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Wednesday 21st of January 2026

American Dream Government assistance is said to undermine the American dream. Wait. Undermine whose American dream? Nancy Isenberg, White Trash © 2016 Kwiple.com
Artificial intelligence  A corporation or a government department isn't a conscious being, but it is an artificial intelligence.  It has the capability to take decisions which are completely distinct from the intentions of any of the people who compose it. And under stressful conditions, it can go stark raving mad. Dan Davies, The Unaccountability Machine © 2024 Kwiple.com
Artificial intelligence I think if this technology goes wrong, it can go quite wrong. And we want to be vocal about that. We want to work with the government to prevent that from happening. Sam Altman, co-founder and CEO of OpenAI, the creator of DALL-E 2 nd Chat GPT-4 © 2023 Kwiple.com
Bankruptcy I would certainly be in favor of allowing states to use the bankruptcy route. … We’re not interested in solving their pension problems for them. Mitch McConnell, on bailing out state and local governments in addition to bailing out big businesses overwhelmed by COVID-19 coronavirus © 2020 Kwiple.com
Bullshitters say You'll have to excuse me – I'm new  to filling out government paperwork so I forgot to mention a meeting or two © 2017 Kwiple.com
Bureaucracy In tacitly partnering with bureaucracies, even as they complain about the partnership, politicians and citizens implicitly rely on an efficiency in the economist's sense:  the efficiency of delegation. That efficiency is ubiquitous. Richard M. Valelly, American Politics © 2018 Kwiple.com
Change Change is no more likely when a 55 percent majority wants it than when only a 25 percent minority does – in either case, a policy change occurs about one quarter of the time. Even more strikingly, when large majorities of Americans favor policy changes – when 70 or 80 percent want change – the get it less than half the time. … This finding means … that we [Americans] are subject to dangerous policy “drift.” Government policies do not adapt to new relaities. Benjamin Page and Martin Gilens, Democracy in America? © 2019 Kwiple.com
Civil wars One study revealed that all of the democracies that experienced civil war between 1960 abd 1995 had majoritarian or presidential systems. None of them were based on proportional representation. Barbara F. Walter, How Civil Wars Start  © 2022 Kwiple.com
Class Government by  the upper class promotes government for  the upper class and government for  the upper class is often bad for everyone else. Nicholas Carnes, White-Collar Government © 2019 Kwiple.com
Congress No matter what the sequence of action among the three departments, if the process is played out to the end, Congress always gets the last say (if it wants it). Garry Wills © 2019 Kwiple.com
Conspiracy theorists say The Deep State is out to get me © 2018 Kwiple.com
The Constitution of the United States For my part, I believe that the legitimacy of the constitution ought to derive solely from it utility as an instrument of democrtic government —nothing more, nothing less. Robert A. Dahl, How Democratic Is the American Constitution?  © 2018 Kwiple.com
The Constitution of the United States The Constitution of 1787 now bears some resemblance, though, to the initial system of government, the Articles of Confederation (1777). The Articles were widely considered a governmental failure because they did not address the evident need for effective national government. Richard M. Valelly, American Politics © 2018 Kwiple.com
The Constitution of the United States Our constitution not only permits divided government,  it cannot prevent divided government. And it provides no way out except by elections at fixed intervals— elections that may only reproduce the existing divisions or inaugurate new ones. Robert A. Dahl, How Democratic Is the American Constitution?  © 2018 Kwiple.com
Corporations To the extent that corporations benefit from government largess in areas such as clean energy, health care, free trade, and international economic development, they are unlikely to bite the hand that feeds them. Jennifer Delton, “Why the American Center Held —and Then Fell Apart” © 2017 Kwiple.com
Corruption If you offer money to a government to influence it, that is corruption. But if someone receives money for services rendered afterwards, that is a commission. Adnan Khashoggi, renowned international arms dealer © 2018 Kwiple.com
Corruption A rule-of-law state can withstand a certain amount of official corruption. What it cannot withstand is a culture of impunity. So long as officials believe that corruption will usually be detected – and if detected, then certaily punished – for just that long they will believe that corruption is wrong. It is for this reason that corrupt regimes swiftly evolve toward authoritarianism, and authoritarian regimes toward corruption. David Frum, Trumpocracy © 2019 Kwiple.com
