Quotes About Government

But ours was intended to be a citizen government. It is what of, by and for the people means. And when our most important issue in California is the creation of jobs, I think it's quite helpful to have someone in the U.S. Senate or in the governor's seat who actually knows where jobs come from.

Well, you know, I - again, even in the context of BP, I wonder about this government's priorities. The federal government's top priority right now should be the cleanup. And BP certainly has done so many things wrong. They need to be held to account.

The GAO just released a report that said 22 percent of federal programs fail to meet their objectives. The truth is we don't know how taxpayer money is spent in Washington, D.C., which is why I think we ought to put every agency budget up on the Internet for everyone to see.

We need more transparency and accountability in government so that people know how their money is being spent. That means putting budgets online, putting legislation online.

The truth is in California you can't build a new manufacturing facility, and businesses are leaving in droves because of bad government policy.

all the things I resent most about out-of-control government and the politicians who support it, grow it, or simply fail to deal with it, what angers me above all else is the knowledge that all of this waste and ruin is entirely preventable.

unexpected increases in inflation are the de facto equivalent of outright default, for inflation allows all debtors (including the government) to repay their debts in currency that has much less purchasing power than it did when the loans were made.

Of course, the problems of external default, domestic default, and inflation are all integrally related. A government that chooses to default on its debts can hardly be relied on to preserve the value of its country's currency.

Although private debt certainly plays a key role in many crises, government debt is far more often the unifying problem across the wide range of financial crises we examine. As we stated earlier, the fact that basic data on domestic debt are so opaque and difficult to obtain is proof that governments will go to great lengths to hide their books when things are going wrong,

there is one common theme to the vast range of crises we consider in this book, it is that excessive debt accumulation, whether it be by the government, banks, corporations, or consumers, often poses greater systemic risks than it seems during a boom.

In 1898, Puerto Rico was invaded and declared a territory of the United States. At first, the island was ruled by a military government and later by a civilian one appointed by the U.S. Congress. In 1952, Puerto Rico became a Commonwealth of the United States, with its own gubernatorial and legislative powers. Although the Jones Act had granted American citizenship to Puerto Ricans in 1917, those living on the island still are not allowed to vote for U.S. presidents or members of Congress.

Wisconsin took another tack when Republican governor Scott Walker championed a bill requiring a government-issued photo ID to vote, and then proceeded to close the Department of Motor Vehicles in areas with Democratic voters while simultaneously extending the hours in Republican strongholds.

If you have a badge, you have the government's go-ahead to harass, intimidate, even murder law-abiding citizens." 5 He further denounced cops as "jack-booted government thugs [who have] more power to take away our constitutional rights, break in our doors, seize our guns, destroy our property, and even injure or kill us." 6

Ronald Reagan breezily shared anecdotes about how Lyndon Johnson's Great Society handed over hard-earned taxpayer dollars to a "slum dweller" to live in posh government-subsidized housing and provided food stamps for one "strapping young buck" to buy steak, while another used the change he received from purchasing an orange to pay for a bottle of vodka. He ridiculed Medicaid recipients as "a faceless mass, waiting for handouts." The

As late as 1942, for instance, only 3 percent of the voting-age population cast a ballot in seven poll tax states.116 Just 3 percent of an electorate in these states decided who would sit in the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives to shape federal policy.

While claiming that the government had never provided access to land for "hard toiling whites," Johnson simply erased the nineteen years that he had worked for the passage of the Homestead Act to ensure that his constituency was given 160 acres wrested or browbeaten from Native Americans

It was a government in which Congress rather than the president was assigned the responsibility of leading the nation.

the end oF reconstruction 372 The "New Departure" 372 The 1872 Presidential Election 373 The Politics of Terror: The "Mississippi Plan

In eighteenth-century parlance, the president was to be a disinterested leader, removed from the tarnishing effects of ambition, greed, and factional wrangling, a check upon the sectional or class interests of lawmakers in the House and Senate.

Today St. Kitts is the only Leeward Island, of the Caribbean, that still grows sugar cane. However, sugar cane is very expensive to grow, harvest, and process. The fields are now state owned and the entire island crop is processed in one government-run factory. The dozens of sugar plantations, which had dotted the island, climbing from the shore up into the mountains, were gradually abandoned. In time, the handsome stone structures -- complete factories-- fell to wind, weather, and vandalism.

Sometime back, a high government official said, "You are doing social work and we also are doing the same. But we are doing it for something and you are doing it for somebody." To do our work, we have to be in love with God.

Voters would long remember the obscene spectacle of Grover Cleveland and his lack of charity in a time of need. No Democrat would be elected president for the next sixteen years; Republicans would hold majorities in Congress for a solid three decades. Not until 1932 would a member of the Democratic party emerge with a different conception of the federal government and what it might do for the American people.

Well, the role of money in politics is pretty corrupting right now.

In addition to their power over government based on government financing and personal influence, bankers could steer governments in ways they wished them to go by other pressures.