Ta-Nehisi Coates Quotes

I ask the vice president to stop dodging the issue with legalese, and acknowledge his continued ties with Halliburton to the American people.

Washington is designed not to solve problems. Congress is so beholden to the money that any solution in the general interest will be frustrated and subverted by the corporate interests who feel they will be damaged by progress, fair play and justice.

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

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.

Donations to political parties, candidates and elected officials should not be a means to gain personal or policy favours or buy access to politicians or civil servants…. Political parties, candidates and politicians should disclose assets, income and expenditure to an independent agency.

The financial interests have captured the government institutions.

Citizens United is a disgrace of a decision, holding that corporate money is corporate speech and entitled to the same First Amendment protection as human speech. As a result, corporations now can spend unlimited amounts of money to influence our elections - often in secret, without any public disclosure.

The best and brightest don't go into politics. The best and brightest are at Goldman Sachs.

The extent to which not just state legislatures but the Congress of the United States are now run by large corporate special interests is beyond mere recognition as fact. The takeover is complete.

That Hillary Clinton can be president of the United States and a Saudi prince can donate $10 or $15 million dollars, let's say, to the Clinton Foundation and then have access for meetings and policy with the U.S. government, that is something that is very important to me.

Our number one agenda is to get money out of politics, to drain the swamp, but not in the way that Trump said. He stacked his cabinet full of Goldman Sachs guys.

From drug companies to health insurers to Wall Street banks, big corporations are spending millions to buy influence in Washington and drown out the voices of regular people.

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.

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.

The SuperPACs and the Citizens United ruling that gives corporations a voice in the political process are all bad news. They made it so you can now lie, and the politician being promoted on that lie will not be held responsible for it.

Objective journalism is one of the main reasons that American politics has been allowed to be so corrupt for so long.

A large majority of Americans believe that corporations exert too much influence on our daily lives and our political process.

The quicker we get rid of the lobby system the better for all of us. I don't think in this day and age it is tenable to have these nods and winks, and on-the-record and off-the-record briefings.

Law has become a business. Health care has become a business. Unfortunately, politics has also become a business. That really undermines society.

Business and politics have a wholesome and an unwholesome interface. You have to eliminate the unwholesome interface.

When you have corporate influence on our government outweighing the influence of citizens, that's terrifying. This is something we have to make a big, big noise about.

We make our public servants jump through quite a few hoops, you know. We get hysterical if they accept a $50 lunch from a lobbyist. We get hysterical if they accept a ride on some corporate jet.

If there are men in this country big enough to own the government of the United States, they are going to own it.

Barack Obama is a black puppet of corporate plutocrats.

Sadly we have government of the lobbyists, by the lobbyists, and for the lobbyists. That is no way to run the Senate.