Tony Cardenas Quotes

The networks are not some chicken-coop manufacturing lobby whose calls nobody returns.

The truth is, the 'Fortune' 500 prefer lobbying to campaigning.

The corporate lobby in Washington is basically designed to stifle all legislative activity on behalf of consumers.

I've seen disgusting excess in business, and I've seen disgusting excess in Washington. But at the same time, I've certainly learned that Washington matters and that you can't ignore it, especially when you get into telecom.

You have to look also to the media, where you have a vast majority of the loudest and most influential political voices in America media from people who came from the entertainment world.

Corporations serve an important purpose, but telling people how to vote isn't one of them.

Corporations are economic entities or structures, and yet they're allowed to fund political candidates, and when those candidates are elected, guess who gets in the door first? It's corporations.

I think I could argue that the press has more impact on politics than corporations.

The commercial broadcasters have tremendous influence in Washington, D.C., for a couple of reasons. First, they're extremely rich and they have lots of money and they have had for a long time, so they can give money to politicians, which gets their attention.

Coal companies have a lot of power in the media, and unfortunately a lot of information doesn't get out.

Lobbyists didn't descend from a spaceship. They evolved organically from the way we do business.

You've got as much right to lobby here as any steel corporation.

The great issue before the American people today is the control of Government and industry by private monopoly.

The railroad men did not hesitate to dominate government where they could.

… the rules of big business … have superseded the teachings of our parents and are reducible to a simple maxim: Get a monopoly; let Society work for you: and remember that the best of all business is politics, for a legislative grant, franchise, subsidy or tax exemption is worth more than a Kimberly or Comstock lode, since it does not require any labor, either mental or physical, for its exploitation”

Corporations write the legislation. They vote on the legislation. And they give advice on how to pass their bills.

Free markets were supposed to lead to free societies. Instead, today’s supercharged global economy is eroding the power of the people in democracies around the globe. Welcome to a world where the bottom line trumps the common good and government takes a back seat to big business.

The average citizen saw that the big PACs with the billionaires and the multimillionaires get what they want in Washington, but the average citizen is left behind.

Amazon's outsized power is looking less and less like smart business and more and more like oppressive politics - one company bullying us all.

I don't tell Rupert Murdoch who to endorse.

I'm sorry that we have to have a Washington presence. We thrived during our first 16 years without any of this. I never made a political visit to Washington and we had no people here. It wasn't on our radar screen. We were just making great software.

We shook up the industry with our landscape-changing deal to acquire Time Warner, the logical next step in our strategy to bring together world-class content with best-in-class distribution which will drive innovation and more choice for consumers.

It's a big and growing problem, the amount of power possessed by Google and Facebook. President Eisenhower said it about the military-industrial complex. They pose a grave threat to our democracy.

Following the principle that you should know your enemy, the BBC has assiduously recorded the relentless rise of Rupert Murdoch and his assault on the old 'decadent' elites of Britain.

The domestic power structure - how power is exercised in the United States, for instance - greatly influences the structure of international institutions. So, for example, the Clinton administration was very influential in shaping the WTO treaty, and, because of the way the US domestic political system works, this meant that corporations could use the US government to wield a huge influence.