Book review: The Little Picture – How Liberals, Progressives, and Twits in local governments are strangling America, and what to do about it, by Greg Karraker

You can fight City Hall, according to this author.

And I thought the J6 book had a long title – shew!

This book came to my attention thanks to a recent article on American Greatness by the author. Since I was waiting to see if the name of the “progressive” mayor of a certain medium-sized city I work in came up as part of the AG article, I was intrigued enough to buy the book, which also was handy enough to use the exact remainder of my gift card balance with the retailer. (Fiscal conservatism, or a sign?)

Once TLP came into my hot little hands, I realized this book was in the same vein as Rise and Fall – a book that came out of a niche the author wanted to create and an opinion he wanted to express, without necessarily having a large market waiting on it. I don’t know if Greg unsuccessfully shopped the idea to publishers or simply wanted complete creative control over the product, but he went the self-publishing route like I have. Also like me, he has a website but in his case it specializes in his topic. (Rise and Fall had a dedicated website as well, but it was intended as promotional.)

This book is a little bit like going downhill – it starts out slowly and picks up speed as it goes along, moving quickly in its last few chapters. (The introductional items and Chapters 1 through 5 take up 183 pages, while the last four barely make it to 110.) It takes Karraker a long time to get to points at times, and the one issue I have with the book is that at times he likes to drill down and get a little too fine-pointed in his arguments and examples. I didn’t need eight pages worth of the names or places where mayors have been convicted of corruption or nearly five pages devoted to reprinting Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution. It’s a nearly 300 page book that probably could have and should have been distilled to about 250.

Even with that, there is a lot of good in the chapters, some of which have great titles like Give Me That Old-Time Corruption, The Planny State, or Tools Against Radicals. (Greg’s a punny guy after my own heart.) Once he gets through the length of opening examples of strangling cities big and small with bureaucratic red tape, overly aggressive government, and featherbedding the family nests with nepotism, the book gets into corruption and crime. In that part, Greg notes that, “Derek Chauvin turned this chapter inside out,” and goes on to describe how the events of 2020 affected local governments.

The part of The Little Picture that hit me where I lived, though, was where he talked about The Planny State. Doing what I do as my “real” job means I have to deal with a lot of these folks, and let me tell you they can really let power go to their head. (There are also many in the field who get what you’re trying to do and whose input is helpful and essential, but the bad apples are likely responsible for many of my gray hairs.) Karraker’s chapter goes through a number of those gray hair producers that he’s had to deal with in his previous quest to establish an Arabian horse farm in a scenic part of northern California, but these obstacles aren’t restricted to his corner of the world. That chapter slides smoothly into a discussion of top-down land use planning thanks to UN initiatives like Agenda 21/Agenda 2030 and ICLEI, which are tools local governments use to take away our private property rights.

But his conclusion is that you can fight city hall, and he closes the book with success stories and a plethora of helpful hints on how you can get more involved. In this case, Greg recommends spending a little less on his book by getting the electronic version because the links he places there are active. His intent is that The Little Picture be, “a living book, with frequent updates to ongoing stories in the outrageous chapters, about corruption, crime, stupidity, and waste, because there are always fresh outrages to share. I also want to update the stories of people like you and me who have beaten city hall, and add new stories of how they’ve done it.” Hopefully he’s successful at making his website a continuing resource on the subject like I intended to do with Rise and Fall until life (and other tasks) got in the way; granted, he’s built his specialty a little more for success in that regard because everyone gets mad at government at some point.

It’s because of that structure and goal that I agree with Karraker that the e-version of this book may be the better way to go. I’m just old school in that I like to have a paperback book in my hands, but those of us who are interested in local government (and I’m looking at you, Patriots for Delaware) should find this a helpful electronic resource.

Book review: January 6 – How Democrats Used the Capitol Protest to Launch a War on Terror Against the Political Right, by Julie Kelly

A comprehensive look at what REALLY happened.

That, my friends, is a long title. But it’s an important book.

I’m going to tell you where I was on the afternoon of January 6, 2021. I was working at my desk at my “real” job when I somehow got word about people breaching the Capitol. To be honest, once I heard that news I was a little scared about what was going on because, yeah, I knew there was a Trump rally in DC that day but I figured it wasn’t going to be that big of an affair. Had the BLM/antifa crowd infiltrated that mob and gone in there to cause trouble? After reading Julie Kelly’s book, chock-full of her research and original reporting, I fear the answer may be far worse than that.

One of the most helpful aspects of January 6 is the timeline Julie puts in early on in the book. We hear a lot about snippets of what went on, particularly the unnecessary murder of an unarmed Ashli Babbitt or the suspicious death of Rosanne Boyland, but knowing the order of events is essential for gathering the big picture of what went on surrounding the nation’s capitol that fateful day.

Yet in reading the book, I found Julie’s narrative most helpful in determining why we are having the aftermath. It’s not unheard of to have a government building breached as a part of protest: just in the last decade or so we’ve had union supporters occupy the Wisconsin state house to protest legislation they believed would weaken their outsized political impact, those who opposed the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court invading the Senate office building, and out in Oregon we had incidents from each side of the political spectrum in 2016 and 2020. (Note the militia protestors took over an unoccupied building in the most rural area of the state.) Of all these protestors, the only ones who faced major charges were the militia members – the nearly 300 arrested at the Kavanaugh protest were “being processed on site and released.” Their charge: “Crowding, Obstructing, or Incommoding,” which carried a possible 90-day jail sentence and $500 fine.

In fact, this disparity between the felony charges brought forth, even to the non-violent protestors in the January 6 cases, and those faced by Kavanaugh protestors, who most likely got off with little or no punishment despite the possible sentence, is another focus of Julie’s book. (I didn’t hear about so-called comedian Amy Schumer doing hard time, did you?) Keeping in regular contact with those arrested and still holed up in a dilapidated D.C. jail awaiting trial over a year later, Kelly gives their side of the story with regard to the conditions they are being kept in as well as the abuse being heaped upon them by a legal system that’s routinely violating their Sixth Amendment rights. Remember, for most on the Capitol grounds, their actual offense could be easily construed as that same “Crowding, Obstructing, or Incommoding” which was the case with Kavanaugh, meaning they’ve served that time and then some. (Later on, in a separate article, Julie argues that there’s no way these January 6 defendants can get a fair trial without a change of venue.)

But even more worrisome to lovers of our Constitutional republic is the possibility that the Capitol protest was something of an inside job. Some people smelled a rat the night before, yelling “Fed!” when (agent provocateur?) Ray Epps repeatedly declared “we must go into the Capitol!” to anyone who would listen. But Kelly’s timeline and subsequent video research reveals that Epps and several others who were on the FBI wanted list for their involvement with the (so-called) insurrection seemed to be the ones organizing the breach of the Capitol grounds, which, unbeknownst to those attending the Trump rally, were closed for public access by an order the night before. (To give you some context, had those restrictions been in place at the 9/12 rally I attended in 2009, I and thousands of others would have been subject to arrest. And I never set foot inside.) As Kelly writes, Epps and others were taking down restricted area fencing while Trump was still speaking so those coming from the rally wouldn’t have known. Furthermore, no such restriction was in place in 2017 when Donald Trump won a controversial and protested election.

