Lawyers From The United States

"The people have been telling pollsters for decades that they want someone who is an outsider, a disrupter, an independent voice who doesn’t owe anybody anything in Washington — and they finally got their wish with Donald J. Trump."

"You can't appeal to us through our wombs, we're pro-life. The fetus beat us. We grew up with sonograms. We know life when we see it."

"The media and Clinton campaign created some sympathy for Donald Trump because the message was not subtle, it was an avalanche, indeed, an unprecedented deluge of negative, caustic, burn-it-to-the-ground anti-Trump messaging, and people don’t respond to that."

"Professional identity cannot cancel out or displace the primordial moral agency that we all share simply by virtue of being human."

"The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did."

"We all know why the Democrats had him there, it’s to obscure the fact that Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have failed at keeping this country safe."

"Barack Obama may have won in 2008 in North Carolina due to illegal voting."

"He sees every night as combat and he goes in as very combative."

"Boris is abrasive, that is who he is both on the air and off."

"He is everything you want in a surrogate because he believes in his candidate."

"The remarks attributed to John Podesta, who is Mrs. Clinton’s chief of staff, are just extraordinarily patronizing and insulting to Catholics. What he would say is offensive. And if it had been said about the Jewish community, if it had been said about the Islamic community, within 10 minutes there would have been an apology."

"We are going to have to dump all those emails so better to do so sooner than later."

"Better if a guy named Sayeed Farouk was reporting that a guy named Christopher Hayes was the shooter."

"I agree with that in principle. Where would you stick the knife in?"

"The American people want climate action. New polling from Climate Power 2020 finds 71 percent favor bold government action on climate change, while only 18 percent oppose it... Running boldly on tackling the climate crisis, running on a Green New Deal, these are policies that can be popular in all 50 states. Democrats should run toward, not away from these fights. The evidence is clear: If we loudly make the case for bold climate action, we will win... We’ve never seen our country so eager to elect leaders who will take bold action to stop the climate crisis. Neither have we ever known a country in such dire need of such bold action. In a moment of historic unemployment, Democrats want to put millions of people back to work now by investing in bold climate action that would create millions of clean energy jobs and begin to repair decades of environmental injustice. That’s what the American people want too. By 23 points, voters support investing trillions of dollars in clean energy infrastructure."

"I'm definitely for making an example of a suspected leaker whether or not we have any real basis for it."

"Mr. Earle derives from his Quaker ancestry the breadth of view that recognizes no monopoly of integrity or weakness in any denomination, and that business ability and character are more valuable, because less easily pretended, than piety."

"In the first place, the meaning of the Constitution never varies. It means today exactly what it meant on the day of its adoption. To hold otherwise would destroy the judicial character of the Supreme Court, and make the continuance of our "unalienable" rights completely uncertain. This has been forcibly stated in South Carolina vs. United States, 199 U. S., at 448: "The Constitution is a written instrument. As such its meaning does not alter. That which it meant when adopted it means now. * * * Those things which are within its grants of power, when made, are still within them, and those things not within remain still excluded. * * * Any other rule of construction, would abrogate the judicial character of this Court, and make it the mere reflex of the popular opinion or passion of the day.""

"...all men naturally love freedom, however ignorant they may be of that eternal vigilance and the necessary measures to preserve it, and where their folly has caused them to lose it, always try to return to it."

"Defense of freedom requires no apology."

"At this moment the most stable Government in the world is our own, and it is solely because, in its real essence, it is the most free, in the only sense in which Freedom really exists; where men can act at their own free discretion, restrained only by the necessities of Justice. If the spirit of the Constitution is to be observed, that great instrument is always self-preserving. It needs only to be followed to be safeguarded."

"Of course, I've made enemies ... But the interesting feature of this reorganization business is that I am criticized between times. They always forget it when there's a broken-down company to pull out of a hole, and somebody's money to save."

"Socialism is offered as a remedy. It is pretty to look at, but it does not mean liberty. It means just the other thing, because it brings us face to face with the same old equation. We know what the socialist leaders would do, for human nature does not change."

"Socialism believes in the elimination of the individual and in the destruction of competition. The people who wish to destroy the idea that the Government exists for each one of us, and not each one of us for the Government, are all in favor of these monopolies. For while they consider them present evils, they consider them working to the good of an established government in which the individual is lost, and every man belongs to the State, and has lost his individual manhood and freedom."

"It has been said that in controversy everything depends upon whether truth be put in the first or in the second place. And so in constitutional law much depends upon whether "liberty" be given precedence."

"...a false prophet has come among you... who, in a country where all are in the highest class—that of the American citizens—tries to divide us into many, and then set those classes against each other; who tries to set State against State, section against section, and so nullify the great work for which Abraham Lincoln gave his life; who tries to lead us into paths of dishonor and asks us to disgrace the country for which we would give our lives..."

"...some one has to speak in favor of the right when so speaking is unpopular. The more unpopular, the greater the necessity; ... The Republican party has done much for this country. It has often created and preserved prosperity by fighting crazes. For the first time in its history, it is yielding to one. If it would only say "we have made this prosperity, it is our child, and shall have our protection," and stand to its guns, it will beat Bryanism to death as it always has. But with its leader caring more for popularity than principle, courageous, as he is uninformed, I, myself, am convinced that it will have to go out of power in order that it may return chastened and more trusted than ever."

"Equality of treatment is the chief purpose for which the Government exists ... Liberty is but an equality of justice."

"I can suggest no remedy, but would prefer present evils to those resulting from the creation of too centralized a power; and the answer, to my mind, is obvious. The true remedy must be found, not in placing our dependence upon the discretion of any one, but of every one,—that is, again, upon liberty, rather than upon power and restraint."

