Ben Chandler Quotes

The House Rules Committee is perhaps the free world's outstanding bureaucratic abomination - a tiny, airless closet deep in the labyrinth of the Capitol where some of the very meanest people on earth spend their days cleaning democracy like a fish.

And you know, almost in a perverse way, I wish it had been undue influence because we know how to correct that. We get rid of the people who, in fact, were exercising that.

Well no administration ever wants an independent overseer, and there are very good career people who are in charge of this investigation, but it could get hairy.

I would argue that one of the issues which the public should be much more emphatic about with all politicians... is patronage, appointing people to high positions because they supported your campaign or helped you raise money.

There's no way you can depend on the Attorney General of the United States to investigate high government officials.

Louisiana showed up at the top of a study of political corruption that calculated the number of convictions per capita. Georgia came out as worst on a corruption risk report from the State Integrity Investigation, which measured factors like accountability, transparency and ethics enforcement.

There are, perhaps, few men who can for any length of time enjoy office and power without being more or less under the influence of feelings unfavorable to the faithful discharge of their political duties.

Hardly a week goes by where somebody doesn't tell me that they won't support me unless I vote a certain way.

Find the corrupt officials and then prosecute them and send them to prison!

Opposition will act as an outward conscience and prevent the abuse of power.

Various checks are opposed to every legislative proposition. Factions get possession of the public councils, bribery corrupts them, personal interests lead them astray from the general interests of their constituents; and other impediments arise, so as to prove to every practical man, that a law of limited duration is much more manageable than one which needs a repeal

Sometimes I think that before we set up war crimes tribunals we should set up Corruption Inquiries and Commissions as corruption always is present in these states.

Wouldn't a judge be a "rotter," if he got an appointment for the Supreme Court bench from a district leader for 14 years at a salary of $25,000 a year and then just said "Thank you"?

When the [political] clubhouse gets control of the seat of government, invariably the private interest outweighs the public interest, and corruption sets in.

We don’t care what the cost-benefit is. We’re going to build it somehow because Congress says it’s going to be built.

In Mafia states government officials enrich themselves and their families and friends while exploiting the money, muscle, political influence, and global connections of criminal syndicates to cement and expand their own power…Top positions in some of the world’s most profitable illicit enterprises are no longer filled only by professional criminals; they now include senior government officials, legislators, spy chiefs, heads of police departments, military officers, and, in some extreme cases, even heads of state and their families.

Many government officials have very high moral standards at the beginning of their duties, but after a while some officials sway from the right path and easily fall into the temptation of bribery and fraud.

The real scandal in Washington is not what is against the law. It is what is not against the law.

You can get from a politician whatever you demand in this country. The great irony is that everybody complains about how it runs but not enough people direct their force and power directly at the politicians and make demands upon them. Ours is a system that abhors remoteness. If you're remote from this political system, it'll kill you.

Tolerance of corruption, explicit and implicit, has made it impossible to govern…. We need absolute transparency of all the assets of government officials.

I consider the media to be indispensable to democracy. That we need an independent media to hold people like me to account. […] power can be very addictive and it can be corrosive and it’s important for the media to call to account people who abuse their power, whether it be here or elsewhere.

We've had corruption -- corruption doesn't exist only in Africa. Where there is a corruptee, there is a corrupter. Right? It's always a two-way process.

The Bank had never used the word 'corruption' at all until I got there, and the reason for that was, as the general counsel pointed out to me, that quite a number of our shareholders represented were not immune from corruption in their governments.

When most people find themselves running afoul of the law, they might change their ways. When the Koch brothers found themselves running afoul of the law, David Koch decided to run for office so that he could change the law.

There can be no compromise regarding corruption.