Political Transparency Quotes



Attributed. The earliest close match located by QI appeared in a column by Dick Nolan in “The San Francisco Examiner” of California in 1966. The comedian Robin Williams, 1951-2014, was also very successful with this line a century later.


That particular Libertarian platform called for the abolition / repeal of Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, the Post Office, Federal election Commission and campaign finance laws. Extreme radical ideas such as this are not typical of Libertarian Party positions before or afterwards. The quotation illustrates that there are people in America who would end public education if they could. The quotation also illustrates how a small cadre of people can capture control of a political party and create a platform that is their own personal views which may be different from most of the party members or the historical position that the party has taken. In 1980 the Libertarian Party Vice Presidential Candidate was David Koch, one half of the billionaire conservative Koch brothers. Their money financed the Libertarian Party in that year and David Koch’s views then prevailed in the party platform. Historically, the Koch brothers moved from a minor third party to the Republican party at the beginning of the 21st century when their money was able to help drive the party very far to the right from the traditions of Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt.


In 1976 Chilean Dictator Augusto Pinochet gave orders to assassinate a Chilian Dissident Orlando Letelier in Washington DC. He had been suspected but there was no evidence with which to bring him to trial in his lifetime, However, President Barak Obama ordered the secret file on the assassination declassified in 2016 — 40 years after the event.