Acquire Today The Divide: American Injustice In The Age Of The Wealth Gap Narrated By Matt Taibbi Disseminated As Paperbound

book should be required reading for all Americans,
Matt Taibbi really illustrated the division between the rich and the poor in this country, Specifically, the way the legal system handles white collar crime and blue collar crime,

He paints a vivid picture of actual instances where the nations millionaire hedge fund managers and corporate pirates repeatedly steal MILLIONS of dollars from pension funds, businesses, IRAs and Startups without spending any time in court forget about actual jail time.

On the other end of the legal spectrum, he illustrates instances of our legal system punishing homeless people, welfare recipients, and legal aliens into a permanent poverty with a dash of oppressive legal battles and fees.


He draws a vivid illustration showing how our system is made to keep poor people down and let rich people off the hook.


Really, truly amazing, This is the kind of book that I hate to love, I've read a lot of Taibbi's Rolling Stone pieces, so I knew moreorless what to expect, For the most part, he didn't disappoint, The book subtitles itself as an exploration of the deepening schisms in American society and the ways in which they are reflected in the US system of justice.
And it is that, but Taibbi's long experience writing about the criminal behavior of virtually every big bank on the planet has gotten in his head.
His tales of the Big Banks' unpunished sins are far longer and much more finelydetailed than his accounts of the lives of the lowerclass Americans and undocumented citizens who are digested by the US justice system on a daily basis.
For the most part this has to do with the maniacal involution of the crimes the banks have committed.
Their complexity would send Rube Goldberg into terminal vertigo and if I'd spent years cataloging the twisted nonsense that goes on inside the deeply criminal institutions that are using our economy like a bull on a breeding mount, I'd be washing down my Cheerios with Wild Turkey.


To say I enjoyed the book would be accurate, but misleading, Closer to the truth to say that it sent me through paroxysms of fear, hatred, hope, psychosis, patriotism, mindfulness, depression, nihilism, lust, amusement, determination, arousal, indignation, angst, ecstasy, the giggles.
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Read it with the lights on, because it is a horror story, It will piss you off but you need to be pissed off over the situations highlighted in this book.
Read it. A society hypernormalized to use individual wealth to measure success tends to accept and often promote inequality, But you might reply: what's wrong with inequality, are you just envious of people better than you

Thankfully, Taibbi has the patience to play your game by tossing it back in your face.
Here's what a twotier society looks like in the land of the free and the home of the brave.
Give it a go before you resume your bootlicking,

I must be channeling my inner Taibbi, Hopefully, this opens the doors to explore global inequality and the history of inequality and egalitarianism, Great resources include Vijay Prashad, David Graeber, Silvia Federici, Michael Parenti, Michael Perelman, . . The Divide: American Injustice in the Age of the Wealth Gap by Matt Taibbi
“The Divide” is an eyeopening book that paints a clear picture of what is the biggest divide in our society, the wealth gap.
Investigative journalist Matt Taibbi takes the reader on a journey of social injustice, Through a series of heartbreaking stories, Taibbi clearly shows the impact that this divide has on our citizens from each perspective.
This troublingpage book includes the following nine chapters:, Unintended Consequences,. Frisk and Stop,. The Man Who Couldnt Stand Up,, The Greatest Bank Robbery You Never Heard Of,, Border Trouble, Part,. Border Trouble, Part,. Little Frauds,. Big Frauds, and. Collateral Consequences.

