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The Puppeteers: The People Who Control the People Who Control America
AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER Why does it feel like no matter what happens in American politics, the Democrats still get their way? When he left Congress in 2017, Jason Chaffetz still thought elections could save us. For generations, conservatives have hoped that freedom-loving congressional majorities could turn back the tide and restore America’s liberties and prosperity. But now, he says, winning elections will not be enough. Increasingly, the work of government is being done by people outside the government—unelected power brokers who are invisible to the American public but who pull the strings, set the agendas, create the incentives, and write the rules we must all live by. Using both government and non-governmental institutions, leftists have bypassed the legislative process to compel institutional compliance with partisan goals. The White House or the Congress may change hands, but the left remains in power. In The Puppeteers , Chaffetz reveals Electing the right leaders is no longer enough. To take back our country, the American people need to understand that they’re in a new fight. But it’s a fight that’s still eminently winnable, and Chaffetz reveals the playbook.
288 pages, Hardcover
First published June 6, 2023
700 people are currently reading
426 people want to read
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June 16, 2023
This is a tough book to review because it makes a number of important arguments that are simultaneously undermined by the author's omnipresent bias and use of low rhetorical devices to make unsupported points. I'll try to be fair to the former without ignoring the latter, because one-sided arguments and the use of straw-man tactics are ultimately far less convincing than balanced perspectives. For those people without a lot of exposure to conservative media points, this book will help illuminate why a lot of issues are unexpectedly emotional for this base and also open up a range of new (and valuable) topics that aren't covered well in the more liberal media.
The tone of the book has that "straight off of Fox News" one-sided and emotionally-charged style, which can make it difficult to approach the value of the content. Where he could present a balanced perspective that tries to expand knowledge (eg by addressing the obvious critiques of his points) and still make compelling arguments, he instead doubles down and pushes for emotional impact by resorting to cheap shots or eye-rolling statements like "A globalist agenda that seeks to weaken America".
Jason's key contention is that the US government is an expanding bureaucracy and that's a bad thing because it distances the activities of the government from elected representatives and instead puts it in the hands of low accountability "b-players" who entrench themselves and drive social agendas. Democrats, since they tend to see solutions to problems as "the government should step in and fix this", have presided over its expansion and set that agenda. In particular, they have expanded the number and scope of federal agencies like the CFPB which have a lot of unilateral power to dish out fines and then allocate those proceeds to crony causes and charities and agencies which help further a cycle of voting democratic, expanding budget, and driving more fining power.
In terms of solutions, the only real one he offered was "starve the government" and with only a few pages of explanation, so this is more a book about banging the drum to raise awareness of these problems rather than aiming people towards a particular solution.
I'll try to address the sub-points below, though some may be less adequately covered since occasionally I had to listen on the go and couldn't take great notes.
A core point he makes is the idea that government agency officials are "far from the voting public" and thus it's essentially undemocratic to use them heavily. I buy the argument that we should have less overall government scope and size but the idea of delegating more existing operating authority and responsibility to Congress, the most do-nothing body in history, as a more democratic mechanism, just doesn't hold water and would need to be substantially more supported. And elected officials do already have oversight over the agencies – both Congress and the executive branch (which was, indeed, elected). So a core premise is already shaky.
The discussion of voting disenfranchisement is interesting. Jason contends that the government's "get out the vote" efforts, which are assisted by a wide range of federal agencies, are ultimately "undemocratic" both because these agencies are meant to be apolitical and because they naturally focus on typically democratic voting blocks (who support their continued existence). Given that he's described before how important it is to return power to the states (because their elected representatives are closer to the people they represent so are more democratic), it's a glaring hole that he doesn't even mention the undemocratic actions taken by statehouses around the country to deliberately disenfranchise voters.
Eye-rolling statements include stuff like (paraphrased) "covid was used to punish dissent and punish scientific truths that would threaten their hold on federal power."
Jason's coverage of ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance) and "stakeholder capitalism" was one of the more interesting issue areas because he tied together the social policies of the left with the way they permeate government mandates and affect private decision-making. Basically, it starts with ESG, which is meant to provide a framework for rewarding or punishing companies and others for non-capitalist externalities to their activities by scoring them based on those activities (which he likens to a Chinese social capital score). Anyone who's studied economic externalities and understands the basics of our environmental history would probably agree that the principle is useful. Where it goes off the rails, according to Jason, is in two areas:
First, the definition of the actual components of what ESG is matters, and it often includes controversial goals related to diversity and inclusion. Jason often emphasizes the idea that "equity" is the wrong thing to strive for because that means equity of *outcome* whereas equity of *opportunity* is what we need. In order to achieve equity of outcome, you have to treat people now very unequally in order to bring the top down and the bottom up, which is fundamentally *ist (racist, classist, etc). And this is the wedge used to show that defining externalities of capitalist activities to include social activities, and especially those driven by this equity-of-outcome crowd, is a big problem.
Second, the government's pressure play to make ESG pervasive means they try to get federal agencies to consider it in their finance allocations (leading to several state treasurers to revolt) and create signals that firms who pressure company boards to adopt ESG will have governmental support while those who don't will not. This directly impacts the ability of "dirty" industries like oil and gas to get financing. Jason takes some cheap shots about short term decision-making around ESG causing unpreparedness for system shocks like the Ukraine invasion, but the core point of whether over-emphasis on ESG is eclipsing the push for shareholder value is worth engaging nonetheless.
A big bogeyman for Jason when describing the financial sector's usurpation of democratic rights is the massive Blackrock asset management company, who committed to adopting ESG approaches several years ago and has been active in boardrooms to defend that. This was one of his weaker points and he hammered it a lot. The basic idea is that the government has, through ESG, pushed enforcement of their social agenda into a few large financial intermediaries who control trillions of dollars of capital, thus going around the democratic process. He contends that most people don't pay attention to their 401k or pension allocations, and thus having these fiduciaries "go rogue" is undemocratic.
This is a weak argument since I can imagine few things more "democratic" (by which he generally means individuals have direct control and oversight) than putting my money somewhere, yet he decries "stakeholder capitalism" by saying (roughly) "this would never happen at the ballot box", as if voting with your capital isn't also voting. Even if it's buried in a pension, there are plenty of levers of control for the individual or firm to re-allocate capital. This whole premise is weak and seems to fly in the face of typical conservative values that corporations are the best direct way to achieve productive goals for capital or outcomes, and it takes away a corporation's right to have an opinion about what makes a good investment strategy (which overrides "free will" for corporations, a strong conservative value). It also takes away individual responsibility for where our capital goes.
He simultaneously lauds the importance of shareholders (democracy!) while decrying the very mechanism by which shareholders achieve their goals (board rooms), which seems like a hypocritical stance and one begging the answer to "ok, then how should they do it?". I also think it hurts the argument to focus so much on the idea that social justice warrior ideals are being enshrined into the "S" of ESG while generally ignoring or overriding the other very reasonable externalities ESG can help to bring into financial decision-making precisely so the government doesn't have to deal with them (or clean them up) later.
An interesting point he makes around climate change is that no one can actually know the impact so it's impossible to trust a handful of experts to plug it into our central control systems properly without driving the bus off the road. This is a fair call for more detailed engagement around a topic that usually gets hand-waved towards "do more! Spend more!".
His stance against transparency and disclosures is a bit head-scratching. Making (large) companies report metrics around things like ESG seems like reasonable transparency into their impacts (to me), but he essentially claims that anything being reported can and will be used against them. That seems like backwards logic… if they're doing something that makes them vulnerable to outcry, I *definitely* want to know about it. The strongest part of this argument is when he brings back Equity and the idea that the social metrics for equity are so broad that essentially any company is vulnerable to lawsuits brought by nonprofits funded by the government and generating fines which then support more lawsuits in an infinite cycle.
