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

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, outsourcing of jobs to cheap foreign labor markets, massive U.S. budget and trade deficits, a crumbling national infrastructure, voter fraud, or runaway costs of energy and health care, the victims are "the hardworking, taxpaying middle class Americans." Dobbs covers all of these issues and, yes, he documents everything he considers wrong. He doubts the middle class will be able to survive the assault if big business and big government continue unchecked in their attacks on "our common good." Moreover, very few countervailing influences stand ready to effect a solution.

Dobbs assures his readers that he takes this position only after long and careful research of the issues. Although every media outlet has an obligation to tell the truth, Dobbs notes broadcast news has become synonymous with big business and that cable news networks all are subsidiaries of major corporations; a mere eight companies own nearly all of mainstream media journalism. Dobbs considers the media's denial of its liberal bias more devastating than the bias itself.

Dobbs has been vilified for his views, threatened, and offered bribes. Critics have called him the "high priest of demotic sensationalism," as well as a "self-important sycophant," "table-thumping protectionist," and "raving populist xenophobe." However, the ad hominem attacks reveal more about the critics than about Dobbs or his stand on issues. The White House, protected by an "insular administration" intolerant of criticism of its policies and pursuits, consistently has denied Dobbs' requests for interviews. Dobbs makes no apologies for having more confidence in the middle class than in the country's elites.

In defining the adversary forging "an outright waft on the middle class, Dobbs blames business and academic elites, the Clinton and Bush administrations, and Congress for passing laws detrimental to the middle class. When corporations ignore their social responsibilities and the Federal government squanders billions of dollars as it goes deeper into debt, the middle class must assume even more of the tax burden. This occurs at the very time many Americans face uncertain job prospects, insecure financial futures, and a potentially reduced standard of living. People in the middle class have suffered in silence too long; they must make themselves heard.

Dobbs proposes minimizing the grip of big money and special interests by mandating public financing of all elections, i.e., clean elections, as is done in Maine, Arizona, and Connecticut; asserting public interest through initiatives and referendums; changing rules concerning lobbyists; altering the way government does business with other nations; returning to Congress the "fast track" option now given the president to regulate commerce with foreign nations; controlling immigration by increasing the number of enforcement personnel; and following Pres. Theodore Roosevelt's idea of having only one language.