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Все книги издательства IngramRebooting Justice
America is a nation founded on justice and the rule of law. But our laws are too complex, and legal advice too expensive, for poor and even middle-class Americans to get help and vindicate their rights. Criminal defendants facing jail time may receive an appointed lawyer who is juggling hundreds of cases and immediately urges them to plead guilty. Civil litigants are even worse off; usually, they get no help at all navigating the maze of technical procedures and rules. The same is true of those seeking legal advice, like planning a will or negotiating an employment contract. Rebooting Justice presents a novel response to longstanding problems. The answer is to use technology and procedural innovation to simplify and change the process itself. In the civil and criminal courts where ordinary Americans appear the most, we should streamline complex procedures and assume that parties will not have a lawyer, rather than the other way around. We need a cheaper, simpler, faster justice system to control costs. We cannot untie the Gordian knot by adding more strands of rope; we need to cut it, to simplify it.
Children of Monsters
What’s it like to be the son or daughter of a dictator? A monster on the Stalin level? What’s it like to bear a name synonymous with oppression, terror, and evil?Jay Nordlinger set out to answer that question, and does so in this book. He surveys 20 dictators in all. They are the worst of the worst: Stalin, Mao, Idi Amin, Pol Pot, Saddam Hussein, and so on. The book is not about them, really, though of course they figure in it. It’s about their children.Some of them are absolute loyalists. They admire, revere, or worship their father. Some of them actually succeed their father as dictator—as in North Korea, Syria, and Haiti. Some of them have doubts. A couple of them become full-blown dissenters, even defectors. A few of the daughters have the experience of having their husband killed by their father. Most of these children are rocked by war, prison, exile, or other upheaval.Obviously, the children have things in common. But they are also individuals, making of life what they can. The main thing they have in common is this: They have been dealt a very, very unusual hand.What would you do, if you were the offspring of an infamous dictator, who lords it over your country?An early reader of this book said, “There’s an opera on every page”: a drama, a tragedy (or even a comedy). Another reader said he had read the chapter on Bokassa “with my eyes on stalks.”Meet these characters for yourself. Marvel, shudder, and ponder.
Uber-Positive
Entire industries are being transformed, consumers have more power than ever before, and people are finding new ways to earn a living—even in today’s slow economic recovery. All of these improvements stem from the rise of the so-called sharing economy.Even in the face of these benefits, innovation is in danger of being suppressed because of overzealous government regulation that protects existing businesses—all behind the façade of consumer safety. This book chronicles Uber’s battle against the New York City taxi industry and its supporters in the government. It also shows the need to stand up for entrepreneurs and the vast benefits that they provide for consumers. As innovators tirelessly work to drive the economy forward, too often regulators function as annoying backseat drivers or roadblocks.
Striking Power
Threats to international peace and security include the proliferation of weapons of mass destructions, rogue nations, and international terrorism. The United States must respond to these challenges to its national security and to world stability by embracing new military technologies such as drones, autonomous robots, and cyber weapons. These weapons can provide more precise, less destructive means to coerce opponents to stop WMD proliferation, clamp down on terrorism, or end humanitarian disasters. Efforts to constrain new military technologies are not only doomed, but dangerous. Most weapons in themselves are not good or evil; their morality turns on the motives and purposes for the war itself. These new weapons can send a strong message without cause death or severe personal injury, and as a result can make war less, rather than more, destructive.
No Child Left Alone
Uncle Sam is the worst helicopter parent in America.Children are taken from their parents because they are obese. Parents are arrested for letting their children play outside alone. Sledding and swaddling are banned. From games to school to breast-feeding to daycare, the overbearing bureaucratic state keeps getting between kids and their parents.The state’s safety, hygiene, and health regulations rule, and the government’s judgment may not coincide with yours. Which foods and drinks to send to school, what toys to buy, whether to breast- or bottle-feed babies are all choices that used to be left to you and me. Not anymore.As a mom to four kids, I should be used to it, but I’m not. All the government-mandated parenting gets under my skin. And I’m not alone.No Child Left Alone explores the growing problem of an intrusive, interfering government and highlights those parents—all the Captain Mommies and Captain Daddies across America—fighting to take back control over their families.