Just the implication that some faction was weaponizing the FBI is chilling enough, but Kelly goes farther by looking into the bureau’s infiltration of the Gretchen Whitmer kidnapping plot, which led to over a dozen arrests in Michigan and other states. Ironically enough, the head of the Detroit FBI field office, Steven D’Antuono, was promoted after the Whitmer arrests to become the D.C. field office head. (This is the one place in the book I noticed a glaring editing mistake, one of the few flaws in the tome.) Is it possible that the skeptics of January 5th were right in smelling a federal setup that ensnared otherwise peaceful protestors?

Kelly wasn’t looking for trouble: in fact, when 2021 began she described her plans as “to continue reporting on COVID hysteria, feckless Republican leadership in Washington, and the Biden regime’s plans to reconfigure the economy around climate change dogma. The nonstop drama surrounding Donald Trump, I figured, would take a welcome break.” Nope, not so much.

Instead, Julie’s task became that of writing an indispensible book if you want to begin to understand the drama unfolding at the Capitol that chilly winter day. (Even if you don’t, it’s still an indispensible book.) Yet the shame of deadlines and publishing is that this history is still being written insofar as the effects of January 6 were likely guiding Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s extremist overreaction to a trucker protest as well as the potential response to a truck convoy of our own.

To call this a “war on terror against the political Right” may have been the most prescient portion of Julie Kelly’s work, because we’re seeing it come true in real time. The question is just how much we’ll put up with before the time comes when risking arrest is the least bad option.

Book review: Rigged – How the Media, Big Tech, and the Democrats Seized Our Elections, by Mollie Hemingway

The latest bestseller from Mollie
Hemingway found its way to me.

Unlike my last book review, I decided to use some of those Amazon dollars I had accrued over the years from various exploits on something useful and informative. Mollie Hemingway’s newest contribution to the discourse scores on both counts, and although I didn’t find a whole lot of new information to me in her book it’s a great one-stop shop in determining how the 2020 election (and, by some extension, the Trump presidency) careened off the rails.

Notice I say I didn’t find a whole lot of new information, and the reason I said that is because I keep an ear to the ground with news from a number of sources I trust to give me the straight skinny. On that count Hemingway is with me as I counted over 1,200 footnotes, and even though many are repeats of the same information source I can’t fault the amount of research on this one.

Mollie takes her time laying out the case, working her way through a number of events that began even before the moment that Donald Trump took office. By the way, I have to ask: have you ever noticed that an election won by a Republican is seldom considered legitimate in the eyes of the Left? Ever since Watergate, there’s almost always been some sort of scandal associated with a GOP victory – accusations of Ronald Reagan sending George H.W. Bush over on an SR-71 spy plane to delay the release of the Iranian hostages until after the 1980 election, the whole Bush v. Gore controversy in 2000, the Diebold scandal in Ohio from 2004, and Russia Russia Russia in 2016. (We got a break for a few years when Reagan was re-elected in enough of a landslide to preclude those questions and Bush followed on his coattails.) Hemingway begins her book talking about the Russia issue but settles in with a look at how election laws were changed in 2020 thanks to the Wuhan flu.

One thing I really liked about Rigged was the setup and layout, as each separate argument group gets its own chapter that’s well-covered. Because of that, it’s not perfectly sequential, but it hits on all the keynotes a reader needs to understand to figure out why the 2020 election went so terribly wrong for Trump. We find out early on, for example, that Democrats were terrified about a second Trump term because the economy was so strong, but got the stroke of luck they needed when COVID-19 (a.k.a. the CCP virus) struck in late 2019 and began to truly affect our nation in the spring of 2020. At the end of the 2020 State of the Union address, with the nation at maximum, triumphant Trump, and where the second chapter comes to an end, Hemingway wrote:

Trump’s opponents would need a miracle to stop him. He was at the peak of his powers and was leading the country to new heights. But Democrats would soon get their lucky break when news of a novel coronavirus reached American shores. It was a crisis they wouldn’t let go to waste.

“Rigged”, p. 60.

Mollie details how things went spiraling downward from there: the rapid spread of COVID and the summer of rioting in the wake of George Floyd’s untimely death put Trump on the defensive, and as the economy tanked thanks to overly restrictive CCP virus mandates it suddenly became virtuous in the eyes of the media to run a campaign from a basement like Joe Biden’s was. She adds in full chapters describing the bizarre influence of “fake news” and, more importantly, the withholding of vital information from the voting public during the Hunter Biden influence scandal. Perhaps the “10 percent for the big guy” was the allotted share from “the most extensive and inclusive voter fraud organization” Biden had – no, wait, that voter fraud organization was bought and paid for by “Zuck bucks,” to which Hemingway also devotes a chapter.

The part where I learned the most was the latter part of the book, which briefly detailed briefly Democrat efforts to clear the field for Joe Biden in certain states – in particular, their shameful effort in Wisconsin to not only successfully kick the Green Party off the ballot, but denying write-in candidate Kanye West a spot because he was fourteen seconds late in having his paperwork accepted – the building was locked due to COVID restrictions and a circuit court ruled against West. (Under normal circumstances, his campaign’s paperwork would have easily made the deadline.) As Hemingway points out, no such efforts were made against the Libertarian Party, whose voters tend to be more right-leaning – and whose Presidential candidate, Jo Jorgensen, received more votes in Wisconsin than Biden’s victory margin there. (Not to say the Republicans aren’t guilty of that at times, too – just ask the Ohio Libertarian Party.)

Overall, Mollie does a fantastic job detailing the voting issues in Wisconsin, Georgia, and Pennsylvania. And if that weren’t enough, we are exposed to the folly that was Donald Trump’s post-election campaign for justice – already a long shot thanks to a system corrupted by the Democrats, Hemingway blamed Rudy Giuliani for many of the legal team’s problems.

Giuliani appeared more interested in creating a public relations spectacle than mounting a credible legal challenge. As his questionable legal strategy faltered, many of the big law firms that had signed onto the Trump campaign’s legal effort didn’t quit so much as quietly back away.

“Rigged”, p. 293.

If one were to consider Donald Trump’s biggest mistakes, number one would have been giving Anthony Fauci the time of day. But arguably a close second was entrusting his legal challenge to the 2020 election to Rudy Giuliani, who seemed to be simply the ringmaster of a circus that also included grifters like Lin Wood and Sidney Powell, whose kraken we still await. I don’t think she meant the Seattle hockey team, did she?

As Hemingway writes to conclude the book, in its final chapter, “Consent of the Losers”:

A growing number of Americans are outraged by the way the left seizes and deploys power. They are sick of the lies, manipulation, and distortion that a corrupt ruling class spins on a regular basis. Those courageous citizens, not the decaying establishment, will determine the fate of our nation. Their efforts will ensure that we pass on our beloved republic to future generations.

In the fights to come, those men and women will have the best weapon – truth – on their side. The only question is whether their leaders will have the courage to use it.

“Rigged”, p. 332.

Like I’m sure she did, I got that bile and anger in the back of my throat simply from retyping the sentence for the quote. It’s not so much that I was a Trump fan, but just the way the history we know of shook out showed that there are people who almost literally take the childhood taunt, “who died and made you king?” as a challenge. They don’t need no stinking laws passed by a legislature to seize power; they’ll just executive order it and dare a court to stop them – too often the courts don’t. (And yes, I’m looking at you, Governor Carnage.)

Rigged is not going to make you happier, unless you’re a power-hungry narcissist. I just hope it adds some steel to the spines because come November we may need it. This one was well worth the investment and read.