COVID-19 coronavirus Letting people put others at risk by refusing to wear masks, practice social distancing, or get vaccinated is qualitatively the same as letting individuals use the threat of violence to get what they want; in both cases, government has a crucial role — it constrains destructive individual behavior. Paul Krugman, New York Review of Books, March 10, 2022 © 2020 Kwiple.com
COVID-19 coronavirus No event better demonstrates why a quality administrative state, led by people able to differentiate experts from charlatans, is so vital to the public. Martin Wolf, Financial Times, March 17, 2020 © 2020 Kwiple.com
COVID-19 coronavirus Ronald Reagan, in a quote that has been making the rounds in recent weeks, once said, “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: I'm from the government and I’m here to help.” Covid-19 has proven him wrong. They are, in a time of real crisis, the nine sexiest. Robert Armstrong, Financial Times, April 14, 2020 © 2020 Kwiple.com
Dead-in-the-heads say God is the only source of our law, liberty and government. Roy Moore © 2017 Kwiple.com
Dead-in-the-heads say If we have to close down our government, we're building that wall. We're going to have our wall. The American people voted for immigration control. We're going to get that wall. Donald Trump, Phoenix rally, August 22, 2017 © 2017 Kwiple.com
Dead-in-the-heads say  Our country needs a good "shutdown" Donald Trump, 8:07 AM - May 2, 2017 © 2018 Kwiple.com
Dead-in-the-heads say Our government: look at it! It isn't too big to fail; it's too big to succeed. It's too big to succeed so we can afford no retreads or nothing will change with the same people and same policies that got us into the status quo. Another Latin word, status quo. It stands for, “Man, middle-class every-day Americans are really gettin' taken for a ride.” Sarah Palin, 2015 Iowa Freedom Summit speech © 2015 Kwiple.com
Dead-in-the-heads say You know what I did? A big favor. I caught the swamp. I caught them all. Lets see what happens. Nobody else could have done that but me. I caught all this corruption that was going on and noboby else could have dont it. Donald Trump © 2019 Kwiple.com
Death  The vanity and presumption of governing  beyond the grave, is the most ridiculous and insolent of all tyrannies. Man has no property in man; neither has any generation a property in the generations which are to follow. Thomas Paine, Rights of Man  © 2020 Kwiple.com
Declaration of Independence The authors of the Declaration of Independence made no anti-imperial or antigovernment statement. Instead, Thomas Jeffereson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Roger Sherman, John Jay, and their fellow members of the Second Continental Congress proclaimed their commitment to a Patriot government that would promote American development. The Declaration marked not the end of empire but the beginning of a new and energetic government in North America. Steve Pincus, The Heart of the Declaration [Patriots believed in governments promoting economic development by raising consumer demand, subsidizing immigrants, helping the poor, taxing the rich, eliminating slavery] © 2018 Kwiple.com
Democracy The biggest threat to democracy is the use of conspiracy theories by governments, who then try to deligitimise opposition or any independent thought by attributing them to conspiracies. Richard J.Evans © 2017 Kwiple.com
Democracy  When corporations get so big that they can start to squeeze the government, then democracy no longer works. Elizabeth Warren © 2019 Kwiple.com
Democrats So this is what I have become certain of:  Democrats spend too much time and energy imagining the policies that a capable government could execute and not rearly enough time imagining how to make a government capable of executing them. It is not only markets that have failed. Ezra Klein, New York Times, May 31, 2022 © 2022 Kwiple.com
Duh obvious You know,  we have so many people in government, even me. Donald Trump © 2017 Kwiple.com
Elections Here's one thing I know: if you have to win a campaign by dividing people, you're not going to be able to govern them. You won't be able to unite them later if that's how you start. Barack Obama © 2017 Kwiple.com
Elites When elites leave their homelands, they typically go to stable countries with long-term horizons. In good times, the rich want a weak state with low tax and little regulation, but in bad times they prefer strong states. That's why the countries with the highest influx of foreign brains per capita are Aus- tralia, Sweden, Norway, Switzerland and Canada, according to the Fund for Peace. The safe haven of the American super- -rich in case the US collapses is social democratic New Zealand. Simon Kuper, Financial Times, July 29, 2021 © 2021 Kwiple.com
Fascism Although many regimes and movements imitated aspects of fascism, explicitly fascist movements generally struggled to become regimes. There is no straightforward reason for this failure, for economic crisis and  fear of communism were very widespread, even where actual communists were rare. The most convincing explanation is that fascism did best where it combined leverage in parliament with street action, as it had in Italy and Germany, and to a lesser extent in Hungary. Kevin Passmore, A Very Short Introduction to Fascism © 2022 Kwiple.com
