Crimes Against Nature by Robert F Kennedy Jr

The subtitle to this book is "How George W Bush and His Corporate Pals are Plundering the Country and Hijacking Our Democracy." There's not really much more that needs to be said about what this book is about. Kennedy has a tremendous amount of data to back up this statement, and his writing lets you know that he feels pretty strongly about it. I would say he's pissed, as we should all be. I already knew vaguely of some instances where Bush's appointments for various government positions allowed corporate interests to basically take over, but Kennedy brings to light many many more perversions of power. This is an incredibly well-researched book, Kennedy obviously went to great lengths to make sure that he had the facts to back up what he knows was happening in our government.
It would be really interesting to see what has changed in the four years since this book was written. Parts of it have an almost mournful tone: Kennedy is telling us about what the Bush administration has done so far, and he is concerned about what is going to be affected in the future. It will also be interesting to see what will change with the new administration - most of Obama's environmental and scientific appointments seem to be people who can make the necessary changes. But there is still a big connection with the corporations, and in today's politics, that seems hard to change. This is an interesting factual read, although much has probably changed since the book first was published.
I read this book to finish up the From the Stack Challenge, and it also qualifies for the RYOB Challenge, since they're pretty much the same thing. I am also using this book for the Read Your Name Challenge. For reading my name, I am doing my full first name - Jessica. So this is my "C".

The Blue Way by Daniel de Faro Adamson & Joe Andrew

While looking for some books on socially responsible investing, I came across this one - the subtitle is How to Profit by Investing in a Better World. But this book is about more than socially responsible investing. The Blue Way refers to supporting companies that support Democrats. The assertion of the authors is that the Republican party is against everything that socially responsible companies are for, or at least their actions have shown this for the past decade or more. And although it seems taboo to discuss the political contributions of companies and CEO's, that is exactly what this book wants to talk about. Many of the companies that are listed in socially responsible mutual funds donate big money to the Republican party, or to individual campaigns. The authors have identified 76 companies on the S&P 500 that they describe as "blue" - contributing a majority of their political donations to Democrats. The authors then set out to show that these 76 companies are more successful than those that support Republicans.
Adamson and Andrew do get their point across. They have run the numbers, and the numbers show that these companies have done much better than the average S&P 500 company over the past decade. Of course, this book came out in 2007, and much has changed about financial markets since then, but it is still an interesting fact. The reason why the authors feel that they have to emphasize their facts so heavily is that conventional wisdom goes against these results. Republicans are traditionally the party of big business. The other main point the authors make is that the reason "blue" companies are more successful than "red" is that their business model is more progressive, in more ways than one. They spend a tremendous amount of the book discussing the importance of progressive leadership, both in business and in politics.
This book was not really what I expected, and it spent more time on topics other than investing than I would have expected, seeing as how the word "investing" was in the title. But the authors did make some very interesting points, and gave me a lot to think about. They discussed changes that certain very large companies have made to make themselves more socially responsible, companies like Nike and Gap, who I didn't realize had made so many steps in that direction. I'm still not sure that I agree that it makes sense to dig into data about political contributions; I also did not particularly care for the incredibly consumerist take on reality. There was barely a mention of the fact that perhaps instead of purchasing stuff from a "blue" company, we could instead not buy stuff at all. But I guess that wasn't the point of the book.

Screwed: The Undeclared War Against the Middle Class by Thom Hartmann

Despite its rather inflammatory title, this book is truly an excellent look at what has happened in economics and politics in the last 30 years. It is impossible to read this book and not understand what Hartmann is getting at; he emphasizes it in every single chapter, sometimes multiple times. His main thesis is that democracy cannot exist without a strong middle class, and that the ultra-conservatives who have taken over the Republican party have steadily weakened the American middle class. This weakens democracy, because it creates a feudal system, where a few rich families (or corporations) control the workers who are barely scraping by.
Hartmann documents this process very well, discussing how services have been taken away from the people and our democracy has been changed ever since Reagan became president. He makes a strong case for how detrimental trickle-down economics is, not only to the middle class, but to all of America. He then offers solutions, in very broad terms.
Hartmann ends the book on a very inspiring note. He outlines the steps that we need to take if we want to succeed, and even gives good reasons for why this can be done through the traditional two parties, rather than by creating a third party. I plan on hanging on to the book for a bit, just to refresh my memory on these steps. It has truly inspired me to get involved in local politics, something I've never really done before. I know that our democracy has seriously weakened over the last eight years, and Hartmann makes a good case for the fact that this began with Reagan, and continued through to the present time, even through Clinton's administration. It's up to us to bring it back to where it belongs, and make sure that all Americans have the same opportunities to succeed.