Book review: Sheriff Mike Lewis – Constitutional. Uncanceled. by Haven Simmons

This book came out last month, and it’s an intriguing one.
Cover image via Amazon.

One would think I don’t read books anymore, and to be honest I had no idea it had been over a half-decade since I reviewed one here on monoblogue. However, I believed this would be an interesting tome with which to renew the tradition, given the local connection of both subject and author, a retired communication professor from Salisbury University.

Moreover, I thought I could shine a unique light on the book as both a published author myself – someone who knows what it’s like to put together a book requiring hours of research and attempting to make it palatable to a reader who wishes to know more about the subject – and as a former constituent and eventual supporter of the title subject. There were quite a few names familiar to me dropped within the book; as one would imagine that drove a lot of my interest in reading a volume that my wife actually purchased for her enjoyment. (It’s why I’m waiting a week or so to put out this review so as not to give her any spoilers.)

Mike Lewis, however, was not just my sheriff when I lived in Wicomico County before crossing over to Delaware two-plus years ago. Arguably the national platform for drug interdiction and Second Amendment support he’s created via his frequent media appearances make Lewis the third-most recognizable figure of his generation with a Salisbury-area background, trailing only Terminator series actress Linda Hamilton and longtime Weather Channel meteorologist Mike Seidel.

Furthermore, not only are Lewis and I almost perfect contemporaries in age and upbringing as we were both born in the same year and have at least some (in my case) amount of rural background, there’s always been that political aspect surrounding him – once he became a household word in Wicomico during his first campaign in 2006, swamping a four-person GOP primary field with 59.7% of the vote then winning handily that November, Mike got to a point where supporters would have jumped at the chance to help elect him to any higher office he wanted. One interesting tidbit I found in SMLCU is that he once promised his wife he would only serve two terms as Sheriff, but instead filed for a fifth last year. Should he be re-elected in 2022, though, he would match his immediate predecessor, the late Sheriff Hunter Nelms, with five electoral victories. Coming back for a sixth term in 2026 would give Lewis the opportunity to serve even longer than Nelms’s 22 years on the job. (An old-school conservative Democrat, Hunter was appointed in 1984 to finish an unexpired term and served through the 2006 election, where he opted not to seek another term.)

In an epilogue describing his book, Simmons recounts the three themes he was attempting to address: first, Lewis’s ambitions and accomplishments, second, those things that the policing profession entails, and lastly, “the big picture of government and the greater society that places law enforcement in a crucial, albeit vulnerable and often underappreciated position.” Out of the three, the book scores well on the first and last parts, but becomes a bit of a drag on the second portion, much of which comes out as a laundry list of offenses that takes up the book’s second, lengthy chapter – 66 pages out of a book that’s 177 pages, excluding epilogue, acknowledgements, end notes, and photos. (That extra material brings the book to 221 pages overall.)

The problem with that second chapter is that dozens of arrests are detailed, including one I really didn’t need a reminder of – the embarrassing Julie Brewington DUI incident from 2018. (I served with Brewington, a TEA Party leader in Wicomico, for my final two years on the Wicomico County Republican Central Committee.) This list could have been honed down to perhaps a couple dozen of the biggest ones, and the final part of the chapter that mainly deals with incidents in the local schools and at Salisbury University should have been a standalone chapter, particularly as the book then transitions into the seminal case that has occurred under Lewis’s watch: the Sarah Foxwell murder case from Christmas 2009. (One departure from the book: while Lewis talks about tying yellow ribbons to mailboxes to denote yards that had been searched by property owners, I distinctly recall they were asking for red shirts or rags because I remember tying one of my old red shirts to a wagon wheel we kept at the end of the driveway where we then lived in the Foxwell search area so they knew we had checked our property. Perhaps – surprisingly – Mike’s memory is less clear than mine on that one, or maybe it was an either/or situation since most houses don’t have yellow ribbon on hand.)

However, once that slog of a second chapter is complete, the book moves along at a nice pace through the time period and events that made Lewis a household name among county sheriffs nationwide, among them the Foxwell case, assisting at the Baltimore riots in 2015 and becoming an impromptu spokesman for the police gathered there, and Mike’s advocacy for the Second Amendment. We also get a glimpse of then-candidate Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign stop in nearby Berlin and the fact that Lewis initially backed Marco Rubio in the race thanks to a previous encounter with him on a drug interdiction fact-finding mission to South America.

SMLCU also gets its share of ink from a couple local politicians, most notably former Wicomico State’s Attorney turned Circuit Court Judge Matt Maciarello and State Senator Mary Beth Carozza, who gushed that, “Mike Lewis was and is the real deal when it comes to defining a top cop – a leader through and through, who day in and day out, leads by example.” While Wicomico County has strong leadership in that regard, it should be pointed out that there was a modest write-in campaign against him in 2018 that netted perhaps 7% of the vote – most likely from malcontents in the local “defund the police” crowd who don’t like Lewis’s aggressive stance toward crimefighting. I have news for them: it’s clear from this book that he doesn’t like them, either.

Unfortunately, all books have a cutoff date for production and printing, so one loose end that would have been worth following up and asking more about was the effort by Lewis to declare Wicomico County a Second Amendment preservation county last year. It ends with a vow to reintroduce the legislation this year, but the question is whether the county would take up something like that in an election year. There were a lot of disappointed people when Lewis backed away from the bill, which many believe is necessary as a counterweight to the overbearing government in Annapolis and Washington, D.C. The book quotes former Delegate Don Dwyer as claiming, “The role of the sheriff is to be an interposer between the law and the citizen.” Added Dwyer, “Sheriffs do have the power to nullify or ignore a law if it is unconstitutional.” Pointed out several times in the book is the fact the sheriff (as opposed to a police chief) is an elected official, thus the public trust is placed upon the officeholder with the accountability of election always in the background.

In sum, a tidier book may have gotten the point across with more brevity, but overall this is an interesting look at a law enforcement officer who has perhaps gone out of his way to have an outsized influence on people both inside and outside his chosen profession. I recall when Mike was first running that I worried about his outside interests:

Lewis is a wonderful teacher. I sat in last month’s WCRC meeting and was fascinated by Mike’s presentation. I’m not a cop but I learned a lot about traffic stops and drug interdiction from just 20 or 30 minutes listening to him speak. Had Hunter Nelms decided to run for another term, I’m certain Mike Lewis would be starting a second career traveling the country and even internationally as a teacher and expert on drug interdiction. It almost seems like a waste having him as a county sheriff when he could do a great job and touch many more people with a career path like he was contemplating.

For Wicomico County Sheriff,” August 20, 2006.

As it turns out, he was more of a multitasker than I gave him credit for – since I endorsed his chief Republican opponent for the primary before backing Lewis in the general – and the book overcomes its flaws to make most of those points.

Finally, in the interest of full disclosure, I am (indirectly) quoted in this book as “a blogger.” Simmons quoted a blog post I did in 2013 at the Second Amendment townhall meeting held by Lewis, which is also credited in the end notes. I guess, thanks to this review, Haven now gets unsolicited advice for a second edition of this book should one come about.

