Synopses & Reviews
Social Security is facing the most serious, well-financed, and determined threat to its existence since its inception in 1935. For Americans to make sense of the barrage of conflicting messages on the subject, it's necessary to understand who is behind the campaign to "reform" Social Security, what the campaign aims to achieve, and how it misrepresents its goals. Best-selling author Joe Conason exposes why and how this is happening. "The Raw Deal explores the Right's privatization goals, Bush's hard-fought privatization campaign (built on a stacked "study"), the corporate interests behind the plan, the media campaign to undermine confidence in Social Security, and how the swindle can be stopped. Conason's no-apologies, no-nonsense approach clears up the myriad misperceptions surrounding this important, confusing issue and gets to the truth about the big Social Security bluff.
About the Author
Joe Conason is the national correspondent for the "New York Observer," where he writes a political column that is distrubuted by the United Features Syndicate. He is also a contributing editor for "Talk" magazine and a contributer to Salon.com. His writing has appeared in" The Nation, Harper's, The New Yorker, "and many other publications.
Gene Lyons won the National Magazine Award in 1980. He has written extensively for "Newsweek, Harper's The Nation, The New Review of Books, Texas Monthly, Entertainment Weekly," and many other magazines. His books include "The Higher Illiteracy" (University of Arkansas, 1988), "Widow's Web" (Simon & Schuster, 1993), and "Fools for Scanda"l (Franklin Square, 1996). He writes a political column for the "Arkansas Democrat-Gazette."
Two-time spoken word Grammy (R) award winner AL FRANKEN is the author of four previous bestsellers. A long-time comedy writer who rose to prominence as one of the original "Saturday Night Live" writers in the 1970s, Franken won five Emmy(R) Awards for his work on "SNL".