Alex Gibney Quotes

Our form of democracy is bribery, on the highest scale.

The only tool we have to fix the problems of this country - the democratic process - is itself broken. Which is why nothing will fundamentally change until we solve the problem of money in politics.

American democracy is spoiled by people buying everything in sight and then selling and buying everything in sight, including our politicians.

What people fail to appreciate is that the currency of corruption in elective office is, not money, but votes.

I think that Obama's failure to reestablish the rule of law in money matters is the most damaging thing that he's done - and perhaps the most damaging thing that has happened in American politics in my lifetime. Because once the rule of law is absent in money matters, then anything really goes in politics.

Billionaires like the Koch brothers, casino mogul Sheldon Adelson, and political puppet master Karl Rove should not be able to buy our elections. Secret money should not be able to drown out the voices of the American people and sell our Democracy to the highest bidder.

The kind of corruption the media talk about, the kind the Supreme Court was concerned about, involves the putative sale of votes in exchange for campaign contributions.

When one may pay out over two million dollars to presidential and Congressional campaigns, the U.S. government is virtually up for sale.

Politicians can be bought and often are.

It challenges a linguist to define modern campaign contributions as something other than bribery.

This [political fundraising] is a very sophisticated system … This is a legalized bribery system where no one has to say anything. I don’t have to say what I want—you [the politician] know what I want.

Today’s expensive election campaigns are entrenching a culture of patronage [in Indonesia].

Our current Supreme Court, in the Citizens United case, took that which had been named corrupt for over 200 years [gifts to politicians] and renamed it legitimate..

The use of billions of dollars to fund election campaign and pay lobbyists to author legislation is not politics. It is legalized bribery.

The structure of private campaign finance has essentially pre-corrupted our politicians, so that they can't even recognize explicit bribery because it feels the same as what they do every day.

Rarely do political contributions lead to direct quid pro quo transactions - donations for votes - and those that cross this line normally get caught.

Here in Maine, we know that the system of special interests influencing elections runs contrary to our democratic values.

Big money has hijacked our politics.

Don't vote for Republicans or Democrats until they clean up the open system of bribery that we live under.

Elections aren't supposed to be for sale... it's that simple.

You've got to just follow the money [in Washington]. You see it. There's no countervailing power.

The idea that money is corrupting innocent politicians would be laughable if it did not lead to such dangerous legislation.

He's an honest politician--he stays bought.

The report produced by my commission, the Global Commission on Elections, Democracy and Security, in 2012 showed the corrosive impact of money in US politics, for example, which undermines the legitimacy of the democratic system in citizens' eyes. Such perceptions partly explain the rise of a phenomenon like the success of Donald Trump.

There's no doubt that in the last two to three decades, American democracy has been hacked. It was based on the regular harvesting of the wisdom of crowds, but now big sources of special interest money are able to prevent the passage of almost any meaningful reform that's aimed at the public interest.