Book review: Friends of the Wigwam: A Civil War Story by John William Huelskamp

The Pecatonica River meanders its way across the northern section of Illinois as it works its way out of Wisconsin,  slowly winding toward a junction with the Rock River west of Rockford. One would think that a stream hundreds of miles away from the action couldn’t be worked into a Civil War story, but author and historian John William Huelskamp succeeds in making this corner of Illinois a key player in the events surrounding the conflict. (Of course, it helps that the Commander-in-Chief at the time as well as the victorious Union general were both connected to that corner of the state in the years preceding the war.)

Huelskamp opens the tale by transporting us to the banks of the Pecatonica in 1857, introducing us to 16-year-old Will and 13-year-old Aaron as they discover the wigwam of the title along its banks. But the action doesn’t just occur there – in scenes around the region, from Chicago on the east to Galena on the west, we are introduced to a number of characters whose lives will eventually be intertwined in and around the conflict. The story moves quickly through a number of historical guideposts that set the stage for what’s to come, with some of the most interesting pieces being those where Abraham Lincoln is convinced to run first for Senate against Stephen Douglas and later for President as a Republican, with a band of supporters that came to be known as the “Wide Awakes.”

But the wigwam was the stage over the next two years to six major characters who became the friends of the wigwam – Will and Aaron, the 15-year-old tomboy Allie, the teenage sharpshooter T.J. Lockwood and his portly fisherman friend Patrick “Trick” Kane – who become part of the pact thanks to a rare errant shot from T.J. – and Allie’s 14-year-old friend Jenny Putnam. They come of age as the nation lurches closer to war, with the boys eventually joining the 93rd Illinois Regiment being recruited in the area by Jenny’s father Holden Putnam.

In truth, this book could have easily been subdivided into two parts, as the onset of war changed both the tone and the pace. The second portion opens with Elmer Ellsworth,  a “friend and brother” of Allie’s – who she had teased about “actin’ so stiff and stuffy” in his military drill uniform at the Lincoln-Douglas debate a few years earlier – becoming the first casualty of the rebellion as he was ambushed taking down a Confederate flag from a hotel in Virginia, just across from Washington, D.C. As the hostilities escalate, several of the men of the area become part of what was the 45th Illinois Regiment, while the boys eventually join with the 93rd being formed under Colonel Putnam in August of 1862. A distraught Allie, who has fallen in love with Will, begs them not to go, but Will calmly tells her, “Allie, it is our duty to go. If we don’t fight this war, who else will?”

As the 93rd heads south and becomes entangled in the campaigns in Tennessee and Mississippi, we find Jenny and Allie back home, mortified at the prospect of losing their friends – so much so that Allie concocts a desperate plan with Jenny’s help to check on their welfare.

There’s no question that the warfare takes its toll on those in the small towns in that region of “the Sucker State,” with many of their best and brightest men never making it home or returning disfigured or mutilated. The friends of the wigwam are not spared those fates before the story ends with a reunion of some of the survivors along the Pecatonica in 1864. Huelskamp closes the loop with an afterword revealing what happened to many of the main characters, including the six friends of the wigwam.

The beauty of Huelskamp’s work as a historian and writer is how the characters are brought to life. There are some accounts from those with integral parts of the story brought to us through the text itself, with Huelskamp providing photos of the actual documents from the battlefield. We get a glimpse at letters sent from the front, military orders as presented, and other documents that explain bits and pieces of the account he puts together.

But much of the work comes from his imagination as to how events could have taken place, even if some of them seem too strange to be true. As an example, the overall story of Allie’s journey is one which reads as complete fiction but it was eventually documented as historical fact in the decades after the war came to an end. (However, Huelskamp had to take a measure of fictional license with her to make the overall story more clear.) It takes a long time and great deal of flipping back and forth, though, to recall where some of the characters had appeared before as the different regiments and divisions work their way through the battle southward. Huelskamp takes the broad strokes of how the battles were fought and adds in a mix of fact (based on the first-hand accounts of the letter writers and correspondents) and realistic fiction to tell a fascinating story of life as soldiers who were fighting for the cause of preserving the Union.

With the book being so full of characters, though, it seems to me a few weren’t fleshed out as well as they could have. One example was the Negro boy L’il Joe, who the clan discovered hiding in the wigwam as an escaped slave before they assist him on his trek northward. Although he’s later brought up in passing, we only get his story as he reports for duty (with his father and two other family members) in a colored regiment near the end of the war and in the penultimate chapter of the book. But since Joe’s story wasn’t followed upon, it’s possible the Negro and Underground Railroad facets of the story were added as fictional tales based on the real events of the era.

In Friends of the Wigwam, Huelskamp combines all the facts and tales into a believable, riveting story that has enough twists and turns to keep you guessing how the story of each participant will end. Perhaps it’s not the best summer beach book out there, but if you are into historical fiction or relish the legends of the Civil War, you will be fascinated at how interesting the people and places of this portion of the great state of Illinois became as the War Between the States played out. Those in our region who likely learned of Maryland’s place in the war should be fans of this different perspective on history.

The case for homeschooling

By Cathy Keim

In the long ago year of 1988, my husband and I made the decision to homeschool our children. I had previously made up my mind that I would teach my children to read figuring that if they could read, then they would be able to handle whatever came at them in school. Even in those faraway times, we had serious concerns about what and how things were being taught in the government schools. Our plan progressed to the point that we enrolled our first child into a small church school where the parents all participated in the school in various professional or volunteer positions. Since I had a Bachelor of Science in Chemistry, I was given the sixth grade science class four days a week. This meant that my younger children had to go into the nursery manned by other volunteer parents.

I had taught our oldest child to read at age four, which I told the teachers when they were testing him for grade placement. They scoffed at me and said that he had just memorized the books from me reading them to him. They whisked him away to test him and came back to inform me with great wonder that he could read.

That should have tipped me off that trouble lay ahead as I was openly discounted from having any knowledge of my own child since I was just a parent. They wanted to push him ahead to the first grade class, but I didn’t want him to be with older children. They allowed him to enter kindergarten and I began teaching sixth grade science.

Within days, my sweet little son came home from school swaggering and bossing around his younger sisters. They were beneath him now that he was a big guy that went to school! I was astonished at the change. Next I found out that the kindergarten teacher was having my son read to the other children while she took care of other matters.

I was diligently preparing science lessons and science experiments to wow my sixth graders. Instead, I found that they had a pecking order firmly in place as to who was the smartest student and who was the dumbest student and they were not interested in learning for the joy of learning.

I was blown away that as early as sixth grade this very small class of students being taught by loving Christian teachers and parents was jaded and uninterested in learning for the sake of learning. I began to question why I was depositing my little ones in a nursery while I taught uninterested students and my own son was getting an inflated ego, but not learning much.

That was the end of our schooling experience. We became homeschoolers and never looked back. For many years, I did not encourage parents to homeschool. I figured it was a personal choice and I knew how much time and effort it took, so I didn’t push it on people. If anyone asked, I would wax lyrical on the many benefits of homeschooling. The benefits were many and well worth the hard work that I put into the homeschooling, but I didn’t push people to join me.

Times have changed though. If my husband and I thought the schools were bad in 1988, we had no idea what was coming down the pike. Now, whenever anybody asks, I am quick to tell them that homeschooling is the best choice. If they cannot homeschool, then their next option is a private Christian school. I would not send my child to a government school, not for the magnet program, the sports team, or the IB program. The indoctrination, the mediocrity, and the violence make it impossible for me to advise anybody to go to a government school.

