War on the Middle Class

Lou Dobbs has an ax to grind with what he calls "the political class" as well as with "special interests," big business, and especially illegal immigrants. He spends most of this audiobook complaining that the middle class is under siege and must fight back against those who hoard power and economic opportunity. Dobbs's ideas on solving these problems are presented in the final 30 minutes. If this sounds familiar, you are a regular viewer of "Lou Dobbs Tonight" on CNN. As a broadcast professional, Dobbs reads smoothly and with authority. Punchy prose and fast-paced delivery move the material along. The book is akin to an extended listen to talk-radio with no call-in segment. T.F. (c) AudioFile 2007, Portland, Maine

Starred review from August 7, 2006
Though a self-confessed "lifelong Republican and a strong believer in free enterprise," Dobbs's opinions have evolved away from mainline GOP and corporate dogma. Charging that the Clinton and Bush administrations have waged "class warfare" on the American middle class, he criticizes their free trade policies, which have eliminated manufacturing jobs in the U.S., either outright or by outsourcing them. He's scornful of a GOP that panders to its fundamentalist religious base with bills that focus on abortion, gay marriage and the Pledge of Allegiance while the huge federal deficits ("an estate tax on the middle class and their children") spiral out of control. He rails against the K Street lobbyists, like Jack Abramoff, and their friends in Congress; chastises the credit card and banking industries for engineering the new bankruptcy law to their own profits; and criticizes the press for its sloppy "he says, she says" journalism. But Dobbs risks slipping from populist to demagogue in his jeremiad against the estimated 11 million illegal immigrants in this country and his support for the vigilante Minuteman Project. Agree with him or not, Dobbs remains a refreshingly bold thinker who refuses to be intellectually pigeonholed.