Thomas Frank Quotes

Washington is rigged to favor people who have an army of lobbyists.

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.

Money has too big an influence on our politics in Washington and somehow we need to do something about that.

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

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

I entered Parliament with what I thought to be the lowest possible opinion of the average member. I came out with one still lower.

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.

Washington is dominated by big money.

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.

Politics makes me sick.

Well, I think the great tragedy in American politics is what is legal, not what is illegal.

Politicians in this country have always been for sale. That is nothing new.

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

I don't think that Washington is a fundamentally bad or corrupt place.

A congressman would rather be called a pervert than a protectionist right now. And he'd probably get better treatment from the press if he was.

Mr. Bush has eliminated the middle man and simply allowed lobbyists to run our government.

The people are weary of detecting the voice of a corporation manager in every political utterance, in the legislature, the Governor's messages, in the expressed opinions of mayors of cities and the Senators sent by the State to Washington, and even in the decisions of judges on the bench.

Washington has become a permanent feudal class of insiders …those are people who are formally in office, staffers, journalists, hangers on … that becomes self-perpetuating … a Congress in which 42 percent become lobbyists… You have people coming here with no intention of going back to the farm.

If you’ve ever been in politics, I don’t want to vote for you.

We live in a country where Wall Street owns Washington.

Does it seem like Washington's rigged for the well connected? That's because it is.

Many Americans have sensed there is a very corrupt pay-to-play system going on in Washington.

Show me a supposedly 'unfixable' problem in Washington, and I'll show you the political corruption standing in the way.

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

Jon Tester became a multi-millionaire in the Senate, even bought a Cosmopolitan Castle on Capitol Hill. I don't want a castle in Washington, and I don't think becoming a senator should make you rich enough to buy one.