Fascism The first truth [about the liberty of a democratic people] is that the liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic state itself.  That, in its essence, is fascism — ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. Franklin Delano Roosevelt, April 29, 1938, Message to Congress on Curbing Monopolies © 2022 Kwiple.com
Fear  Those who won our independence believed … that fear breeds repression; that repression breeds hate; that hate menaces stable government; Louis Brandeis, Whitney v. California © 2022 Kwiple.com
Freedom of the press No government ought to be without censors: and where the press is free, no one ever will. Thomas Jefferson, letter to George Washington, September 9, 1792 © 2023 Kwiple.com
Government  As long as there is plenty, poverty is evil. Government belongs wherever evil needs an adversary and there are people in distress. Robert F. Kennedy © 2021 Kwiple.com
Government The atmosphere is ripe for a party of big government to sweep elections in post-pandemic America. But then so it has been before. Looking back at the past century or so, two political facts seem to hold across several rich democracies. One is the ideo- logical supremacy of the left. The other is its electoral underperformance. … We are left with one of the oddest quirks in politics. Voters often choose the party that is less keen on government to oversee its expansion. … Voters trust that parties who enlarge the state reluctantly are likely to do it sensibly. Janan Ganesh, Financial Times, April 8, 2020 © 2020 Kwiple.com
Government The commonly held view that the more governments do, the less freedom people have is … mistaken. Governments do sometimes restrict freedom, sometimes justifiably, sometimes not … But at other times government action can increase freedom by giving people options that they would not have otherwise because of cost. We need to look at particular policies, to see whether in opening options up they are closing down other ones that are more important. David Miller, Political Philisophy © 2018 Kwiple.com
Government For decades we have attacked it, redirected it, outsourced it, and filled it with incompetents and cronies. Yes, it still works well enough when we need it to blow up some small country, but those branches of it designed to help out Americans of “lower socioeconomic status,” as the scientists would put it, are now bare. Thomas Frank, Rendezvous with Oblivion © 2018 Kwiple.com
Government Government by organized wealth is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob. Franklin Delano Roosevelt © 2021 Kwiple.com
Government [G]overnment exists wherever some have the authority to issue orders to others, backed by sanctions, in one or more domains of life. The modern state  is merely one form of government among others. Elizabeth Anderson, Private Government  © 2018 Kwiple.com
Government Government is everywhere, not just in the form of the state, but even more pervasively in the workplace. Elizabeth Anderson, Private Government  © 2018 Kwiple.com
Government Governments deal with “wicked problems” that can't be solved (or even fully understood): social injustice, hostile powers or climate change. The “solutionism” of Silicon Valley rarely works in politics. Simon Kuper, Financial Times, March 10-11, 2018 © 2018 Kwiple.com
Government Governments of all types – democratic and authoritarian, small states and superpowers – are losing their ability to anticipate events. They are thus losing  the means to shape them. Edward Luce, The Retreat of Western Liberalism  © 2017 Kwiple.com
Government Governments of the Industrial World, you weary giants of flesh and steel, I come from Cyberspace, the new home of Mind. On behalf of the future, I ask you of the past to leave us alone. You are not welcome among us. You have no sovereignty where we gather. John Perry Barlow, “A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace” © 2017 Kwiple.com
Government The happiness of society is the end of government. John Adams, Thoughts on Government  © 2021 Kwiple.com
Government I don't know jokes — I just watch the government and report the facts. Will Rogers © 2024 Kwiple.com
Government  If you have contempt for government, you will get contemptible government. Daniel Patrick Moynihan © 2018 Kwiple.com
Government In today's world, smart government is a critical ingredient of national competitiveness. Unless America can address government's role in a more pragmatic light, it may doom itself to continued descent. Edward Luce, Time to Start Thinking  © 2017 Kwiple.com
Government The issue of government has always been whether individual men and women will have to serve some system of government and economics, or whether a system of government and economics exists to serve individual men and women. Franklin Delano Roosevelt © 2021 Kwiple.com
