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Munir Moon is the author of two books. The Middle Class Comeback: Women, Millennials, and Technology Leading the Way, counters the negativity of the dominant narrative surrounding the past, present, and, most importantly, future of America's middle class. It presents a hopeful blueprint for its revival with women, millennials, and technology being major factors while addressing the transformation of ever rising healthcare and education costs and taxes that adversely impact the middle class.
The first book, The Beltway Beast: Stealing from Future Generations and Destroying the Middle Class, transcends the anger and frustration of American people with their leaders failing to solve the country's problems. It documents our current reality and offers transformational ideas, such as shrinking the Presidential Primary process by utilizing technology, reducing healthcare costs through Smart Patient Credits, and using a Value Based Tax system that transfers power from Washington back to the states.
Moon spent 8 years in the financial industry, starting at Chase Econometrics and ending in the Savings and Loan Association during the 1980s. He was a first-hand observer of the financial crisis in the 80s, which resulted in the demise of the Savings and Loan industry to be repeated in 2008 in a different form. Moon is the president of Bertech, a Southern California-based small business that has been recognized three times as one of the top 500 fastest-growing small businesses by Inc. 500.
Moon blogs at The Huffington Post and is a contributor to the LAprogressive.com. He earned his B.S. in engineering, M.S. in economics and M.B.A. in finance from UCLA. He is married with three sons and lives in Los Angeles County, California.
Reviewed by Stefan Vucak for Readers' Favorite
The Beltway Beast opens with a depressing summary of the American political system that is subject to corporate lobbyists and focus by Congressmen to get reelected rather than serve the interests of the people and the country. It is an interesting approach as it reinforces the perception that all politicians are basically untrustworthy. Once elected, Congressmen toe their party line and enjoy the perks of the office, life in Congress funded by vested interest groups who control government policy. Attempts were made to set up independent parties, but all failed due to lack of broad Congressional support. To fix the numerous economic and foreign policy issues outlined in the book, Munir Moon advocates creation of a new political party, whose charter is: ‘The People’s Party of America’s (PPA) vision for America is to be a nation of entrepreneurs and innovators who are free from bureaucracy and centralized power. It is a party that is fiscally and socially responsible. It espouses personal responsibility and decentralized government as its core theme.’
I found The Beltway Beast and Munir Moon’s wealth of statistical information to back up his dissertation a fascinating read that in many respects will confirm the people’s view of the inefficiencies and ineffectiveness inherent in the current U.S. political and domestic systems. Although notionally reasonable, the proposed ‘solutions’ to address a plethora of domestic and foreign policy problems outlined in each chapter tend to get dogmatic as the solutions are based on a premise that Congress is filled with reasonable representatives and the population in general actually cares what is going on and wants to participate in the political decision-making process. Sadly, the reality is altogether different as Munir Moon himself acknowledges. The People’s Party of America’s manifesto is to establish itself and win electoral support to implement its remedial policies; a laudable objective. However, to succeed, the PPA would need to obtain absolute control of Congress and state legislature mechanisms. The party’s program is an idealist’s view that ignores reality and has no prospect of being realized - unless the party manages to obtain total political power. The obvious danger with such a vision, should it be even partially realized, could easily lead to dictatorial rule.
Some readers of The Beltway Beast will not find this book palatable and its proposed solutions Utopian, but they will find it thoughtful and worthy of consideration when choosing their state or federal candidates. To solve the national problems outlined in the book, American people will need to become involved in the political process and make their voices heard. The alternative is to maintain an intransigent Congress where national interests are ignored in the pursuit of partisan obstinacy. However, overcoming vested corporate interests promulgated by the lobby army who control politicians on both sides of the aisle will be a daunting challenge that many feel should nevertheless be pursued.
