The American Scheme


Book Description

The American dream has long become the American scheme, yet so many people still only see America being what it once was. The American Scheme series offers a look at some of the most prominent problems in the United States today. Its volumes are not intended to be manifests of hatred toward the nation, but merely guides written to shine a light on common issues that plague every nation in the world. In volume 1 of the series, author Jared A. Snyder discusses the problem of poverty and shares his own personal experiences related to living in poverty for many years, as well as ideas that he believes would help lessen the problem. The American Scheme series is truly an insider's look into life in the United States of America!




The American Scheme


Book Description

On American foreign policy.




Need and Greed


Book Description

More than just a tale of manipulated financial statements, counterfeit securities, sham transactions, and cyber fraud, this story is intertwined with personalities from among the rich and famous who were involved, in some fashion, such as Governor George Pataki, actress Debbie Reynolds, attorney F. Lee Bailey, and the former chairman of the SEC. In the largest pyramid scheme in American history, the Bennett Companies which even looted their own employee's pension fund, fleeced more than 12,000 investors, 10,000 trade creditors, and 245 banks and financial institutions, of more than $1 billion. A Ponzi scheme-named for Charles Ponzi, who enticed investors with promises of high returns to purchase worthless coupons in the 1920s- was taken to new heights in the 1990s by the Bennett Companies. Extensively documented, Need and Greed follows the human drama as a small-time scam grows exponentially into nationwide holdings of hotels, floating and fixed casinos, office buildings, shopping malls, and other investments. It also allows the reader a rare view into the inner workings of big-time crime, its prosecution, and subsequent civil litigation. Throughout the book, Weisman includes vignettes about hapless investors, portraits of the Bennetts and other key players, the corporate culture at Bennett Funding, and the trappings of the lush Bennett lifestyle.




A Great and Noble Scheme: The Tragic Story of the Expulsion of the French Acadians from Their American Homeland


Book Description

"Altogether superb: an accessible, fluent account that advances scholarship while building a worthy memorial to the victims of two and a half centuries past." —Kirkus Reviews (starred review) In 1755, New England troops embarked on a "great and noble scheme" to expel 18,000 French-speaking Acadians ("the neutral French") from Nova Scotia, killing thousands, separating innumerable families, and driving many into forests where they waged a desperate guerrilla resistance. The right of neutrality; to live in peace from the imperial wars waged between France and England; had been one of the founding values of Acadia; its settlers traded and intermarried freely with native Mikmaq Indians and English Protestants alike. But the Acadians' refusal to swear unconditional allegiance to the British Crown in the mid-eighteenth century gave New Englanders, who had long coveted Nova Scotia's fertile farmland, pretense enough to launch a campaign of ethnic cleansing on a massive scale. John Mack Faragher draws on original research to weave 150 years of history into a gripping narrative of both the civilization of Acadia and the British plot to destroy it.




Amalgamation Schemes


Book Description

"In this analysis, Sexton pursues a critique of contemporary multiracialism, from the splintered political initiatives of the multiracial movement to the academic field of multiracial studies, to the melodramatic media declarations about "the browning of America." He contests the rationales of colorblindness and multiracial exceptionalism and the promotion of a repackaged family values platform in order to demonstrate that the true target of multiracialism is the singularity of blackness as a social identity, a political organizing principle, and an object of desire. From this vantage, Sexton interrogates the trivialization of sexual violence under chattel slavery and the convoluted relationship between racial and sexual politics in the new multiracial consciousness."--BOOK JACKET.




Ponzi's Scheme


Book Description

It was a time when anything seemed possible–instant wealth, glittering fame, fabulous luxury–and for a run of magical weeks in the spring and summer of 1920, Charles Ponzi made it all come true. Promising to double investors’ money in three months, the dapper, charming Ponzi raised the “rob Peter to pay Paul” scam to an art form. At the peak of his success, Ponzi was raking in more than $2 million a week at his office in downtown Boston. Then his house of cards came crashing down–thanks in large part to the relentless investigative reporting of Richard Grozier’s Boston Post. A classic American tale of immigrant life and the dream of success, Ponzi’s Scheme is the amazing story of the magnetic scoundrel who launched the most successful scheme of financial alchemy in modern history.




Plots, Designs, and Schemes


Book Description

Plots, Designs, and Schemes is the first study that investigates the long history of American conspiracy theories from the perspective of literary and cultural studies. Since research in these fields has so far almost exclusively focused on the contemporary period, the book concentrates on the time before 1960. Four detailed case studies offer close readings of the Salem witchcraft crisis of 1692, fears of Catholic invasion during the 1830s to 1850s, antebellum conspiracy theories about slavery, and anxieties about Communist subversion during the 1950s. The study primarily engages with factual texts, such as sermons, pamphlets, political speeches, and confessional narratives, but it also analyzes how fears of conspiracy were dramatized and negotiated in fictional texts, such as Nathaniel Hawthorne's Young Goodman Brown (1835) or Hermann Melville's Benito Cereno (1855). The book offers three central insights: 1. The American predilection for conspiracy theorizing can be traced back to the co-presence and persistence of a specific epistemological paradigm that relates all effects to intentional human action, the ideology of republicanism, and the Puritan heritage. 2. Until far into the twentieth century, conspiracy theories were considered a perfectly legitimate form of knowledge. As such, they shaped how many Americans, elites as well as “common” people, understood and reacted to historical events. The Revolutionary War and the Civil War would not have occurred without widespread conspiracy theories. 3. Although most extant research claims the opposite, conspiracy theories have never been as marginal and unimportant as in the past decades. Their disqualification as stigmatized knowledge only occurred around 1960, and coincided with a shift from theories that detect conspiracies directed against the government to conspiracies by the government.




