Political Authors From The United States

"State control of the kind we've seen during the lockdowns has historically been associated with nonwhites and the extent to which some white Americans are viciously apposed to it may reflect the extent to which the social meaning of whiteness is freedom from that control...as well as the right to impose it on racial others. The lockdown is thus an assault on "liberty" *and* the inability to force (disproportionately black and brown) others to labor is *also* an assault on liberty"

"the price of equality, or at least of the promise of an equal society, is vigilance against those who would make government the tool of hierarchy. And, in turn, we must recognize that this struggle-to secure democracy against privilege on the one hand, and to secure privilege against democracy on the other-is the unresolvable conflict of American life. It is the push and pull that will last for as long as the republic stands."

"one consequence of the fact that our popular historical understanding erases roughly 1870 to 1932 from public memory is that many Americans have a distinctly warped view of how resilient american democracy actually is"

"I just became super attuned to how much space cars take up in a way that I just don’t think people appreciate. It’s very easy to say we need more parking in a place, but there’s not that much conversation of, like, what you’re giving up when you do that. And I think being a biker or pedestrian helps you see what actually you’re giving up by prioritizing car infrastructure."

"President Abraham Lincoln died more than 150 years ago. The "" was so enraged at him for beating them in the Civil War and at his party for ending slavery that they voted Democrat for the next 100 years. Then the Democrats started supporting civil rights for . The Republicans saw the opportunity, courted them and flipped them. The Solid South is now theirs. It has been a long time since the Republican Party has been "the party of Lincoln". Let us put that aside. Is the GOP still the "party of Reagan"? Oh, very much so. And I was recently reminded exactly how much while re-reading a book I wrote during his presidency back in the 1980s: "You Get What You Pay For". As I flipped through the pages, I found myself saying, over and over again, "that's just like Trump"."

"Joe constantly points out that Trump started his campaign with racism, riding down the escalator, attacking Mexicans. Joe thinks this illustrates a difference. Ronald Reagan also started his presidential campaign with racism. He chose to make his kick-off speech in the heart of the Solid South, in Mississippi, quite near where three civil rights workers had been murdered. He said, "I believe in states' rights." It was the biggest dog whistle of the day, code for segregation, and the crowd cheered. He continued: "... we have distorted the balance of our government today by giving powers that were never intended to be given in the Constitution to that federal establishment." It had been the Republican Party that had tried to impose integration after the Civil War. Reagan was making it clear that his party was completely divorcing itself from Lincoln's vision. It was not a one-off. Reagan ran against the "" and against "the strapping bucks" who stood in front of you at the supermarket, buying steaks with food stamps, while you made do with hamburger helper, earned by the honest sweat of your brow. It was a brilliant strategy that turned government programmes into handouts to minorities with money stolen - through taxes - from good white people. It was called the . Reagan did not invent it. But he sold it with warmth, charm, and a smile."

"What he brought to the presidency that was really original was making up stories and never being embarrassed that they were not true. He made up a tale about a mysterious stranger who gave the Founding Fathers the courage to sign the Declaration of Independence. He loved the tale of a bomber pilot who decided not to parachute from his shot-up plane in order to stay and comfort a wounded member of his crew as they plunged to the ground and received the Congressional Medal of Honor ... posthumously ... and told it often, although it had only happened in a movie. He said that he had been present at the liberation of a concentration camp during World War II, though he had never left Hollywood. It used to be that being caught in a lie harmed your credibility, but Reagan, for the most part, got away with it. In doing so he set a new standard that opened the tarnished road that Trump rides down on today."

"Trump may be vulgar, Trump may be abrasive, but in terms of racism, corruption, and destruction, he is Mr Reagan's true heir. Trump's Republican Party is what it has been at least since the 1980s, only more so."

"It bears repeating: since the EITC lowers wages and the current minimum wage is still a poverty wage for many families, it is a missed opportunity for the federal government and the more than 40 cities and seven states phasing in $15 minimum wages to not include a EITC and vice versa. Like lightbulbs and lamps, the policies are complements."

