Peter Coyote Quotes

Over the past few years special interests have had a larger and larger say over who gets what in America, and the voices of average citizens are being shut out.

President Junior is the mascot of crony capitalism.

Special interests are a roadblock wielding undue influence over policy makers. They seek to maintain short-term profits with little regard to either the long-term impact on the planet that will be inherited by our children and grand-children or the long-term economic well-being of our country.

The financial interests have captured the government institutions.

In practice, getting rid of crony capitalism is incredibly difficult.

Wall Street, the banks, and corporate America, has been able to call the shots here. They control our members of Congress and they get what they want.

We have needed … reforms for quite some time. But because of collusion between politics and business, nothing happened.

Pigs at the Trough: How Corporate Greed and Political Corruption Are Undermining America

Every economy exists, no matter what the level of democracy, has elements of crony capitalism. It's - given human nature and given the democratic structures, which we all, I assume, adhere to, that is an inevitable consequence.

We have the best government that money can buy.

Unlike the Tea Party, who see themselves as the customers of government, people in the Occupy Wall Street movement understand that we are the government. Stated most simply, we are trying to run a 21st-century society on a 13th-century economic operating system. It just doesn't work.

The idea of allowing corporations to have unlimited influence on our democracy is very dangerous, obviously.

What we do today has nothing to do with capitalism or socialism. It is a crony type of system that transfers money to the coffers of bureaucrats.

The kind of capitalism I hate most is crony capitalism, the friends who decide. These are things which should be killed in Russia.

The nation is faced with one of the most corporate-orientated anti-consumer Congresses in our history.

Big Business can make laws as easily as it can break them - and with as little impunity.

The incestuous relationship between government and big business thrives in the dark.

Policy is no longer being written by politicians accountable to the American public. Instead, policies concerning the defense budget, deregulation, health care, public transportation, job training programs, and a host of other crucial areas are now largely written by lobbyists who represent mega corporations.

This place is being corrupted by money. Anyone who does not believe this is not living on this planet…. Anybody with their eyes open knows that we have a problem.

Big business does not want honest government.

Most scandals involve broken laws. In the case of the congressional campaign financing system, the laws themselves are the scandal.

The wonder of this month's military procurement scandal is that it can still scandalize us. The practices that are being exposed—the revolving door between government and industry, the mutual backscratching between the military and the companies that build the weapons—aren't abuses of the system. They are the system.

Give the votes to people who have no property and they will sell them to the rich, who will be able to buy them.

Unfortunately, public officials are largely controlled by the very corporations against which they should proceed.

One party is under the ironclad control of Wall Street and the other one caters to Wall Street.