Billionaires and Bagmen offers a surprising solution to the question many people are asking: How can we take our lives back from an over-reaching government, Wall Street power brokers, lobbyist-written laws, the billionaires who buy them off and candidates we don't like? Sean Cogan, is funny, prickly, charismatic economist turned venture capitalist, comes up with the idea that his town should simply ignore Big Brother's rules and write its own. He is convinced that the government is no longer "of, by and for the people," that the President and all three branches of government are bought, paid for, and held in the grip of powerful billionaires, corrupt multinational corporations and their bagmen: the politicians and lobbyists who carry out their agendas.
From a savvy newspaper reporter to a secretive former CIA agent who knows how the game is played to the idiot alcoholic mayor of the town who tries to sabotage the initiative, events start to spin out of control. Things go from bad to worse when the powers that be in Washington become concerned that this independence movement could take on a life of its own.
Cogan and his team of supporters, old high school friends, plow ahead in spite of the collusion of spies, lobbyists, a controversial talk show host and a whole boatload of other unsavory characters. It's an exciting, scary and dangerous ride.
About the Author: Ray Bourhis is uniquely qualified to be a political pundit and an enemy of unbridled corporate and political corruption. A lawyer and consumer advocate practicing out of San Francisco, California, Bourhis has been at the forefront of the battle against greed and excessive power for most of his life. Bourhis grew up in the tough neighborhood of Elmhurst in Queens, New York. He credits an attempt by local street gang members to throw him, at the age of twelve, into a blazing bonfire with helping him develop the survival skills needed to spend his legal career taking on insurance companies. Bourhis got his BA at Ohio State University. In his senior year, he created the University's first mascot in eighty-five years with his then girlfriend, Sally Lanyon. Ray and Sally launched the mascot, unannounced, onto the football field in the middle of the marching band's homecoming half-time show. When he waddled off the field, 82,000 fans chanted, "We want the mascot! We want the mascot!" and the OSU icon, now known as Brutus Buckeye, was born. After graduating from Ohio State, he took a job teaching in a rural high school in Appalachia, where he got fired for putting together a pilot project with Senator Robert Kennedy for students to work on Arizona Indian Reservations during the summer. Bourhis wound up as one of Kennedy's key staffers, working with the Senator on his presidential campaign. He then joined the Domestic Peace Corps (VISTA) and was sent to California as a community organizer with the farm workers. Ray's passion for fighting for the underdog ultimately led him to the UC Berkeley School of Law where he founded a student-run public interest law firm that became known as CalPirg. Since law school Bourhis has specialized in representing policyholders in cases involving the wrongful denial of long-term disability (LTD) insurance claims. His firm has set legal precedents and obtained record verdicts and settlements in that field. Bourhis' Billionaires and Bagmen reflects a lifetime of disdain for what he considers the hijacking of America. And what happens with Sean Cogan and his friends in Fairview may well turn fiction into fact. In addition to Billionaires and Bagmen, Bourhis is the author of the soon to be released Preemption: A License to Steal Your Medical/ LTD Benefits. He also co-authored The Autobiography of Brutus Buckeye: As Told to His Parents Sally Lanyon and Ray Bourhis, published in 2015 to honor Brutus' 50th birthday.
