美国国会，总统，财政部长，联邦储备银行联合起来保护金融资本，向中产阶级发动战争。

Lou Dobbs' War on the Middle Class is a masterpiece for understanding the main reasons for the decline of the middle class and the American Dream during the last two decades. Congress and the White House have become pawns to large corporations and powerful special interest groups. Both Democrat and Republican parties have succumbed to corporate contributions and squadrons of well-financed lobbyists. Labor unions--once a major defender of working men and women--have lost power and some union officials seem preoccupied with pleasing large corporations, rather than defending their members. Many of our churches failed to stress the importance of the US Constitution, fair trade (not so-called Free Trade) and the protection of our American middle class. His economics are sound. (My education includes a MBA with a minor in economics.)

Dobbs cites the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005 as an example of federal legislation largely written by banking and credit card mega corporations. The leading cause of personal bankruptcy is medical costs caused by severe illness or accident. There is no exemption for these victims under this new federal legislation.

National sovereignty--and the protection it affords to US citizens from foreign countries and foreign corporations--has eroded under federal policies of Free Trade and a global marketplace. The US Constitution and our representative Congress are being replaced by UN dictates and fast-track trade agreements signed by the President and cheered on by multinational corporations.

Lou Dobbs has outlined and then detailed the War on the Middle Class. Not only is the US middle class under attack, the lower class is being held down. During the last 10 years, it has become harder to move up into the lower-middle class. Some reasons include: the double-inflation-rate-or-more increases in the cost of college education; reduction in government educational loans; loss of manufacturing jobs, loss of Information Technology jobs; and double-inflation-or-more increases in health insurance and medical costs.

The media--composed of newspapers, magazines, and news networks (wire services, TV and radio)--usually present political and economic news on the basis of Republican and Democrat party viewpoints. But these major political party stances do not come from most of their members; these viewpoints come from less than 100 political bosses, most or all of whom are indebted to large corporations. This is a false "balanced news" approach and ignores many viewpoints of the American people.

Our Declaration of Independence proclaims, "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." However, US citizens have not consented to much of state and federal actions and laws during the last 20 years. Our unalienable Rights have been sold and degraded; our pursuit of Happiness has been de-railed and blocked. "Elites are not interested in working people," says Dobbs, but are determined to secure their financial and social standings--at the expense of downtrodden American workers and small business owners.

American middle-class workers now compete with over 3 billion poor workers--most earning under $3 per hour, many earning under $2 per hour. [Personal savings as a percent of disposable income was: 7.3% in 1960; 9.4% in 1970; 10.0% in 1980; 7.0% in 1990; 4.6% in 1995; 2.3% in 2000; and -0.4% (yes, minus 4/10ths %) in 2005. Source: U.S. Dept. of Commerce.] Falling real (adjusted for inflation and taxes) wages and decreasing savings by most Americans is the result.

Immigration is an emotionally-charged subject. Chapter 8 exposes the dangers of broken US borders.

Throughout the book and in chapter 12, Lou Dobbs states several major actions that we can take to win. One is to become better informed, active voters and citizens. The American Dream and middle class are engaged in a historical battle.

I read a lot, and my highest praise for this book is that it is easily a single coherent substitute for at least 50 others books including Barbara Ehrenrich's Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America; David Shipler's The Working Poor: Invisible in America; Jeff Faux, The Global Class War: How America's Bipartisan Elite Lost Our Future - and What It Will Take to Win It Back; Greg Palast's The Best Democracy Money Can Buy and many many others including books I have reviewed on the broken government, immoral capitalism, the failure of education and health care, and so on. He covers it all, including how Wal-Mart is trying to use the World Trade Organization to force US states to back down on laws protecting them from this predatory organization (see my reviews of the book and DVD about Wal-Mart).

Although the author draws most heavily on his own broadcast remarks, and does not provide an annotated bibliography for further study, Amazon reviews by many others could serve to this end--just search for the topic and read the reviews of the book for a broader study.

Lou Dobbs may well have swung the 2006 election with his series on Broken Government and Jack Cafferty's robust commentaries, and thank God he did.

The book ends with key documents--the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the Constitutional Amendments.

Summing it all up: take back the power by voting and demanding that Washington represent the people instead of corporations; fair trade not free trade; end illegal immigration (and I would add, demand English as a common language); self-insure as a Nation with respect to health care.

This topic is so important, I bought a second book with a more aggressive title, Screwed: The Undeclared War Against the Middle Class - And What We Can Do about It (BK Currents) by Thom Hartmann, also published in 2006, and I am pleased to report that these two books complement one another perfectly.

Lou Dobbs would have my vote if he ever ran for President. Now if we can just get him to add a 15 minute "national intelligence review" to the CNN line-up or web site....all the topics he deals with are right on target, but missing is the larger picture: America faces ten high-level global threats, America has no strategy and no coherent policies across twelve policy areas from Agriculture and Debt to Security and Water, and America has no plan for helping the eight challengers (Brazil through Venezuela) avoid our enormous mistakes, mistakes the planet cannot afford (we consume one third of the energy and create one third of the waste if not more).

Of all the books I have read, this is the one that I hope everyone buys, reads, and discusses before the 2008 primaries and general election.