Aside - I hope we can all see the irony in his supporting the supposed democracy of state governments who ban investment in businesses which boycotted oil and gas businesses..?
The education sections were mixed. "Wokeness" in schools has become a very charged topic and it's difficult to do so in a balanced way, but he seemed more interested in finding the most extreme examples to support his perspectives than examining the truth. He contends that teachers have too much power via their unions and they're hampering student rights to education (and he uses more eye-rolling phrases like [roughly] "so they can destroy the education system"). He frames teachers' unwillingness to return to schools as, effectively, laziness rather than, you know, being scared of catching death from their students, which seems patently unfair. His smoking gun is that they reviewed and helped write the CDC's back-to-school plans. If I was rolling out a plan that affected millions of teachers, I'd also look for stakeholder input (imagine if they *didn't* what the scandal would be?), so this seems shrug-worthy. But his claim that parents so strongly supported returning to school that they flipped from blue to red in their voting patterns was interesting (until I remembered what home-schooling a covid kid did to many families I know, then it was obvious).
The more interesting points he makes in education are about how much of education spending (and, really, all big omnibus federal spending programs) ends up in "retraining" budgets which get funneled to companies teaching friendly "woke" curricula and other related boondoggles. I think it's valuable to dig into the details and ask why should a large portion of any federal bill be spent in any particular direction and who decides which of the hands being held out receives the pork. The idea that the covid relief bill was a progressive shopping list seems worth examining much deeper.
Obviously, he discusses Covid as well, mostly in the context of education. I don't think his arguments were uniquely weak, but ultimately suffer from the same blind spot most hindsight-confirmation ones do – that *now* we know many interventions were only marginally effective and there weren't many differences between masking/unmasking, even possibly vaccinating/not (for spreading the virus, though death risk was greatly reduced), therefore the measures we took were bad/liberty-violations/etc. But… Since it was entirely possible that all of these interventions could have (and did) have real effects and that we had to assume the worst at the time, it's weak to decry the decisions made when we had to do so with partial information and a very serious potential downside to millions of lives. That said, we also have to engage the arguments that covid interventions created other downsides (other deaths, loss of education, loss of jobs, etc), and I appreciate highlighting that other side nonetheless.
Once Jason gets into the FBI bias, things get off the rails and the arguments get thinner. The core, and reasonable, complaint is that the FBI is getting politicized more and more by a rising tide of progressivism that's enforced via hiring decisions and the way they define things like right-wing extremism (low bar) vs left-wing extremism (high bar) to skew data that drives allocation of resources. But he also makes jaw-dropping comments like "the republican party's singular role in ending slavery" which are, at best, absurdly misleading and which ignore an enormous weight of history. He uses culture-war language to describe cases of left-wing violence but ignores the long and storied history of lynchings and very real oppression that has been the result of right wing organizations, which creates a false equivalency. But he's right to call out the hypocrisy in the left's treatment of BLM protests versus demonstrations on the right.
Quick aside – I thought it was funny to bring up Newsguard, a media watchdog and bias-rating org, as being ultimately biased to the left because right-leaning sites used more biased approaches. It's funny because his sense of outrage is implicitly based on a very Equity-like feeling that left and right media should somehow be equally biased. In reality, that's obviously not a truism. FWIW, I've personally found much more acute content bias (sandwiched between fear-based ads) on the right and more editorial bias (sandwiched between virtue-signaling ads) on the left.
His discussion of government surveillance risks is spot on. He describes how the government agencies get around their supposed prohibition on domestic warrantless data collection by just buying that data from companies, then (obviously) eventually abusing it.
Overall… this was a tough one to get through because the gemstone arguments were buried deep in a pile of bias, straw-manning and using the most extreme representative of a side to paint the entire viewpoint but it's fundamentally a book trying to convince you of something rather than search for truth. Several of those arguments were worthy, so it was a worthwhile read, but the style in which they were delivered weakened their effectiveness when it could have strengthened them. 3 stars out of 5.
The tone of the book has that "straight off of Fox News" one-sided and emotionally-charged style, which can make it difficult to approach the value of the content. Where he could present a balanced perspective that tries to expand knowledge (eg by addressing the obvious critiques of his points) and still make compelling arguments, he instead doubles down and pushes for emotional impact by resorting to cheap shots or eye-rolling statements like "A globalist agenda that seeks to weaken America".
Jason's key contention is that the US government is an expanding bureaucracy and that's a bad thing because it distances the activities of the government from elected representatives and instead puts it in the hands of low accountability "b-players" who entrench themselves and drive social agendas. Democrats, since they tend to see solutions to problems as "the government should step in and fix this", have presided over its expansion and set that agenda. In particular, they have expanded the number and scope of federal agencies like the CFPB which have a lot of unilateral power to dish out fines and then allocate those proceeds to crony causes and charities and agencies which help further a cycle of voting democratic, expanding budget, and driving more fining power.
In terms of solutions, the only real one he offered was "starve the government" and with only a few pages of explanation, so this is more a book about banging the drum to raise awareness of these problems rather than aiming people towards a particular solution.
I'll try to address the sub-points below, though some may be less adequately covered since occasionally I had to listen on the go and couldn't take great notes.
A core point he makes is the idea that government agency officials are "far from the voting public" and thus it's essentially undemocratic to use them heavily. I buy the argument that we should have less overall government scope and size but the idea of delegating more existing operating authority and responsibility to Congress, the most do-nothing body in history, as a more democratic mechanism, just doesn't hold water and would need to be substantially more supported. And elected officials do already have oversight over the agencies – both Congress and the executive branch (which was, indeed, elected). So a core premise is already shaky.
The discussion of voting disenfranchisement is interesting. Jason contends that the government's "get out the vote" efforts, which are assisted by a wide range of federal agencies, are ultimately "undemocratic" both because these agencies are meant to be apolitical and because they naturally focus on typically democratic voting blocks (who support their continued existence). Given that he's described before how important it is to return power to the states (because their elected representatives are closer to the people they represent so are more democratic), it's a glaring hole that he doesn't even mention the undemocratic actions taken by statehouses around the country to deliberately disenfranchise voters.
Eye-rolling statements include stuff like (paraphrased) "covid was used to punish dissent and punish scientific truths that would threaten their hold on federal power."
Jason's coverage of ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance) and "stakeholder capitalism" was one of the more interesting issue areas because he tied together the social policies of the left with the way they permeate government mandates and affect private decision-making. Basically, it starts with ESG, which is meant to provide a framework for rewarding or punishing companies and others for non-capitalist externalities to their activities by scoring them based on those activities (which he likens to a Chinese social capital score). Anyone who's studied economic externalities and understands the basics of our environmental history would probably agree that the principle is useful. Where it goes off the rails, according to Jason, is in two areas:
First, the definition of the actual components of what ESG is matters, and it often includes controversial goals related to diversity and inclusion. Jason often emphasizes the idea that "equity" is the wrong thing to strive for because that means equity of *outcome* whereas equity of *opportunity* is what we need. In order to achieve equity of outcome, you have to treat people now very unequally in order to bring the top down and the bottom up, which is fundamentally *ist (racist, classist, etc). And this is the wedge used to show that defining externalities of capitalist activities to include social activities, and especially those driven by this equity-of-outcome crowd, is a big problem.
Second, the government's pressure play to make ESG pervasive means they try to get federal agencies to consider it in their finance allocations (leading to several state treasurers to revolt) and create signals that firms who pressure company boards to adopt ESG will have governmental support while those who don't will not. This directly impacts the ability of "dirty" industries like oil and gas to get financing. Jason takes some cheap shots about short term decision-making around ESG causing unpreparedness for system shocks like the Ukraine invasion, but the core point of whether over-emphasis on ESG is eclipsing the push for shareholder value is worth engaging nonetheless.
