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Suing a doctor for medical malpractice is extremely difficult, despite the many claims to the contrary. To prevail, even more. Several studies have agreed that only about one in ten cases of serious negligence – and only 1% of all adverse medical events -- ever result in any sort of legal action being initiated. Nevertheless, if you ask the average American about the many problems that plague our healthcare system, they will be quick to point out that malpractice claims are one of the main culprits, and those unjust awards in turn increase our healthcare costs. Answers like Lacy Windham’s compound to the problem. In her answer, made from the physician’s point of view, she mentions the financial impact to the doctor, the stress it causes to the doctor, and blames the issue on injury lawyers that work on a contingency basis. She fails to mention that the vast majority of medical injury attorneys reject the vast majority of cases because the chances of prevailing in court are dim (especially if the victim is old or sick) and don’t justify the hundreds of thousands of dollars that they cost to litigate - especially if the victim dies. She paints the doctor as the victim, suffering from the injustice of being sued, and cries for tort reform, when in fact, “by the recent publication of a major study in the New England Journal of Medicine. A team of five doctors and public health experts found that tort reform measures passed in three states – specifically designed to insulate emergency room doctors from lawsuits -- did nothing to reduce the number of expensive tests and procedures those ER doctors prescribed.This latest study follows numerous others that deflated other tort reform myths: that making it harder for victims to file medical malpractice lawsuits would reduce the number of “frivolous” suits that “clog the courts;" that imposing caps on the damages victims could receive would reign in "out of control" juries that were awarding lottery-size sums to plaintiffs; and that malpractice insurance premiums would fall, thereby reversing a doctor shortage caused by specialists "fleeing the profession." (Source: On Tort Reform, It's Time to Declare Victory and Withdraw)Interestingly enough, on Ms. Windham’s answer, there is no mention of the poor fool whose life is a shadow of his old self because a doctor did not do her job.So going back to the premise of the question, here is my take of why it is so hard to sue -and more importantly, prevail!- in a medical malpractice case. As Ms. Windham said, not every bad outcome is negligence, but that does not mean that an error was not made. In order to prevail in a medical malpractice trial you need to prove several things:That there was an error.That error was a deviation of the standard of careThat particular deviation of the standard of care caused your injuries.And that those injuries merit compensation.Rarely a case of medical malpractice is straightforward. Let me give you some examples:First scenario:Falls in hospital are one of the main causes of injury in a hospital settings. Medicare considers it a “Never happen” event and they consider it a deviation from the standard of care. Therefore, it won’t pay the medical provider for the care of injuries that result from a fall, as a financial penalty to reduce their occurrence (Hospital-Acquired Conditions).So let’s say your retired and active 65-year old mom had a stroke, and in her confusion she falls from the bed and breaks her hip. She gets a hip replacement but during surgery she suffers a complication -a risk expected from surgery-, and she dies.This case will never see the light of court.Since the victim died, in a state that has passed tort reform, the maximum award that the plaintiff can get is $250,000. So no medical malpractice attorney worth its salt will touch it. Not because there is no merit. It is because the cost of prosecuting such a case is staggering: between experts and the discovery process, a medical malpractice lawyer can easily spend close to $100k-$150k of his own money in litigation fees. So let’s do the math for the best case scenario:Award size: $250,000Minus costs of litigation: $100,000 (has to pay no matter if they win or lose)_________________________Net gain: $150,000Minus Attorney fees 33.3% (only recouped if they win): $49,950________________________Victim receives: $100,050.And that if they are lucky!Because the reality is that the attorney knows that if he goes to court, the hospital will claim that the victim was not healthy. That the victim died as a result of the surgery -where she signed a piece of paper where she accepted the risks of surgery- and that surgery was within the standard of care. There will be no mention of the fact that the victim was in surgery as a result of a deviation of the standard of care. The hospital will paint her as frail and old, an inevitable casualty of her bad habits. If you are lucky, you will get a letter saying “We are sorry you are not satisfied with our service” while you try to explain to your children that Nanna is in heaven.Conclusion of this scenario: When a victim is frail, sick or old, and the case results in a fatality, it will be close to impossible to find representation much less to successfully sue because the awards in tort reform states don’t make it feasible for plaintiff’s attorney to incur in this massive financial risk . Even in states that have not passed tort reform, the value of life of someone that does not work (such a stay at home mom or an elderly person) is very small and the awards will be minimal.Second scenario:New technologies are making it into our healthcare system at a staggering pace. Though the FDA regulates the release of such devices, some of them are pulled out of the market due to their risk of complications that may even result in death. Even considering these issues, the Trump administration wants to further weaken these regulations FDA Moves on Trump Plan to Slash Regulations.So let’s say that your wife has uterine fibroids. The doctor advises that instead of a hysterectomy, a morcellator to be used used to keep the uterus, and mentions that even though there are some risks, the advantages outweight the risks. The patient undergoes surgery, and a few months later it she finds out that she has leiomyosarcoma. Not only that, the patient finds out that there has been concerns about the use of morcellators due to their risk of spreading undetected cancer in healthy patients (see Power Morcellators), a risk that could have been prevented if the doctor had done a hysterectomy. She is given Chemo and radiotherapy, and loses her job because she cannot reasonably work. After treatment, she at most, has a three-year life expectancy.The patient tries to sue. No one touches her case because the statute of limitations has elapsed and because there is still research to be made about the safety of such devices, as the data is not yet conclusive Morcellation-Cancer Controversy Still Unresolved. Like the morcellator, plenty of other medical devices are being evaluated due to their side effects and complications (seeDangerous Medical Implants and Devices - Consumer Reports)Conclusion of this scenario: If you are hurt by the use of a new medical device or drug, it may take years, if ever, to get any sort of compensation because the research to evaluate its safety can take easily a decade. Most likely you will die before the research is completed. Your only chance at compensation will be to find a large law firm that does a class-action lawsuit against the manufacturer. It will be impossible to sue the doctor that did the procedure even if he failed to disclose the risks, because he used an FDA approved device and followed the guidelines of the manufacturer. Statute of limitations further limit the window of opportunity during which a patient can sue.Third scenario:Let’s say that you are injured at your job. You are a nurse that was attacked by a patient in withdrawal, and injured your neck, requiring surgery. Since you were bed-bound and the doctor considered you a risk for thrombosis, the started giving you blood thinners to avoid a blood clot, but a mishap at the pharmacy caused them to give you massive amounts of blood