Government It is reasonable to believe that procedural regularity is an important facet of government legitimacy.  But legitimacy is not solely – not even primarily –  a product of the procedures that agencies follow. Legitimacy arises more generally from the perception that government is capable, informed, prompt, responsive, and fair. Mandatory procedures may sometimes advance those values. They can focus agencies on priorities they may have ignored, orient bueaucracies to broader public goals, and improve the quality of agency deliberation. But procedures can also burn agency resources  on senseless paperwork, empower lawyers at the  expense of experts, and frustrate agencies' ability  to act. When procedures impair an agency's  ability  to do its job, they can drain [it] of legitimacy. y Nicholas Bagley, “The Procedure Fetish” © 2022 Kwiple.com
Government The legitimate object of government is to do for a community of people whatever they need to have done, but cannot do at all, or cannot so well do, for themselves, in their separate and individual capacities. Abraham Lincoln © 2019 Kwiple.com
Government One of these days, the people of Louisiana are going to get good government, and they're not going to like it. attributed to Huey Long  © 2021 Kwiple.com
Government [O]ur hybrid system, which is neither majoritarian nor proportional, may possess the advantages of neither and the defects of both. If it fails to ensure the fairness promised by the proportional vision, it also fails to provide the clear accountability promised by the majoritarian vision. Robert A. Dahl, How Democratic Is the American Constitution?  © 2018 Kwiple.com
Government People who don't believe in government are likely to defile government. Bill Moyers © 2017 Kwiple.com
Government The problem isn't government. It's our government. … Government isn't intrinsically inefficient. It has been made  inefficient. And not just by the right. Ezra Klein, New York Times, May 31, 2022 © 2022 Kwiple.com
Government Procedure is where romantic ideas about legislators as the voice of the people collide with institutional reality. Laurence Tribe and Joshua Matz, To End a Presidency  © 2020 Kwiple.com
Government Republicans tell you right out front, we hate government. Then why go into it? If you hate government, you shouldn't do it. That's why I'm not a priest. Bill Maher © 2016 Kwiple.com
Government [W]e like to believe that the fate of a government lies in the hands of its citizens. If the people hold democratic values, democracy will be safe. If the citizens are open to authoritarian appeals, then, sooner or later, democracy will be in trouble. This view is wrong. It assumes too much of democracy—that “the people” can shape at will the kind of government they possess. It is hard to find any evi- dence of majority support for authori- tarianism in 1920s Germany and Italy. Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, How Democracies Die  © 2018 Kwiple.com
Government When aggregated wealth demands what is unfair, its immense power can be met only by the still greater power of the people as a whole, exerted in the only way it can be exerted, through the Government; and we must be resolutely prepared to use the power of the Government to any needed extent, even though it be necessary to tread paths which are yet untrod. Theodore Roosevelt © 2016 Kwiple.com
Government Why will the state tend to grow faster than the economy? First, the economy needs a well-educated and healthy labour force. Second, the services supplied by the state are ones in which it is hard to raise productivity, which tends to make them increasingly expensive. Third, spending on transfers and health will rise with the proportion of the population that is old and infirm. Finally, higher spending on transfers and essential services is also what voters demand. Martin Wolf, Financial Times, November 13, 2022, © 2022 Kwiple.com
Government Wise rulers know that the best way to defeat opposition is to win over its leaders; England was slow to learn that, in an industrial society, this means appropriating and educating the able children of the lower classes when they are still young. But eventually the rulers did learn; in a competitive world they had to. Michael Young, The Rise of the Meritocracy  © 2021 Kwiple.com
Government Yet lawyers, not managers, have assumed primary responsibility for shaping administrative law in the United States. And if all you’ve got is a lawyer,  everything looks like a procedural problem. y Nicholas Bagley, “The Procedure Fetish” © 2022 Kwiple.com
Gun lobbyists say State legislatures are for rubber-stamping bills we've written © 2018 Kwiple.com
Guns What moves a weapon, what really makes a gun sell, is the promise that the government is going to ban it. Stephen Marche, The Next Civil War  © 2022 Kwiple.com
Kwiple dictionary deregulation (dē reg'yə lā'shən), n. The process, performed under the guise of ending regulations, of replacing ones fostering public interests with ones fostering private interests. © 2016 Kwiple.com
