Rating: 
Summary: I laughed until I cried
Review: The utter inanity of Howard's explosive expose would, in the word's of Mark Twain, make a dead man laugh. Then you consider the reality and one must weep. There are in fact many authors who have looked to the future and relayed the good news of an imminent utopia about to erupt in our midst, arriving at light speed on the winged feet of technology. Hold on Horatio. You forgot the Lawyers, the Media, and the Government. All three have a different plan. Virginia Postrel, Reg Whittaker, et al, are apparently blind to the visceral stupidity and craven corruption of the three amigos just mentioned. One author has not succumbed to the conventional idiocy that ignores Howard's reality. Jerry Furland. the author of "Transfer-the end of the beginning", stands in the vanguard of those who gladly shoulder the burden of scorn of the "progressive and oh so hip" crowd who despite every known attribute of Mankind, continue to insist that we can handle it. Well, I see little hope of that. People, to include me, generally suck. The Founding Fathers recognised that. Result: the U.S. Constitution. Howard shows us that despite the advantages of birth, Americans are intent on self-destruction and will pursue that goal amid general applause and approbation. Oh, Furland is not an intellectual per se. That is his strength. To be an intellectual, widely recognized as such, is to abandone all pretense of intellect. This Furland will hopefully never do. Great book Mr. Howard!
Rating: 
Summary: Storytelling Run Riot
Review: This book largely recycles stories popular among insurance executives, politicians pandering for campaign contributions, tort reformers, and other malefactors. Mr. Howard too often uses "common sense" to disguise a status quo that lets individuals or collectivities pollute or poison with impunity and with profit. He hopes to get away with the rhetoric of "common sense" by telling tall tales, often whoppers gleaned from the press, politicians, pundits, or, even worse, FORBES. Given Mr. Howard's credulity -- real or pretended -- no savvy, informed reader should grant the tall tales or Mr. Howard any credibility. But then, national newsmagazines did not lavish attention on this book because it appealed to the sophisticated or aware reader! That is too bad, because the United States could use thoroughgoing legal reforms IF such reforms are informed by actualities rather than anecdotes. Skip this grim brother. Read ACCIDENTAL JUSTICE by Bell and O'Connell or other balanced discussions written for thoughtful readers.
Rating: 
Summary: disappointing that he offers no solutions
Review: This book provides a devastating critique of the blizzard of rules & regulations that government has promulgated in the past century and the damage they have caused to our society & our economy. Howard provides numerous examples of nonsensical regulations (New York City refusing to allow Mother Teresa to build a homeless shelter unless a $100,000 elevator is installed, the EPA ruling that bricks are poisonous because if they are sawn in pieces there may be some silicate particles, etc.), but these are easy targets. The most graphic illustration of the insanity of government regulation comes in his discussion of the Americans with Disabilies Act & the mayhem it has caused: kneeling buses spend a half hour during people's work commute, loading & unloading a wheelchair rider; public transportation vehicles end up with far less seats than before in order to accomodate the chairs; street curbs are ramped for the wheelchairs, but now the blind have trouble telling where the curb ends, etc. It's time to ask whether all this is a worthwhile price to pay to benefit a minute proportion of the population. Equally disturbing, is the discussion of Special Education. What is the sense of an educational system that devotes a huge proportion of it's resources to nearly ineducable students? The most interesting part of the book may be his examination of the motivation behind the regulatory scheme we now face. He points out that the original motivation for regulation was fairness. Social policy planners believed that only be having an elaborate & inflexible pattern of regulation that covered every eventuality, could you guarantee that bureaucrats would be freed from outside influences. However, the result has been to require that everyone follow the same scheme of rules, regardless of whether they make any sense. As Howard argues, this has brought us to a crisis point in American life. We are increasingly frustrated by the intrusion of these rules into our lives, increasingly distrustful of government & increasingly willing to find ways around these regulations. However, and this is a significant weakness of the book, Howard does not offer a real prescription for these problems. His critique is powerful enough that it's hard to believe that we wouldn't be better off if we scrapped all government regulation & started over, but Howard understandably shies away from any such radical solution. GRADE: B
Rating:
Summary: disappointing that he offers no solutions
