No comments about Queen Bess: The Unauthorized Biography of Bess Myerson.

No comments about Druglord: Guns, Powder and Pay-Offs.

2 comments about When She Was Bad.

1. Ms. Alexander,(the Kitty Kelly of New York political scandal)writes an entertaining yet frenetic tale of the fall of Bess Meyerson, Commissioner of Cultural Affairs of the city of New York, and former Miss America. Much attention is paid to Judge Hortense Gable's emotionally unstable daughter, Sukhreet, the catalyst of the scandal involving her having obtained a city job in exchange for leniency in the divorce case of Ms. Meyerson's lover (Andy Capasso, the most famous sewer man since Ed Norton.)For those who have put down Nancy Drew, but are not yet ready for Jackie Susann novels.



2. I like Shana Alexander as an author. This book is quite interesting and detailed about Bess Myerson, the self-proclaimed Queen of the Jews and her life. Alexander details Bess' childhood and poor upbringing in the Bronx with a nasty mother and a loving father. She became the First Jewish Miss America in 1945. From then on, she became a public figure in both media and New York City politics. Bess herself was a mess from the beginning. She was not a very good mother to her only daughter Barra nor a very good wife to her husbands. I remember Bess more for the scandal that involved a highly respected judge Hortense Gabel, her bizarre daughter Sukhreet (born Julie Bess) Gabel, and TOny Capasso. At that time, Bess was having an affair with married father Tony Capasso. Judge Gabel was trying her best to be a good mother to the outrageous daughter Sukhreet by helping her get a job. It was the job of being Bess' assistant that helped get Bess into her mess. Ironically, the Gabels are painted much better here than anywhere else. Sukhreet is probably still outrageous as ever but she told the truth. She was a smart woman with psychological problems from the beginning. She wasn't crazy but she was brilliant and capable of so much more. Surprisingly, it is Judge Hortense Wittstein Gabel that I feel the most sympathy for of all. Judge Gabel was in fact one of the most respected judges on the bench in New York City. She was also very dedicated to her profession and she was honorable, respectable, and dedicated to her profession. She would have made an excellent supreme court justice. The Gabels lived quite modestly in a rent-controlled apartment. Her husband and dentist, Milton Gabel, was retired but not Hortense. She was determined to do what she loved. She helped in affordable housing and she was the kind of person to make the city a better place. Sadly, this scandal affected an otherwise wonderful perfect career. While some lawyers would seek fame and fortune, Hortense was satisfied in her life and position. One can only imagine what might have been. She was probably on the shortlist for the supreme court that I could imagine. This book could use pictures that is why I am giving it 4 stars. I have the hardcover edition and there are no pictures. I feel sorry for Nancy Capasso who was the woman left behind in the Bess Mess. Her husband's infidelity with Bess was a cruel affair without any indiscretion. I can imagine that Sukhreet is still alive and living her life. She was never capable of being your average daughter. Even her parents forgave her for acting like a spoiled child but she did tell the truth but she got laughed out of court and she got attention that she may have wanted all along. I don't think she was much to blame. I think Hortense was just trying to be a good mother and Sukhreet was offended by the notion that she couldn't get a job on her own.

No comments about The People V. Clarence Darrow the Bribery Trial of America's Greatest Lawyer.

No comments about The Corrupt Judge: An Inquiry Into Bribery and Other Crimes and Misdemeanors in the Federal Courts.

5 comments about Out on the Rim.