thinners. During your surgery, the intubation went wrong. What exactly you don’t know because later you will find that the medical records relating to the intubation are completely gone.You woke up and were barely conscious, but you realized you had massive trouble breathing. Finally, you realize that you are bleeding internally and manage to tell the nurse that it may be the medication. By the time they discontinue the thinners, you have been drowning in your own blood for hours. The damaged caused will require you to go on state disability and eventually, be on a list for a lung transplant. Since your initial injury happened on the job, your health insurance company won’t pay for the medical care, while your worker’s compensation won’t pay either because they claim, rightly, that they are only liable for the neck injury and not the complications caused by the surgery. In the meanwhile, you have no medical coverage nor income and have to live with friends until you finally qualify a compassionate allowance under social security and Medicare because you can barely breathe.Conclusion of this scenario: Conflict between insurance companies, such as worker’s compensation, disability insurers and health care providers severely limits access to medical care after severe medical injury, and makes it even harder for a patient to sue due to subrogation clauses common in these contracts. Also, tampering of medical records is not uncommon, and though it is forbidden by law, it is extremely hard to prove, especially if the patient is dead and their loved ones don’t have a medical power of attorney in place to do a quick collection of these records. Without proper records, it is difficult to prove, beyond a reasonable doubt, that there was a deviation from the standard of care. And even if you find evidence of tampering, most likely the medical board of your state won’t do a damn thing: in California, they close 95% of complaints, and they seal them from the patient and the public, so there is no way to know if they even investigated a violation at all.Last scenario:You were healthy and active, a picture of health. You ran and swan, and never got ill. You are a man on his prime, fond of running and biking.One day, you twisted your ankle after you stepped on a rock. Initially it bothered you a little, but after a couple of days your ankle suddenly swelled and reddened, causing so much pain that you could not even put weight on it. You also felt extremely weak and feverish. Concerned, you went to the doctor and after just glancing at your foot and without doing a full examination, she quickly diagnosed you with having the flu and a sprained ankle. She ordered an x-ray which showed no fracture and sent you on her merry way.Your symptoms did not improve, and concerned, you called the nurse and described symptoms of what they know is severe sepsis: shivering, sleepyness, a fever that did not improve with 1800 mg of ibuprofen a day. They kept telling you it was the flu and to stay home. Since you were getting worse - your arm that was normal is now hurting tremendously after a minor injury, the skin of your foot is inflamed and looks weird - you decided to contact the doctor that examined you initially, and without running any tests, she continues to tell you it was the flu and to stay home. You sent her pictures of your foot which show cellulitis. She ignores them and diagnoses your symptoms as pneumonia. In regards of the arm, she just advises to ice it.Since you cannot stand the pain you go to the emergency room, where thanks to your lucky stars a doctor noticed that something was seriously amiss with you and quickly diagnosed you with septic and toxic shock syndrome. They saved your life, at the cost of all of your limbs. The arm that was hurting was suffering from non-traumatic compartment syndrome and you lost your entire hand. The impact of the infection was so devastating that you will suffer severe nerve damage that will put you in a wheelchair for the rest of your life.You were lucky. Your wife quickly realized that something was amiss. She quickly gathered all communications and collected your medical records, and cataloged everything that happened -photos, conversations and emails. She did so because the outcome was not reasonable: it is not a reasonable outcome for a healthy man in his forties to end up a multiple amputee thanks to a common and easy to treat strep infection while on proper and continuous medical care. But still finding representation was difficult -three major law firms rejected the case, even though they believed that there were several grounds for negligence. But thankfully, one of the best lawyers in the state took your case. The attorneys and the experts quickly realized that you met the entire clinical presentation of having septic arthritis in the ankle joint since the beginning. After it went untreated, it quickly developed into severe sepsis and eventually septic shock, but since the doctors never did a culture of this tissue, your attorneys could not prove it beyond a reasonable doubt.Your wife sued, and she lost, despite there being close to a dozen violations of the standard of care. You see, even though the judge that presided the case suspected that the doctor was negligent - causation was the issue at hand-. Was the infection that caused the paralysis? Is there any study linking amputations and time to get to the ER?. Can we proved beyond a reasonable doubt that the outcome would have been different if he had landed in the ER 10 hours earlier?. Since the complications suffered by you are rare, there is no much data showing the impact of sepsis on morbidity.In any case, a separate investigation by the medical board found that that the treatment you received was below the standard of care. The cost of your medical care is staggering -at about $54,000/year. But yet, you have to fully absorb the cost of someone’s mistakes, while the doctor that harmed you lives in one of the wealthiest neighborhoods of the Bay Area and thanks to some well paid lawyer, managed to close the complaint and the investigation without receiving so much as a fine. She has a perfectly clean record and continues to practice while you need a person at all times because you can barely feed yourself.Conclusion of this scenario: Even if you are a perfect victim: a healthy person with spotless medical records, a clear cause of what happened and severe financial and physical consequences caused by medical negligence, you still can lose your case because the hospital will find tons of experts that will say that what happened to you was unavoidable and that even if you had gotten proper medical care the outcome would have been the same. The chances are far even worse if you are bound by mandatory arbitration. This creates a pool of judges that know that if they rule against a medical provider the chances of presiding on another trial will be zero since the hospital has veto power over the judge presiding any malpractice case. And if you make about $600/hr and make close to $60,000 for two weeks of work you won’t risk ruling against the hand that feeds you. You will find whatever straw you can find to dismiss the case or rule in favor of the defendant (http://www.oia-kaiserarb.com/pdfs/2016-Annual-Report.pdf).For this reason, many law firms will automatically reject any case coming from places such as Kaiser Permanente, where patient claims are bound to mandatory arbitration (see Arbitration Everywhere, Stacking the Deck of Justice) because they know that they will have worse outcomes than in a jury trial, no matter the merits of the case. And if you are not a perfect victim ( let’s say, you had a DUI, you used tested positive for marijuana, you are poorly educated, you had a criminal record) they will assassinate your character- no matter how severe and evident your injuries. They will do their best to discredit you as a crook that wants to go after the poor’s physician’s money.None of these scenarios are hypothetical. They are the stories of real victims of medical errors, all of which I know personally (FDA to weigh risks of potentially cancer-spreading device). The last scenario in particular, speaks to me: I am the wife on that story. My husband is the victim.As you can see, this