Review: This book provides a devastating critique of the blizzard of rules & regulations that government has promulgated in the past century and the damage they have caused to our society & our economy. Howard provides numerous examples of nonsensical regulations (New York City refusing to allow Mother Teresa to build a homeless shelter unless a $100,000 elevator is installed, the EPA ruling that bricks are poisonous because if they are sawn in pieces there may be some silicate particles, etc.), but these are easy targets. The most graphic illustration of the insanity of government regulation comes in his discussion of the Americans with Disabilies Act & the mayhem it has caused: kneeling buses spend a half hour during people's work commute, loading & unloading a wheelchair rider; public transportation vehicles end up with far less seats than before in order to accomodate the chairs; street curbs are ramped for the wheelchairs, but now the blind have trouble telling where the curb ends, etc. It's time to ask whether all this is a worthwhile price to pay to benefit a minute proportion of the population. Equally disturbing, is the discussion of Special Education. What is the sense of an educational system that devotes a huge proportion of it's resources to nearly ineducable students? The most interesting part of the book may be his examination of the motivation behind the regulatory scheme we now face. He points out that the original motivation for regulation was fairness. Social policy planners believed that only be having an elaborate & inflexible pattern of regulation that covered every eventuality, could you guarantee that bureaucrats would be freed from outside influences. However, the result has been to require that everyone follow the same scheme of rules, regardless of whether they make any sense. As Howard argues, this has brought us to a crisis point in American life. We are increasingly frustrated by the intrusion of these rules into our lives, increasingly distrustful of government & increasingly willing to find ways around these regulations. However, and this is a significant weakness of the book, Howard does not offer a real prescription for these problems. His critique is powerful enough that it's hard to believe that we wouldn't be better off if we scrapped all government regulation & started over, but Howard understandably shies away from any such radical solution. GRADE: B
Rating:
Summary: Progress impeded by "The Process"
Review: This book takes a disturbing look into The Law as the suffocater of progress and the enemy of common sense. Not that we all need too much reminding of that nowadays, though. The examples are many, but are juicier (if that word is appropriate) in the second half of the book. After you read this you'll wonder how ANYTHING ever gets accomplished anymore, especially in NYC. Watch the movie "...And Justice For All" to get your blood pumping, then read this book to get your blood vessels to actually burst. It'll make you want to emigrate to another country at times.
Rating:
Summary: Insiteful
Review: This book was exteremely well written. It is a very thought provoking book and a must read for all politicians as well as voters
Rating:
Summary: Lawyer's summ. of the drastic changes in America's legal sys
Review: This is a great book for anyone who has felt that there was
something fundamentally wrong with the US justice system, but
just wasn't sure what it was.
Using both anecdotal and historical evidence, Philip Howard makes the strong case that during the last few decades we
have tried to make everything so deterministic that common
sense has been lost.
I strongly recommend this book.
Rating:
Summary: Uncommon Sense
Review: This is a much more concise book than Bovard's "Lost Rights" - and yet makes the point that Bovard fails to: we are lost in a misguided legalism that is not to any person's benefit, except for those bureaucrats whose profession it is navigate the web of laws and regulations we have today in the United States. To find our way again we need to return to simpler a implementation our legal system. Much of our legal system could be boiled down to the Golden Rule. The founding fathers understood this principle when they wrote the U.S. Constitution. The next time you or someone near you says, "There oughta be a law", read or re-read this book. Besides, there probably already are a multitude of laws covering the act you want outlawed - just try to make sense of them.
Rating:
Summary: Great from start to finish.
Review: This is a quick, easy read and I can relate to this book. My parents run a small, family business and we waste so much time and money to try and sort our way through all of this nonsense when we should be coming up with ideas to be more productive. After you read this book, you realize how much of a strain this puts on everyone.
Rating:
Summary: Great from start to finish.
Review: This is a quick, easy read and I can relate to this book. My parents run a small, family business and we waste so much time and money to try and sort our way through all of this nonsense when we should be coming up with ideas to be more productive. After you read this book, you realize how much of a strain this puts on everyone.
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