Matt Taibbi Quotes

The biggest problem that we have is that California is being run now by special interests. All of the politicians are not anymore making the moves for the people, but for special interests and we have to stop that.

All of our political parties are bought and paid for by corporate America, Wall Street, and the wealthy interests. The Republican Party more so, but the Democrats take their share of the loot, too.

We pay a price when special interests win out over the collective national interest.

People like Elizabeth Dole have given too much power to the special interests.

Washington is corporate occupied territory …. The two parties are fighting it out to see who will take orders from their corporate paymasters.

Sen. Obama comes from the old Chicago machine politics and has never taken on the special interests in his party on a major issue ever.

Republicans, Democrats, libertarians, and independents all agree on only one thing - our national politicians are bought.

Mrs. Clinton is the embodiment of a corrupt establishment owned by special interests, having personally enriched herself by giving closed-door speeches to Wall Street firms and the big banks.

We have a culture of political corruption in Jefferson City. We have corrupt politicians, well-paid lobbyists and special-interest insiders taking the state in the wrong direction.

Barack Obama's large contributor was Goldman Sachs - same thing on the Republican side. If you go to both their conventions, you see the same lobbyists paying off both sides so they win either way.

Candidate Obama was either exceptionally naive or willfully disingenuous when he vowed to change the way Washington works. The very promise of Hope and Change was rooted in uprooting the Washington modus operandi. But instead of rejecting it, he embraced it all - the secrecy, the closed doors, the political favors, the near-criminal negligence.

Why, over her political career has Wall Street been a major - the major campaign contributor to Hillary Clinton? You know, maybe they're dumb and they don't know what they're going to get, but I don't think so.

There are a lot of grotesqueries in politics, not the least of which is the fund-raising side.

I'm not part of the friends-and-family club; I'm not part of the pay-to-play club; I'm not looking to get re-elected. I'm not looking to go to another office and fill my campaign coffers. I don't need any friends in Albany except the people of the state.

Wall Street's outsized influence in our nation's capital is something I've talked about for a long time - long before I even thought about running for office. But where I see a problem - an infestation, really - a lot of others in Washington, both Democrats and Republicans, seem to see government working just fine.

He [Donald Trump] buys and sells politicians of all stripes.

America has the best congress money can buy.

The principal reasons that special interests can extract their price from government is money .... Those who do not accept money from PACs are those who have other sources.

When I have to choose between voting for the people or voting for the special interests, I always stick with the special interests. They remember. The people forget.

Special interests and Congress are too closely connected and the ties that bind are the millions spent on campaigns.

Money in politics leads to bad things—and I am bipartisan in that view.

He [Richard Nixon] is still the handmaiden of big business as he always has been.

The special interests are protected in Washington and the public interest is submerged.

Saxby Chambliss spent over $100,000 of leadership PAC money to play golf…. Even after a politician leaves office he can use leadership PAC money to enhance his lifestyle….The irony is that the leadership PAC concept was intended to help other members of the party to get elected to office.

A millionaire can buy a Senate seat just as he would buy an opera box or a yacht or any other luxury in which he can afford to indulge himself. In some instances the sale takes the form of open bribery of the legislators; more often the Senate seat was simply the satisfaction of a ‘claim’ acknowledged by the leaders of the party and created by large contributions to the party treasury.