David Cay Johnston on Books

"No serious coverage of taxes is possible without reading the journal Tax Notes published by, a nonprofit enterprise whose beneficiaries include reporters."

"In every place where there is no real tax system, such as Honduras or Afghanistan, there is no widespread wealth."

"People don't know... They... are so fascinated by what's going on in the White House, they're not paying attention to what matters. ...he reason I hope every single one of you reads my book is that people need to know this or we will not get change."

"e have the highest percentage of children who go to bed hungry of any modern country. You wouldn't know from reading the news or watching TV that America has a hunger problem, that all across America we have communities, in the country, in the suburbs, in the city, where volunteers send home backpacks full of food for families on the weekend, because otherwise these kids would not eat."

"Except for a handful of people, Peter Gosselin at the Los Angeles Times who's done some big series, and a few other reporters here and there, now and then, why is it that this issue of income redistribution and government taking from the many and giving to the few is not being reported widely. You are not reading about it in many, many, many newspapers around the country. I would think it would be one of the major things."

"Journalism never did a great job of covering government, but 40% of journalism jobs in this country have disappeared since 2000. ...s a result of that the agencies aren't being covered at all. The electricity markets, job safety, diplomacy, all through the government, the military. All of these things are being ravaged by this. ...Spend a couple of evenings reading the book, and then you've got to... tell other people. Have the facts to persuade them to understand what's wrong."

"I remember reading a story... in one of the biggest papers in the country about the county budget in the dominant area of marketing for that newspaper... It consisted of the 3 county commissioners... yelling at each other over the budget, and it had a single mention of the budget will be "x" dollars. It didn't tell me how much of my property taxes go up, are they spending more on the sheriff and less on schools or are they going to fix the potholes. None of the substance was there."

"Donald Trump came into office and killed the. ...hat partnership had serious flaws. It was written in secret, by corporate lobbyists and by lawyers involved in the trade business. It was so secretive that when my congresswoman,, having seen what I wrote, wanted to read what was in there... she said "Yea, it's all written... in language that doesn't mean anything to me," and Louise has a PhD in microbiology. ...It's written in the language of people in the trade, not to be understood by mere mortals."