Marginalizing the middle class: cable TV heavyweight Lou Dobbs lambasts big government and big business for stripping hardworking Americans of their money and dignity.

• Author: Fischer, Raymond L.
• Position: Literary Scene

LOU DOBBS, AUTHOR of Exporting America and Space: The Next Business Frontier and award-winning anchor and managing editor of CNN's "Lou Dobbs Tonight," has received the Peabody Award, Luminary Award, Horatio Alger Association Award for Distinguished Americans and an Emmy Lifetime Award. Unafraid to take on important issues, Dobbs unrelentingly reports facts and the even when what he says contradicts the political and economic opinions of leading figures and news columnists.

According to Dobbs, his latest book's title, War on the Middle Class: How the Government, Big Business, and Special Interest Groups Are Waging War on the American Dream and How to Fight Back, reflects an evolution in his understanding of the nation's failed public policies, business practices, and politics as well as the disastrous impact these failures have had on the middle class--the single largest group of people in this country. War on the Middle Class evolved from subjects explored on "Lou Dobbs Tonight." Beginning in 2004, "The Middle-Class Squeeze" focused on health care and the outsourcing of jobs. By the end of the year, the title changed to "Assault on the Middle Class," with emphasis on job losses and public education's failing millions of students. With the realization that the issues were bigger and more important than previously thought, Dobbs ultimately broadened the title to "War on the Middle Class."

Research for the TV series convinced him that the same forces and groups within the political economy consistently orchestrated specific social, economic, and political trends. The books' major theme reveals that corporations and a political system dominated by special interests virtually "own" the U.S. Corporate America, "directed" by individuals hostile to middle class interests, holds power over Congress through campaign contributions, armies of lobbyists, control of political and economic think tanks, and the media. The most interesting section of the book, "The Best Government Money Can Buy," evidences why Dobbs believes most elected officials of both major parties have been "bought and paid for" by means of campaign donations from corporate and special interest lobbyists who not only influence legislation, but actually write the language of what becomes law. Politicians have become "viciously partisan and contemptuous of their constituencies."

Whether the issue is failing public education, corruption in Washington, rampant illegal immigration...