronon November 13, 2014

Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase

The story of this young, not so young any more, man's development is very interesting and fun. The first part of the book is about the authors early struggles that are not different from the struggles of many others and an identification with these experiences might be very helpful for many readers. His reasonable discussion that graduating from college should not be a prerequisite for being an informed and an employed citizen is well made. The last part of the book presents many important views about honesty and integrity in the greater political arena. His arguments to get people to think for them selves are well presented.

0CommentWas this review helpful to you?YesNo

shows the evolution of a philosopher

Bywoodstownon January 21, 2013

Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase

I've read a number of Jim Bovard's articles, but this is the first book. I'll track down his books now. He shows his love of independence and learning and how his views have evolved in response to restrictions he found.
He does a great job of mixing in satire, self-deprecation, and outrage at the trespasses bureaucrats expect us to quietly endure. I also think he did a good job emphasizing how important it is to limit debt if you want to be independent. I'll be passing this along to my teenagers.
The Kindle version functioned flawlessly.

0Comment 3 people found this helpful. Was this review helpful to you?YesNo

Most recent customer reviews

Five Stars

Damn good book.

Published on August 24, 2015 by Kevin Benko

A hoot

A must read for aspiring hooligans... Every superhero needs an origin story. This is Jim Bovard's. It's a highly entertaining read. All aspiring agitators should check it out.

Published on August 22, 2015 by Ben Franklin

good book

Enjoyed reading this book. Lots of good insights and humor. Interesting to see how a writer evolved from youth to maturity

Published on October 5, 2014 by linredcar

Kept Me Up All Night

Dang it, it kept me up all night because I could not put it down. It is a fun read sure to give you many chuckles.

Published on January 26, 2014 by Dave

James Bovard Does It AGAIN!

Public Policy Hooligan EXCELLENT. Sorry I finished it, as I wanted to continue reading. Pshaw! Another phenomenal book from Mr.Read more

Published on November 19, 2013 by OFG (Old Fat Guy)

Fascinating story!

Unlike other books by Jim Bovard, this one has much personal background. It contains classic Bovard humor and quotable lines, along with a history of what he went through to have...Read more

Published on October 22, 2013 by Brian C. Lewis

The wasp that keeps the horse alert

I always admired Mr. Bovard's pugnacity in expositing the excess of State power, its inconsistences and hypocrisy. I truly admire his role as the wasp that keeps the horse alert.Read more

Published on October 4, 2013 by Adriana F.

The Happy Hooligan

In a world where personal liberty is under daily assault, Bovard manages to remain cheerful, if not always optimistic.Read more

Published on August 31, 2013 by J. Gregory Smith

If you think the Government is here to help, don't read this...

Great book about the many abuses of the government. Oh yeah, also some interesting stuff on the life and times of Jim Bovard. Enjoy!

Published on July 10, 2013 by Amazon Customer

Good book, but not a great book

This book is good reading. Bovard is a committed libertarian, against big government, very competently self-educated in economics, but is not an outstanding writer.Read more

Published on July 7, 2013 by J. Livingstone

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