issue is extremely complex, and prone to propaganda, particularly on the hand of HMO’s and physicians. Doctors in particular, are extremely wary of litigation when the data does not merit it (Afraid of getting sued? A plaintiff attorney offers counsel (but no sympathy)). They blame lawsuits for defensive care, instead of ever reducing examination times. The average doctor spends between 5–10 minutes examining a patient, and to make up for lost examination time, they order a battery of tests to make up for it, no matter how wasteful or unnecessary they are (see America’s Epidemic of Unnecessary Care). Hospitals profits tidily from this waste: after all, they bill the insurance company for every test they make.Is litigation the best venue for resolving issues of medical negligence?, I would say: it isn’t. Because our current system takes long to serve the victims, it is extremely wasteful and only helps a very small fraction of victims of medical errors. A doctor may have committed an error that does not amount to negligence, yet that is little consolation to the person that lost their loved one or has to stop working to take care of them. A no-fault system is a better venue, first, because a doctor may be more willing to admit that he dropped the ball, but to admit that they were negligent, never. Propublica recently released this article that shows how other countries deal with such incidents (How Denmark Dumped Medical Malpractice and Improved Patient Safety — ProPublica), but for that system to ever work in the US there must be far more transparency that there is now on the medical community, particularly since they tend to see the doctor as the real victim of a complaint, and not the patient, no matter how valid the case. And given how they treat their whistle blowers (Doctor Confesses: I Lied To Protect Colleague In Malpractice Suit) , I doubt that they would be willing to testify against a colleague - even in a no-fault system. And unfortunately, medical expert reports are needed in any sort of system to value the merits of a claim.

The healthcare in the US is not expensive because is a system designed for profit. If that were the case, hospitals would be following six-sigma quality guidelines and follow evidence based medicine.No.It is because it is a system where EVERYONE profits from waste.1) The doctor profits when he orders unnecessary tests and procedures. BUT if he works for a system where the insurer and the hospital are the same entity (For example, Kaiser Permanente) he may be penalized/rewarded for ordering/denying tests, procedures and referrals even if they are medically necessary.The hospital profits when doctor does (1) and(2) When the good doctor fucks up. See that healthy man that whose sepsis was misdiagnosed and resulted in limb amputations? He becomes a cash cow for the hospital for the rest of his life. If the crappy doctor on the other hand, works for a system such as Kaiser's, he/she will save millions of dollars to the HMO by refusing to order necessary tests and treatments. That is why poor doctors are kept on the job for years, even though according to the National Practitioner Data Bank Public Use File;The vast majority of doctors – 82 percent – have never had a medical malpractice payment since the NPDB was created in 1990.Just 5.9 percent of doctors have been responsible for 57.8 percent of all malpractice payments since 1991, according to data from September 1990 through 2005. Each of these doctors made at least two payments. (Source Public Citizen)But what about frivolous lawsuits? you may say. Tort reform and arbitration have made pretty much impossible to sue a doctor -but to go through that issue is the source of another long post. The reality is that only 3% of valid medical malpractice cases go to trial, and the plaintiff loses 75% of the time. The chances of the hospital having to do a huge payout to a patient are extremely slim. The cost of preventable medical errors is staggering - some estimates put it as high as $780 billion a year (source The economics of health care quality and medical errors. ). Guess who gets the majority of that money - you have it right: The Hospital and doctors. Medical boards all over the country are nothing but cartels safeguarding crappy doctors. Did you prescribe methadone as a pain reliever after a tonsillectomy and the patient dies of an overdose a few days later?. A "public" letter of reprimand will suffice (see Page on ca.gov ). No probation, no suspension. If the case is pretty bad, the good doc will lawyer up and settle for a single act of negligence and leave it at that.BUT! you may say, can't the victim testify or witness the proceeding?THESE HEARINGS, THEIR FINDINGS, THE NAME OF THE DISTRICT ATTORNEY ASSIGNED TO YOUR CASE (IF YOU MAKE IT THAT FAR) ARE ENTIRELY CONFIDENTIAL. Imagine a secret trial in which the prosecutor and the defendant can discuss as good pals what kind of disciplinary actions they would like, and the victim is not even allowed to show how badly harmed they were?. Yup, that is the way the disciplinary hearings from the Medical boards work in the US. In fact, they still are debating whether you, as a patient, should be notified if you good doc is on probation (Your doctor’s on probation: Should you be told?) You get more transparency in your pick of Vietnamese restaurant than of the doctor that makes life and death decisions for you.BUT!! you may say. How about the Insurers? Medicaid? Medicare?. Wouldn't it be in their best interest to improve safety practices and do evidence-based medicine?. Ideally, this would be the case, BUT!!!3) VENDORS do not have any sort of transparency in prices. From medications, to the cost of the band-aid, or a simple test, and you may get staggering differences in price (see A blood test can cost from $10 to $10,000 in Calif. hospitals, according to a study). Insurers negotiate prices with HMO's so this kind of magical math happens all the time.The cynic in me believes that the vendors and the insurers are in cahoots: inflate the price 1000%, and the 20-30% percent patient co-payment alone would shift the majority of the REAL cost to the patient -and even make a tidy profit. The poor fellow with the Bronze plan? please pay up the whole price, credit cards accepted, pronto.Not only that, but if the situation becomes too bad, Insurers can always raise prices. Or in the case of Medicare, instead of going against the powerful AMA and the health insurance and pharmaceutical industry, we start saving money by denying benefits to those who may need it. Prosthetic devices? See Rescind the Medicare proposal restricting access to prosthetic limbs and returning amputees to 1970’s standards of care. Same goes for wheelchairs Stop Medicare from Making Inappropriate Cuts to Complex Wheelchair Accessories. When Medicare goes into full mayhem mode, and refuses to pay for complications generated by easily preventable hospital conditions (see Medicare's no-pay events: Coping with the complications), then the hospitals start releasing the sick patients to SNF (skilled nursing facilities) and saying that the condition was acquired there.But how about the patients?, you may say4) But the patients have also a big responsibility in this whole mess. You have a kick ass program at work? You think nothing of ordering unnecessary tests "just to make sure", and "treating yourself" via chiropractors, accupuncturists and homeopaths, which are nothing but quackery (See Page on sciencebasedmedicine.org and https://www.Page on sciencebasedmedicine.org/acupuncture-doesnt-work/). You overburden hospitals when you to to the ER when nothing is wrong with you, you refuse to vaccinate your children because of something you read on the internet, you bitch when Obamacare rolls in and you say "hands off my health plan", you are the first to demand that undocumented immigrants be forbidden to buy insurance in the exchanges, even though they contribute over $13 billion of dollars to our SS and Medicare systems on a yearly basis, and get less than $1 billion back (See Page on socialsecurity.gov) -and virtually ensure that they only get care in the ER's when their conditions are often lethal and incredibly expensive to treat. In fact, you, the patient, are a very integral part of