"Standing against the chronic American problem of low-wage employers are three forces: embattled trade unions, too-slow minimum wage hikes, and elements of the tax code, principally the (EITC). One reason these policies don't help raise wages more is that each policy, acting alone, undermines the other. People can't live on the minimum wage and the EITC suppresses wage growth. Weak trade unions means weak political mobilization for both policies. But to be effective, EITC and minimum wage have to be included in the same , in the same sentence, and even in the same breath. Some activists and politicians—mostly Democrats I am afraid—are working very hard to help poor and low-income people. They have an increase in the minimum wage and expansion of the EITC. But no bill has them linked together. Why do they need to be linked?"

"It is common sense once you think about it. The widely-praised Earned Income Tax Credit, which is a paid by taxpayers, encourages more low-wage employers (a problem that minimum wages and unions can fix). Don't get me wrong, the EITC has great effects. It expands labor force participation and increases income to families. [...] The EITC helps working-poor mothers become economically engaged, and improves the life chances of their children by keeping them in school, enabling their families to access better food, and even increasing their vocabulary. But the crucial negative economic effects of the EITC are often overlooked. The EITC subsidizes low-wage employers, who are able to attract EITC-eligible workers at lower wages than they otherwise would have to pay. Some workers get a raise from the government via the EITC. But the workers who don’t qualify for the EITC end up with reduced wages. It is more and more likely that those workers are older workers (who mostly don’t have dependent children)."

"Merely expanding the EITC will continue to subsidize low-wage employers and drive down market wages. Indeed, there is no bigger supporter of the EITC than low-wage employers. For instance, the funds nonprofit organizations such as the and the to expand EITC outreach. The economic dynamic makes it no question that an EITC should be paired with higher minimum wages and increased bargaining power for workers so that employers can't lower wages when their workers get a low-wage subsidy."

"Last week, we were chatting here in the shebeen about a remarkable woman named , a British social worker and radical who took upon herself the job of informing the British people and the world of the atrocities the Empire was committing in its South African concentration camps during the Second Boer War. The parallels to the news of the day seemed obvious. It is important now to realize that the camps that so horrified Hobhouse consisted of women and children living in tents. So imagine my non-surprise to discover that, as a solution to the bad publicity it was getting for housing migrant children in terrible conditions, the administration* decided to move some of the kids out of some of the worst conditions and off to another site to live...in tents! [...] The average temperature in June in El Paso is 98 degrees. In July, it's 97. In August, it's 94. And "temporary" in this context, and with this crowd running things, has developed a very flexible new definition. Of course, if the kids are still in the tents in November, things will have cooled to an average of 66. The great outdoors! Anyway, because this is America, where the enterprise is always free, and because this is 2019, almost a decade after the Supreme Court legalized influence-peddling, our politicians are free to take money from those who make money off facilities like these, because that's what keeps us free. [...] There's the usual yadda-yadda from spokesfolk about how this is really about constituent service; Cuellar's mouthpiece argues that there are so many prisons in Cuellar's district, that Cuellar's getting correction-industry money is like, say, Jay Inslee getting money from yacht manufacturers. [...] There is a historic exercise in human misery being undertaken by the United States government in South Texas right now, and if you take money from people making a pile out of that misery, you're complicit. Sorry, but that's the iron logic of atrocities."

"I would also point out that, please god, somebody psychoanalyze this guy (Donald Trump). I would argue that his mind, while a lot of things, including a landfill for the rancid refuse of pure appetite, is not exactly intricate."

"Democratic Socialist Bernie Sanders and billionaire are on the same page. They both point to the stark reality that American workers have experienced sluggish to nonexistent wage growth for years as a crisis for American capitalism. The great American wage repression is so bad that the United States leads rich nations in allowing 25% of our jobs to pay close to . In most major developed countries that share is in the single digits."

