Last Friday’s broadcast of the Bill Moyers Journal replayed and updated its Capital Crimes report, which gives a very good overview of the Jack Abramoff scandal.  In conjunction with the rebroadcast, the Journal has posted on its website an interview of Thomas Frank, author of What’s the Matter with Kansas: How Conservatives Won the Heart of America and regular columnist for The Wall Street Journal.  Frank has just released his new book, The Wrecking Crew: How Conservatives Rule, where he documents how politicians and their lobbyist friends are dismantling government through deregulation, budget cuts and by selling off essential services through private-sector bidding and privatization, all of course hidden from public view.

PoliticalWire.com dubbed the bottom line:

It is no coincidence that the same politicians who guffaw at the idea of effective government have installed a regime in which incompetence is the rule.

The ranks of conservatives running the federal government the past seven-plus years, Frank writes, are filled with men and women like Abramoff who betray their laissez faire philosophy to cut sweet heart deals for private industry. Harper’s Magazine published an abridged version of the book in its August edition. And yesterday, NPR’s Fresh Air broadcasted an interview with Frank about his new book.

Put it on your summer reading list. I am.