My husband and I wanted our children to love to learn and to know how to find the information they needed to learn whatever they needed to learn. In the lower grades I taught to completion (that was how I described it). It meant that they didn’t move ahead until they were rock solid on the foundational knowledge. It is hard to do algebra if you don’t know your basic math facts. You can’t write well if you don’t know grammar.

I could write on and on about this, but I don’t have to since my friend, Sam Sorbo, just wrote They’re Your Kids: My Journey from Self-Doubter to Home School Advocate. With her usual incisive wit and to the point plain speaking she makes the case for homeschooling. I have written a few pieces on the ills of Common Core, but Sam puts the information at your fingertips in a quick-to-read, but devastating review of our government schools. Then she picks you up and puts your feet on the path to success as she encourages you to join her and her family on the daily adventure that is homeschooling.

I laughed out loud when she told about her son becoming the swaggering big man after a short time at school. I had witnessed the same unhappy transformation in my own son back in 1988. Happily, I can join Sam in telling you that your children can come home and shed these unwanted changes.

Sam explains how you can pick up your homeschool and travel for work or vacations without missing a beat. We found this particularly helpful since my husband would have conferences in wonderful locations like Boston, San Francisco, or Sanibel Island. We would study up on what museums, zoos, aquariums, historical sites, or geological wonders were going to be available at the conference location.

Each family will have their own unique homeschool style based on their interests and their needs. Parents, you will know your children and the bonds will be deeper between your children since they will not be separated from you and from each other for most of their waking hours. When you identify a problem area for your children, you will deal with it because they are with you and it must be done. Too many parents send their children off to let the teacher fix the problem.

This book is like hearing myself talk as Sam hits one point after another that I dealt with as a homeschooling mom. She addresses the insecurity that I believe all homeschooling moms feel from time to time (or let’s be honest: daily!). When you ship your children out each day, you can blame the school or the teacher or their peers when things go wrong. When you are the teacher, you feel that it all is on your head. The truth of the matter is that as parents we are responsible for our children’s education, so whether you homeschool or get somebody else to educate your child, you as the parent are still where the buck stops.

As Sam puts it: “Let’s not fool ourselves: homework is home school, just with more pressure, later in the day, when everyone’s tired, hungry, and grouchy.” So why not skip outsourcing the most important job you can ever have and bring it home. Read Sam’s book and if you have questions, just drop me a comment. You can start your own family’s adventure.

Here is a clip of Sam’s interview on Fox and Friends about her book.

Book review: You Will Be Made to Care: The War on Faith, Family, and Your Freedom to Believe by Erick Erickson and Bill Blankschaen

As I described a few weeks ago, I was one of a select group that was picked to read an advance manuscript of this book for reviewing purposes. Having read Erick Erickson’s work on a regular basis through RedState and his new website called The Resurgent, I thought I had a pretty good idea of what to expect in this book. Yet I was still intrigued by the direction that it went and by the emotions this book took me through as I read through it.

In its opening chapters, the book honestly made me quite angry. Knowing that Erickson is legally trained, it should not have been a surprise that he lays out the initial argument regarding the ongoing war on faith, family, and (particularly) freedom to believe by laying out case after case after trumped-up case where aggrieved members of the protected classes of today’s society work to rob those who proclaim their adherence of traditional, Biblical values of their livelihoods and reputations. While Erickson initially brings his main focus to the case of former Atlanta fire chief (and onetime Obama appointee) Kelvin Cochran, who was dismissed in early 2015 by the city of Atlanta based on a book he had written over a year earlier, he works briefly through dozens of other cases where believers have encountered unexpected consequences for running afoul of secular society.

Needless to say, my leftwing friends would read through this laundry list of incidents – which include the more famous examples of businesses like Sweet Cakes by Melissa, Ralph’s Thriftway, or Memories Pizza – and conclude that these entities were trampling on the “right” to, using these particular examples, seek to solicit a wedding cake created for their same-sex ceremony, purchase the “morning after” pill, or cater their same-sex wedding reception. To the activist plaintiffs in the former two cases it didn’t matter that each of these entitles were happy to suggest alternative arrangements or, in the case of Memories Pizza, was dealing with an entirely theoretical request: the plaintiffs believed these businesses were using the fig leaf of religious belief to deny “rights,” and sadly in most of these instances the heavy hand of government was putting a thumb on the scale against the business owners. These abuses of power, which appear throughout the first two-thirds of the book, should make anyone who reads this book angry.

Yet as Erickson explains, after going through several of these examples:

There is one key reason that those on the Left must force their beliefs on the rest of us. It’s really very simple. If they didn’t force their craziness on us, we would never embrace it. Deep down, they know that to be true. Progressive thinking doesn’t work in the real world.

They go on to try and figure out the progressive worldview, and at that point my anger turned more into a sense of pity. It’s really not all that hard to come to the realization that we are but sinners who fall short of the grace of God, but to do so means you actually have to admit to yourself that many of your acts are sinful and eventual repentance is necessary.

But Erickson makes the case in his book that pastors and churches are falling short in their calling as well, substituting symbolism for substance. For example:

There seems to a pattern here in Protestant circles: the more liberal a church becomes, the more it invests in all the trappings of the appearance of religion. The more it compromises the truth, the more it seems to try and compensate with impressive liturgies, pompous ceremony, and clerical garb. The compromisers seem to want you to get a feeling of spirituality from the way they conduct the service – not the words they use. It’s as if they want to be judged by the color of their robes and not the content of their sermons.

To Erickson, too many men of the cloth have come to avoid the discussion of sin as it relates to everyday life. Pastors, he argues, have become overly timid in their discussions so as not to scare away parishioners by appearing too judgmental or jeopardize the church’s tax-exempt status. While the modern church can be entertaining, he writes, it falls short on the enlightenment aspect. Through most of Christian history, he continues, we have been persecuted so why should we expect different today? In fact, Erick boldly states that our faith in America as a nation may be misplaced if it supersedes our faith in God. Ours may not be the Christian nation we grew up believing that it was.

Yet my anger at the outset turned to hope as I continued on. While it has the appearance of being a little bit self-serving – as Erickson’s recently-created website is dubbed The Resurgent – within the final chapters of You Will Be Made to Care he lays out ideas for a resurgence of the people: The Resurgent Community, The Resurgent Believer, The Resurgent Family, The Resurgent Church, and finally The Resurgent Citizen. I see these five chapters as the “how-to guide” of the book – like the erstwhile lawyer, local politician and campaigner he was, Erickson laid out the case for change, added the necessary backstory and history, then explained his platform and agenda for positive, worthwhile improvements to our state of being.

In introducing this segment of the book, Erickson writes that the nation is not about red vs. blue states or regions anymore. Instead:

I see us – the resistance to the suddenly dominant Spirit of the Age – as a group of conservatives and faith-filled people united against the forces of the Left. Sensing what is at stake in the conflict, many of us have found our voices and are willing to be bold, to become a resurgent people of free ideas, faith, and family.

The evolution of this book hit home for me because it reminded me of my own journey through faith and what it can lead us to believe. I’ve been pro-life for many years, but never really became as activist about it until I began regularly attending church. It’s also led me in the direction of bringing my cohort Cathy Keim on board as a relatively like-minded writer with many of the same goals in mind but a different and unique audience.

