Author: Benjamin I. Page File Type: pdf In 2016, when millions of Americans voted for Donald Trump, many believed his claims that personal wealth would free him from wealthy donors and allow him to drain the swamp. But then Trump appointed several billionaires and multimillionaires to high-level positions and pursued billionaire-friendly policies, such as cutting corporate income taxes. Why the change from his fiery campaign rhetoric and promises to the working class? This should not be surprising, argue Benjamin I. Page, Jason Seawright, and Matthew J. Lacombe As the gap between the wealthiest and the rest of us has widened, the few who hold one billion dollars or more in net worth have begun to play a more and more active part in politicswith serious consequences for democracy in the United States. Page, Seawright, and Lacombe argue that while political contributions offer a window onto billionaires influence, especially on economic policy, they do not present a full picture of policy preferences and political actions. That is because on some of the most important issues, including taxation, immigration, and Social Security, billionaires have chosen to engage in stealth politics. They try hard to influence public policy, making large contributions to political parties and policy-focused causes, leading policy-advocacy organizations, holding political fundraisers, and bundling others contributionsall while rarely talking about public policy to the media. This means that their influence is not only unequal but also largely unaccountable to and unchallengeable by the American people. Stealth politics makes it difficult for ordinary citizens to know what billionaires are doing or mobilize against it. The book closes with remedies citizens can pursue if they wish to make wealthy Americans more politically accountable, such as public financing of political campaigns and easier voting procedures, and notes the broader types of reforms, such as a more progressive income tax system, that would be needed to increase political equality and reinvigorate majoritarian democracy in the United States. **

Author: Darcie Dennigan File Type: pdf Corinna, A-Maying the Apocalypse simultaneously celebrates and laments that we are butdecaying.Betraying a love of old poems and symbols and new words and forms, these are poems where the moons spritzing its perfumes and the phlegm is thick and fastover cities and Starbucks and suburbs. The poet is in love with the rhythm of the man-made world, and the rhythm is so strong sometimes it blows up the room.**

Author: Tim Waterman File Type: pdf 2018. Open Library of Humanities, 4(1) 4, pp. 126, DOI httpsdoi.org10.16995olh.109

Author: Susan Braudy File Type: epub In 1955, Ann Woodward shot her husband, Billy, in their Oyster Bay, Long Island, home. While she was cleared by a grand jury, which believed her story that she had mistaken Billy for a prowler who had been recently breaking into neighboring houses, New York society was convinced that she had deliberately murdered Billy and that her formidable mother-in-law, Elsie Woodward, had covered up the crime to prevent further scandal to the socially prominent family. The incident became fiction in Truman Capotes malicious 1975 Esquire story, leading to Anns suicide, and later was the subject of Dominick Dunnes The Two Mrs. Grenvilles. Now, after years of research, Braudy reveals the truth behind the legend. Tracing Anns life from her difficult Kansas childhood through her early years as a model and aspiring actress to her stormy marriage to Billy Woodward and the sad years of her social exile after his death, Braudy shows how Ann, a victim of cruel gossip and class snobbery, could not have deliberately killed Billy.**From Library JournalIn 1955, Ann Woodward shot her husband, Billy, in their Oyster Bay, Long Island, home. While she was cleared by a grand jury, which believed her story that she had mistaken Billy for a prowler who had been recently breaking into neighboring houses, New York society was convinced that she had deliberately murdered Billy and that her formidable mother-in-law, Elsie Woodward, had covered up the crime to prevent further scandal to the socially prominent family. The incident became fiction in Truman Capotes malicious 1975 Esquire story, leading to Anns suicide, and later was the subject of Dominick Dunnes The Two Mrs. Grenvilles ( LJ 785). Now, after years of research, Braudy reveals the truth behind the legend. Tracing Anns life from her difficult Kansas childhood through her early years as a model and aspiring actress to her stormy marriage to Billy Woodward and the sad years of her social exile after his death, Braudy shows how Ann, a victim of cruel gossip and class snobbery, could not have deliberately killed Billy. Fans of Dunnes book will enjoy this sympathetic chronicle. Recommended. Excerpted in the July 27, 1992 issue of New York magazine.--Ed. - Wilda Williams, Library Journal 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc. From Kirkus Reviews Braudy (What the Movies Made Me Do, 1985, etc.) sets out to do a background book on a high-society ``murder already addressed fictionally by Dominick Dunne in The Two Mrs. Grenvilles and Truman Capote in Answered Prayers--and finds herself defending the so- called murderess. Although Ann Woodward was never indicted for murdering her husband, William Woodward, Jr., his mother, Elsie, spread the rumor that Ann had deliberately killed Billy--and spread it first by insinuating that she herself had had the killing covered up for the sake of her grandsons. In Capotes vile version, Ann shot Billy in the shower, then dragged his body (with the butlers help) down the hall to the doorway of his bedroom. By the time Braudy finishes with the facts, theres no doubt that both Capote and Dunne were swimming in fantasy, that the death was an accident (Ann apparently thought that Billy was an intruder), and that Ann was victimized by the snobbery of the ultrarich, who exiled her after Billys death. Braudy sticks to a weave of impressively fine detail taken from over a thousand interviews, though occasionally one wonders about her recording the inner thoughts of her fatal pair. But her cool drawing of the Woodwards social background, their casual spending of immense sums, and their hobnobbing with the Duke and Duchess of Windsor is jaw-dropping. Ann, born to poor country folk in Kansas, chose early to better herself as a Powers model. She danced nights in an upscale Manhattan chorus line and was a respected radio actress by day when she met shy, virginal, playboy Billy. When married, their greatest claim to fame was their racing stable and fantastically fast horse, Nashua. Both were adulterers and engaged in rages before sex What happened to them can be seen as the result of unrestrained immaturity. Hypnotic, though Braudy keeps a cool mask on her prose. (One hundred photographs.) -- 1992, Kirkus Associates, LP.