the problem when you vote and without first getting a basic understanding of the inherent complexity of this matter.As a final note, here is a little reason of by I am so passionate about the subject.This was my husband - a triathlete, a marathon runner - handsome fella uhm?On January 2013, he sprained his ankle and developed a joint infection. His doctor, hurried and careless, told him it was just the flu and did not order any blood work nor cultures, even though he had a textbook presentation of septic arthritis of the ankle joint. Despite constant follow up calls to the hospital, they kept reassuring us that this was expected. The doctor that examined him initially, suspected that he has sepsis, but never told him to go to the ER. By the time we reached the ER he was in full septic and toxic shock from a common strain of Streptococcus pyogenes. A bacteria easily treatable with penicillin.Cost of treating him on time: $30.This is how my husband looks like nowNow, the breakdown of the cost of this errorHospitalization19 days in ICU: between $15,000-$$30,000 day (due to complex presentation, intubation, wound care and dialysis)= $285,000- $570,000141 days of regular hospitalization: on low end, $1975 x $ 141= $278,485Surgical costs (aprox 15 surgeries of 4-6 hours duration each) = Unknown, but average surgery for debridement costs $15,000. I am being conservative at putting the costs of surgery at around $225,00012 weeks of acute rehabilitation: $1,040,000 (and I got this much rehab because I bitched like a rabid dog)Total hospitalization: A conservative cost of $2,113,000Litigation: Our attorney (between experts, court reporters, etc) $150,000Kaiser (let's be conservative and assume they had the same costs as us) = $150,000But Kaiser alone had to pay for their attorney. Assuming the guy worked about 200 hours in the case (which is quite conservative, as the trial alone was about 80 hours), at $400/h, we are talking about $80,000 in fees.Arbitrator: 100 hours at $550/h= $55,000Total legal costs: $495,000Victim gets zero. Arbitration rules -but for insurers!!Anthem, and now Medicare, pay approximately $100,000/year in medical costs for husband. Prosthesis ain't cheap. At 20% copay, we had to pay close to $20,000/year in copays alone, that without including caregiver costs.Husband, an engineer, used to make close to $150,000/year. Luckily we had good LTD insurance, but still, I had to stop working in engineering as the time constraints and cost of care-giving made it impossible to continue working FT. That means that SS will stop receiving close to $620,000 in Medicare and SS taxes from us during our expected work expectancy.So to add it up:Costs of initial hospitalization: $2.1 millionLegal costs: $495,000Insurance costs through husband's lifetime (life expentancy of 75): $3 millionCosts to victims: $600,000 (based on same life expentancy)Loss of Medicare and SS earnings: $620,000Loss of wages: 2.3 million (wife), 1.1 million (husband - I am deducting his disability payments)Total cost to society: $10,215,000 (in 2015 dollars)So you can understand my frustration when PCP's tell me that it would be too cumbersome to test all suspicious cases?. With the cost of Husband's case alone, we would have been able to test and treat more that 300,000 patients.To this date, doctor still practices, despite having been found below the standard of care by the CA medical board. If we are lucky, she will get a public letter of reprimand and that will be it.You on the other hand, will pay dearly, when Medicare goes insolvent, or when your insurance rates increase. All because of the waste.

"We hang the petty thieves and appoint the great ones to public office." - Aesop (620-560 BC)"Just because you (do not take an interest in politics)* doesn't mean politics won't take an interest in you." - Pericles (495-429 BC) (*)original Greek definition of a village idiot, according to JFK"The abuse of buying and selling votes crept in and money began to play an important part in determining elections. Later on, this process of corruption spread in the law courts and to the army, and finally, when even the sword became enslaved by the power of gold, the republic was subjected to the rule of emperors." - Plutarch"A prince never lacks legitimate reasons to break his promise." - Niccolo Machiavelli"If one would give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest man, I would find something in them to have him hanged." - Cardinal Richelieu 1641"The English people believes itself to be free; it is gravely mistaken; it is free only during election of members of parliament; as soon as the members are elected, the people is enslaved; it is nothing. In the brief moment of its freedom, the English people makes such a use of that freedom that it deserves to lose it." - Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-78)"The true danger is when liberty is nibbled away, for expedients, and by parts." - Edmund Burke (1729-97)"...Neither body to jail nor soul to damn." - Lord Edward Thurlow (1731-1806) describing a new British invention, the corporation. One might add, nowadays, "nor conscience to pique, nor death to ponder.""Devil take the hindmost." - Colonial Record of Georgia (1742, when the majority of its population were slaves)"Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add 'within the limits of the law' because law is often but the tyrant's will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual." - Thomas Jefferson - "There is...an artificial aristocracy founded on wealth and birth, without either virtue or talents.... The artificial aristocracy is a mischievous ingredient in government, and provisions should be made to prevent its ascendancy.""The liberties of a people never were, nor ever will be, secure when the transactions of their rulers may be concealed from them." - Patrick Henry"The preservation of the means of knowledge among the lowest ranks is of more importance to the public than all the property of all the rich men in the country." - John Adams"Ignorant, restless desperadoes, without conscience or principles, have led a deluded multitude to follow their standard, under pretense of grievances which have no existence but in their own imaginations." - Abigail Adams"[America] goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own. She will commend the general cause by the countenance of her voice, and the benign' sympathy of her example. She well knows that by once enlisting under other banners than her own, were they even the banners of foreign independence, she would involve herself beyond the power of extrication, in all the wars of interest and intrigue, of envy, and ambition, which assume the colors and usurp the standard of freedom. The fundamental maxims of her policy would insensibly change from liberty to force. She might become the dictatress of the world. She would be no longer the ruler of her own spirit." - John Quincy Adams, US House, 7/4/1821"When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men living together in society, they create for themselves in the course of time a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it." - Frederic Bastiat"Distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful." - Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche - "The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher regard those who think alike than those who think differently.""Although it is not true that all conservatives are stupid ..., it is true that most stupid people are conservative." - John Stewart Mill (1806-1873) "I never meant to say that the conservatives are ... stupid. I meant to say that stupid people are generally conservative. I believe that is so obviously and universally admitted a principle that I hardly think any gentleman will deny it.""There is nothing more frightful than ignorance in action." - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe - "None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free." and "There is nothing worse than aggressive stupidity." and "Divide and rule, a sound motto. Unite and lead, a better one.""The nose of a mob is its [dimmed] imagination. By this, at any time, it can be quietly led." - Edgar Allen Poe"You'll never go broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public." - P. T. Barnum (1810-91)"It is the weakness and danger of republics that the vices as well as virtues of the people are represented in their legislation." - Helen Hunt Jackson (1830-85)"TYRANNY OF THE MAJORITY.