A big bogeyman for Jason when describing the financial sector's usurpation of democratic rights is the massive Blackrock asset management company, who committed to adopting ESG approaches several years ago and has been active in boardrooms to defend that. This was one of his weaker points and he hammered it a lot. The basic idea is that the government has, through ESG, pushed enforcement of their social agenda into a few large financial intermediaries who control trillions of dollars of capital, thus going around the democratic process. He contends that most people don't pay attention to their 401k or pension allocations, and thus having these fiduciaries "go rogue" is undemocratic.
This is a weak argument since I can imagine few things more "democratic" (by which he generally means individuals have direct control and oversight) than putting my money somewhere, yet he decries "stakeholder capitalism" by saying (roughly) "this would never happen at the ballot box", as if voting with your capital isn't also voting. Even if it's buried in a pension, there are plenty of levers of control for the individual or firm to re-allocate capital. This whole premise is weak and seems to fly in the face of typical conservative values that corporations are the best direct way to achieve productive goals for capital or outcomes, and it takes away a corporation's right to have an opinion about what makes a good investment strategy (which overrides "free will" for corporations, a strong conservative value). It also takes away individual responsibility for where our capital goes.
He simultaneously lauds the importance of shareholders (democracy!) while decrying the very mechanism by which shareholders achieve their goals (board rooms), which seems like a hypocritical stance and one begging the answer to "ok, then how should they do it?". I also think it hurts the argument to focus so much on the idea that social justice warrior ideals are being enshrined into the "S" of ESG while generally ignoring or overriding the other very reasonable externalities ESG can help to bring into financial decision-making precisely so the government doesn't have to deal with them (or clean them up) later.
An interesting point he makes around climate change is that no one can actually know the impact so it's impossible to trust a handful of experts to plug it into our central control systems properly without driving the bus off the road. This is a fair call for more detailed engagement around a topic that usually gets hand-waved towards "do more! Spend more!".
His stance against transparency and disclosures is a bit head-scratching. Making (large) companies report metrics around things like ESG seems like reasonable transparency into their impacts (to me), but he essentially claims that anything being reported can and will be used against them. That seems like backwards logic… if they're doing something that makes them vulnerable to outcry, I *definitely* want to know about it. The strongest part of this argument is when he brings back Equity and the idea that the social metrics for equity are so broad that essentially any company is vulnerable to lawsuits brought by nonprofits funded by the government and generating fines which then support more lawsuits in an infinite cycle.
Aside - I hope we can all see the irony in his supporting the supposed democracy of state governments who ban investment in businesses which boycotted oil and gas businesses..?
The education sections were mixed. "Wokeness" in schools has become a very charged topic and it's difficult to do so in a balanced way, but he seemed more interested in finding the most extreme examples to support his perspectives than examining the truth. He contends that teachers have too much power via their unions and they're hampering student rights to education (and he uses more eye-rolling phrases like [roughly] "so they can destroy the education system"). He frames teachers' unwillingness to return to schools as, effectively, laziness rather than, you know, being scared of catching death from their students, which seems patently unfair. His smoking gun is that they reviewed and helped write the CDC's back-to-school plans. If I was rolling out a plan that affected millions of teachers, I'd also look for stakeholder input (imagine if they *didn't* what the scandal would be?), so this seems shrug-worthy. But his claim that parents so strongly supported returning to school that they flipped from blue to red in their voting patterns was interesting (until I remembered what home-schooling a covid kid did to many families I know, then it was obvious).
The more interesting points he makes in education are about how much of education spending (and, really, all big omnibus federal spending programs) ends up in "retraining" budgets which get funneled to companies teaching friendly "woke" curricula and other related boondoggles. I think it's valuable to dig into the details and ask why should a large portion of any federal bill be spent in any particular direction and who decides which of the hands being held out receives the pork. The idea that the covid relief bill was a progressive shopping list seems worth examining much deeper.
Obviously, he discusses Covid as well, mostly in the context of education. I don't think his arguments were uniquely weak, but ultimately suffer from the same blind spot most hindsight-confirmation ones do – that *now* we know many interventions were only marginally effective and there weren't many differences between masking/unmasking, even possibly vaccinating/not (for spreading the virus, though death risk was greatly reduced), therefore the measures we took were bad/liberty-violations/etc. But… Since it was entirely possible that all of these interventions could have (and did) have real effects and that we had to assume the worst at the time, it's weak to decry the decisions made when we had to do so with partial information and a very serious potential downside to millions of lives. That said, we also have to engage the arguments that covid interventions created other downsides (other deaths, loss of education, loss of jobs, etc), and I appreciate highlighting that other side nonetheless.
Once Jason gets into the FBI bias, things get off the rails and the arguments get thinner. The core, and reasonable, complaint is that the FBI is getting politicized more and more by a rising tide of progressivism that's enforced via hiring decisions and the way they define things like right-wing extremism (low bar) vs left-wing extremism (high bar) to skew data that drives allocation of resources. But he also makes jaw-dropping comments like "the republican party's singular role in ending slavery" which are, at best, absurdly misleading and which ignore an enormous weight of history. He uses culture-war language to describe cases of left-wing violence but ignores the long and storied history of lynchings and very real oppression that has been the result of right wing organizations, which creates a false equivalency. But he's right to call out the hypocrisy in the left's treatment of BLM protests versus demonstrations on the right.
Quick aside – I thought it was funny to bring up Newsguard, a media watchdog and bias-rating org, as being ultimately biased to the left because right-leaning sites used more biased approaches. It's funny because his sense of outrage is implicitly based on a very Equity-like feeling that left and right media should somehow be equally biased. In reality, that's obviously not a truism. FWIW, I've personally found much more acute content bias (sandwiched between fear-based ads) on the right and more editorial bias (sandwiched between virtue-signaling ads) on the left.
His discussion of government surveillance risks is spot on. He describes how the government agencies get around their supposed prohibition on domestic warrantless data collection by just buying that data from companies, then (obviously) eventually abusing it.
Overall… this was a tough one to get through because the gemstone arguments were buried deep in a pile of bias, straw-manning and using the most extreme representative of a side to paint the entire viewpoint but it's fundamentally a book trying to convince you of something rather than search for truth. Several of those arguments were worthy, so it was a worthwhile read, but the style in which they were delivered weakened their effectiveness when it could have strengthened them. 3 stars out of 5.
June 21, 2023
The road to hell is paved with conspiracy theories
June 11, 2023
Excellent book!
Would recommend this important book to any person who is paying attention and becoming alarmed about the destruction of our country and our culture.
Would recommend this important book to any person who is paying attention and becoming alarmed about the destruction of our country and our culture.
July 30, 2023
This is an excellent book that exposes how the deep state is entrenched in all aspects of our lives. It’s disturbing to realize that despite all of this knowledge things probably won’t change. The author spends just a few pages on how to overcome this cabal, I would have liked to have seen more insight on this.
June 29, 2023
Clear, documented accounts of political and corporate corruption from an insider who has seen how Washington works (or doesn’t). If you’re familiar with and like the works of Peter Schweizer or Jay Sekulow, you’ll enjoy this. If you tend to be naive towards power structures and like to dismiss overwhelming evidence as just conspiracy, then go read Bill Kristol or National Review.
July 19, 2023
Well at least this one had chapter notes. This is the Glenn Beck school of analysis, work your way backward from the conclusion you want to make, string unrelated data points together, and attribute the most evil of motives to the people you are trying to smear, rinse and repeat. I'm sure the wingnut choir loves this one too.
August 9, 2023
A must read for patriots
I found this book discouraging at times as the author describes how the left has infiltrated the federal bureaucracy. It made me feel like the task of freedom loving Americans is insurmountable. But then he describes what GovernorYoungkin has accomplished in Virginia and it gives you hope.