Putin's Master Plan
Vladimir Putin has a master plan to destroy Europe, divide NATO, reclaim Russian influence in the world, and most of all to marginalize the United States and the West in order to achieve regional hegemony and global power. Putin’s unified strategy and vision for Europe has not been thoroughly discussed or articulated in any meaningful way until now. Putin’s Master Plan is the first comprehensive attempt to systematically explain Putin’s global strategy, which could inevitably and inexorably lead to the breakup of the NATO alliance, and potentially to war with the West. Currently, the West has no strategy, no plan, and no tactics to confront Putin’s master plan other than imposing limited economic sanctions, which have done little to deter Putin's aggression—and may well have encouraged and facilitated it. The viewpoint taken here is not just alarmism, but an accurate and, for the first time, clear and sober portrayal of a frightening situation that, more and more, serious observers of European and Russian politics are openly recognizing and acknowledging.Putin’s Master Plan makes the case that it is essential to wake up to Putin’s strategy to destroy Europe, divide NATO, and build a new empire in the former Soviet Union. Russia has demonstrated an extraordinary level of aggression, most boldly in its outright invasions of Georgia and Ukraine. American weakness and a divided Europe have left Russia’s terrified neighbors without an alternative to Russian domination, and even once-stalwart American allies such as the Republic of Georgia are on the brink of becoming part of Putin’s new empire in Europe. Putin has made it clear that he sees NATO expansion as a fundamental threat to Russian nationhood, and he is systematically challenging the NATO Alliance as well as the United States. So far, he is winning.
I Know Best
In 1979, Christopher Lasch published the epochal The Culture of Narcissism warning of the normalizing of narcissism in our society. Lasch may have understated it. 35 years later, in the Obama era—with its parade of endless, often inexplicable, scandals—we have a full blown epidemic of what has recently been called Moral Narcissism.Forget Narcissus and his reflection, Moral Narcissism—the almost schizophrenic divide between intentions and results now pervading our culture—is the new method for feeling good about yourself. It no longer matters how anything turns out as long as your intentions were good, that you were “moral.” And, just as importantly, the only determinant of those intentions, the only one who defines that morality, is you.I Know Best goes beyond Lasch to lay bare how this moral narcissism is behind all those scandals from Obamacare to the Veteran's Administration to the IRS, Benghazi, Bergdahl, Syria and beyond. Everything the Obama administration did and does was about making them feel good about themselves—the results be damned.And they have as their allies those supreme moral narcissists in the academy, media and Hollywood, ever willing to ratify those good intentions and ignore those same results.But I Know Best is not just about the Left. Moral Narcissism affects the right as well, even when they don’t realize it. It is a true epidemic that must be cured in order to save our democratic republic and our futures.
Hidden in Plain Sight
The 2008 financial crisis—like the Great Depression—was a world-historical event. What caused it will be debated for years, if not generations. The conventional narrative is that the financial crisis was caused by Wall Street greed and insufficient regulation of the financial system. That narrative produced the Dodd-Frank Act, the mostcomprehensive financial-system regulation since the New Deal. There is evidence, however, that the Dodd-Frank Act has slowed the recovery from the recession. If insufficient regulation caused the financial crisis, then the Dodd-Frank Act will never be modified or repealed; proponents will argue that doing so will cause another crisis.A competing narrative about what caused the financial crisis has received little attention. This view, which is accepted by almost all Republicans in Congress and most conservatives, contends that the crisis was caused by government housing policies. This book extensively documents this view. For example, it shows that in June 2008, before the crisis, 58 percent of all US mortgages were subprime or other low-quality mortgages. Of these, 76 percent were on the books of government agencies such as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. When these mortgages defaulted in 2007 and 2008, they drove down housing prices and weakened banks and other mortgage holders, causing the crisis.After this book is published, no one will be able to claim that the financial crisis was caused by insufficient regulation, or defend Dodd-Frank, without coming to terms with the data this book contains.