"To vote for Mr. Roosevelt is to give Mr. Taft half a slap and Mr. Wilson half a boost, and why a man would want to impale himself on so absurd a dilemma I can't see for the life of me."

"Ignore accounting conventions. They are not useful risk management tools; they are designed to make our lives easier and comfortable."

"Always measure opportunities lost.”Rotberg, Eugene. (2009)."

"We design performance measures to cover-up error. They are called benchmarks. We make decisions based on: Will we be found out? Discovered? Identified as the wrongdoer? Do we really want to have to explain this stuff to someone who spent his or her life in sales or marketing?"

"Never penalize those who work for us for mistakes or reward them for being right about markets. It will go to their heads, is counterproductive and, in any event, material compensation will not correlate with their ability to predict the future next time."

"Sigmund Freud would have been a wonderful witness here. He would have explained the use of derivatives as denial and rationalization—the pretense that we are doing one thing when we really mean to do something else; the relationship between the banker and its client as one of ambivalence and reliance on the father figure; the use of accounting conventions as repression and the absence of reality testing; the work environment as the pleasure/pain principle—current pleasure for future damage, let someone else pick up the pieces; leveraging and doubling our bets as counter-phobic behavior; termination therapy as what happens when the CFO and Treasurer get caught; and, of course, transference—how the trader seeks to shift responsibility to his or her superior when the string runs out."

"A war takes place; an earthquake occurs; a flood of a magnitude not seen in a hundred years washes over the land; a cartel falls apart; oil prices quadruple; tax laws change, and the market in which you had an open position, or even hedged, moves in a magnitude not only unforeseen, but totally outside past models. They always do. You are in trouble."

"Banks are unprofitable because they make too many bad loans and their good loans have little profit in them. They also have the dubious advantage of an awful set of accounting conventions—“a rolling loan gathers no loss”—that permits them to mask their mistakes and hold assets without marking their value to market. Spreads are narrow, costs are high and there is too much reliance on insured deposits, with the accompanying incentive to take risks with someone else's money."

"Freud, Galileo and Darwin told us, at different times and in different ways, that we are not the center of the universe; that we do not have control; that we do not fully understand our motivations; that we are not all that special. They did not have an easy time of it—for each society wants to believe that it can exercise control over its own destiny and over others. I suspect their findings apply not just to science or personal behavior, but to the way power and leverage can be exercised by nation states. Yours, I suspect, will be the first generation which will have to achieve results with neither military nor economic predominance—no matter where you sit."

"“Admit we are not sure of all the risks. . . ."

"Show some humility. . . ."

"Figure out what we are really trying to do. . . ."

"Try to understand why a transaction makes sense to your counterparty. . . ."

"Ask ‘what if?’ Quantify ‘what if?’ . . ."

"When people think of Washington corruption, they think of organizations like Black, Manafort & Stone, that shook down dictators, took all their money, and then tried to take America's government and make them serve the dictator's interest. You know, it is the swamp."

"For five months, Trump's campaign manager was Paul Manafort, advisor to dictators and near dictators including a pro-Moscow regime in Ukraine that was ousted by a popular uprising."

"The hiring of Manafort and others, specifically , a Russian-born real estate mogul with mob ties whose 2015 emails indicate that he hoped to help secure both a Moscow-based real estate deal and the American presidency for Trump—showed a disturbing pattern of associations with those around Vladimir Putin, head of the in Moscow..."

"Manafort arrived in Ukraine in the wake of the ... doctors determined that had been poisoned with dioxin... With guidance from Manafort and backing from Moscow, the made an astonishing comeback over the next five years, culminating in Yanukovych’s successful bid for the presidency in 2010. ...With money from the Party of Regions and its... backers, [Manafort] hired lobbyists in Washington to spin the imprisonment of [former Prime Minister] Tymoshenko as an example of Ukraine’s commitment to the rule of law. ...Such services did not come cheap... with payments worth $12.7 million designated for [Manafort] between 2007 and 2012. The indictment... claims Manafort and an associate laundered the proceeds of his work in Ukraine through offshore accounts, and failed to pay U.S. taxes on the income."

"A lobbyist can perform no greater favor for a lawmaker than to help get him elected. It is the ultimate political , and it can be cashed in again and again. No other firm holds more of this precious currency than the Washington shop known as Black, Manafort. Legally, there are two firms. Black, Manafort, Stone & Kelly, a lobbying operation... Black, Manafort, Stone & Atwater, a political-consulting firm, has helped elect... powerful... politicians... The partners... say that the lobbying and political-consulting functions are kept separate. ...Charges , president of the public-interest lobbying group : "It's institutionalized conflict of interest." ...The partners charge six-figure fees to lobby and six-figure fees to manage election campaigns. As a result, they take home six-figure salaries. ...They unabashedly peddle their access to the Reagan Administration."

"As a political firm, Black, Manafort represents Democrats and Republicans alike--and sometimes candidates running for the same seat. ...Stone and Atwater's offices are right across the hall from each other, prompting one congressional aide to ask facetiously, "Why have primaries for the nomination? Why not have the candidates go over to Black, Manafort & Stone and argue it out?""

"Paul Manafort went to work in Ukraine in 2005... A U.S. embassy cable... described Manafort’s job as giving an “extreme makeover” to... presidential hopeful... , who had the backing of the and most of Ukraine’s wealthiest tycoons. His , the cable said, was "a haven" for "mobsters and oligarchs." ...Yanukovych had served jail time in his youth for theft and battery. He also had a hard time speaking Ukrainian... The man paying the exorbitant bills for these efforts was... the coal and metals magnate . ...[S]ome of Yanukovych’s political patrons were implicated in the murder of ... abducted and beheaded [in 2000]."