I found this book discouraging at times as the author describes how the left has infiltrated the federal bureaucracy. It made me feel like the task of freedom loving Americans is insurmountable. But then he describes what GovernorYoungkin has accomplished in Virginia and it gives you hope.
July 13, 2023
Excellently researched and easy to read, this book describes the real problem in the USA. Can it be fixed?! Pray.
August 29, 2023
I’m a Democrat who reads op-eds and books by conservatives to keep an overview of “what the other side thinks.” The most recent ones were David Horowitz’s
Dark Agenda: The War to Destroy Christian America
and Newt Gingrich (and staff)’s
Beyond Biden: Rebuilding the America We Love
.
Gingrich’s book belongs in the category I’ll call Non-Rant (reasoned presentation of what some Republicans now disparage as Reagan Republicanism), while Horowitz’s book falls into the Rant group, also known as diatribe, polemic, preach-to-the-choir. For this reader, The Puppeteers falls into the second category. (Are there Rants among Democratic spokesmen? Of course. They don’t help the dialogue or our future.) My 3 rating is independent of my political response -- the book is organized, generally well written, and includes source footnotes.
Chaffetz says in his introduction that he will focus on the Democrats’ social justice goals, certain national security policies, and control of climate change. He never acknowledges that we on the left pursue these policies because we think they’re right (i.e., the best for all, the most fair, the most just). In each case, he accuses the left of pursuing these goals ONLY for nefarious purposes. But what are those nefarious purposes? To give power to leftist organizations, businesses, government agencies, academia – i.e., the “puppeteers.” And what are these organizations to do with the power? Well, pursue the goals the Democrats support. We have a circular logic here. Does he directly accuse the Democrats of abusing power and money in illegal or even borderline illegal ways? Well, no. To me, it sounds like he just wants to use button phrases to maintain the outrage level of his audience. If he sounds angry enough, there must be SOMETHING immoral and dangerous about Democratic policies.
The underlying source of his anger is his one-track commitment to free market “laissez faire” policies. Anything which diminishes capitalists’ freedom and regulates the markets is the route to national failure. With the implication -- anyone who disagrees wishes the worst for America and Americans. Mr. Chaffetz, I’m a loyal American who flies the flag daily – it’s right outside my home office window and I’d post a photo if I could. I am not your enemy. I read your brutal characterization of the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau and wonder if we live on the same planet. The CFPB was created by Congress (with mostly Democratic support) to protect people like me – the average, hardworking, middle-class American – from abuses from financial organizations like banks, credit bureaus, check-cashing businesses, etc. – abuses that you would have to admit, privately, can get quite egregious. To you, it seems these agencies should be free to make money no matter how much they fool and entrap consumers. Caveat emptor seems to be your motto.
So, as one who is not a member of the choir, I ended up frustrated at Chaffetz skewing and cherry-picking facts -- and annoyed by his nasty accusations of me and my kind as America-haters and Marxist Communists. Let me quote the review by Chris Brimmer: “Well at least this one had chapter notes. This is the Glenn Beck school of analysis, work your way backward from the conclusion you want to make, string unrelated data points together, and attribute the most evil of motives to the people you are trying to smear, rinse and repeat.”
There’s enough reasoned discussion of the issues that the book would have far more value if he removed the outrage, accusations, and distortions. For example, I and most Democrats would agree with his chapter on the dangers of surveillance, private and government. He admits that the ACLU has defended personal privacy rights against the abuse of surveillance in several major cases – but isn’t the ACLU one of those radical left America-hating organizations, according to many of his viewpoint? I would have appreciated his acknowledgement that both sides can share viewpoints on this – and many – issues. Wouldn’t that have been a more valuable book in our times?
Gingrich’s book belongs in the category I’ll call Non-Rant (reasoned presentation of what some Republicans now disparage as Reagan Republicanism), while Horowitz’s book falls into the Rant group, also known as diatribe, polemic, preach-to-the-choir. For this reader, The Puppeteers falls into the second category. (Are there Rants among Democratic spokesmen? Of course. They don’t help the dialogue or our future.) My 3 rating is independent of my political response -- the book is organized, generally well written, and includes source footnotes.
Chaffetz says in his introduction that he will focus on the Democrats’ social justice goals, certain national security policies, and control of climate change. He never acknowledges that we on the left pursue these policies because we think they’re right (i.e., the best for all, the most fair, the most just). In each case, he accuses the left of pursuing these goals ONLY for nefarious purposes. But what are those nefarious purposes? To give power to leftist organizations, businesses, government agencies, academia – i.e., the “puppeteers.” And what are these organizations to do with the power? Well, pursue the goals the Democrats support. We have a circular logic here. Does he directly accuse the Democrats of abusing power and money in illegal or even borderline illegal ways? Well, no. To me, it sounds like he just wants to use button phrases to maintain the outrage level of his audience. If he sounds angry enough, there must be SOMETHING immoral and dangerous about Democratic policies.
The underlying source of his anger is his one-track commitment to free market “laissez faire” policies. Anything which diminishes capitalists’ freedom and regulates the markets is the route to national failure. With the implication -- anyone who disagrees wishes the worst for America and Americans. Mr. Chaffetz, I’m a loyal American who flies the flag daily – it’s right outside my home office window and I’d post a photo if I could. I am not your enemy. I read your brutal characterization of the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau and wonder if we live on the same planet. The CFPB was created by Congress (with mostly Democratic support) to protect people like me – the average, hardworking, middle-class American – from abuses from financial organizations like banks, credit bureaus, check-cashing businesses, etc. – abuses that you would have to admit, privately, can get quite egregious. To you, it seems these agencies should be free to make money no matter how much they fool and entrap consumers. Caveat emptor seems to be your motto.
So, as one who is not a member of the choir, I ended up frustrated at Chaffetz skewing and cherry-picking facts -- and annoyed by his nasty accusations of me and my kind as America-haters and Marxist Communists. Let me quote the review by Chris Brimmer: “Well at least this one had chapter notes. This is the Glenn Beck school of analysis, work your way backward from the conclusion you want to make, string unrelated data points together, and attribute the most evil of motives to the people you are trying to smear, rinse and repeat.”
There’s enough reasoned discussion of the issues that the book would have far more value if he removed the outrage, accusations, and distortions. For example, I and most Democrats would agree with his chapter on the dangers of surveillance, private and government. He admits that the ACLU has defended personal privacy rights against the abuse of surveillance in several major cases – but isn’t the ACLU one of those radical left America-hating organizations, according to many of his viewpoint? I would have appreciated his acknowledgement that both sides can share viewpoints on this – and many – issues. Wouldn’t that have been a more valuable book in our times?
September 27, 2024
I just finished reading The Puppeteers by Jason Chaffee. It was well written and brought up facts of which I was unaware. He discussed topics that aren't covered well in the more liberal media. However, the book's tone is one-sided and has an emotionally charged style, making it challenging to appreciate the content.
Having sat in corporate board rooms for much of my career, his comments about board decisions being influenced by Blackstone and others is not true. I'm afraid I also have to disagree with his arguments against ESG or DEI. I have found that having people with diverse viewpoints is valuable. For too long, old white men have run our country and our companies. That has been changing. Boards now have women, blacks, Latinos, Jews, young people, etc., who bring ideas about their particular cohort that has expanded the range of products and programs offered to the American public.
His stance against transparency and disclosures of ESG performance is a bit head-scratching. Having companies report metrics around things like ESG seems like reasonable transparency, which would help inform shareholders of corporate actions.
I also spent six years as Chair of the Board of Chesapeake Conservancy, which has given me insight into the climate problems facing our nation and the world. Chaffee and others seem to feel that this is not a real issue and that innovation will solve our problems. However, the melting of icebergs and the violent weather we’ve been experiencing are real and only going to worsen.