Kwiple dictionary free markets (frē mär'kitz), verbal phrase. Once a qualified noun (like free  beer), now a verbal phrase (like Free Willy) meaning to understaff and underfund regulatory agencies and to castrate and eviscerate the remains while fulminating about their size and power. © 2015 Kwiple.com
Kwiple dictionary regulatory capture (reg'ya lə tōr'ē kap'chər), n. The situation that results from letting a corporate fox guard a government henhouse. © 2015 Kwiple.com
Kwiplers say Rename Mick Mulvaney's  Consumer Protection Financial Bureau the Payday Lenders' Protection Bureau © 2018 Kwiple.com
Kwiplers say Require candidates for state and national electoral offices to take a test about issues relevant to the office they seek, with the test being created and administered by subject matter experts and the results being widely publicized one month before the election © 2017 Kwiple.com
Leadership The Federal government is not supposed to be out there buying vast amounts of items and then shipping. You know, we're not a shipping clerk. Donald Trump, leaving it to state and local governments to compete with one another to obtain hospital beds, face masks, ventilators, personal protective equipment, test kits and other equipment needed to fight the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic © 2020 Kwiple.com
Left-wing populists say It is this lack of an agonistic confrontation, not the fact of representation, which deprives the citizen of a voice. The remedy does not lie in abolishing representation but in making our institutions more representative. This is indeed the objective of a left populist strategy. Chantal Mouffe, For a Left Populism © 2018 Kwiple.com
Lies The man from the BBC was laughing as he reported the White House's false claims about the size of the crowd at Donald Trump's inauguration. He should have been crying. What we are witnessing is the destruction of the credibility of the American government. Gideon Rachman, Financial Times, January 24, 2015 © 2017 Kwiple.com
Lobbyists The number of workers in the Congressional Research Service, Congressional Budget Office and Government Accountability Office, the internal information services that provide unbiased reports to members, has dropped by 40% since 1979 even as legislation has grown more complex. Paid influencers, including those without the word “lobbyist” on their business cards, fill the gap. The Economist, September 2, 2017 © 2017 Kwiple.com
Political inequality The main reason, perhaps the only real reason, why second chambers exist in all federal systems is to preserve and protect unequal  representation. That is, they exist primarily to ensure that the representatives of small units cannot be readily outvoted by the representatives of large units. In a word, they are designed to construct a barrier to majority rule at the national level. Robert A. Dahl, How Democratic Is the American Constitution?  © 2018 Kwiple.com
Political philosophy We can define political philosophy as an investigation into the nature, causes, and effects of good and bad government. … three ideas stand at the very heart of the subject. The first is that good and bad government profoundly affect the quality of human lives. … The second is that the form  our government takes is not predetermined: we have a choice to make. … The third idea is that we can know what distinguishes good from bad: we can trace the effects of different forms of government and we can learn what qualities go to make up  the best form of government. In other words, there is such a thing as political knowledge. David Miller, Political Philosophy: A Very Short Introduction © 2018 Kwiple.com
Politicians A politician is a man who understands government,  and it takes a politican to run a government. A statesman is a politician who's been dead 10 or 15 years. Harry S. Truman © 2023 Kwiple.com
Politics If conciliation is a continuing task for those who govern—and the nature of “politics” would seem to dictate that it is—then order is not a set pattern, but something akin to a precarious equilibrium, a condition that demands a willingness to accept partial solutions. Sheldon Wolin, Politics and Vision © 2017 Kwiple.com
Populism Stable democracy is incompatible with a belief that fellow citizens are “enemies of the people”. We must recognise and address the anger that causes populism. But populism is an enemy of good government and even of democracy. Martin Wolf, Financial Times, June 28, 2017 © 2017 Kwiple.com
Power  The difficulty is not that corporate power is beyond the control of the American government. It is that corporate power controls the American government. Robert B. Reich, The System © 2021 Kwiple.com
Presidency A remarkable fact … is the extent to which presidentialism is a Third World phenomenon.  Matthew Soberg Shugart and John M. Carey, Presidents and Assemblies: Constitutional Design and Electoral Dynamics © 2018 Kwiple.com