(title of a section in his book, Democracy in America, Volume I, Chapter XV, 1835) ... In America the majority raises formidable barriers around the liberty of opinion; within these barriers an author may write what he pleases, but woe to him if he goes beyond them." - Alexis de Tocqueville - "The President ... may err ... Congress may decide amiss ... But if the Supreme Court is ever composed of imprudent or bad men, the Union may be plunged into anarchy or civil war." Bk 1, Ch 8."(Jefferson's) ideas, however, were fundamentally wrong. They rested upon the assumption of the equality of races. This was an error. ... Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery -- subordination to the superior race -- is his natural and normal condition." Confederate Vice-President Alexander Stephens, Savannah, March 21, 1861."Fear is the parent of cruelty." - James Anthony Froude (1818-94)"Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities." - Voltaire"I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. ... corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed." - attributed to A.Lincoln, letter to Col. William F. Elkins, Nov. 21, 1864."The great mistake of my life was taking a military education." - Robert E Lee"Let them eat grass." - Andrew Myrick, a white trader to the starving Sioux, at a meeting of US Bureau of Indian Affairs agents, Indians and traders, in August 1862. Afterward Myrick was found dead with grass in his mouth."Any nation which by means of protective duties and restrictions on navigation has raised her manufacturing power and her navigation to such a degree of development that no other nation can sustain free competition with her, can do nothing wiser than to throw away these ladders of her greatness, to preach to other nations the benefits of free trade, and to declare in penitent tones that she has hitherto wandered in the paths of error, and has now for the first time succeeded in discovering the truth." - Friedrich List (1789-1846) US Consul to Germany, describing the source of Britain's wealth in his book, The National System of Political Economy, 1841."There is scarcely anything in the world that some man cannot make a little worse, and sell a little more cheaply. The person who buys on price alone is this man's lawful prey." - John Ruskin (1819-1900)"The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread." - Anatole France (1844-1924)"I can hire one-half of the working class to kill the other half." - attributed to Jay Gould, US railroad developer and speculator, circa 1886."The Commission is, or can be made, of great use to the railroads. It satisfies the popular clamor for a government supervision of the railroads, while at the same time that supervision is almost entirely nominal." - Richard Olney, railroad attorney and US Attorney General, circa 1889, re the first US regulatory agency, the Interstate Commerce Commission."No sport is wholesome in which ungenerous or mean acts which easily escape detection contribute to victory." - Charles William Eliot, President of Harvard (1869-1909) opposing football."To disagree with three-fourths of the public is one of the first requisites of sanity." - Oscar Wilde"Everything that can be invented has been invented." - Charles H. Duell, Commissioner, U.S. patent office, 1899"There are three ways in which we may rule, by force, by fraud, or by law. We have ruled by force, we can rule by fraud, but we want to rule by law." - Charles Aycock, white-supremacist soon to be Gov. of NC, to his supporters, 1900, later to pass a state constitutional amendment that would, in effect, disenfranchise most black voters."I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do, because I notice it always coincides with their own desires." - Susan B Anthony"I have read carefully the treaty of Paris, and I have seen that we do not intend to free, but to subjugate the people of the Philippines. We have gone there to conquer, not to redeem. It should, it seems to me, be our pleasure and duty to make those people free, and let them deal with their own domestic questions in their own way. And so I am an anti-imperialist. I am opposed to having the eagle put its talons on any other land." Mark Twain, New York Herald, Oct. 15, 1900."There are two ideas of government. There are those who believe that, if you will only legislate to make the well-to-do prosperous, their prosperity will leak through on those below. The Democratic idea, however, has been that if you legislate to make the masses prosperous, their prosperity will find its way up through every class which rests upon them." - William Jennings Bryan, 1896"Politics is the art of preventing people from taking part in affairs which properly concern them." - Paul Valery (1871-1945)"Behind the ostensible government sits enthroned an invisible government, owing no allegiance and acknowledging no responsibility to the people. To destroy this invisible government, to dissolve the unholy alliance between corrupt business and corrupt politics is the first task of the statesmanship of the day." - Theodore Roosevelt, 1912 Platform of Progressive Party."Do you want to know the cause of war? It is capitalism, greed, the dirty hunger for dollars. Take away the capitalist and you will sweep war from the earth." - Henry Ford"If you want to know what God thinks about money, just look at the people He gives it to." - Dorothy Parker"Things have come to a hell of a pass, when a man can't whip his own jackass." (i.e. Democratic Party) - Henry Watterson (1840-1921), editor Louisville Courier-Journal, US Congressman (KY-D)."We will get everything out of her that you can squeeze out of a lemon and a bit more.... I will squeeze her until you can hear the pips squeak. My only doubt is not whether we can squeeze hard enough, but whether there is enough juice." - Sir Eric Geddes (1875-1937), British Conservative politician, speech on German war reparations, 12/10/1918"Is there any man, is there any woman, let me say any child here that does not know that the seed of war in the modern world is industrial and commercial rivalry?" 1919 - Woodrow Wilson - "If you want to make enemies, try to change something.""I do not understand the squeamishness about the use of gas. I am strongly in favor of using poisonous gas against uncivilized tribes." - Winston Churchill, in a letter about the Iraqi and Kurdish rebellion against British occupation, 1920"When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross." - attributed to Sinclair Lewis"The first human who hurled an insult instead of a stone was the founder of civilization." - Sigmund Freud"The worst sin towards our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them; that's the essence of inhumanity." - George Bernard Shaw"There is always room at the top - after the investigation." - Oliver Herford (1863-1935) British born American writer"I'd put my money on the sun and solar energy. What a source of power! I hope we don't have to wait until oil and coal run out before we tackle that." - Thomas Edison, in conversation with Henry Ford and Harvey Firestone, 1931"We can either have democracy in this country or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few. But we can't have both." - Justice Louis Brandeis"...the very rich... are different from you and me." - F. Scott Fitzgerald"War is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives. A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small 'inside' group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes." - Maj.