Dobbs, L. (2007) Independents day: Awakening the American Spirit. (New York: Viking)

Lou Dobbs is a popular commentator on cable news. He is also a populist that wants to reclaim consumer and worker rights, lost under free market fundamentalists. In other words, he is a mild social democrat and looks back to the America from the mid 40’s to 1980.

He laments the loss of the American dollar to the world struggles that impact everyday Americans. He describes a history where long fought union and consumer groups had to oppose both the government and its owner large corporations and investments banks. He underlines how both parties pay homage to Wall Street, while one party panders civil and economic issues and the other tolerates evangelical agendas.

Dobbs wants to move more cautiously in international affairs and close down the U.S.A.’s porous borders. However, the Shadow Government of corporate and investment

houses, stop government action that would benefit most of us. We allow religious intrusions to fog over our perception of loss (false consciousness) and usually vote against ourselves.

Day in and day out, media sources on a large scale are the cheerleaders to the corporate elites. Do you know that we could have a dollar crisis that could put the entire world in another world depression? We have to pay our debts. Vice President Cheney is wrong. Debts do count and the short term benefits of a cheap dollar selling goods overseas and retiring the debt is only a short time before bad becomes worse and the dollar crashes.

In the mean time, social benefits dwindle. Social security still has some time, but Medicare is in for some hard times. The media does not help. It entertains and that flows over into the news department. Soft news is interesting and cheap to produce. Endless amounts of time are spent on commercial actors and singers who are generally mentally troubled.

In the middle of all this is the top tenth of the top 1% whom make most of the money on income and dividends and outsource those profits to the Cayman Islands, a tax haven. We now have a regressive tax that burdens the other 99%.

The corporate elites have captured the language and the media and the over riding mantra is tax cuts. We all get a little and the rich get the most. We also go further in debt.

It has been done before and we can do it again. Vote and work for those candidates that promise consumer and worker protections of pre- 1980. Globalization does not have to be a natural outcome of the 21^st century nor does outsourcing. They can be amended.

Although this book has been published in 2007, it could have been written earlier. However,  Dobbs is a moderate who for years was a business reporter. Most of what is stated above has finally begun to sink into the world of everyday folk. However, if the masses get organized to make lawful and non-violent change is another matter?