Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Quotes

The bosses of the Democratic party and the bosses of the Republican party alike have a closer grip than ever before on the party machines in the States and in the Nation. This crooked control of both the old parties by the beneficiaries of political and business privilege renders it hopeless to expect any far-reaching and fundamental service from either.

The Philippines, it has a politics of patronage. Family and favors, in addition to the old cliche of guns, goons and gold, really do still hold a lot of sway.

Political machines seek to perpetuate themselves by all sorts of tricks. They sidetrack, channelize and emasculate the popular will

Politics are impossible without spoils.... You have to deal with men as they are ... you must bribe the masses with spoils.

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

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.

Party leads to vicious, corrupt and unprofitable legislation, for the sole purpose of defeating party.

Both Republicans and Democrats are corrupt. The motto of the Democratic Party is, "Anything to get in." The motto of the Republican Party is "Anything to stay in.

In Washington, every closet has a revolving door.

It should scare every voter in the 5th District that a powerful D.C. lobbyist is trying to install a personal congressman in our part of Connecticut.

We are supposed to believe that every dollar given to a Clinton is a dollar that improves the world. But is it? Clintonworld is a galaxy where personal enrichment and political advancement blend seamlessly, and where a cast of jarringly familiar characters pad their pockets every which way to Sunday.

When you start attacking cronyism and people's political interests, it gets nasty.

No matter how you rearrange President Obama's inner circle, it still looks, smells and tastes like a rotten Chicago deep-dish pizza.

New politicians try to displace old ones by changing the electoral laws, while entrenched politicians defend outworn electoral systems when they feel that the new laws might weaken their positions and perhaps even abolish their sinecures.

The system of building up, by corruption, political machines dominated by a boss whom the corporations believe essential to them for corrupt purposes of their own, is too deeply entrenched even yet in our national life.

I will devote none of my time to developing laws to increase my own patronage and multiply canvassers [electors] in my favor.

Throughout most of Chicago's history, the Civil Service Commission has been enmeshed in partisan politics. Thousands of city employees were given temporary appointments and kept in this status, year after year, in order to keep them loyal partisan political workers.

The boss of all bosses operates like a shifty-eyed precinct captain on the make ... These are activities on would expect of a small-time ward heeler, not a figure of such influence and stature.

He was among the first of the Secretaries to apply that system [the spoils system] to the dismission of clerks in his Department.... It is a detestable system, drawn from the worst periods of the Roman republic; and if it were to be perpetuated, if the offices, honors, and dignities of the people were to be put up to the scramble, to be decided by the result of every Presidential election, our Government and institutions, becoming intolerable, would finally end in a despotism as inexorable as that at Constantinople.

It is in the committee that the dirty work is done ... away from the many-eyed scrutiny of the rest of Congress and the public ... special interest legislation usually originates in the committee room.

Clinton talks reform, but it's business as usual in Washington with different pigs at the trough.

I have heard in highest places the shameless doctrine avowed by men grown old in public office that the true way by which power should be gained in the Republic is to bribe the people with the offices created for their service.

Our nation was founded on the pork barrel, and it has become great by political log-rolling.

... he [Thomas E. Dewey] is a political streetwalker accosting men with "come home with me dear.

There has never yet been, among political men, any real and serious attempt to prevent [election] bribery, because there has been no real desire that elections should not be costly. Their costliness is an advantage to those who can afford the expense, by excluding a multitude of competitors.