I agree with his chapter on the dangers of private and government surveillance. Interestingly, he admits that the ACLU has defended personal privacy rights against the abuse of surveillance in several significant cases – but isn’t the ACLU one of those radical left organizations?
The discussion of voting disenfranchisement is interesting. Chaffee contends that the government's "get out the vote" efforts are ultimately "undemocratic" because these agencies are meant to be apolitical yet typically focus on democratic voting blocks. Yet he doesn't even mention the undemocratic actions taken by statehouses around the country to disenfranchise voters deliberately.
The whole chapter on Covid is biased since it is easy to look back and criticize. At the time, Fauci, the CDC, and state governments were trying to save lives, which they did. I agree that closing schools and putting restrictions on crowds had awful impacts, but there was nothing nefarious intended.
Enough. I learned a lot from the book, and it gave me better insight into how others are thinking about our government.
Having sat in corporate board rooms for much of my career, his comments about board decisions being influenced by Blackstone and others is not true. I'm afraid I also have to disagree with his arguments against ESG or DEI. I have found that having people with diverse viewpoints is valuable. For too long, old white men have run our country and our companies. That has been changing. Boards now have women, blacks, Latinos, Jews, young people, etc., who bring ideas about their particular cohort that has expanded the range of products and programs offered to the American public.
His stance against transparency and disclosures of ESG performance is a bit head-scratching. Having companies report metrics around things like ESG seems like reasonable transparency, which would help inform shareholders of corporate actions.
I also spent six years as Chair of the Board of Chesapeake Conservancy, which has given me insight into the climate problems facing our nation and the world. Chaffee and others seem to feel that this is not a real issue and that innovation will solve our problems. However, the melting of icebergs and the violent weather we’ve been experiencing are real and only going to worsen.
I agree with his chapter on the dangers of private and government surveillance. Interestingly, he admits that the ACLU has defended personal privacy rights against the abuse of surveillance in several significant cases – but isn’t the ACLU one of those radical left organizations?
The discussion of voting disenfranchisement is interesting. Chaffee contends that the government's "get out the vote" efforts are ultimately "undemocratic" because these agencies are meant to be apolitical yet typically focus on democratic voting blocks. Yet he doesn't even mention the undemocratic actions taken by statehouses around the country to disenfranchise voters deliberately.
The whole chapter on Covid is biased since it is easy to look back and criticize. At the time, Fauci, the CDC, and state governments were trying to save lives, which they did. I agree that closing schools and putting restrictions on crowds had awful impacts, but there was nothing nefarious intended.
Enough. I learned a lot from the book, and it gave me better insight into how others are thinking about our government.
August 30, 2023
Written by a former US Congressman...a late wake-up call to all Americans who still believe in Democracy.
"Large segments of the leadership of financial institutions, professional public employees, nonprofit organizations, labor unions, academia, and social and legacy media gatekeepers have been replaced with craven partisan activists with a common goal: controlling the thing they call a democracy. These puppeteers have learned to leverage their combined power to drive the American agenda; And they're driving us off a cliff."
"While our elected officials get more power by complying with the will of the electorate, the B Team gets more power by growing government. They get power by choosing which outside vendors will get government contracts, creating relationships with those vendors, and potentially later being hired by them. the B Team within government gets more power by insidiously annexing power from state and local government (the Department of Education is a case in point)."
"...the left spent two years using public health as a pretext for usurping power. They used the pandemic to shut down the economy and the schools, to empower loyal allies at the teachers unions, to adopt voting practices for partisan advantage, to punish dissent, and the censor scientific truths they feared would threaten their grip on power. And they did it all with a Republican president."
"No longer are we rewarding the best and the brightest. We are now implementing criteria that reward discrimination and pander to victimhood, rather than performance and achievement."
"Asset management firms pressure and puppeteer public companies on the stock market while credit rating agencies exert pressure against the bond markets. on the government side, regulatory frameworks are written and enforced by unelected bureaucrats while major policy is driven by political ideologues representing the interests of global elites. None of these actors ever has to answer to a voter."
"...stakeholder capitalism's single-minded focus on long-term value prioritizes the threats of climate change and social injustice while ignoring threats from a nuclear-armed China or Russia, oil and gas shortages, a border overrun by drug cartels and deadly fentanyl, the possible loss of the dollar's status as the world reserve currency, runaway inflation, and a $31 trillion national debt."
"A capitalism that subjugates prosperity to ideology is not capitalism. And a democracy that substitutes the judgment of elite oligarchs for the will of the people is not democracy."
"...S&P placed several issuers tied to the oil and gas industry on CreditWatch...This is quite remarkable given the nearly $5 trillion in subsidies over the past twenty years on renewables that has resulted in only 5 percent share of global energy produced from those sources."
"After a decade in which a jaw-dropping $3.8 trillion was invested in renewable energy projects, fossil fuel consumption as a percentage of total energy use dropped by just 1 percent. From 82 percent of total consumption in 2011, fossil fuels were still 81 percent of the total $3.8 trillion later."
"The decision to starve the oil and gas industries of capital and feed it to less efficient forms of energy (energy that also exacts high environmental costs) is purely a political one. ... By starving the oil and gas industry of capital, we limit our market choices and our economic growth. This is a form of tyranny. When elites determine how we must live our lives, we have lost our capitalist system of economic freedom."
"We have no guarantees that renewable energy fully deployed will have less of an impact on the climate than our current reliance on fossil fuels. What default investments in ESG funds are guaranteed to do is divert wealth from one sector of the economy to another that is more favored by the administration. That's a dangerous precedent to set. Furthermore, it is a complete rejection of our market system in favor of centralized control."
"...during the Obama administration when the president forked over half a billion dollars in loan guarantees to troubled solar company Solyndra. Ostensibly, the money was to help the U.S. transition to renewable energy. But what it really did (and I would argue what it was meant to do) was pay off a loyal political constituency."
"In effect, lenders are bankrolling the same parasites that bled them for the risky loans that caused the mortgage crisis. With new cash, they can ramp back up their shakedown campaign, repeating the cycle of dangerous political lending that wrecked the economy."
"Regulation and innovation are inversely correlated. Common sense tells us that the more bureaucrats' policies divert the flow of capital away from productive investments to fund regulatory compliance, the less innovators can expend developing new solutions to old problems. If we were serous about solving climate change, we would unleash the innovators."
"Federal agencies weaponize equity. Nonprofits weaponize federal aid. Teachers unions weaponize curriculum. And without an elected representative among them, they drive public policy in the United States."
"...it speaks to the modern failure of progressive poverty programs that trap inner-city neighborhoods in failing schools, government dependency, and chronic victimhood."
"Near the end of the Obama administration, the Washington Post reported that HUD had been paying $37 million per month to subsidize ineligible public housing tenants. In many cases, these were people who simply refused to comply with work or public service requirements tied to payments. With no consequences, they simply freeloaded from taxpayers."
"...HUD's accounting was such a mess that the OIG couldn't complete its audit, even after HUD officials corrected $520 billion (with a b) in bookkeeping errors. The agency spent $131 million on two failed projects over fourteen years to update its financial management system, only to ultimately cancel on both."
"In his March 2021 Executive Order on Promoting Access to Voting, Biden directed the head of each of the six hundred federal agencies to develop a plan to 'protect and promote the exercise of the fright to vote', to 'expand access to voter registration and accurate election information,' and to 'combat misinformation'. I had to read it twice. Elections are administered by states. Federal employees are hired to administer federal programs, not to help the ruling party get out the vote to specific groups that tend to vote for the ruling party."
"In a lawsuit filed to enforce its Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, the Foundation for Government Accountability called the order an 'unconstitutional taxpayer-funded 'get out the vote' effort designed to benefit the president's political party. ... It is evidently none of the public's business how the Biden administration is using taxpayer dollars to fund progressive election interference."
