Quotes About Government

raising the average income tax for the top income percentile to 43.5 percent from 22.4 percent, the level of 2007, would raise revenue by 3 percent of GDP, which is enough to close the US structural deficit while still leaving very high earners with more after-tax income than they would have had under Nixon.

a new study by James Henry of the Tax Justice Network estimates that there is as much as 32 trillion dollars, which is over twice the entire US national debt, hidden away offshore not paying taxes, which makes for a very tempting target indeed.

First of all, let's establish something. If the United States ever gets to the point that it cannot roll over its debt, the supposed big fear, we can safely assume that all other sovereign debt alternatives are already dead.

those who have never heard of "MJ-12" and those who "knew" that it was simply a very elaborate hoax.

had detected desperation in Sharpe's broadcasts of late. With all branches of government now seated on the left, Sharpe and his corps of angry white microphone jocks could be reliably cast as the whining remnants of a bygone era.

In some major cities today, having a pro football team is a higher priority than providing basic services. The city of Oakland and Alameda County, for example, shell out over $30 million each year to support the Raiders; by 2012, Oakland, with one of the worst crime rates in the nation, had cut 200 police officers to save money. The

Inner-city slums could be cleared, blacks removed to more distant second-ghetto areas, central business districts redeveloped, and transportation woes solved all at the same time — and mostly at federal expense.

Put another way, road engineers had relied on the supposedly apolitical principles of highway building as their major form of political expression.

The government has incredible powers at its disposal, and when it abuses those powers, someone has to stand up.

people] can see only the human actors upon the stage of history. Wicked rulers, ruthless dictators, tyrants, oppressors, kings, governments, and presidents are, to them, the real and only characters in the great drama of life as it affects the political realm. They have no idea at all of the unseen realm of evil personalities, energizing and motivating their human agents…

If we tried to write about politics, you'd realize that we're all a bunch of idiots.

We need a grassroots movement and government policies and programs to change the food landscape and the built environment to give our children a chance to have happy, healthy successful lives.

When our government policies and agricultural subsidies have supported the flood of an extra 700 calories per person per day into the food system since 1970 (mostly in the form of high-fructose corn syrup from corn and trans fats), we have a problem.

Getting to space is not rocket science, it's political science!

But the best thing Washington can do for education is realize that our role is limited. Washington must keep its promises, but let those who know our childrens' names- parents, teachers and school board members- make education decisions.

The founding fathers, whose infinite wisdom gave us a Constitution and form of government well nigh perfect, located the seat of that government in a stinking, steaming swamp.

With its architectural grandeur, Senator Gore said, our capital would someday "make wonderful ruins.

What the Founding Fathers created in the Constitution is the most magnificent government on the face of the Earth, and the reason is this: because it was intended to preserve the American society and the American spirit, not to transform it or destroy it.

In the mid-1990s, New York City was spending $58,000 annually per adult inmate and $70,000 for each juvenile at Rikers.[6] In 2013, the annual cost per inmate was $167,000.[7] Over the last two decades this amounts to eight to ten times what the city spends on each child in its public schools.

Increasingly, U.S. private prisons construct and manage the poor in carceral institutions, for profit. But corporations also offer privatized services to local, state, and federal governments for their carceral facilities. Private

Private prisons are an offspring of the larger incarceration binge we have been tracing. The private prisons mark the spaces in U.S. society where the bodies of the poor most dramatically show the results of the policies comprehensively inaugurated by the Ronald Reagan presidency, which sought to privatize in the early 1980s as many government functions as possible. The

United States police have repeatedly been found to use torture in their apprehending and detaining practices, and specific techniques designed by U.S. city police forces have shaped the reigning forms of torture used by U.S. CIA and other government security forces.

This is a classic ploy familiar to revolutionary leaders throughout history: the failure of the revolution proves the need to radicalize it. This is why, for decades now, Americans have been spectators at the dark comedy of Republicans running for office successfully against "the government"—and then, once in power, running for reelection on the promise to bring down "the government" they themselves control.

But in a democracy the only way to meaningfully defend them—and not just make empty gestures of recognition and "celebration"—is to win elections and exercise power in the long run, at every level of government. And the only way to accomplish that is to have a message that appeals to as many people as possible and pulls them together. Identity liberalism does just the opposite.