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Why would a former candidate for U.S. Congress who once shared a stage with former President Ronald Reagan in Boca Raton, Florida write an entire book highly critical of the “trickle down” theory? Well, that was in 1986, and the author was a true believer. Now he writes that he is “publishing this book in an election cycle to bash the Ronald Reagan nonsense I once believed in.” He doesn’t stop there! Statements like “America’s wealthy folk took control of this country with George Washington” or “Obama II needed to put a hundred elite bankers and Wall Street traders in jail” show the direction he has gone. His target is Corporations, with a big C, with sites set particularly on Big Oil, Wal-Mart, IBM, and Wall Street. His cause is the shrinking middle class, and he blames special interests.
In a series of short chapters the writer argues that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are simply over oil profits. He considers China to be the greater threat, linking it with North Korea as a growing military juggernaut that is poised to supplant the U.S. as a world power. He accuses candidate Trump of being like other ‘oil –licans’ in valuing profits over love of country. The loss of manufacturing jobs is considered part the wealthy’s attempt to destroy upward mobility for the middle class. Citizens United, the Supreme Court’s ruling that corporations, as ‘people’, can contribute to political parties, is also attacked as transforming our nation into an oligarchical slave state. Though he quotes Lenin at various points and most of these revelations are decades-old (if not mostly ignored or misundertood by the masses), the author is not against wealth per se. Quoting New Testament passages, he cries for more generosity and care for one’s fellow man. Though mostly libertarian in tone, the author ultimately champions Bernie Sanders for his stand on Citizens United.
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