Positives:
. Engaging, wellwritten, wellresearched book that is accessible to the masses,
. Even handed, equalopportunity critique. Taibbi has his style of writing that consists of passion, sharp tone, and very descriptive, His interviewees take center stage and help him tell a compelling story of social injustice,
. An excellent and an important topic, inequality and how it is manifested, “We still have real jury trials, honest judges, and free elections, all the superficial characteristics of a functional, free democracy.
But underneath that surface is a florid and malevolent bureaucracy that mostly not absolutely, but mostly keeps the rich and the poor separate through thousands of tiny, scarcely visible inequities.
”
. This book is about inequality shown through a series of reallife examples, Taibbi removes the fog and shows what is really happening, “Were creating a dystopia, where the mania of the state isnt secrecy or censorship but unfairness, Obsessed with success and wealth and despising failure and poverty, our society is systematically dividing the population into winners and losers, using institutions like the courts to speed the process.
Winners get rich and get off, Losers go broke and go to jail, It isnt just that some clever crook on Wall Street can steal a billion dollars and never see the inside of a courtroom its that, plus the fact that some black teenager a few miles away can go to jail just for standing on a street corner, that makes the whole picture complete.
”
. The consequences of legislation. “Moreover, even within the United States there had been intentional, lobbiedfor changes in corporate structure: the repeal of the GlassSteagall Act, which had prevented the mergers of commercial banks, investment banks, and insurance companies this repeal led to the creation of megafirms like Citigroup, and Supreme Court decisions rolling back bans on interstate banking which led to a string of mergers, resulting in the formation of giant national banks like Wachovia and Bank of America.
In the finance sector at least, these changes allowed companies to be more enormous and difficult to regulate than they ever had been before.
”
. Doesnt mince words about financial fraud, “Specifically, this was a massive criminal fraud scheme, something akin to a giant counterfeiting operation, in which banks massproduced extremely risky, lowquality subprime mortgages and with lightningquick efficiency sold them off to institutional suckerinvestors as highly rated AAA bonds.
The hot potato game targeted unions, pension funds, and governmentbacked mortgage companies like Fannie Mae on the secondary market.
”
. A look at the infuriating stopandfrisk abuse, “In, the year before Tory got arrested, another year when exactly nobody on Wall Street was arrested for crimes connected to the financial crisis, New York City police stopped and searched a record,people.
Out of those,percent were black or Hispanic, ”
. An interesting and troubling look at the legal system in practice and how it applies to the poor, “Prosecutors wont say so openly, but privately, they will admit that when their cases are weak, they drive their cases through this Lincoln Tunnel of a procedural loophole, dragging things out as long as possible to force a plea.
It usually works. ”
. How the legal system applies to banks, “Big banks get caught committing crimes, at worst they pay a big fine, Instead of going to jail, a check gets written, and it comes out of the pockets of shareholders, not the individuals responsible.
”
. Taibbi makes a compelling argument that the most outrageous and damning behaviors are conducted in such a way that its too complex to define.
“The real issue wasnt legal or illegal But seen or unseen While some of the most dangerous behaviors in American big business were indeed against the law, they were often, more importantly, outside the law, executed in an undefined legal space, in darkness.
” “You cant police what you cant see, and you cant see in the dark, ”
. One of the best examples of outrageous, irresponsible behaviors of banks is illustrated through the Lehman story, “The creditors were thrust facefirst into the immovable principle that underlies everything modern that Wall Street does: if a crime is complicated enough, and sanctified by enough “reputable” attorneys and accountants, then American law enforcement will inevitably be too slow or too weak to stop it.
”
. The compelling argument for a permanent oligarchical bailout state, “The deals the government and Wall Street worked out that weekend to save the likes of AIG, Goldman, Deutsche Bank, Morgan Stanley, and Merrill Lynch were unprecedented in their reach and political consequence, transforming America into a permanent oligarchical bailout state.
This was, essentially, a formal merger of Wall Street and the U, S. government. ”
. A look at immigration. “Gainesville This small Georgia city is ground zero for enforcement of a ferocious federal immigration rule calledg that essentially deputizes any and all state and local law enforcement officials to arrest undocumented aliens on behalf of the U.
S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency ICE, ” “So the undocumented alien who kills a room full of Rotarians with an ax has a right to counsel, a phone call, and protection against improper searches.
The alien caught crossing the street on his way to work has no rights at all, ”
. A look at the corrections industry, “The jailingHispanics business is the perfect mix of politics and profit, Companies like CCA donate generously to politicians everywhere, particularly at the state level, The firm has spent as much as,million lobbying in a single year and on average spends betweenmillion andmillion a year, Its lobbyists are everywhere, and in every major antiimmigrant bill, you can usually find a current or former CCA lobbyist lurking in the weeds somewhere.
Arizona governor Jan Brewer, for instance, had two exCCA lobbyists on her staff helping write the legislation when she pushed through her notoriouslaw, which essentially legalized racial profiling in the cause of catching illegal immigrants.
”
. One of the most disturbing tales in the annals of Wall Street, the Fairfax story, “The Fairfax fiasco is a tale of harassment on a grand scale, in which the cream of Americas corporate culture followed executives, burgled information from private bank accounts, researched the Canadians sexual preferences for blackmail purposes, broke into hotel rooms and left threatening messages, prankcalled a cancerstricken woman in the middle of the night, and even harassed the pastor of the staid Anglican church where the Canadian CEO worshipped on Sundays.
”
. Startling facts. “There are no real regulatory audits of hedge funds, and no government body checks hedge funds trades or verifies their claims.
It even came out, in the famous Bernie Madoff case, that despite numerous complaints to the SEC over the years from reputable sources, nobody in the government even checked to make sure Madoffs hedge fund even made trades at all.
Madoff actually went more than thirteen years without making a single stock purchase and yet somehow survived several SEC investigationsthats how flimsy government regulation of hedge funds has been and still is.
”
. A look at programs such as ProjectPthat investigated welfare fraud cases, “Pgenerates, by the thousand, stories that sound like testimonials culled from refugees of some distant, lowrent, thirdworld despotate.
The stories are terrible, humiliating, abusive, ” “So the standard is, anyone who receives aid from taxpayers forgoes his rights, because the state has a “strong interest” in rooting out fraud.
” “Twentysix billion dollars of fraud: no felony cases, But when the stakes are in the hundreds of dollars, we kick in,doors a year, in just one county.
”
. Case involving GOP candidate John Kasich, “For instance, in, the state of Ohiothe same state that lost tens of millions in the earlys when its pension fund bought severely overpriced mortgagebacked securities from a Lehman Brothers banker named John Kasich, who would later become governortried to recoup some of its losses by sending out,notices to Ohioans seeking “overpayments” in either welfare or food stamps.
”
. The whistleblower case of Linda Almonte, “In Riverside, California, you get a hundred bucks and a thankyou for bringing a fraud case to light, When you scratch the same civic itch at JPMorgan Chase, you lose everything you own and end up living the life of a financial fugitive.
Linda and her kids, when I met them, seemed like a family on the run, ”
. Unequal justice. “The problem is, if the law is applied unequally enough over a long enough period of time, at some point, law enforcement becomes politically illegitimate.
Whole classes of arrests become circle one illegal, improper, morally unenforceable, ”