1. Out on the Rim starts out delightfully enough. The year is 1986, the place Washington, D.C. Sixty year old counterterrorism expert Booth Stallings is hired by persons unknown to deliver a $5 million bribe to a troublesome Filipino rebel leader.
   But Stallings does not see himself as a mere delivery boy. He'd much rather get his hands permanently on the 5 million. Knowing he'll need some help and after consulting with his lawyer son-in-law, he takes on as partners Artie Wu and Quincy Durant. Two lifelong friends who know their way around both the Far East and other people's money.
   By the time he gets to Manila, Stallings finds that he has four partners, not two. You see, a con man named Otherguy Overby and an ex-Secret Service agent named Georgia Blue have cleverly insinuated themselves into the mix.
   Out on the Rim is an entertaining and complex tale of intrigue. There's plenty of double crossing and lots of unexpected alliances turn up. In fact, about two thirds of the way through, the complications start to get a bit out of hand. And that is the book's main flaw.
   Written with wit and urbane humor, Out on the Rim is deliciously engaging. But the number of twists and turns could have been 50% less without detracting at all from the fun.



2. I just re-read this book after first reading it when it came out. It has always had a special spot with me and it didn't let me down the second time around. I worked in Manila 1981-84 and remembered the book as capturing the feel of the place. Indeed it does capure the post-Marcos era and the poor, terminally corrupt Philippines. The main characters are great. Who wouldn't want to run a caper with this crew. Wish Thomas was still with us and we could look forward to more from "Other Guy" the pretender and the rest.



3. I keep reading Out on the Rim because of the great story telling ability of Ross Thomas. All of his stories are complex and funny with plots that twist and turn with each chapter. This is my favorite and reminds me of "All the Guys are Bad Guys," written by a new story teller on the scene.



4. Sixty year old Booth Stallings is an expert on terrorism who has been employed by the US government for many years, so when he is suddenly sacked, he is at a loss to understand exactly why this has happened, not for one moment believing the flim flam that's been fed to him. He is approached by an intermediary to recruit a few helpers to make an offer to a Filipino rebel leader to retire to Hong Kong with a payout of US$5,000,000, as he and this rebel had worked together during WW2. He gathers a team of expert con men, including one woman, to help in the elaborate caper which takes place on the island of Cebu in the Philippines. The plot and counter plots are so convoluted that the reader must keep his or her wits about them as people change sides, pretend to change sides, and are involved in very shadowy deals. It's a good read for lovers of involved spy deals.



5. I really like his books!What a shame that he will never write another one.

No comments about The Game They Played.

2 comments about End Legalized Bribery: An Ex-Congressman's Proposal to Clean Up Congress.

1. This is not a tawdry "kiss and tell" book, nor is Mr. Heftel "holier than thou". Heftel describes the shameful "government for sale" system that has perverted the wonderful system planned by the Founding Fathers. This book is a laundry list of incidents of "abuse-of-power for pay" and a well reasoned plea for returning American government to the voters, the people. I think he is writing down what most of us know in our guts. Read it and vote!



2. Cecil Heftel spent 10 years in congress representing the people of his district, however he found like many congressmen and senators before him that not ALL Americans are supposed to be represented. Only those who donate large sums of money to congressmen, senators and presidents get represented in our nation's capital. If you try to represent the American people you'll never get on a committee and you'll never recieve any funds from your party for re-election. Large corporations and multi-million dollar lobbying groups rule this country. They write legislation, buy senators and congressmen, they destroy the careers of honest law-makers, alter the tax-code to suit their own selfish needs and keep useful products off the market, so that their own inferior products wont have any competion. The American Automotive industry even got a law passed that exempted them from being prosecuted if they built an unsafe or dangerous product. Why are your taxes so high? Because large corporations with millions or even billions of dollars in profits pay little to no taxes on those profits! These and other corrupt practices are heavily documented in this book. Your government is for sale and YOU can't afford it! YOU are not represented in the nation's capital and your congressman doesn't care about you. He cares about the NRA, Lockheed Martin, McDonnell Douglass, General Motors, Northrop Grumman and General Electric. Buying this book won't stop the corruption, but I think that every American should at least know how corrupt the system is AND what it it costing them personally.

3 comments about Money for Nothing: Politicians, Rent Extraction, and Political Extortion.

