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From the Introduction by Nomi Prins: "Once upon a time, families talked about politics over dinner, hit TV shows like M*A*S*H openly questioned war, and people didn’t fall in love over the Internet. In the early 1980s, Bruce Springsteen’s Born in the USA was the working person’s anthem, and it was cool; at the 2005 Grammy awards, Green Day’s timely album, American Idiot, got six nominations. Some-where along the way, we changed. Pride and cynicism switched positions—particularly when it came to politics.

It’s not that politics became less important; it’s that more Americans checked out of the conversation. That’s one reason for the declining voter turnout over the past couple of decades, and the fact that many people tend not to trust either of the major parties.1 If you can’t connect to your leaders or feel they “get” you, it’s only natural to disconnect from what they’re saying. Maybe that’s why more people recognize the judges on American Idol than the judges on the Supreme Court. It’s easier to relate to would-be singers with dreams than to guys in robes—or pundits in suits, for that matter. Plus, it takes time to follow these issues as you’re battling traffic, working a job you hate to pay off the school loans that got you there, or stretching your social security checks.

But politics still touches our everyday lives in so many different ways. So taking the nature of our frantic lives into account, I­ ’ve tried to talk about American politics by starting with something we can all relate to—our wallets. Wallets are roadmaps of our daily realities: they hold photos of the ­ people we love, chunks of our identity, and plastic cards that evoke our financial worries. The cards inside your wallet tell a story. They also tell the tale of the government’s impact on you.

This book traces those impacts. The driver’s license ­ chap­ ter connects the price you pay at the gas pump to our ­ coun­try’s policies on energy and Iraq. The health insurance chapter talks about Medicare, Medicaid, and those ridiculous insurance premiums we all hate. The credit card chapter examines personal debt, credit card company profits, and the skyrocketing national debt. The student identification chapter looks at mounting educational expenses and reduced governmental support for what is supposed to be the country’s most valuable asset—its brains. And so on. I’ve tried to untangle the web our government weaves around and through our frantic lives. So this book is for anyone who struggles to pay bills, needs healthcare, is looking for a job, or feels their company is not keeping its promises to them. It’s for anyone who has questioned the government’s role in it all...

This book will make you aware of what you’re not getting from your government, why you’re not getting it, what you’re entitled to, and how to get it. It will also show you that you’re not alone. If we do this right, politicians in Washington will become more concerned about the people they represent. That’s what real America should be. Real people, real wallets, real soul, real ideas—and that’s what you’ll find in the following chapters."

"This is the first book I have read that sees the effects of Republican incompetence and meanness through the eyes of ordinary Americans. The people in this book are our thoughtful, hardworking neighbors who are not political, and who do not, for the most part, rail against Bush. They are simply trying to get through the day. Jacked is, in an odd way, uplifting. The real message here is that America is indeed a great country whose major malady is bad leadership."
--- Howard Dean, chairman, Democratic National Committee

From the Publisher: Author, journalist, and Wall Street expert Nomi Prins examines the effects of Republican policies, scandals, and blunders by conducting a guided tour of a typical American wallet. Each chapter matches a wallet item to a set of political topics. The driver’s license leads to a discussion of gasoline prices, energy policy, and Iraq; the Social Security card leads out to the administration’s efforts to “reform” Social Security by weakening it; the credit card points to bankruptcy legislation and credit card company profits; the health insurance card is a reminder of soaring medical and insurance costs, and the cutting of Medicaid and Medicare, and so on. Crisscrossing the country to gather the personal experiences of a wide variety of Americans, Prins tells their stories, shows them trying to make ends meet, and questions why the government is failing them. Taken together, these lively, accessible chapters link the “conservative” record to its disastrous effects on ordinary people and tell us what we can do about it.

Nomi Prins did her field work for "Jacked." This is a book filled with the voices of people living on the margins who Prins interviewed in more than 30 states. It's the voice of America you hear but rarely in the mainstream media.

Many of them don't even realize that the Republicans are picking their pockets. That's one of the saddest messages in the book. The GOP has neutralized economic issues through the art of diversion.

It's time to take our wallets back from the pickpockets in Washington.

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