-Gen. Smedley Butler, simultaneously highest ranking and most decorated U.S. Marine, two Congressional Medals of Honor, for capture of Vera Cruz, Mexico, 1914, and for capture of Ft. Riviere, Haiti, 1917, Distinguished Service Medal, 1919. Republican candidate for Senate, 1932. "I spent 33 years and four months in active military service as a member of this country's most agile military force, the Marine Corps. I served in all commissioned ranks from Second Lieutenant to Major-General. And during that period, I spent most of my time being a high class muscle-man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the Bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I could have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents." "I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested." in 'Common Sense', Nov., 1935."It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it." - Upton Sinclair (1878-1968)"Governments can err, Presidents do make mistakes, but the immortal Dante tells us that divine justice weighs the sins of the cold-blooded and the sins of the warm-hearted in different scales. Better the occasional faults of a Government that lives in a spirit of charity than the constant omission of a Government frozen in the ice of its own indifference." - Franklin D Roosevelt, 1936"The Democrats and the Republicans are equally corrupt where money is concerned. It's only in the amount (therefore extent) where the Republicans excel." - Will Rogers"The boom, not the slump, is the right time for austerity at the Treasury." - John Maynard Keynes, 1937"The wretchedness of being rich is that you live with rich people.... To suppose, as we all suppose, that we could be rich and not behave as the rich behave, is like supposing that we could drink all day and stay sober." - Logan Pearsall Smith (1865-1946), U.S. essayist"All the lessons of history in four sentences: Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad with power. The mills of God grind slowly, but they grind exceedingly small. The bee fertilizes the flower it robs. When it is dark enough, you can see the stars." - Charles Beard (1874-1948), American historian."The things that will destroy us are: politics without principle; pleasure without conscience; wealth without work; knowledge without character; business without morality; science without humanity; and worship without sacrifice." - Mahatma Gandhi - "I think it would be a good idea." when asked by a reporter for his opinion of Western civilization."The third-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking with the majority. The second-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking with the minority. The first-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking." - A.A. Milne (1882-1956)"Puritanism -- The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy." and "I am strongly in favor of common sense, common honesty, and common decency. This makes me forever ineligible for public office." - H. L. Mencken (1880-1956) "Most people want security in this world, not liberty." and "The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed ...by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary." and "Democracy is the art and science of running the circus from the monkey cage.""Great minds discuss ideas; Average minds discuss events; Small minds discuss people." - Eleanor Roosevelt - "You wouldn't worry so much about what others think of you if you realized how seldom they do.""Those who cast the votes decide nothing. Those who count the votes decide everything." - Joseph Stalin, and the counting starts with who's most enabled to vote."The biggest cause of trouble in the world today is that the stupid people are so sure about things and the intelligent folks are so full of doubts." - Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)During troubled conditions experienced by large numbers of people "explosive and dangerous forces hidden in the archetype come into action, frequently with unpredictable consequences. There is no lunacy people under the domination of an archetype will not fall prey to." - Carl Jung"Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism, because it is a merger of State and corporate power." - attributed to Mussolini, 1932 Enciclopedia Italiana."The victor will never be asked if he told the truth." - Adolf Hitler - "The great strength of the totalitarian state is that it forces those who fear it to imitate it." and "The basic feature of our economic theory is that we have no theory at all.""Power corrupts the few, while weakness corrupts the many... The resentment of the weak does not spring from any injustice done to them but from the sense of their inadequacy and impotence. They hate not wickedness but weakness. When it is in their power to do so, the weak destroy (what they're told is) weakness wherever they see it." - Eric Hoffer - "It is by its promise of a sense of power that evil... attracts the weak.""Man's capacity for justice makes democracy possible, but man's inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary." - Reinhold Niebuhr (1892-1971), US theologian, 1944"The enemy aggressor is always pursuing a course of larceny, murder, rapine and barbarism. We are always moving forward with high mission, a destiny imposed by the Deity to regenerate our victims while incidentally capturing their markets, to civilise savage and senile and paranoid peoples while blundering accidentally into their oil wells." - John T. Flynn (1882-1964, American writer), 1944"The people don't want war, but" they "can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. This is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and for exposing the country to danger. It works the same in every country." - Hermann Goering during the Nuremberg Trials"The nature of the breakdowns of civilizations can be summed up in three points: a failure of creative power in the minority, an answering withdrawal of mimesis on the part of the majority, and a consequent loss of social unity in the society as a whole." - Arnold Joseph Toynbee (1889-1975) in A Study of History, V.4, part B, p.6, 1948. - "Civilizations in decline are consistently characterised by a tendency towards standardization and uniformity.""Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services." - Article 25, Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 1948"An honest public servant can't become rich in politics." - H. Truman, 1954"When people speak to you about a preventive war, you tell them to go and fight it. After my experience, I have come to hate war. War settles nothing." - Dwight D. Eisenhower - "All of us have heard this term 'preventive war' since the earliest days of Hitler. I recall that is about the first time I heard it. In this day and time...I don't believe there is such a thing; and, frankly, I wouldn't even listen to anyone seriously that came in and talked about such a thing." 1953 press conference, about being presented with plans to wage preventive war to disarm Stalin's Soviet Union."If a victory is told in detail, one can no longer distinguish it from a defeat." - Jean-Paul Sartre"Congress is so strange. A man gets up to speak and says nothing. Nobody listens - and then everybody disagrees." - Boris Marshalov (1902-67) Russian observer, after visiting the House of Representatives in 1947."Our enormously productive economy demands that we make consumption our way of life, that we convert the buying and use of goods into rituals, that we seek our spiritual satisfaction and our ego satisfaction in consumption. We need things consumed, burned up, worn out, replaced and discarded at an ever-increasing rate." - Victor Lebow, retail analyst, a few years after WWII"Our willingness to part with something before it is completely worn out is a phenomenon noticeable in no other society in history... It is soundly based on our economy of abundance. It must be further nurtured even though it runs contrary to one of the oldest inbred laws of humanity - the law of thrift." J. Gordon Lippincott, industrial designer. 