(This also affords me the opportunity to remind readers that Erickson has a co-author for this book – Bill Blankschaen seemed to be an excellent choice as a co-author given his history as a collaborator and pastor. While I write about Erick in the singular for the purposes of the review, I’m sure Erick would be the first to tell you the book is a joint effort.)

Yet the chapter on The Resurgent Community reminds me of something I wrote (to considerably less fanfare) a few years ago. After the introduction, I wrote about community in the respect that we should stop looking inward and do more to help our fellow man. While my perspective wasn’t overtly religious, the point Erickson made in this chapter made me think about that which I wrote a few years back but had contemplated long before that.

I also enjoyed the humanizing moment he shared in the book. Wrote Erickson:

If we know we need the fellowship of other believers, why do we seem to be so cloistered in our own homes? I don’t know about you, but one of the greatest barriers our family has to connecting with other believers is (a) very practical concern – a clean house. It sounds crazy when we think about it in the context of facing persecution for our faith, but the first thing people have to be willing to do to cultivate community is to stop worrying about how their home looks.

This light-hearted example aside, perhaps the thing I most took away from You Will Be Made to Care is Erickson’s conclusion that we are not alone. Despite these interesting times we live in, the advice to be a light in the darkness and be a happy warrior is timeless.

What I would encourage those who read my review to do is to (naturally) pre-order the book for yourself. (Like most new books, it already has a website and pre-ordering entitles you to some added perks.) Since it comes out next Monday (the 22nd) it will likely be in your hands next week. Read through it and then share it: loan it out to your friends, your pastors, your fellow worshipers and remind them they are not alone.

Even if they only read it and return it, I’m sure Erick and Bill won’t miss the dollar or two in their pockets if they know the information is being disseminated. There are a couple people on my personal list to share it with, so once I get my hard copy I’m doing the same.

It’s time for Christians to stop feeling sorry for ourselves or playing the victim. At my church we are reminded that the outside world is a missionary field, so if Erickson’s book helps you serve in that capacity there’s nothing wrong with enlisting his aid.

Book review: The Long War and Common Core: Everything You Need to Know to Win the War! by Donna H. Hearne

Reviewed by Cathy Keim

I was out weeding my flowerbeds this afternoon, which is very therapeutic. You feel like you can bring order to chaos with a little sweat and elbow grease. The satisfaction is temporary though as you know those weeds will be back quickly, especially after a good rain.

This brought to mind the book that I just finished, The Long War & Common Core: Everything You Need to Know to Win the War!, by Donna H. Hearne. The current struggle against Common Core is just the newest battle in a continuous onslaught from the progressive educational community to capture our children’s hearts and minds. Valiant parents and teachers have fought against Progressive Education in the 1930s, Secular Humanist Education in the 1950s, and Outcome Based Education in the 1990s. “All of these strategies are based on the premise of “progressive experts,” instead of mom, dad and the teacher, setting common standards for all children. And since these secular, utopian standards drive the curriculum and assessments, local control of education cease to be a reality.” (Hearne 3)

Like the weeds in my flowerbeds, these bad ideas just keep popping up. Even now several states are rebranding Common Core because of the fierce resistance from parents. But just because the name changes, it doesn’t mean that the standards have changed.

Donna Hearne is well equipped to take up the challenge of documenting the twists and turns of our academic wars in America. According to her Amazon biography, Hearne “is executive director of The Constitutional Coalition and has a degree in elementary education from Washington University, St. Louis. She is a writer, a radio talk show host for thirty-plus years, and currently serves on a local school board. From 1981-1991, she worked in the U.S. Department of Education. Appointed by President Reagan, she served on several policy-making boards, with an appointment in 1988 to America 2000, the forerunner of Goals 2000 as her last appointment.”

I attended the 26th Educational Conference hosted by the Constitutional Coalition back in January of this year. Donna mentioned her book then as she was just sending it to the publisher. Her goal in writing this book was to equip parents to understand the history of the war that they are now a part of and how to protect their children while fighting to wrench control of their schools back from the federal government.

This book is a compact 141 pages including appendices and endnotes. The goal was to make a Reader’s Digest type condensed book that would point the reader to the facts, equip them with information for further research if they desired, but to be a fast-paced quick read for busy people.

Donna was successful in this endeavor. The book is so tightly woven that it is hard to pull a quote without wanting to just keep going. It is difficult to condense it any further.

She introduces you to the big players like Antonio Gramsci, the Italian communist, who coined the phrase “the long march through culture” (Hearne 4), as well as John Dewey who reportedly said, “You can’t make Socialists out of individualists – children who know how to think for themselves spoil the harmony of the collective society which is coming, where everyone is interdependent” (Hearne 3), and our current high priest of teacher education, Bill Ayers.

She presents the Frankfurt School, a Communist think tank officially called the Institute for Social Research that was started in Germany in 1922 by George Lukacs, a Hungarian aristocrat turned communist. The Frankfurt school moved to the USA in the 1930s and 1940s where John Dewey’s sponsorship gave them access to Teacher’s College at Columbia University, the premier teaching institution in the USA. From there its graduates filled more that 60% of all teaching and educational and administrative posts in the country.

Here are a few of the goals of the Frankfurt School: “creation of racism offenses…teaching of sex and homosexuality to children…huge immigration to destroy identity…encouraging the breakdown of the family” (Hearne 40). These bullet points sound just like what we see happening all around us.

Donna addresses the problems with the science standards and the literature/history standards. “The traditional/classical liberal arts education laid down foundational truths and built sequentially, logically, and contextually on those foundations, ultimately creating an ever-widening knowledge base upon which any vocation or pursuit of life could draw upon and transition into.” (Hearne 98)

The current concept tosses out the old and teaches fractured thinking where the student is exposed to lots of information without any context. Since they cannot organize the random facts in any meaningful fashion, their brains become cluttered with irrelevant facts and the brain does not develop in an orderly way.

The examples will drive the claims home to you. If you think that you do not have to worry about Common Core because you homeschool your child or send them to private school, think again. There will be no escape for any student that wants to continue on to college because the entrance exams will be the choke point. Your student will not be able to pass if they do not conform to the standards.

Do not despair! There is a whole chapter called Solutions to help you take your knowledge and make a difference. The first Appendix has questions and answers about Common Core. This appendix is invaluable for the clear, succinct answers that you can use when talking to friends and politicians about Common Core.

Donna Hearne really did a great job of putting together a fast paced, highly readable book about an extremely important topic. If you care about fighting Common Core, this is the book to get you started.

When I talk to people about the big issues of the day, many are discouraged and feel helpless. Take heart from the weeds in your garden. They will always be there, but you are not helpless. Go pull some weeds, beat back the jungle, and see how much better you feel. Now do the same with the neverending battle over the educational system. Get educated and then do one thing with your newfound knowledge. Taking charge of your life and resisting the educational behemoth will change your attitude. You can make a difference.

Book review: America’s Suicide by Michael H. Davison

Americas SuicideFor decades there have been people convinced America’s greatness is behind her. Based on some of the evidence, though, a compelling case can indeed be made that this republic is in its final days and author Michael H. Davison believes that he both understands the problem and prescribes the cure in his new book, America’s Suicide.