"He is thinking about himself and what he actually feels. What he is speaking is from his heart. That is what is in his heart. The bottom line is that this President is saying things to basically allow his base, the David dukes and those like David Duke too, to feel free to do what they want. Don, I mean this started Friday. And if he can't see that this is terror, when you have white men brazen enough without hoods to carry tiki torches like they were doing back in the day, it wasn't tiki torches back then, with hoods to scare slaves, to scare blacks and other groups, if that is not terror, it's to incite intimidation, fear and to do what else they were going to do, like strange fruit hanging from a free, lynching's, things of that nature. And then talk about negative things about Jews in this country. The Jewish community is hurt. The black community is hurt by this. And then to say that that man who rammed that car into the other cars and killed that poor young lady, that was murder? It was more than murder. It was terror. And the President says the media is dishonest? Well, Don, I don't use the "l" word much but the President lied. You know, Monday when he came out, that is not what he wanted to say. He came back and said what he originally said. The President lied about his feelings. He said indeed, he gave his heart today saying that all sides started it. Were involved and created this. No, it was one side that started this."

"Are you going to include the Congressional Black Caucus, and the Congressional Hispanic Caucus as well as …"

"In one sense, this is a healthy response because it recognizes that race matters and racism matter, and and create different experiences for people in this country. But there is also something important to be said for solidarity. ... It's important to say that solidarity is not charity. Historically, solidarity has meant the recognition that all our struggles are connected. In the socialist movement and the labor movement, there's the old saying that "." The point is to understand that when the majority of people are divided and standing up for one another, the chances of losing are much greater--but when we stand together, we have a better chance of winning."

"Unity isn't established by ignoring the differences between different groups, but by persuading everyone to take all the different struggles seriously. That needs to be in the front of our minds now--to organize as broad a movement as possible as we move forward. Because the attacks are happening on so many different levels: the criminal justice system, housing and evictions, public education, low wages and poverty. All sorts of struggles are happening right now, and we should be standing in solidarity and supporting all of them."

"For 40 years, there has been a one-sided discussion blaming Black people for their own . And so Black people accept it. It's that pervasive that African Americans as a whole, and organizations that are supposed to defend our civil rights, accept that logic. We have to fight back against that logic and offer a different argument for why inequality and discrimination runs right through this society."

"It's not like people don't know that horrible things are happening. But at the same time, because so many horrible things are happening, it can feel exhausting and insurmountable. ... That can make you feel like there's nothing we can do--that the people in charge are all powerful. But at the same time, people don't forget the experience of struggle--and that there are victories along the way, amid the defeats. ... There are some victories even amid the setbacks."

"We shouldn't discount or downplay those who are showing up because the protests overall aren't as big as we would like them to be. There are a growing number of young people in this country who are getting fed up, and they're the ones who are showing up to protests and demonstrations, and who want to fight now. We have to connect with those people to figure out where we take these movements around different issues. Movements don't just fall out of the sky fully formed."

"We do know from the numbers of people who have come out already--and from the anger that we know exists in the communities where we live--that people want to fight. They don't necessarily know how to fight or what to do. But they want to, and that's important because it means people want things to be different, and that's an important starting place to work with. For people who want to do something, and do it now, this means we have to be both patient in terms of how larger movements develop, but also urgent about doing the work of organizing for the things we can do now. Movements aren't built by waiting for the struggle to develop and build itself--it's based on what we do today."

"The police embrace their brutality. They are proud of themselves."

"Black lives are considered to be substantially cheaper than white lives in this country."

"For too long, the powers that be in this country have been able to explain these inequalities--why there are higher levels of poverty among Blacks, why there's higher unemployment, why Blacks go to the worst schools--by saying that we don't care. They blame the parents, and they blame the individuals for their success or failures. And at no point is there a discussion about the society that we live in and the way it's organized. There's no discussion about how the system sets up people to fail, it sets up people to be poor, it sets up people to be unemployed."