Private government A government is private with respect to a subject if it can issue orders, backed by sanctions, to that subject in some domain of that subject's life, and that subject has no say in how that government operates and no standing to demand that their interests be taken into account, other than perhaps in narrowly defined circumstances, in the decisions that government makes. Private government is government that has arbitrary, unaccoun- table power over those it governs. This of course is a matter of degree. Its powers may checked in certain ways by other governments, by social norms, and by other pressures. Elizabeth Anderson, Private Government  © 2018 Kwiple.com
Private government We are told that our choice is between free markets and state control, when most adults live their working lives under a third thing entirely: private government. Elizabeth Anderson, Private Gvoernment  © 2018 Kwiple.com
Private government You are subject to private government  wherever (1) you are subordinate to authorities who can order you around and sanction you for not complying over some domain of your life, and (2) the authorities treat it as none of your business, across a wide range of cases, what orders it issues or why it sanctions you. Elizabeth Anderson, Private Gvoernment  © 2018 Kwiple.com
Profits Businessmen generally make lousy political leaders because government isn't about turning a profit, it's about taking care of the things that shouldn't have to turn a profit. Bill Maher © 2015 Kwiple.com
Power [T]he making of governmental decisions is not a majestic march of great majorities united upon certain matters of basic policy. It is the steady appeasement of relatively small groups. Robert A. Dahl, A Preface to Democratic Theory  © 2018 Kwiple.com
Regulations The risk of doing too much is outweighed by the risk of doing too little. Americans have learned that it is not okay to love your country and to hate your government. Lawrence Summers, following the 2008 financial collapse © 2017 Kwiple.com
Religion Our government makes no sense, unless it is founded in a deeply felt religious faith – and I don't care what it is. Dwight Eisenhower © 2021 Kwiple.com
Republican Party [T]he Republican Party has come to shape itself around his [Trump's] person, it has also adopted his worldview, which is to say, the worldview and ideology of the boss. No longer content to run government for  business, the Republican Party  now hopes to run government as  a business. Jamelle Bouie, New York Times, June 23, 2023 © 2023 Kwiple.com
Republicans say Appointing people seeking to demoralize, disable and dismantle a government department to be its leader is change we believe in  © 2017 Kwiple.com
Republicans say The best government officials are see-no-evil officials © 2018 Kwiple.com
Republicans say  Buzz cutting where trimming would do is change we believe in © 2017 Kwiple.com
Republicans say  Call them “bureaucrats,” not “civil servants” © 2018 Kwiple.com
Republicans say Castrating the State Department is change we believe in  © 2017 Kwiple.com
Republicans say Cutting funding for statistical agencies like the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Bureau of Economic Analysis and the Census Bureau is change we believe in  © 2016 Kwiple.com
Republicans say Discouraging competent people from joining government is change we believe in  © 2017 Kwiple.com
Republicans say Enrich and empower the few by discrediting government © 2018 Kwiple.com
Republicans say Global warming is a liberal conspiracy to impose a world government on freedom-loving people © 2017 Kwiple.com
Republicans say Governments can never succeed, markets can never fail © 2015 Kwiple.com
Republicans say Passing laws by rubber-stamping bills written for us by corporate lobbyists is change we believe in © 2017 Kwiple.com
Republicans say Preventing government agencies from discharging oversight responsibilities is change we believe in © 2017 Kwiple.com
Republicans say The purpose of government is to protect corporations and the rich from mobs © 2016 Kwiple.com
Republicans say The solution for bad government is no government © 2015 Kwiple.com
Republicans say Staff top positions in government with businessmen too rich for lobbyists to buy © 2017 Kwiple.com
Republicans say Voting on unwritten bills and bills for which there have been no hearings is change we believe in © 2017 Kwiple.com
Rural America Rural communities's view of Washington usually emerge in two competing narratives: on the one hand, the government ignores us and doesn't do anything to help with our problems, and, on the other hand, the government constantly intrudes in our lives without understanding us and thus makes our problems worse. Robert Wuthnow, The Left Behind © 2018 Kwiple.com
Selfie I react pragmatically. Where the market works, I'm for that. Where the government is necessary, I'm for that. I'm deeply suspicious of somebody who says, “I'm in favor of privatization,” or “I'm deeply in favor of public ownership.” I'm in favor of whatever works in the particular case. John Kenneth Galbraith © 2019 Kwiple.com
Selfie I have little interest in streamlining  government or in making it more efficient, for I mean to reduce its size. I do not undertake to promote welfare, for I propose to extend freedom. My aim is not to pass laws, but to repeal them. Barry Goldwater, Conscience of a Conservative © 2020 Kwiple.com