1947"Slums may well be breeding-grounds of crime, but middle-class suburbs are incubators of apathy and delirium." - Cyril Connolly, British critic, 1951The American economy's "ultimate purpose is to produce more consumer goods." (not better health care, education, housing, transportation, or recreation or less poverty and hunger, but providing more stuff to consumers.) - Arthur F. Burns, Chairman of Pres. Eisenhower's Council of Economic Advisers, 1953"It is our job to make women unhappy with what they have." - B. Earl Puckett, Allied Stores Corp. 1953"Our dangers, as it seems to me, are not from the outrageous but from the conforming; not from those who rarely and under the lurid glare of obloquy upset our moral complaisance, or shock us with unaccustomed conduct, but from those, the mass of us, who take their virtues and their tastes, like their shirts and their furniture, from the limited patterns which the market offers." - Learned Hand (1872-1961), noted federal judge (1909-1951)."More and more I come to value charity and love of one's fellow being above everything else. All our lauded technological progress - our very civilization - is like the axe in the hand of the pathological criminal." - Albert Einstein (1879-1955)"But the greatest menace to our civilization today is the conflict between giant organized systems of self-righteousness--each system only too delighted to find that the other is wicked--each only too glad that the sins give it the pretext for still deeper hatred and animosity." - Herbert Butterfield (1900-79) in Christianity, Diplomacy and War, p. 43 (1953)."You've done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?" - Joseph Welch to Joseph McCarthy."... a land of slander and scare; the land of sly innuendo, the poison pen, the anonymous phone call and hustling, pushing, shoving; the land of smash and grab and anything to win. This is Nixonland." and "In America, anybody can be president. That's one of the risks you take." - Adlai E Stevenson"We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason if we remember that we are not descended from fearful men, not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate and to defend causes which were, for the moment, unpopular." - Edward R. Murrow"For the corporation executives, the military metaphysic often coincides with their interest in a stable and planned flow of profit; it enables them to have their risk underwritten by public money; it enables them reasonably to expect that they can exploit for private profit now and later, the risky research developments paid for by public money. It is, in brief, a mask of the subsidized capitalism from which they extract profit and upon which their power is based." - C. Wright Mills, Causes of World War 3, 1960."We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security." and "In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military industrial complex. The potential for disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist." - Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1961"The lack of objectivity, as far as foreign nations are concerned, is notorious. From one day to another, another nation is made out to be utterly depraved and fiendish, while one's own nation stands for everything that is good and noble. Every action of the enemy is judged by one standard - every action of oneself by another. Even good deeds by the enemy are considered a sign of particular devilishness, meant to deceive us and the world, while our bad deeds are necessary and justified by our noble goals which they serve." - Erich Fromm(A just society is the one in which a reasonable person would choose to live, without knowing, in advance, with what advantages he'd be born.) - John Rawls, Harvard philosophy professor"As you grow older, you'll see white men cheat black men every day of your life, but let me tell you something and don't you forget it - whenever a white man does that to a black man, no matter who he is, how rich he is, or how fine a family he comes from, that white man is trash." - Harper Lee"Dante once said that the hottest places in hell are reserved for those who in a period of moral crisis maintain their neutrality." and "A nation that is afraid to let its people judge truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people." - John F Kennedy"If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you." - Lyndon Johnson, 1960, to Bill Moyers."The people recognize themselves in their commodities; they find their soul in their automobile, hi-fi set, split-level home, kitchen equipment." - Herbert Marcuse (1898-1979), U.S. political philosopher. One-Dimensional Man, 1964"We know that a man can read Goethe or Rilke in the evening, that he can play Bach and Schubert, and go to his day's work at Auschwitz in the morning." - George Steiner, 1967On campaign contributions: "Money is the mother's milk of politics." - Jesse Unruh, Calif. Speaker of the House and State Treasurer - on lobbyists: "If you can't eat their food, drink their booze, screw their women, take their money, and then vote against them you've got no business being up here.""The amount of poverty and suffering required for the emergence of a Rockefeller, and the amount of depravity that the accumulation of a fortune of such magnitude entails, are left out of the picture, and it is not always possible to make the people in general see this." - Ernesto 'Che' Guevara, MD (1928-1967) "I know you've come to kill me. Shoot, coward, you're only going to kill a man.""I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality... I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word." and "The time is always right to do what is right." - Martin Luther King Jr."In our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God." - Robert Kennedy, quoting Aeschylus to those whom he'd just told of Martin Luther King's murder, at a rally in Indianapolis, April 4, 1968."If we believe men have any personal rights at all, then they must have an absolute moral right to such a measure of good health as society can provide." - attributed to Aristotle by Robert Kennedy and others."All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing." - Sergei Bondarchuk in 1968 film of "War and Peace"."In the United States today, we have more than our share of the nattering nabobs of negativism. They have formed their own 4-H Club - the 'hopeless, hysterical hypochondriacs of history.' " - Spiro T. Agnew, 9/11/70, felon and Republican VP. (written for him by Wm. Safire, speechwriter for Pres. Nixon)"The less care they give them, the more money they make." - John Ehrlichman, describing Kaiser Permanente to Pres. Nixon, who replied "Fine." - White House tapes, 2/17/71. Kaiser and his family were Nixon supporters."Follow the money. Always follow the money." - Deep Throat"If they can get you asking the wrong questions,* they don't have to worry about the answers." - Thomas Pynchon *such as "How do we get gov't off 'our' backs?"An historical record suggesting the US has fallen short of its "transcendent ideals" is "an abuse of reality," i.e., we must not "confound the abuse of reality with reality itself." - Hans Morgenthau (1904-1980) (O yeah?)"In each cultural era, the medium in which information is recorded and transmitted is decisive in determining the character of that culture." - Marshall McLuhan (1911-80) - "Madison Avenue is a very powerful aggression against private consciousness. A demand that you yield your private consciousness to public manipulation.""The totalitarian mass leaders based their propaganda on the correct psychological assumption that (if found to be lies, many) would protest that they had known all along that the statement was a lie and would admire the leaders for their superior tactical cleverness." - Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 1976, p. 382."The illusion of freedom will continue as long as it's profitable to continue the illusion. At the point where the illusion becomes too expensive to maintain, they will just take down the scenery, they will pull back the curtains, they will move the tables and chairs out of the way, and you will see the brick wall at the back of the theatre." - Frank Zappa, 1977"I don't know that atheists should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered patriots." - GHW Bush, in FREE INQUIRY magazine, Fall 1988."Two party system like two geraniums in outhouse window, look pretty but still big stink." - Taiwanese proverb"History teaches that grave threats to liberty often come in times of urgency, when constitutional rights seem too extravagant to endure." - Thurgood Marshall (1908-93) US lawyer and Associate Justice of the US Supreme Court (1967-91)"It is not our affluence, or our plumbing, or our clogged freeways that grip the imagination of others. Rather, it is the values upon which our system is built. These values imply our adherence not only to liberty and individual freedom, but also to international peace, law and order, and constructive social purpose. When we depart from these values, we do so at our peril." - James William Fulbright (1905-95)"In history, the man in the ruffled shirt and gold-coated waistcoat levitates above the blood he has ordered to be spilled by dirty-handed underlings." - Francis Jennings (1918-2000) American historian"I have seen the Octopus." - Danny Casolaro (1947-1991) to his family just before he died under mysterious circumstances."