Negatives:
, At overpages it requires a commitment of your time,
. Some of Taibbis outrage may be overblown, “The attorney general of the United States had just admitted, in front of a room full of reporters, that he asks Wall Street for advice before he prosecutes Wall Street.
” Is that really deserving of outrage I consider it research, which by the way is what Taibbi does so well for his own books.

. Taibbi does a fantastic job of describing the problems but no much delving into potential solutions, I would have added a chapter on solutions by the subject matter experts,
. No formal bibliography and no notes,
. Very few charts and visual material to complement the narrative,
. Its a very good book to help you understand through stories whats at the heart of the divide, however, its not as good as a quick reference.



In summary, this is a very good book on social injustice, inequality, Through a series of stories Taibbi illustrates clearly whats at the heart of our social divide, Its infuriating to see how this divide takes place in America the rich get away with crimes that have far bigger ramifications on our society and in doing so causes the law in many respects to lose its legitimacy.
My biggest complaint about the book is the lack of references and supplementary material, A very interesting read, I recommend it!

Further suggestions: “Inequality” by Anthony B, Atkinson, “The

Economics of Inequality” by Thomas Piketty, “The Great Divide” by Joseph Stiglitz, “WinnerTake All Politics” by Jacob S.
Hacker, “The Great Escape” by Angus Deaton, “Screwed the Undeclared War Against the Middle Class” by Thom Hartmann, “The Monster: How a Gang of Predatory Lenders and Wall Street Bankers Fleeced America” by Michael W.
Hudson, “Perfectly Legal” by David Cay Johnston, “The Looting of America” by Les Leopold and “The Great American Stickup” by Robert Scheer.
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