1. What motivates politicians? How do they act? If you are interested in those questions your should read this. The author starts from earlier work in the area by Stigler and Posner - but then extends their models in a number of areas. McChesney has a remarkable ability to take a complex area of economics (public choice) and write in an interesting and understandable fashion. This book is probably going to be read mostly by academics but deserves a wider audience.



2. Fred McChesney here develops his original idea of rent extraction -- and it's an idea that renders understandable much of what the government does. (Want to know why the NRA and politicians perform a perpetual, public dance with each other? Read this book. McChesney's explanation will surprise you.) This book is a marvelous example of the best in public-choice scholarship: clearly written and cogent.



3. Fred McChesney's book "Money For Nothing" builds upon public choice economist Gordon Tullock's work on how lobbyists obtain economic benefits from politicians. While Tullock's theory - known as "rent-seeking" - is gaining mainstream appeal, many economists now offer similar explanations for other aspects of legislative behavior that aids some interest groups while harming others. McChesney's theory of "rent-extraction" breaks new ground not yet covered by these economists.

   McChesney defines rent extraction as "the political practice of extorting payments from private parties by making threats to expropriate wealth." In other words, he claims that politicians can take money from citizens by threatening to harm them and accepting bribes in the form of campaign contributions to leave them alone. He points out that if individuals have accumulated wealth and wish to keep it away from the government, they will be willing to pay politicians to leave them alone until the costs of doing so exceed the benefits of doing so.

   Therefore, while Tullock's theory involves politicians accepting payments to create political favors in the form of rents, McChesney's involves politicians accepting payments to avoid destroying existing private rents. He explains the differences between the two by stating: "With the former (rent-creation/bribery), the beneficiaries of political action compensate the politician for increasing their welfare. With the latter (rent extraction/extortion), persons whose welfare would otherwise be diminished by political action compensate the politician for not effectuating that diminution."

   He does point out that constitutional protection of private property and freedom of contract can prevent politicians from acting upon their threats. However, he claims the erosion of these protections has made the problem much more severe during the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

   To support his view that rent extraction imposes enormous costs on the economy, McChesney provides a wealth of evidence from recent policy debates. For example, he cites the United States Federal Trade Commission's efforts - at the request of Congress - to impose warranty and defect disclosure requirements on used car dealers as an attempt by individual members of Congress to obtain campaign contributions in exchange for voiding the rules. In this instance, he provides statistics on contributions made by the National Auto Dealers' Association to members of Congress who voted to repeal the regulations. In discussing the Supreme Court's response to the wheeling and dealing, he points out that the dealers were essentially tricked into paying to repeal legislation that Congress never intended to enact anyway.

   On the Clinton health care plan, he states that stock prices of pharmaceutical firms began to fall before the policy was formally proposed. He emphasizes that investors knew that once price controls became an issue, the firms involved would have to spend money fighting the legislation by making campaign contributions. Thus, the firms were expected to lose enormous sums of money whether or not the bill was actually passed. Most importantly, he points out that the firms were never able to recover any of the money they lost in the process.

   In addition to legislative threats to impose price caps, he cites situations in which politicians threaten to repeal existing price caps to obtain contributions. For example, he states that proposals to raise admission fees at Yellowstone National Park have met with resistance from local merchants and users who benefit from lower prices. In other words, politicians can even threaten regulatory systems that they inherited from previous regimes in order to extract contributions from the firms that benefit from those systems.

   McChesney relates his theory to law and economics by applying the Coase Theorem to his logic. He claims that, in a world without transaction costs, there would be no regulation because markets would allocate goods to their highest bidders. Therefore, in his model, the existence of regulation is treated as a political market failure in which private individuals fail to accurately appraise the credibility of threats made by politicians.

   McChesney offers a simple, straightforward way to make sense of much of the regulatory excess observed throughout the economy. Although his treatment of tax code reform may require some clarification, his model will eventually enjoy the same mainstream appeal that has been afforded to Tullock's over time.

No comments about The RICO Act (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act).