Selfie I probably represented the worst of the American political system. I was a guy who was drawn to politics because of campaigns and not government. Stuart Stevens © 2020 Kwiple.com
Sleepers at the wheel say Businessmen can run government better than politicians a.k.a. “the businessman fallacy” © 2018 Kwiple.com
Sleepers at the wheel say Close relatives can give presidents more candid advice than any outsider © 2017 Kwiple.com
Sleepers at the wheel say Entertainers can run government better than politicians © 2018 Kwiple.com
Sleepers at the wheel say Fox News commentators  can run government better than politicians © 2018 Kwiple.com
Sleepers at the wheel say “Government spending” means spending on undeserving nonworking and nonwhite people © 2017 Kwiple.com
Sleepers at the wheel say The government that governs least governs best © 2016 Kwiple.com
Sleepers at the wheel say The major God-given responsibility, the state's primary calling, is to moralize a fallen world through the use of force. I think the best President is the one who is best going to use government as an adjudicator of wrongdoing. And I always thought that Trump would be the best at that. Ralph Drollinger, host of a Trump White House Bible-study group for Cabinet officers © 2017 Kwiple.com
Snapshot Barr and Trump are pursuing very different projects – the one a crusade to align government with his idea of religious authority, the other a venal quest for self-aggrandizement. But they serve each other's purpose by collaborating to destroy the independence of anything – federal agencies, the public servants who work in them, even the other branches of government – that could restrain the president. William Barr and Donald Trump portrayed by George Packer, The Atlantic, April 2020 © 2020 Kwiple.com
Snapshot In Trump,  the age of unreason has at last found its hero. The “self-made man” is always the idol of those who aren’t quite making it.  He is the sacred embodiment of the American dream, the guy who answers to nobody, the poor man's idea of a rich man. It's the educated phonies this group can't stand. With his utter lack of policy knowledge and belligerent commitment to maintaining his ignorance, Trump is the perfect represen- tative for a population whose idea of good  governance is just to scramble the eggheads. When reason becomes the enemy of the common man, the common man becomes the enemy of reason. Donald Trump portrayed by Matthew Stewart © 2020 Kwiple.com
State of the union Business practices aimed at boosting shareholder value – like outsourcing, offshoring, automation, union-busting, predatory lending, and a range of anti-competitive abuses – have undermined the security of large swaths of the country. In turn, a flood of business dollars for campaign donations and lobbying over decades has helped thwart effective government responses to rising pain on Main Street. David Callahan © 2017 Kwiple.com
State of the union Envoys in Washington compare the Trump children to princes and princesses in a royal court. That is a bit unfair to princes: such modern examples as William and Harry in Britain talk of duty, of humility, and of shunning politics precisely because they are unelected. The Economist, July 15, 2017 © 2017 Kwiple.com
State of the union A fish rots from the head down Crux of the Trump era © 2018 Kwiple.com
State of the union The greatest threat to the United States today is not the rise of the hard right. It is the general decline in legitimacy of government that underlies the rise of the hard right. Stephen Marche, The Next Civil War  © 2022 Kwiple.com
State of the union Let's just admit that this arranged marriage isn't really working anymore, is it? … If we are already living in two political geographies, why not generate a system of government to match? Sasha Issenberg, “Divided We Stand,” New York magazine, November 12-25, 2018 © 2018 Kwiple.com
State of the union Oligarchy in government, monopoly in business, inequality in society  © 2016 Kwiple.com
Supreme Court A system of government that makes the people subordinate to a committee of nine unelected lawyers does not deserve to be called a democracy. Antonin Scalia © 2021 Kwiple.com
Surely you jest Trump Family Wedding Planner to Head New York's Federal Housing Office headline, New York Times, June 16, 2017, announcing the appointment of Lynne Patton, longtime Trump family associate and planner of its golf tournaments and Eric's wedding, to head the New York and New Jersey office of the Department of Housing and Urban Development © 2017 Kwiple.com
Surveillance  … surveillance must always go both ways. If surveillance goes only from top to bottom, this is the high road to dictatorship. So whenever you increase surveillance of individuals, you should simultaneously increase surveillance of the government and big corporations too. … If it is not too complicated to start monitoring what you do — it is not too complicated to start monitoring what the government does. Yuval Harari, Financial Times, February 26, 2021 © 2021 Kwiple.com