As we all know, suicide is the act of taking one’s own life. It’s brought about generally out of despair, pain, or a feeling there’s no way out. In America’s case, though, this suicide is a slow-motion decline caused by the seductive message of the Left, one which tells the voter they can have it all if they allow the government to act as provider and guardian. Frequently citing the untold bloodshed of the twentieth century from tyrants such as Hitler, Stalin, Mao, and the Kim family in North Korea, Davison builds the case that continuing on our path will invariably lead to an American dictator. He closes his opening chapter by noting:

As you applaud the government white knight in his crusades to slay the evil dragon of prejudice, condemn the poisoners of air and water, champion the causes of the poor and bypassed, feed the hungry, shelter the homeless, inspire the young to correct political thinking, protect us from the greedy, punish the exploiter, regulate the manufacturer into a straitjacket, transfer your burdens to the rich, school the ignorant, heal the sick, comfort the despairing and soothe the passage of the aged, all while he basks in your adulation of his compassion and generosity (which you pretend not to notice was at your and your grandchildren’s expense)…have you been meanwhile noticing that each year you have a little less to say about what you do with your life and property?

Few conservatives would find fault with that laundry list of laments, nor his suggestion that the Left in this nation has perverted capitalism into an unrecognizable form, and in this paragraph Davison sums up much of the issue he takes with the Left. It’s an easy target, one which Davison spends much of the first half of his book painstakingly detailing.

Yet Davison also finds fault with the Right, in part the wobbly opposition of the Republican Party. As he writes:

The more that the Republican Party abandons its ostensible principles and concedes moral superiority to its opposition by adopting diluted versions of the latter’s principles, the more will Republicans lose the allegiance of men of principle.

But on the other hand, Davison continues:

Yet the more that Republicans adhere to their advertised free market and limited government doctrines, the more votes they will lose from all too numerous people threatened by principles that hold them responsible for their own well being and who consistently vote to expand parental government.

He also contends that:

Capitalism can never become a viable economic system until it becomes moral, and it cannot become moral until it stops subordinating the good of mankind to profit.

In other words, the Right isn’t completely in the right insofar as economics goes, nor does it have a corner on the moral superiority aspect. It is in this aspect that I respectfully disagree with the author, who had done an outstanding job outlining both the problem and the possible solutions up to that point.

Davison contends that morality, and particularly science, has transcended the need for religion. In that respect Davison reminds me of the objectivism of Ayn Rand, whose philosophy is summed up by noting, “(t)o embrace existence is to reject all notions of the supernatural and the mystical, including God.” As Davison sneers:

Ironically leftists and religious conservatives have at least one desire in common. Both want us all on our knees.

Yet two key objections Davison writes about are creationism vs. evolution and the belief that religious people object to stem cell research – in essence, areas where religion and science interesct and perhaps cannot co-exist. I would concede those positions are held by the extremists in Christian thought, but by and large the mainstream of Christians understand evolution as a theory and have no problem with adult stem cell research. Only embryonic stem cell research, which has been shown to be of little scientific use anyway. runs afoul of most Christian doctrine.

Undaunted, Davison continues:

Contemporary man’s most desperate need is for a rational human based, instead of God based, ethical system for living on this Earth to fill the philosophical void in which we live…

Religion and morality must therefore be divorced. Our survival depends on it.

Yet while Davison has the answers for many of the other questions, he cannot lay a finger on just who or what should take the place of God, or our Creator, or any other higher power mankind feels the need to answer to. The Left has tried to replace the higher power of religion with a state-sponsored church or the state itself, but to no avail. While Davison seems to agree with Marx, who contended religion was “the opiate of the masses,” it’s worth noting that no Marxist state could completely stamp out religion as traditionally expressed, in large part due to the work of religious missionaries.

Therein lies the inherent weakness of Davison’s argument, for if a country acknowledges in its founding documents that “we are endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights,” it would take a radical transformation and perhaps an entirely new constitution to determine from whom these rights naturally emanate. Still, Davison wishes:

Suppose we cull from the Democratic Party that faction who holds capitalism guilty for all economic injustice in the United States, regards profit and property as theft, believes that corporations rule the nation even as they have been going bankrupt in greater numbers and fantasizes that a yet more expanded nanny state and widespread nationalizations will assure justice and prosperity.

From the Republican Party cull those who insist that their religion must trump the discoveries of science, believe in angels and devils but reject Darwin, and despite a universe full of evidence to the contrary, manage to convince themselves that the Earth came into being less than ten thousand years ago.

His result would be what he calls the Rational and Responsible American Party, with fourteen points of policy corrections he outlines near the end of the book.

America’s Suicide is a challenging book, not just in the sense of opposition to conventional wisdom but also in turgid and at times stilted prose. There are a lot of areas you may need to read a second time just to make sure you understand the point, and of all the books I have reviewed in this space it took me the longest to read and understand – thus you have a far longer review than most.

Yet the one thing it accomplishes is adding that dose of objectivism to the national conversation. It’s a book that pulls no punches and slaughters sacred cows left and right, but sometimes that’s the necessary tonic to provoke thought.

Book review: The Founder’s Plot, by Frank Victoria

The Founders Plot

Here at my site I have, on rare occasions, reviewed a non-fiction book which interests me from a political angle. For the first time, though, I’m today reviewing a fictional novel – but it’s one which could, more or less, be ripped from current headlines.

In The Founder’s Plot, at a time not-so-far removed from the present, Michael DiGrasso is elected as governor with the promise to get tough on illegal immigration. The one aspect of the story which is a little unbelievable is the part about being elected in California on that particular platform, although I suppose those few taxpaying citizens who remain in the Golden State could be motivated enough to do such a thing as conditions in the state continue to deteriorate from an onslaught of illegal immigrants. We have seen evidence of this outrage recently in the small town of Murrieta, California.

Regardless, DiGrasso is elected and immediately puts his plan into action. The secondary storyline of The Founder’s Plot shrewdly looks at the situation through the eyes of Carlos and Marisol Costellano, illegal immigrants who had made a home in America despite their lack of legal status. Over several years, Carlos had worked his way through a variety of jobs to the point of being a skilled laborer, investing his earnings into the purchase of the duplex where his family lived. Also residing in the duplex are the Castellanos’ good friends Julio and Carmella Perez, whose grown children also work their way into the story.

Yet it’s not just characterization, as Victoria puts a lot of work into the book’s details. While he glosses past the machinations of putting the tough immigration law into place, he doesn’t skimp on the political dealings which occur after the law takes effect and it becomes clear that DiGrasso means business. Nor are we spared the backstory explaining DiGrasso’s dogged determination and desire to make a stand against where he believes America has veered from the path intended by those who created our nation. In that regard, he gets assistance from some powerful friends.

On the flip side, Victoria adroitly creates a setting where we follow Carlos into an underworld of selling forged documents to fellow illegal immigrants as he desperately tries to make additional money for his growing family. While DiGrasso is only a man Carlos sees in the news, he senses DiGrasso is serious about enforcing the new immigration law and has to consider whether to pull up stakes and move to another state or even return to Mexico after years away.

The book’s seminal event is perhaps its most realistic prospect: a legal challenge to DiGrasso’s immigration law survives to the Supreme Court, which rules that it goes too far in its restrictions. The governor’s open defiance of the Court’s decision leads to protests and calls for his impeachment by California opposition leaders. Unsurprisingly, Victoria relates how some in DiGrasso’s own party are too weak-willed or blinded by political opportunism to stand up for a state’s right to enforce its own laws.