"The primary focus of the two largest national unions - the NEA and AFT, is no longer teachers. It's politics. In 2021, NEA spent $66 million on political activities and lobbying, compared to just $32 million on representational activities. ... The unions function more like left-wing super PACs than labor unions. And with the help of Democratic politicians, their efforts to influence kids with partisan messaging have become more aggressive."
"What should be a teacher-driven institution focused on providing a world-class education has become a cudgel for injecting leftist orthodoxy in public institutions. Though we don't elect these people, they have an enormous influence over how our children are taught to see the world. They pull the strings, unimpeded by anything we do on election day."
"...I see little evidence that AFT promotes any real policy change in education. What they really want seems to be the same thing the B Team always wants - to grow government. They don't want parents empowered of elected officials interfering. They'll decide what's best for kids based on what's best for them."
"Given that data now show that lockdowns and school closures were ineffective, masking had little impact on health outcomes, vaccines did little to prevent reinfection in children, outdoor transmission was rare, and natural immunity was real, it seems Weingarten and her political benefactors were the real purveyors of catastrophic health disinformation."
"A curriculum designed to teach kids what to think instead of how to think would teach partisan narratives and suppress opposing views. A party or activist group that could control how mental health is delivered, whose values are taught, or how opposing views are perceived could control a counterfeit substitute for democracy. Such a party isn't dependent on winning election to wield this power over kids. they need to command the loyalty of institutions that benefit from big governement."
"Large segments of the leadership of financial institutions, professional public employees, nonprofit organizations, labor unions, academia, and social and legacy media gatekeepers have been replaced with craven partisan activists with a common goal: controlling the thing they call a democracy. These puppeteers have learned to leverage their combined power to drive the American agenda; And they're driving us off a cliff."
"While our elected officials get more power by complying with the will of the electorate, the B Team gets more power by growing government. They get power by choosing which outside vendors will get government contracts, creating relationships with those vendors, and potentially later being hired by them. the B Team within government gets more power by insidiously annexing power from state and local government (the Department of Education is a case in point)."
"...the left spent two years using public health as a pretext for usurping power. They used the pandemic to shut down the economy and the schools, to empower loyal allies at the teachers unions, to adopt voting practices for partisan advantage, to punish dissent, and the censor scientific truths they feared would threaten their grip on power. And they did it all with a Republican president."
"No longer are we rewarding the best and the brightest. We are now implementing criteria that reward discrimination and pander to victimhood, rather than performance and achievement."
"Asset management firms pressure and puppeteer public companies on the stock market while credit rating agencies exert pressure against the bond markets. on the government side, regulatory frameworks are written and enforced by unelected bureaucrats while major policy is driven by political ideologues representing the interests of global elites. None of these actors ever has to answer to a voter."
"...stakeholder capitalism's single-minded focus on long-term value prioritizes the threats of climate change and social injustice while ignoring threats from a nuclear-armed China or Russia, oil and gas shortages, a border overrun by drug cartels and deadly fentanyl, the possible loss of the dollar's status as the world reserve currency, runaway inflation, and a $31 trillion national debt."
"A capitalism that subjugates prosperity to ideology is not capitalism. And a democracy that substitutes the judgment of elite oligarchs for the will of the people is not democracy."
"...S&P placed several issuers tied to the oil and gas industry on CreditWatch...This is quite remarkable given the nearly $5 trillion in subsidies over the past twenty years on renewables that has resulted in only 5 percent share of global energy produced from those sources."
"After a decade in which a jaw-dropping $3.8 trillion was invested in renewable energy projects, fossil fuel consumption as a percentage of total energy use dropped by just 1 percent. From 82 percent of total consumption in 2011, fossil fuels were still 81 percent of the total $3.8 trillion later."
"The decision to starve the oil and gas industries of capital and feed it to less efficient forms of energy (energy that also exacts high environmental costs) is purely a political one. ... By starving the oil and gas industry of capital, we limit our market choices and our economic growth. This is a form of tyranny. When elites determine how we must live our lives, we have lost our capitalist system of economic freedom."
"We have no guarantees that renewable energy fully deployed will have less of an impact on the climate than our current reliance on fossil fuels. What default investments in ESG funds are guaranteed to do is divert wealth from one sector of the economy to another that is more favored by the administration. That's a dangerous precedent to set. Furthermore, it is a complete rejection of our market system in favor of centralized control."
"...during the Obama administration when the president forked over half a billion dollars in loan guarantees to troubled solar company Solyndra. Ostensibly, the money was to help the U.S. transition to renewable energy. But what it really did (and I would argue what it was meant to do) was pay off a loyal political constituency."
"In effect, lenders are bankrolling the same parasites that bled them for the risky loans that caused the mortgage crisis. With new cash, they can ramp back up their shakedown campaign, repeating the cycle of dangerous political lending that wrecked the economy."
"Regulation and innovation are inversely correlated. Common sense tells us that the more bureaucrats' policies divert the flow of capital away from productive investments to fund regulatory compliance, the less innovators can expend developing new solutions to old problems. If we were serous about solving climate change, we would unleash the innovators."
"Federal agencies weaponize equity. Nonprofits weaponize federal aid. Teachers unions weaponize curriculum. And without an elected representative among them, they drive public policy in the United States."
"...it speaks to the modern failure of progressive poverty programs that trap inner-city neighborhoods in failing schools, government dependency, and chronic victimhood."
"Near the end of the Obama administration, the Washington Post reported that HUD had been paying $37 million per month to subsidize ineligible public housing tenants. In many cases, these were people who simply refused to comply with work or public service requirements tied to payments. With no consequences, they simply freeloaded from taxpayers."
"...HUD's accounting was such a mess that the OIG couldn't complete its audit, even after HUD officials corrected $520 billion (with a b) in bookkeeping errors. The agency spent $131 million on two failed projects over fourteen years to update its financial management system, only to ultimately cancel on both."
"In his March 2021 Executive Order on Promoting Access to Voting, Biden directed the head of each of the six hundred federal agencies to develop a plan to 'protect and promote the exercise of the fright to vote', to 'expand access to voter registration and accurate election information,' and to 'combat misinformation'. I had to read it twice. Elections are administered by states. Federal employees are hired to administer federal programs, not to help the ruling party get out the vote to specific groups that tend to vote for the ruling party."
"In a lawsuit filed to enforce its Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, the Foundation for Government Accountability called the order an 'unconstitutional taxpayer-funded 'get out the vote' effort designed to benefit the president's political party. ... It is evidently none of the public's business how the Biden administration is using taxpayer dollars to fund progressive election interference."
"The primary focus of the two largest national unions - the NEA and AFT, is no longer teachers. It's politics. In 2021, NEA spent $66 million on political activities and lobbying, compared to just $32 million on representational activities. ... The unions function more like left-wing super PACs than labor unions. And with the help of Democratic politicians, their efforts to influence kids with partisan messaging have become more aggressive."
"What should be a teacher-driven institution focused on providing a world-class education has become a cudgel for injecting leftist orthodoxy in public institutions. Though we don't elect these people, they have an enormous influence over how our children are taught to see the world. They pull the strings, unimpeded by anything we do on election day."
"...I see little evidence that AFT promotes any real policy change in education. What they really want seems to be the same thing the B Team always wants - to grow government. They don't want parents empowered of elected officials interfering. They'll decide what's best for kids based on what's best for them."
"Given that data now show that lockdowns and school closures were ineffective, masking had little impact on health outcomes, vaccines did little to prevent reinfection in children, outdoor transmission was rare, and natural immunity was real, it seems Weingarten and her political benefactors were the real purveyors of catastrophic health disinformation."