"There’s no more pungent symbol of the corrupt nature of the Bush administration’s invasion and occupation of Iraq than , the -based oil services conglomerate, which has made billions from the war even in the face of charges of massive , shoddy work, official bribery and political influence-peddling. The remarkable thing is that Halliburton’s looting of Iraq and the happened in broad daylight, right under the nose of the press, the Democrats and Michael Moore, who made Dick Cheney’s former company the bete noir of his film “9/11.” Nothing deterred the company from capitalizing on the war it helped orchestrate."

"In the ever-expanding universe of Pentagon contracting, cost is never the problem, public exposure is."

"After nearly four hours of gunfire, there was silence. There was silence, even though the order only applied to American soldiers. There was silence because none of the in the village were firing back. There was silence because the Viet Cong had never fired on US troops that day. There was silence because there were no Viet Cong in the village that day. There was silence because most of the people who were in the village that day were dead."

"The My Lai killings weren’t indiscriminate. The GIs weren’t killing just anyone. They were killing everyone. They were killing everything: chickens, pigs, dogs, rabbits, cows, water buffalo, grandmothers, and children. Young girls, wounded boys, toddlers, infants. More than half of the 504 people murdered in Pinkville that morning were minors. The GIs were following orders and the orders were: to kill everything. Kill everything that breathes. Kill everything that moves."

"I wish we conservatives could clone Mona Charen so that we could keep one for ourselves and give the other to the liberal movement which is equally badly in need of a truth-teller to call out the hypocrites and snollygosters."

"Others must do as their own consciences require, but I stand with @monacharenEPPC. She stands for true conservative, American, and Judaeo-Christian values."

"Like the Republican Party, CPAC has become heavily Trumpified. ... So it has come to this: a conservative group whose worst fault in years past may have been excessive flat tax enthusiasm now opens its doors to the nationalists of Europe."

"But this time, and particularly in front of this crowd, it felt far more urgent to point out the hypocrisy of our side. How can conservative women hope to have any credibility on the subject of or relations between the sexes when they excuse the behavior of President Trump? And how can we participate in any conversation about when the Republican president and the Republican Party backed a man (Roy Moore) credibly accused of child molestation for the United States Senate? I watched my fellow panelists’ eyes widen. And then the booing began. I’d been dreading it for days, but when it came, I almost welcomed it. There is nothing more freeing than telling the truth. And it must be done, again and again, by those of us who refuse to be absorbed into this brainless, sinister, clownish thing called Trumpism, by those of us who refuse to overlook the fools, frauds and fascists attempting to glide along in his slipstream into respectability. I spoke to a hostile audience for the sake of every person who has watched this spectacle of mendacity in disbelief and misery for the past two years. Just hearing the words you know are true can serve as ballast, steadying your mind when so much seems unreal."

"Politicians, activists and intellectuals have succumbed with numbing regularity, betraying every principle they once claimed to uphold. But there remains a vigorous remnant of dissenters. I hear from them."

"I am disappointed in people on our side for being hypocrites about sexual harassers and abusers of women, who are in our party, who are sitting in the White House, who brag about their extramarital affairs, who brag about mistreating women—and because he happens to have an "R" next to his name we look the other way...This is a party that endorsed Roy Moore for the Senate in the State of Alabama even though he was a credibly accused child molester. You cannot claim that you stand for women and put up with that...Speaking of bad guys, there was quite an interesting person who was on this stage the other day. Her name is . Now, why was she here? Why was she here? She’s a young, no-longer-in-office politician from France. I think the only reason she was here is because she’s named Le Pen. And the Le Pen name is a disgrace. Her grandfather (Jean-Marie Le Pen) is a racist and a Nazi. She claims that she stands for him. And the fact that CPAC invited her is a disgrace."

"[[Racial views of Donald Trump|Let me put it this way, I think he [Donald Trump] is very eager not to upset the racists who like him. Too eager]]."