American Kleptocracy


Book Description

A remarkable debut by one of America's premier young reporters on financial corruption, Casey Michel's American Kleptocracy offers an explosive investigation into how the United States of America built the largest illicit offshore finance system the world has ever known. "An indefatigable young American journalist who has virtually cornered the international kleptocracy beat on the US end of the black aquifer." —The Los Angeles Review of Books For years, one country has acted as the greatest offshore haven in the world, attracting hundreds of billions of dollars in illicit finance tied directly to corrupt regimes, extremist networks, and the worst the world has to offer. But it hasn’t been the sand-splattered Caribbean islands, or even traditional financial secrecy havens like Switzerland or Panama, that have come to dominate the offshoring world. Instead, the country profiting the most also happens to be the one that still claims to be the moral leader of the free world, and the one that claims to be leading the fight against the crooked and the corrupt: the USA. American Kleptocracy examines just how the United States’ implosion into a center of global offshoring took place: how states like Delaware and Nevada perfected the art of the anonymous shell company, and how post-9/11 reformers watched their success usher in a new flood of illicit finance directly into the U.S.; how African despots and post-Soviet oligarchs came to dominate American coastlines, American industries, and entire cities and small towns across the American Midwest; how Nazi-era lobbyists birthed an entire industry of spin-men whitewashing trans-national crooks and despots, and how dirty money has now begun infiltrating America's universities and think tanks and cultural centers; and how those on the front-line are trying to restore America's legacy of anti-corruption leadership—and finally end this reign of American kleptocracy.




Hillary's Scheme


Book Description

Can this country survive another Clinton presidency? Two terms of “Slick Willy” were bad enough. Now, numerous political experts and people close to the Clinton family hint that Hillary is plotting to retake the White House and ring in another four—or eight—years of a Clinton as commander in chief. She denies any presidential bid is in the works. But a few years before she entered the Senate race, Hillary claimed she would never run for any elective office whatsoever. In shocking detail, Hillary’s Scheme confirms the worst fear of tens of millions of Americans: that Hillary Clinton indeed plans to run for president within the next few years. This explosive, behind-the-scenes book by investigative journalist Carl Limbacher blows the lid off the New York senator’s plans for a grand political coup, something she has been carefully and quietly plotting for more than 20 years. Limbacher conducted extensive research into Hillary’s past and secured exclusive interviews with Clinton insiders—and even questioned Hillary herself—to bring you the real story. What he uncovers are the truly juicy morsels, the backroom deals, and the insider wrangling around Hillary’s presidential ambitions that aren’t being reported in the mainstream press. If you love to hate Hillary or are just curious about one of America’s most controversial figures, there’s plenty in this book to get your blood boiling. You’ll discover the answers to questions Hillary is unwilling to address in public, including: Why is she not likely to wait until 2008 to enter the race for president? How did she torpedo Al Gore’s chances for a rematch with President Bush? Where are the millions of dollars she’s supposedly raising for the Democratic Party really going? Why does she dodge tough questions about her husband’s abysmal record on fighting international terrorism? And many, many more! If you don’t think that Hillary Clinton has a fighting chance to win the presidency, you must read this book. With startling prescience, Limbacher draws parallels between today’s political environment and that which existed in 1992—the year George H. W. Bush lost the race to an upstart governor from Arkansas. You don’t need to be a member of the “vast right-wing conspiracy” or even a Republican to be concerned about what Hillary in the White House would mean for the presidency, the Constitution, and America as we know it.




EASY MONEY and the American Real Estate Ponzi Scheme


Book Description

Politicians, bureaucrats, home buyers and housing activists are at it again. History is repeating itself right in front of us, and if we do nothing to stop the volatility in real estate markets, we risk the impending doom of the next housing collapse. Industry experts John Agostinelli and Chris Michaud had front row seats during the Great Recession. They witnessed the nonsensical lending practices that blew up the bubble and created disastrous consequences for government endorsed loans, and hurt low to moderate income people and the communities they lived in. Not only did government create the problem, their reaction to the crisis made matters worse. So what now? How do we prevent this from happening again? Easy Money and the American Real Estate Ponzi Scheme reveals: - How to determine where prices are heading - The whole truth about the causes of the real estate bubble - Why the real estate cycle is important to you - How to make better real estate decisions that affect your pocketbook - What needs to be done to restore the American Dream With keen insights and a no-holds-barred style, this in-depth examination of the real estate market is a cry for action because--without change--we are headed towards another calamity. Readers will learn about the need to revamp Dodd-Frank, how to stop incentivizing debt and risk, put an end to our National bailout mentality and return to the days of achieving the American Dream as our forefathers had envisioned. Now is the time to stop the nation's addiction to "Easy Money," and blow the whistle on corruption so that our children's standard of living does not disappear.