"A curriculum designed to teach kids what to think instead of how to think would teach partisan narratives and suppress opposing views. A party or activist group that could control how mental health is delivered, whose values are taught, or how opposing views are perceived could control a counterfeit substitute for democracy. Such a party isn't dependent on winning election to wield this power over kids. they need to command the loyalty of institutions that benefit from big governement."
October 30, 2023
Having read a previous book by this author, I was interested in this one as well.
Former Rep. Chaffetz, in my opinion, is a good writer and the topics addressed in this book are quite interesting. As most Americans probably already know, the Biden administration is actually run by a shadow group of people who don't necessarily have our country's best interests at the forefront.
Mr. Chaffetz takes on particular areas within our bloated government structures and investigates just how the behind-the-scenes employees (many from the Obama administration) are running things on a day-to-day basis. What is happening is scary and disconcerting. Americans, beware; some these individuals (Susan Rice - now gone, Jakc Sullivan, Brian Deese, etc.) just to name a few, have an agenda that is not necessarily in America's best interest, but more in line with a progressive/globalist mindset! Not what our country is supposed to stand for.
I recommend this book to anyone who cares about the future of our great country.
Former Rep. Chaffetz, in my opinion, is a good writer and the topics addressed in this book are quite interesting. As most Americans probably already know, the Biden administration is actually run by a shadow group of people who don't necessarily have our country's best interests at the forefront.
Mr. Chaffetz takes on particular areas within our bloated government structures and investigates just how the behind-the-scenes employees (many from the Obama administration) are running things on a day-to-day basis. What is happening is scary and disconcerting. Americans, beware; some these individuals (Susan Rice - now gone, Jakc Sullivan, Brian Deese, etc.) just to name a few, have an agenda that is not necessarily in America's best interest, but more in line with a progressive/globalist mindset! Not what our country is supposed to stand for.
I recommend this book to anyone who cares about the future of our great country.
June 25, 2023
Okay so some of his points were on point specially with his critizs of joe biden but i think the biggest downfall is that all of this is theoretical rather than lead with examples
September 24, 2023
This book will scare your socks off, and I have no doubt that every bit of it is true.
August 9, 2024
I picked up this book after seeing it frequently in bookstores but not knowing much about the author, other than a quick google search before picking it up. I generally enjoy reading political books from those whose opinions differ from mine to see and learn about other's perspectives, even when I may disagree with them.
The Puppeteers had a strong negative tone throughout the book. The author winds through each chapter giving his opinion on how the "B Team," Bureaucrats, and Democrats have made terrible decisions in varying American political topics with a very negative narrative undertone. However, the author does not provide any solutions to fix these problems until the very last chapter, and a short one at that. This book felt like a long ramble of complaints about other's actions (government Bureaucrats and Democrats) without ever proposing solutions or compromises.
While the author attempted to support their opinions with facts (indicated by the lengthy notes section), I felt that many times the author confused correlation with causation. Many of the facts used to support the argument were correlated to the outcome, but more times than not the author fell short of supporting his opinions with causal facts.
The last two chapters of the book were my favorite, not just because it meant I was almost done reading the book. In the 2nd to last chapter, "Justifying Surveillance," the author makes a strong argument that the government is side-stepping our Constitution by mass-buying consumer data versus collecting it (mass-collecting is illegal, buy buying data is not technically illegal). He brings into perspective the risks of government surveillance expanding outside of agency mandates and regulations. However, I felt the author could have made is argument stronger by loosing the fear-based undertone which was prevalent throughout the rest of the book.
In the last chapter, the author provides the first glance of proposed solutions to fix the problems mentioned throughout the book in "How to Take On the Puppeteers and Win." I agreed with the author when they wrote; "Diversity, access to a quality education, upward mobility for the underprivileged, environmental stewardship of our lands and waters - these are not controversial issues;" however, I wish The Puppeteers offered more perspective into the author's solutions to these problems. The author made clear that "ineffective bureaucrats, more bloated federal contracts, and more government-subsidized markets that aren't profitable in a free marked system" are not the solution, but failed to show what would work.
The Puppeteers had a strong negative tone throughout the book. The author winds through each chapter giving his opinion on how the "B Team," Bureaucrats, and Democrats have made terrible decisions in varying American political topics with a very negative narrative undertone. However, the author does not provide any solutions to fix these problems until the very last chapter, and a short one at that. This book felt like a long ramble of complaints about other's actions (government Bureaucrats and Democrats) without ever proposing solutions or compromises.
While the author attempted to support their opinions with facts (indicated by the lengthy notes section), I felt that many times the author confused correlation with causation. Many of the facts used to support the argument were correlated to the outcome, but more times than not the author fell short of supporting his opinions with causal facts.
The last two chapters of the book were my favorite, not just because it meant I was almost done reading the book. In the 2nd to last chapter, "Justifying Surveillance," the author makes a strong argument that the government is side-stepping our Constitution by mass-buying consumer data versus collecting it (mass-collecting is illegal, buy buying data is not technically illegal). He brings into perspective the risks of government surveillance expanding outside of agency mandates and regulations. However, I felt the author could have made is argument stronger by loosing the fear-based undertone which was prevalent throughout the rest of the book.
In the last chapter, the author provides the first glance of proposed solutions to fix the problems mentioned throughout the book in "How to Take On the Puppeteers and Win." I agreed with the author when they wrote; "Diversity, access to a quality education, upward mobility for the underprivileged, environmental stewardship of our lands and waters - these are not controversial issues;" however, I wish The Puppeteers offered more perspective into the author's solutions to these problems. The author made clear that "ineffective bureaucrats, more bloated federal contracts, and more government-subsidized markets that aren't profitable in a free marked system" are not the solution, but failed to show what would work.
May 4, 2024
dnf, 7% in. Laughable take that the left is usurping "democracy".
i JUST finished a book about Cheney through W Bush felt president was above law. They used this "power" to hire loyalists to write dubious legality into war, torture, and spying on fellow Americans. Doing all this with no recourse for victims and w/ complete impunity for the leaders...
Republicans refused to even allow Obama to forward a supreme court nominee... then flipped to allow one for trump under same conditions. trump nominees dedicated to get power by exploiting anti-abortion religious nuts. federalist society pulling strings behind scenes. oh let's not forget the lavish gifts supreme court and legislators all get.
The Dems refused to allow a primary against the unpopular Biden in 2024.
Republicans censuring reps who dont tow the party line.
Trump tried to use gray areas in laws to overturn an election. NOT Jan 6 capitol thing, but everything his team was doing behind scenes with fake electors. he wanted to gum up ambiguity in system then send decision to his supreme court
big business also pretty much runs the country via political contributions... AIPAC and anti-BDS money puppeteering... gerry-mandering... the compromise to give oversized electors to low population states... election day being when some poor workers cant
the bs this dude is talking is for hard core kool-aid drinking conservatives... otherwise u cant listen to this shit
i JUST finished a book about Cheney through W Bush felt president was above law. They used this "power" to hire loyalists to write dubious legality into war, torture, and spying on fellow Americans. Doing all this with no recourse for victims and w/ complete impunity for the leaders...
Republicans refused to even allow Obama to forward a supreme court nominee... then flipped to allow one for trump under same conditions. trump nominees dedicated to get power by exploiting anti-abortion religious nuts. federalist society pulling strings behind scenes. oh let's not forget the lavish gifts supreme court and legislators all get.
The Dems refused to allow a primary against the unpopular Biden in 2024.
Republicans censuring reps who dont tow the party line.
