Alan L. Moss

"Economic consultant and former public servant Moss argues that American politics has been corrupted by special interests, moneyed lobbyists, and the system of campaign finance. He supports this argument through interviews with a variety of Washington actors, including a lobbyist, a European diplomat, and individuals on both sides of the Washington political divide. He then describes the deleterious impact of this corruption in failing to address global warming, raise the minimum wage, fix the health care crisis, or address inner-city crime. He also connects the system's deteriorating political leadership to the tragedy of Iraq and offers a number of measures to solve the problem, including charging the American Political Science Association and other non-partisan groups with developing candidate information profiles, founding a Federation of Public Interest Organizations... providing public financing for all federal elections, and restoring Federal Service capabilities and expertise."

Learn about lobbying and special interests, April 9, 2009

For someone who knows very little about the influence of lobbying and special interests, I found this a great wake up call. It leads you smoothly from our Founding Fathers and their plans for making a democratic government through the morass of lobbying. The book discusses major issues of minimum wage, health care, inner-city crime, stem cell research, and more and how these are affected negatively by lobbying and special interests. It ends with "a plan to restore America's democracy." An especially good book for high school and college classes.

A great timely book, December 11, 2008

"This is a must read for anyone interested in learning more about some of the most controversial political issues of the day. The book succeeds in explaining complex subject matter in an easy to understand style, and in tackling a wide variety of interesting topics like global warming and stem cell research. Moss also goes beyond just identifying issues and problems, and offers a well-constructed, detailed plan to reduce the influence of special interests and promote true democracy."

Great book on impact of lobbyists, November 5, 2008

"This is a great book if you are interested in how government really works. It provides a capsule history of how the nation's democracy was born and how it was originally designed to work. While I had a lot of this material in college, it was really nice to review our proud history and what the Founding Fathers were able to accomplish. It was fascinating to learn how lobbyists have shaped U.S. policy. For example, I didn't know that domestic gun dealers have lost sales to imports and without strong lobbying efforts, many U.S. manufacturers would likely go out of business. It made you understand why certain employers have to pay lobbyists to represent their interests. I especially enjoyed the top ten political leadership principles, qualities that the author contends will make those in office more likely to attack the problems that special interests have created. These appear to be excellent criteria with which those running for office should be evaluated. Overall, I found this book to be much more than I expected."

Well worth the investment, October 23, 2008

"This is the best book I've read concerning lobbyists and their impact on our democracy. The author does a great job explaining complex issues, such as global warming and inner city crime, and links wrongheaded U.S. policy to the influence of special interests and their lobbyists. The interviews conducted with Washington insiders provide new insight into how these people think. Just when you think all is lost, the author reduces the problem to five root causes and proposes a solid plan to turn things around. This book was well worth the investment."

If you are lucky, there comes a time when you see through the fog of confusing rhetoric and inexplicable events and understand a situation for what it is. If that epiphany involves the country you love, you are doubly blessed.

In 2002, after 35 years in Washington, D.C., I retired from the Federal Service and moved to the Jersey Shore. I left behind my years as American Political Science Association Congressional Fellow in the United States Senate, Chief Economist of the U.S. Department of Labor�s Wage and Hour Division, and Adjunct Instructor at the University of Virginia�s Northern Virginia Campus. I thought that my passionate interest in American politics, nurtured by Ph D studies and day to day dealings in Washington would begin to take a back seat to less stressful subjects.

Before long, my days of leisure became interspersed with occasional work as an economic consultant and the fulfillment of a life-long dream to write fiction. While I found both these callings challenging and satisfying, the drumbeat of bad news from Washington and around the world denied me the peace one would hope for in retirement.

Why do we continue to lose young men and women in foreign misadventures? Why do we continue to defile our environment with carbon emissions? Why do we continue to deny workers a sufficient minimum wage? Why do we continue to see millions of Americans with no health insurance? Why do we continue to experience inner-city gun violence and record numbers of our citizens in prison? And why do we continue to underutilize the stem cell research that promises cures for many of our most devastating diseases? These were the questions that confronted me.

Removed from the seat of government and no longer beholden to support the policies of whichever Administration happened to be in power, events became clearer and easier to analyze. Unable to resist, I pledged to seek answers and find solutions. Thus, for the past year, I have devoted myself to studying our misfortunes and determining how our system can be fixed.

As my new work progressed, one theme became evident. The ills that plague our nation are the result of the unchecked power of special interests, lobbyists, and their interaction with our method of campaign financing. The book you are about to read is the presentation of this general conclusion, how it was reached, and how we might modify our system of government to take account of our recent experience.

The problems we are suffering are not the result of random events. They are the predictable consequences of the absence of countervailing power to offset the impact of factions and their massive resources. Once you understand the way in which our democracy has been damaged and how we can reverse the harm that�s been done, you will be empowered to become a political force for positive change, with your vote and, if you wish, with activist contributions.

MEDIA EXPERT INTERVIEW

Q: What role do the media play in electing political candidates to public office?

A: The huge amount of money spent on candidate ads for political campaigns is unprecedented. At the same time, now we have tremendous amounts of money spent on issue ads. Most times you don�t really know who is financing the issue ads. They come in with names that are generic -- this group or that -- so you don�t know who is behind the ads.

The reason television is used so much is the power of TV. As many years as I�ve been in it, the power of TV can�t be denied. You really can sell ice to Eskimos. What the political people have discovered about TV is its incredible power. I�ve always thought retailers have underestimated what TV can accomplish. On the other hand, politicians now understand it.

The politicians have found that TV works and the reason TV works as compared to newspapers, magazines and other print media is that with print media you must make a conscious effort to understand the information being provided. With TV you can avoid the conscious effort required by print media. So what happens is you sit down and you listen and maybe you watch the TV ads and even though you may contend that you aren�t paying attention, most of the time those ads have an impact.

The reason it has become so important in the political process is because politicians have realized that their product is no different from paper towels, cleaners, or dog food. They are selling a product and the public can be sold. Evidence of this is the Swift Boat episode and how effective it was. I don�t think they spent more than $2 million with those messages and yet they changed the outcome of the election.