The accurate detail continues in the depiction of DiGrasso’s dealings with a skeptical, questioning press around the country. The harsh questioning from penny-ante television “legal experts” is expertly dissected by DiGrasso, whose confident answers – ones which cite well the Founders’ original intent – make you wish DiGrasso was a real governor putting these personalities in their place.

As the book continues on, both protagonists wrestle with a number of moral dilemmas. Castellanos finds he’s a good salesman of the forged documents, but keeping that job secret from his wife and staying one step ahead of the law takes its toll – yet to stop the activity exposes him to the prospect of additional harm. Similar family issues also leave DiGrasso wavering on whether to continue his defiant stance or find compromise with those who claim the law is too difficult on immigrant families simply searching for a better life.

I read The Founder’s Plot over several sittings, but it was crafted in such a way that getting deeper into it made it harder to put down. Running at 341 pages, Victoria puts together a gripping tale full of twists and turns which can’t be anticipated, leaving the reader trying to guess how the story would come out. The ending turns out to involve the President and may come as a pleasant surprise given the caliber of politicians and entities involved.

While Victoria has a degree in journalism and experience in the writing field as a longtime newsletter writer and editor, it’s a giant leap to writing fiction in a believable manner. Perhaps a pickier review would speak more to the lack of development of certain minor characters and subplots which could have been excised from the book, but overall I found The Founder’s Plot to be an excellent political thriller – as I said, the farther I got into it, the harder time I had putting it down. Those who like their fiction taken from the events of today would be well-served to pick up and read Victoria’s debut fictional effort.

A slightly different version of this is crossposted at Watchdog Wire.

Book review: Give Yourself A Raise (2nd Edition), by Gordon Bennett Bleil

While yesterday, Black Friday, was a day of “shop until you drop” revelry featuring what merchants try to advertise as “can’t miss” sales, we all know that for many the bill will come due sooner or later. A common complaint is how January is the most difficult month to get through financially because all the Christmas bills come due. It’s why vowing to straighten out finances is one of the most popular New Year’s resolutions.

But what if you could enable yourself to have a few extra dollars to purchase nice gifts without driving your credit card balance through the roof? It’s the premise of Gordon Bennett Bleil’s book, Give Yourself A Raise.

Writing a review of a financial book can be difficult because the plot isn’t a constant, nor can the book be indicative as a history of events. But GYAR can be used as a guide to the future if used properly and in the spirit of financial improvement.

Not so much of a traditional book as it is a series of lessons, GYAR comes chock full of charts, worksheets, and advice for climbing out of the financial hole more and more Americans find themselves in. Of course, the first step is evaluating your situation and this is handled ably in the introduction and expanded upon in the first chapter through what Bleil calls the Financial Freedom Risk Assessment Quiz. Chances are a high percentage of those reading the book need some help.

But much of what Bleil talks about can be termed common sense in money management: pay yourself first and live within your means. Those who are deep in a financial hole need to be reminded that the process of getting out of it will take a little bit of time.

One thing which struck me about the book – and perhaps a bone of contention – is Bleil’s advocacy of multiple, interconnected bank accounts in what he calls the Family Freedom Money Management System. It’s a complex system of checking, savings, and retirement accounts with a heavy reliance on electronic banking and bill paying. A hands-off approach such as this may be fine for a family on solid financial footing, and may already be in place for families to some extent as many already have checking, savings, and retirement accounts set up. But Bleil advocates tying all these together in order to transfer funds as needed.

Common sense returns in the second half of the book as Bleil applies his financial advice to debt management, spending strategies, and a series of chapters on financial literacy which briefly introduce readers to several aspects of the fiscal world. There’s no question that financial literacy is something which has to be learned by most because it’s not generally taught. Bleil’s is not a bad guide to doing so.

As it stands, the book can be a useful guide to those who wish to right the financial ship and want to invest the time in doing so. For example, there’s a time-consuming portion of the book where Bleil advocates analyzing spending over a month to determine where petty cash goes. While it’s true that those Starbucks lattes and trips to the corner store add up, going through statements and receipts may be a daunting task for many.

But in this book there is one huge drawback which must be improved to make it useful. Perhaps this is an oversight, but many of the charts in the book which are supposedly found on an associated website can’t be found there. Certainly this is a drawback to the usefulness of GYAR.

Unlike other authors, though, it’s worth pointing out that the price of the advice lies completely in buying the book and perhaps running a few copies of the charts. Bleil doesn’t use the book as a jumping-off point to sell other services, although he has worked in the academic and broadcasting fields as a financial expert.

So as a self-contained financial primer, this book could be useful to those who are looking for advice on getting out of debt. It’s a system which can work if one wants to devote time and effort to putting it in place and keeping an eye out for trouble.

Disclosure: the author of this review was provided a copy of the book by The Cadence Group, for whom he has reviewed a number of volumes.

Book review: Resurrecting The Street: Overcoming the Greatest Operational Crisis in History

As we once again approach the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, it’s worth pondering that there is a generation approaching high school age which has little to no personal memory of how terrifying that day was. In that respect, it’s good to keep the narrative alive and author Jeff Ingber relates his unique perspective in his book Resurrecting the Street.

Spoken from the perspective of one intimately familiar with the financial world of government securities, Ingber compiled the book over the course of many months and over 100 interviews with others who experienced the events of the day. With those additional voices to provide background, Ingber paints a well-rounded portrait of the events which unfolded in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, particularly the hard decisions on when the markets would reopen and how the billions of dollars of unfinished business which was conducted by traders who were victims in offices which were no longer in existence would be reconciled. It took until the following May, writes Ingber, to finally reconcile these lost trades to a point where the total in question was less than $40,000.

Meanwhile, waiting in the wings was a world financial market placed on hold thanks to the 9/11 attacks. With bated breath, people around the world were seeking a sign that America was not going to be defeated by the actions of radical Islamic terrorists who had succeeded in their second attempt to bring down the Twin Towers.

But there were a number of other operational hurdles to address in the days following the attacks as well. While the question of redundancy and backup planning was broached in the months leading up to the Y2k panic, few financial companies had adequate facilities to deal with the problem. And even when there were contingencies in the system, many had a fatal flaw: for example, there was only one Verizon switching facility in that portion of Manhattan, so even completely isolated systems were routed through that one choke point.

Given the amount of lavish detail the subject demands, Ingber does a reasonable job of humanizing a story which could have been bone-dry. But the book bogs down in some sections; for example, Jeff spends a number of pages relating the history of government securities and how that business evolved. It’s somewhat worthy background reading matter, but probably could have been excised without detracting from the final product. The extensive footnotes – nearly 100 pages worth – cap off a book which chugs past 300 pages by itself.

As a financial lay person, to me the most interesting parts of the story were the experiences of those who didn’t run from Manhattan. Obviously escapees from the World Trade Center had to get out by any means possible in a situation where delay eventually meant death (Ingber points out that those who escaped the World Trade Center after its 1993 bombing may have gained some knowledge which saved their lives) but those in surrounding buildings who stayed on to assess the damage and rebuild a system through sheer dedication, gut instinct, and faith that the financial crisis could be rectified are the real heroes in Ingber’s book.

We’re still years away from a time where those who lived through the 9/11 terror become as rare as those who distinctly recall Pearl Harbor Day are today. But Jeff Ingber tells a story which needed to be told, adding his expertise and extensive interviews to the tapestry of tales weaved about the most tragic day in our recent history.

Update: I’m told this book will be free (presumably the e-book version) between September 7th and 11th.