Extortion: How Politicians Extract Your Money, Buy Votes, and Line Their Own Pockets

A bombshell investigation reveals how Washington really works: politicians extort money from us, then use it to buy each other’s votes. Best-selling author Peter Schweizer reveals:

Extortion: How Politicians Extract Your Money, Buy Votes, and Line Their Own Pockets 51WPybFhEhL._SY344_PJlook-inside-v2,TopRight,1,0_SH20_BO1,204,203,200_

Extortion: How Politicians Extract Your Money, Buy Votes, and Line Their Own Pockets 51WPybFhEhL._SY344_PJlook-inside-v2,TopRight,1,0_SH20_BO1,204,203,200_

*Obama’s "Protection Money": How the Obama Administration targeted industries for criminal investigation but chose not to pursue key political donors.

*John Boehner’s "Tollbooth": How the Speaker of the House extracts money by soliciting political donations before he will hold crucial votes on the House floor.

*The "Slush Fund": How politicians extract "campaign contributions" and then convert them to bankroll lavish lifestyles complete with limos, private jets, golf at five-star resorts, fine wines, and cash for family members.

*Capitol Hill’s "Underground Economy": How congressmen use a little-known loophole that allows them to secretly link their votes to cash.

Extortion finally makes clear why Congress is so dysfunctional: it’s all about making money, not making law.

PETER SCHWEIZER is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and he is the founder and director of the Government Accountability Institute. He has written for the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Newsweek/Daily Beast, and elsewhere. His books include Throw Them All Out, which exposed congressional insider stock trading and led to the passage of the STOCK Act.

You can't beat Peter Schweizer for justified, popular outrage backed up by meticulous research, and that's just what this book brings to the table.

Milker bills for instance: lobbying, cronyism, you-scratch-my-back-I'll-scratch-yours; all these are catch-phrases in the public's imagination for public corruption and associated grifting. Milker bills and the other outrages Schweizer documents should introduce a new concept in the public's lexicon of outrage: political extortion.

What makes political extortion a new concept is that we are used to thinking of politicians as marionettes for moneyed interests (whether right or left): Wall Street, Labor Unions, Oil companies, Trial Lawyers, etc. Certainly this happens, but what Schweizer demonstrates is that it often flows the other way as well. Want your industry to be spared a new transaction tax? Well, pay up, especially if its to my leadership PAC, and I can go on a golf vacation. Otherwise that bill is going to the floor, baby! In other words, a lot of contemporary politics is a protection racket run by Congress AND the White House. Or think of it this way, if Government is a monopoly, then it can charge monopoly rents on those who need its services most (corporations, labor unions, Hollywood).

http://www.amazon.com/Extortion-Peter-Schweizer/dp/0544103343

Extortion: How Politicians Extract Your Money, Buy Votes, and Line Their Own Pockets

Extortion: How Politicians Extract Your Money, Buy Votes, and Line Their Own Pockets

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