Government Quotes - Page 405

A thoughtful and well-informed consideration of US government in relation to American society.

America can enjoy a vital, fully functioning government, with all the benefits provided by Texas, while reducing Texas at the same time.

The question, then, for Western companies, as much as for Western governments, is to decide whose side they are on: the Chinese officials who like to define their culture in a paternalistic, authoritarian way, or the large number of Chinese who have their own ideas about freedom.

In environments where corporations become too interventionist and capture regulation themselves, the government must be able to battle back so that the people have a chance.

I believe that if you go and ask a chief executive of a Goldman Sachs or a BP, and they answer you honestly they want monopolies, they want government subsidies, they want preferences - they're not interested in free markets.

Government cannot do it all. As we work hard to break welfare dependency and get young people ready for the labour market, we need businesses to give them a chance and not just fall back on labour from abroad.

I wish we could begin a new period of normal relations with the government of the United States.

We repeat and again reaffirm that neither a State nor the Federal Government can constitutionally force a person "to profess a belief or disbelief in any religion." Neither can constitutionally pass laws or impose requirements which aid all religions as against nonbelievers, and neither can aid those religions based on a belief in the existence of God as against those religions founded on different beliefs.

History showed that many people had lost their respect for any religion that had relied upon the support of government to spread its faith.

Charles Beard warned us that governments-inc luding the government of the United States-are not neutral, that they represent the dominant economic interests, and that their Constitutions are intended to serve these interests.

The First Amendment and Fourteenth Amendment rights in the United States Constitution were being violated in Albany again and again - freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, the equal protection of the laws - I could count at least 30 such violations. Yet the president, sworn to uphold the Constitution, and all the agencies of the United States government at his disposal, were nowhere to be seen.

It was an old lesson learned by governments: that war solves problems of control.

Strike is always a form of direct action. With the strike, too, you are not asking government to make things easier for you by passing legislation, you are taking a direct action against the employer.

I think a way to behave is to think not in terms of representative government, not in terms of voting, not in terms of electoral politics, but thinking in terms of organizing social movements, organizing in the work place, organizing in the neighborhood, organizing collectives that can become strong enough to eventually take over - first to become strong enough to resist what has been done to them by authority, and second, later, to become strong enough to actually take over the institutions.

There has always been, and there is now, a profound conflict of interest between the people and the government of the United States.

The really critical thing isn't who's sitting in he White House, but who is sitting in the streets, in the cafeterias, in the halls of government, in the factories. Who is protesting, who is occupying offices and demonstrating ? - those are the things that determine what happens.

When people don't understand that the government doesn't have their interests in mind, they're more susceptible to go to war.

That whole idea of threats to national security is a very interesting one. The phrase is very useful for the government to try to encompass the citizenry in the same box as the government is in. To say, "We're all in this together. It threatens all of us."

Perhaps the most important thing I learned was about democracy, that democracy is not our government, our constitution, our legal structure. Too often they are enemies of democracy.

Any time I can be of help to the government in terms of giving advice -I've given a little advice, actually.

When the Federal government buys the mortgages, they're not spending it, they're investing it.

I love to tell how I'm suffering because one percent we're paying 25 percent of the total. We're not paying 25 percent of the total taxes on individuals. We're paying maybe 25 percent of the income tax, but the payroll tax is over a third of the receipts of the federal government. And they don't take that from me on capital gains. They don't take that from me on dividends. They take from the woman who comes in and takes the wastebaskets out.

I'm a parent, and I regulate what my kids listen to. I don't need the government to be the parent. If I'm a crappy parent, then I need the government involved.

I really didn't know much about the Libertarians. I knew they were for less government and more individual freedom. I liked that.

We won when we toppled Saddam. That was the only clear goal of this war, to topple the Iraqi government. It took about 10 minutes.