Bureaucratic Accountability Quotes

How can faceless bureaucrats in an intelligence agency deny brave soldiers a chance to tell the truth?

We need to do a top/bottom review of the federal government and for every agency administration bureaucracy that is not called for in the United States Constitution, we have to really ask the question what is its purpose, how many people work there, how much does it cost the taxpayers and what is the value to our society.

A minister is supposed to be there to remind his permanent officials that they work for the rest of us. If, instead, he becomes the cabinet champion and public spokesman for his department, democracy is vitiated.

You have to have a certain realism that government is a pretty blunt instrument, and without the constant attention of highly qualified people with the right metrics, it will fall into not doing things very well.

The overarching purpose of access to information legislation … is to facilitate democracy. It does so in two related ways. It helps to ensure first, that citizens have the information required to participate meaningfully in the democratic process, and secondly, that politicians and bureaucrats remain accountable to the citizenry.

Corrupt bureaucrats and cops ought to dismissed or compulsorily retired from service, as they are a drain on the service. Their performance must be vigorously assessed.

Congressional intervention and the availability of intervention demonstrably offset agency indifference; are a guard against arbitrary, improper, and illegal bureaucratic decisions; and provide the power of public pressure to require the nonelected official to be responsive.

Bureaucracy has murdered people in the greater New Orleans area and bureaucracy needs to stand trial before Congress today. So I'm asking Congress, please investigate this now. Take whatever idiot they have at the top of whatever agency, give me a better idiot. Give me a caring idiot. Give me a sensitive idiot. Just don't give me the same idiot.

The only good bureaucrat is one with a pistol at his head. Put it in his hand and it's good-bye to the Bill of Rights.

Corruption is a huge problem and the poor and the powerless are often its most egregious victims. But it is not an accident that the most effective bureaucracies in the world rely much more on internal controls rather than on independent ombudsmen.

The best way to put the federal bureaucracy back on a leash is to make it obey the laws the people write.

If the Congress is going to spend its whole time hauling up regulators and bureaucrats and looking like they're focusing on tiny, trivial things, instead of jobs and the economy, it could be a problem for them.

With any bureaucracy, an accountable bureaucracy, we need the press and we need critics to keep us on our toes…. we do wish the press to continue to report and continue to criticize because it is only in that way that the government can continue to improve and meet the aspirations of an increasingly affluent society.

You cannot give the vice president the authority to declassify specific information and then turn around and say he can just give carte blanche to an assistant of his to declassify whatever he wants.

The treatment I have received from the advocates of Civil Service Reform makes my blood boil…. I know what I have done and what I have suffered in this cause and with that I am satisfied as I retire from the struggle. I hope the next man will be better trusted by those who assume to be apostles of the Reform. The cause is worth much — very much; but the people who stand ready to attribute every mistake in the selection of officers to wanton violation of principle and assume to know more of the conditions, motives and intents that those charged with responsibility, are worth nothing

Compared to publicity…internal checks upon bureaucratic misbehavior…have but negligible value.

We in North Carolina are people who pay for our mistakes and … we do not tolerate bureaucracies that trample basic human rights.

I would never jeopardize classified information to be brought out to the public. This information is all open source. There is no reason to worry about classification. It is simply an attempt by bureaucrats to cover their rear ends.

Your job description as a journalist is to question and scrutinize critically-neve r to repeat claims uncritically, no matter how highly placed the sources in the bureaucracy. Don't ever forget that. You're a damn good writer, but that talent is completely worthless if you forget your job description.

It’s easier for Congress to beat civil servants about the ears than address the programs that are not working well.

Bureaucracy has committed murder here in the greater New Orleans area, and bureaucracy has to stand trial before Congress now.