John Stauber Quotes

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

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

I have never seen such lobbying before as we have had in the last few weeks and such crookedness and complicity among members [of congress].

The lobbyists have erected a brick wall around Washington DC—a wall that keeps them in and keeps you out.

Historians, studying us, will say that we allowed corporations to become the government.

I do not allow hirelings of Standard Oil to define my democracy.

There is no way for people to vote against Goldman Sachs.

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

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.

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.

Washington DC is corporate-occupied territory.

The simple fact is we do not live in a democracy. Certainly not the kind our Founding Fathers intended. We live in a corporate dictatorship represented by, and beholden to, no single human being you can reason with or hold responsible for anything.

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.

That's one of the things about the Tea Party people. They think corporations have too much influence in American life and they do.

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

There's one political party in this country, and that's the corporate party.

It never fails to astonish me how cheaply a politician can be bought.

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

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.

In the United States, large corporations control some members of Congress. All this does is delay the corporation's funeral at our expense.

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.

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

Five years ago, the Supreme Court, by a 5-4 decision in the Citizens United case told the richest people in America, "You already control the economy of the country. We are now going to let you control the political system as well".

The worst enemy of good government is not our ignorant foreign voter [immigrants], but our educated domestic railroad president, our prominent business man, our leading lawyer.

The oil and gas lobby, with the vast amount of money at its disposal, is, I believe, the most diabolical influence at work in the nation's capitol. It has for years succeeded in blocking the assignment of public-spirited members to the tax-writing committees of the House and Senate, and also intervened in the election of leaders and assistant leaders in both Houses.