Taxes Operating largely out of public view – in tax court, through arcane legislative provisions and in private negotiations with the Internal Revenue Service – the wealthy have used their influence to steadily whittle away at the government's ability to tax them. The effect has been to create a kind of private tax system, catering to only several thousand Americans. New York Times, December 30, 2015 © 2015 Kwiple.com
Tea Partiers Virtually every Tea Party advocate I interviewed for this book has personally benefited from a major government service or has close family who have. … Most said, “Since it's there, why not use it?” But many were ashamed and asked me to dissociate their identity from such an act, which I've done. But shame didn't stop those who disapproved of public services from using them.  Arlie Russell Hochschild, Strangers in Their Own Land  © 2017 Kwiple.com
Trumpism And he came to see there was nothing arbitrary or capricious about the Trump administration's attitude toward public data. Under each act of data suppression usually lay a narrow commercial motive: a gun lobbyist, a coal company, a poultry company. “The NOAA webpage used to have a link to weather forecasts,” he said. “It was highly popular. I saw it had been buried. And I asked: Now why would they bury that?” Then he realized: the man Trump nominated to run NOAA thought that people who wanted a weather forecast should have to pay him for it. There was a rift in American life that was now coursing through American government. It wasn't between Democrats and Republicans. It was between the people who were in it for the mission and the people who were in it for the money. Michael Lewis, The Fifth Risk © 2019 Kwiple.com
Trumpism Trumpocracy as a system of power rests not on deregulation but on nonregulation, not on deconstructing the state but on breaking the state in order to plunder the state. David Frum, Trumpocracy © 2019 Kwiple.com
Trumpists say As I've said for the last two weeks, the Senate will be glad to vote on a measure that the House passes that the president will sign. But we're not going to vote on anything else. Mitch McConnell, January 2, 2019, guaranteeing he will keep the government shut down until Trump gets his Mex best thing © 2019 Kwiple.com
Trumpists say The four corners of deceit:  government, academia, science and media. Those institutions are now corrupt and exist by virtue of deceit. That's how they promulgate themselves; it is how they prosper. Rush Limbaugh © 2022 Kwiple.com
Trumpists say If Americans want to change their government, they're going to have to get over their dictator phobia. Curtis Yarvin, the political thinker admired by J. D. Vance © 2024 Kwiple.com
Voting So many of our Christians have what I call the goo-goo syndrome: good government. They want everybody to vote. I don't want everybody to vote. Elections are not won by a majority of people. They never have been from the beginning of our country and they are not now. As a matter of fact, our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down. Paul Weyrich, Republican religious conservative, New Right founder © 2015 Kwiple.com
Wealth inequality The central issue is we're developing into a plutocracy. We've got an enormous number of enormously rich people that have convinced themselves that they're rich because they're smart and constructive. And they don't like government, and they don't like to pay taxes.  Paul Volcker © 2018 Kwiple.com
Wealth inequality Forty years ago, wealthy Americans helped finance the U.S. government far more than now through their tax payments. Today wealthy Americans help finance the government mainly by lending it money. Robert B.Reich, Beyond Outrage  [2012] © 2020 Kwiple.com
White-collar government Across the board, white-collar government is good for white-collar Americans and bad for the less fortunate. Nicholas Carnes, White-Collar Government © 2019 Kwiple.com
White-collar government Because our legislatures are so imbalanced along social class lines, the opinions of the blue-collar workers who make up a majority of the population are all but excluded from this process. The views lawmakers refine and enlarge are not those of the public: they are those of white-collar Americans. Nicholas Carnes, White-Collar Government © 2019 Kwiple.com
Work [I]t is the state that establishes the default constitution of workplace governance. It is a form of authoritarian, private government, in which, under employment-at-will, workers cede all  their rights to their employers, except those specifically reserved for them by law. Elizabeth Anderson, Private Government  © 2018 Kwiple.com
 
Working class If even just half a percent of working-class Americans had what it takes to govern, there would be there would be enough qualified blue-collar workers to fill every seat in Congress and every seat on every state legislature more than forty times over  — with enough savvy workers left over to run a few thousand city councils. Nicholas Carnes,White-Collar Government © 2019 Kwiple.com