Trump tried to use gray areas in laws to overturn an election. NOT Jan 6 capitol thing, but everything his team was doing behind scenes with fake electors. he wanted to gum up ambiguity in system then send decision to his supreme court
big business also pretty much runs the country via political contributions... AIPAC and anti-BDS money puppeteering... gerry-mandering... the compromise to give oversized electors to low population states... election day being when some poor workers cant
the bs this dude is talking is for hard core kool-aid drinking conservatives... otherwise u cant listen to this shit
October 7, 2023
Fascinating book! the author is an ex-congressman of UT. America needs to stop all the special interest groups buying politicians. The People Who Control the People Who Control America are returning us to Serfdom. Author Jason Chaffetz shares his findings well in easy to read explanations about how the deep State fools us . We need to return to prosperity. But, he says, winning elections will not be enough. Increasingly, the work of government is being done by people outside the government—unelected power brokers who are invisible to the American public but who pull the strings, set the agendas, create the incentives, and write the rules we must all live by. Using both government and non-governmental institutions, leftists have bypassed the legislative process to compel institutional compliance with partisan goals. The White House or the Congress may change hands, but the left remains in power.
August 8, 2024
This book is difficult to review as the author continually attempts to inject political bias. There is a sense of danger here as the author's view is overly pessimistic. One key example of this is the obsessive infatuation with ESG scores being adopted in policy and by major companies worldwide. The author even repeats the same negative points.
The negative manner and the author's opinion constantly come across and subtract from what might have been a good book. This book uses research and factual information, but then obsessively focuses on the smaller negative details. The blend of using factual information and presenting a very negative biased view utterly ruined this book for me. Good questions are being asked however, the answers to these questions are presented in a fictional biased view.
In conclusion, this book obsessively and selectively hyper-fixates and provides an extreme view.
The negative manner and the author's opinion constantly come across and subtract from what might have been a good book. This book uses research and factual information, but then obsessively focuses on the smaller negative details. The blend of using factual information and presenting a very negative biased view utterly ruined this book for me. Good questions are being asked however, the answers to these questions are presented in a fictional biased view.
In conclusion, this book obsessively and selectively hyper-fixates and provides an extreme view.
March 7, 2024
PART I The Pretext of Climate Change
CHAPTER 1 America’s New Social Credit System…3
CHAPTER 2 Farewell Free Markets, Hello Stakeholder Capitalism…16
CHAPTER 3 The Progressive Catch-22…30
CHAPTER 4 The End of the World Justifies Any Sacrifice…39
CHAPTER 5 “Most Power, Least Famous”: The Shadow Government
Power Players…60
PART II Social Justice
CHAPTER 6 Government Needs More Racism…73
CHAPTER 7 Inventing Discrimination to Redirect Capital…87
CHAPTER 8 Unions: The Education B Team…104
CHAPTER 9 The Unions Go Global…121
PART III National Security
CHAPTER 10 Hunting Hatred to Silence Dissent…139
CHAPTER 11 Criminalizing Dissent…152
CHAPTER 12 Justifying Surveillance…165
CHAPTER 13 How to Take On the Puppeteers and Win…184
Another depressing book.
CHAPTER 1 America’s New Social Credit System…3
CHAPTER 2 Farewell Free Markets, Hello Stakeholder Capitalism…16
CHAPTER 3 The Progressive Catch-22…30
CHAPTER 4 The End of the World Justifies Any Sacrifice…39
CHAPTER 5 “Most Power, Least Famous”: The Shadow Government
Power Players…60
PART II Social Justice
CHAPTER 6 Government Needs More Racism…73
CHAPTER 7 Inventing Discrimination to Redirect Capital…87
CHAPTER 8 Unions: The Education B Team…104
CHAPTER 9 The Unions Go Global…121
PART III National Security
CHAPTER 10 Hunting Hatred to Silence Dissent…139
CHAPTER 11 Criminalizing Dissent…152
CHAPTER 12 Justifying Surveillance…165
CHAPTER 13 How to Take On the Puppeteers and Win…184
Another depressing book.
May 8, 2024
This is a great book which is easy to read and covers most/all(?) of the things being done by Criminals in our government to subvert our Constitution. That said, there's always some things missing and a lack of emphasis where its need. Also, there's very little about what we can Do about Anything except the usual, keep your chins up and your nose to the grind stone? What we really need is the book that walks US out of the Communist Shithole being constructed by the Puppeteers for us and back to a system of government which represents the will of the people. And, if the majority of US want to try Communism for a change for 20, 30, 40+ years... I have to find somewhere to go!
October 8, 2024
Excellent details about how influence is exercised to sway the political environment and get around the constitutional rights of we the people. The elected "Leadership" (which we perhaps should call "misleaders") of our country these days seem to have seen their moral values eroded by mental gymnastics governed by a special class of players who seem not to have a true sense of or alignment with the moral origins that were used by our founding fathers. I hope that Jason or another of his ilk will write a book that outlines steps we can take to change things in the future....our freedom depends on it.
August 17, 2025
Topical books such as this one have a certain shelf life. Mr. Chaffetz, former congressman, delivers a fine expose on the various layers of bureaucracy that implement policies, rules and regulations. He warns of multibillion-dollar grants to assorted NGOs within the USAID agency that are funneled to activists who are fundamentally changing the fabric of America. He also writes of the CFPB and the outright corruption that has proliferated in the department since its founding in 2011 during the first Obama administration. Fortunately, both agencies are now being dismantled. A federal appeals court ruled that Trump can commence with mass firings. Some of the information is very illuminating, so I definitely recommend it.
December 16, 2023
This is an interesting book that one should read if you want to know more about the "inner workings" of the Federal government and how politics are influencing our daily lives.
There are two chapters that I found myself reading over again: one on the personnel in the government that are more influential than the average person ever thinks (or for that matter, maybe believes) and the second is how we can fight back.
Without the index and notes the book is about 200 pages, so it is a fairly quick, informative read.
There are two chapters that I found myself reading over again: one on the personnel in the government that are more influential than the average person ever thinks (or for that matter, maybe believes) and the second is how we can fight back.
Without the index and notes the book is about 200 pages, so it is a fairly quick, informative read.
December 29, 2023
Regardless of your political affiliation, this is a must-read. I learned so much about the "Deep State"--the bureaucracy and its many loyal private sector connections--and how our American government is increasingly under its control. Author and ex-Congressman, Jason Chaffetz, provides an inordinant amount of well-documented details that left me shocked and disgusted. American citizens need to wake up. Overall, 4.5 stars as I found the last chapter to be lacking.
February 1, 2024
This is a must read for every American! It's horrifying to find out exactly how the federal government gets around the Constitution to do things that are unconstitutional. Truly scary. It's time for us all to wake up...not in the "woke" sense but in the practical sense to what is really going on in the country and who really is pulling the strings of government.
September 29, 2024
Eye Opener
This book reminded me off the British comedy Yes, Minister; however, in a horrifying way. Whereas the show is hilarious, what the left is doing to this country is not only awful, but illegal and unconstitutional. Open-minded individuals should read thus book and wake up.
This book reminded me off the British comedy Yes, Minister; however, in a horrifying way. Whereas the show is hilarious, what the left is doing to this country is not only awful, but illegal and unconstitutional. Open-minded individuals should read thus book and wake up.
September 5, 2023
Full of good information but too wonky for me. Plus the general direction of this country (currently) is simply depressing to read about. Living through it is one thing. Reading about it is more depressing.
September 8, 2023
Solid read that confirms how messed up our country has become. Less government and way better accountability for regulators is needed. Having experienced it firsthand many times in business, it is clear reform would help.
November 10, 2023
Well written, fact filled book. Often wondered who is running the USA. The powerful elites are waging a campaign to totally transform the country. Capitalism has resulted in enormous greed which is destroying the Judeo-Christian culture the founders relied upon.
January 27, 2024
America needs to read this book and think about who determines what happens in the country’s underbelly. Then read a book authored by a previous Oversight Committee chairman and see if this is the norm. I am a fan of Jason Chaffetz and respect his body of work and his character!
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