Book Club

South DaCola book club w/ Hookers or Cake

Jade Bos used to live in Sioux Falls and live with my friends Rocco Tchetter and Sideshow. One day, Jade decided that he needed a coffee table for his room, so he tore the door off one of his other roommates rooms, put it on concrete blocks, and he had a coffee table, unfortunately, said roommate had to take his one set of sheets and use that as a door which forced him to sleep on his sweat stained mattress without sheets and forced the rest of us to have to view his ugly naked ass passed out on said mattress (his one set of sheets had a gigantic hole in them) It was like a peep show no one wanted to see. Thanks for the memories, Jade. Well, anyhoo, Jade just released a book that is associated with his website. Here is a sneak peak;

South DaCola Book Club w/So Damn Much Money: The Triumph of Lobbying and the Corrosion of American Government

I saw this author on Bill Moyers Journal last night, and found his interview about his book interesting. He pretty much talks about how lobbyists and lobbying has destroyed politics and politicians. Can you say – Duh? He did get a plug in about publicly funded elections in states like Arizona and there positive effects, Moyers probably could have done a entire show about that.  I could not agree more, if we are ever going to clean up politics, that is the way to go.

The startling story of the monumental growth of lobbying in Washington, D.C., and how it undermines effective government and pollutes our politics.

A true insider, Robert G. Kaiser has monitored American politics for The Washington Post for nearly half a century. In this sometimes shocking and always riveting book, he explains how and why, over the last four decades, Washington became a dysfunctional capital. At the heart of his story is money—money made by special interests using campaign contributions and lobbyists to influence government decisions, and money demanded by congressional candidates to pay for their increasingly expensive campaigns, which can cost a staggering sum. In 1974, the average winning campaign for the Senate cost $437,000; by 2006, that number had grown to $7.92 million. The cost of winning House campaigns grew comparably: $56,500 in 1974, $1.3 million in 2006.