"I’ve been a conservative my entire life. ... So you’d think that the , or CPAC, would be a natural fit. It once was. But on Saturday, after speaking to this year’s gathering, I had to be escorted from the premises by several guards who seemed genuinely concerned for my safety. What happened to me at CPAC is the perfect illustration of the collective experience of a whole swath of conservatives since Donald Trump became the . We built and organized this party — but now we’re made to feel like interlopers."

"I know how encouraged I feel whenever someone simply states the truth."

"When Woodrow Wilson wrote his essay "The Study of Administration" in 1887, he attempted to square the needs of a complex industrial nation with the demands of a democratic political culture (Felker 1993). With a vision of administration untouched by politics, he prescribed their separation. Frank Goodnow’s book Politics and Administration (1900) elaborated on this dichotomy, and Leonard White’s (1926) work made the separation of politics and administration an article of faith in the first textbook on the subject. This is emblematic of a turn public administration made at its inception, a decision paralleled by political science as it embraced the “god” of science and ignored the truth of context, history, values, and, messiest of all, unforeseen, unpredictable exigencies."

"Another of Wilson's contemporaries who was greatly concerned about the mixing or "meddling" of politics with administration was Professor Frank J. Goodnow, who Inter became President of The Johns Hopkins University. Goodnow formalized his conception of administration in 1900 in his aptly entitled book, Politics and Administration. Goodnow's definition was similar to Wilson's, although he made the technical distinction, which Wilson had rejected, between politics as "the expression of the will of the state" and administration as "the execution of that will;" • but what was more important in Goodnow's concept of administration was the fact that he saw its wider implications in the long sweep of American history."

"American students dismayed at the inadequacies of the ethical approach in the Gilded Age, stimulated by their pilgrimage to German universities, and led by such figures as J. W. Burgess, E. J. James, A. B. Hart, A. L. Lowell, and F. J. Goodnow have sought to recreate political science as a true science."

"The state attains its ends as well through liberty as through government, as well through entrusting the care of matters of public interest to individuals as through the maintenance of public governmental services for their management."

"The use of the word "administration," is unfortunately somewhat misleading, for the word when accompanied by the definite article is also used to indicate... popularly the most important executive or administrative authorities."

"The conventional model for explaining the uniqueness of American democracy is its division between executive, legislative, and judicial functions. It was the great contribution of Frank J. Goodnow to codify a less obvious, but no less profound element: the distinction between politics and policies, principles and operations. He showed how the United States went beyond a nation based on government by gentlemen and then one based on the spoils system brought about by the Jacksonian revolt against the Eastern Establishment, into a government that separated political officials from civil administrators."

"What parts of this function of administration should be subjected to the control of the function of politics?"

"Economists live in a world of economic data, facts and opinions informed by their experiences."

"While the viewpoints offered by Johnson are rooted in a long-held and consistent philosophy that can be evaluated by those who agree with him, and those who do not, the viewpoints offered by Trump seem to change like the leaves that change their colors when summer gives way to fall. We know what Johnson believes today, and will believe tomorrow. Can anyone suggest we know what Trump will believe tomorrow, or the day after tomorrow?"

"I agree with the libertarianism offered by candidates from former Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) to Johnson, and on other issues I do not. For example, I agree with the libertarian opposition to infringement on civil liberties in the Big Brother state that has grown with widespread eavesdropping from big government, and I agree with libertarians on their opposition to what is called the , and I believe pot should be legalized (and Jack Daniels should always remain legal!). I do not agree with the degree of laissez-faire advocated by libertarians in an economy that I believe is rigged by big business and their lobbyists and campaign donations."

"Johnson makes a major contribution to our national debates, as did Paul before him. The libertarian perspective is valuable, important and deserves to be considered by all voters. It is also fair to note that Johnson, like Paul before him, has won a fair share of support from younger voters who are the future of the nation. If someone had asked me to predict who would emerge as the leading alternative to Clinton in a poll of respected economists, I would never have guessed that the runner-up to Clinton would be Johnson, and not Trump."