[T]he long-term political effects of a successful... health care bill will be even worse — much worse... It will revive the reputation of... Democrats as the generous protector of middle-class interests. And it will at the same time strike a punishing blow against Republican claims to defend the middle class..." - William Kristol memo, "Defeating President Clinton's Healthcare Proposal" 12/93"The 20th century has been characterized by three developments of great political importance: The growth of democracy, the growth of corporate power, and the growth of corporate propaganda as a means of protecting corporate power against democracy." - Alex Carey, Australian social scientist, 1995"Propaganda does not deceive people; it merely helps them (aggrieved or comfortable) to deceive themselves." - Eric Hoffer"The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting." - Milan Kundera"The greatest threat to democracy is the increasing concentration of major electronic media in ever fewer hands." - Rep. David Price (D-NC)"I cannot think of a time when we have had a region emerge as suddenly to become as strategically significant as the Caspian." - Dick Cheney, 1998, when Hamid Karzai, working for Unocal, was negotiating with the Taliban for an oil pipeline from the Caspian through Afghanistan. Henry Kissinger also worked for Unocal. A.F.Sec. under GHW Bush, Donald Rice, was on Unocal's board of directors. Unocal has since merged with Chevron/Texaco."Here is a list of the countries that the U.S. has been at war with - and bombed - since the Second World War: China (1945-46, 1950-53), Korea (1950-53), Guatemala (1954, 1967-69), Indonesia (1958), Cuba (1959-60), the Belgian Congo (1964), Peru (1965), Laos (1964-73), Vietnam (1961-73), Cambodia (1969-70), Grenada (1983), Libya (1986), El Salvador (1980s), Nicaragua (1980s), Panama (1989), Iraq (1991-99), Bosnia (1995), Sudan (1998), Yugoslavia (1999), and now Afghanistan." - Arundhati Roy, Manchester Guardian, 10/23/01 (Extending this to the present, one sees our warring and bombing increased AFTER the Berlin Wall fell in 1989.)The future is "up for grabs". - Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, Paul Wolfowitz, 1991."Liberating Iraq would be a cakewalk." - DoD advisor Ken Adelman, 2/02."We need to execute people like John Walker (Lindh) in order to physically intimidate liberals, by making them realize that they can be killed, too. Otherwise, they will turn out to be outright traitors." - Ann Coulter, 1/02, applauded by NSA Condoleeza Rice, HHS Sec. Tommy Thompson, and Lynne Cheney (wife of the VP), all of whom were present."If we don't believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don't believe in it at all." - Noam Chomsky - "Corporations, which previously had been considered artificial entities with no rights, were accorded all the rights of persons, and far more, since they are 'immortal persons', and 'persons' of extraordinary wealth and power. Furthermore, they were no longer bound to the specific purposes designated by State charter, but could act as they choose, with few constraints."(The Bible teaches and Christians believe) "...that government ...derives its moral authority from God. Government is the 'minister of God' with powers to 'revenge,' to 'execute wrath,' including even wrath by the sword..." - Justice Antonin Scalia, 5/02."An empty head is not really empty; it is stuffed with rubbish. Hence the difficulty of forcing anything into an empty head." - Eric Hoffer"The most important thing is for us to find Osama bin Laden. It is our number one priority and we will not rest until we find him." - GW Bush, 9/13/01 - "I don't know where he is and I really don't care. It's not that important. It's not our priority." - 9/13/02 - "Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof, the smoking gun that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud." - 10/02 - "Oh, no, we're not going to have any casualties" to Pat Robertson, 2/03."Why should we hear about body bags and deaths? Oh, I mean, it's not relevant. So why should I waste my beautiful mind on something like that?" - Barbara Bush, ABC's Good Morning America, March 18, 2003."The corporation is an externalizing machine (moving its operating costs and risks to external organizations and people), in the same way that a shark is a killing machine." - Robert Monks (2003) Republican candidate for Senate from Maine and corporate governance adviser in the film "The Corporation"."We have long since made clear that a state of war is not a blank check for the President when it comes to the rights of the Nation's citizens." - Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, HAMDI et al. v. RUMSFELD, SECRETARY OF DEFENSE, et al., on writ of certiorari to the US Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit, 6/28/04"(Reagan) has the most fraudulent reputation of any who has ever served in public office. He was certainly genial, a decent guy, a 3rd rate actor that had his career revived by the advice by his new father-in-law, Dr. Davis (a supporter the John Birch Society) 'Go where the money is!' In other words flack for 20 Mule Team Borax and GE. This confused guy even voted for FDR four times by his own admission. He learned that it was 'good business' to give up a lifetime of supposed ideals. He was a quick study, but basically a 'dope' who was lost without a script. ... He even thought that the CO2 from a tree was equivalent to a car's emissions. He was a 'stiff' built up by his handlers. His last term was a disaster, and to cap it off, during the Poindexter and McFarlane Trials, he said under oath over 400 times that he did not remember! With a history of Harding, Coolidge, Hoover, and Nixon I can understand easily that the 'flat-earth' luddites of the new GOP love to worship the memory of the 'Gipper' whose understanding of the problems of this country matched his inability to answer a question 'off the cuff.' Maybe that's why he ran out after every press conference yelling over his shoulder. They couldn't wait to get him away." - Richard J. Garfunkel, American Daily, Phoenix, AZ, 5/1/07"... leadership begins on Madison Avenue, on the desks and in the offices of people who spend hundreds of millions of dollars buying what will get them ratings." - Norman Lear"Profits, like sausages... are esteemed most by those who know least about what goes into them." - Alvin Toffler(Iraq has the third largest reserves of conventional oil in the world.) - Country Analysis Briefs (2007) US Energy Information Administration, and Gal Luft (2003) "How Much Oil Does Iraq Have?" The Brookings Institution.The invasion of Iraq caused a "seven-fold increase in jihadism." - the RAND Corporation"Alan Greenspan has proclaimed himself 'shocked' that 'the self-interest of lending institutions to protect shareholders equity' proved to be an illusion... The Reagan-Thatcher model, which favored finance over domestic manufacturing, has collapsed. ... The mutually reinforcing rise of financialization and globalization broke the bond between American capitalism and America's interests. ...we should take a cue from Scandinavia's social capitalism, which is less manufacturing-centered than the German model. The Scandinavians have upgraded the skills and wages of their workers in the retail and service sectors -- the sectors that employ the majority of our own workforce. In consequence, fully employed impoverished workers, of which there are millions in the United States, do not exist in Scandinavia." - Harold Meyerson, "Building a Better Capitalism"], The Washington Post, March 12, 2009."If we're able to stop Obama on this (health care reform), it will be his Waterloo. It will break him." - Sen. Jim DeMint (SC-R) 7/09"Don't get sick, and if you do get sick, die quickly."- Rep. Alan Grayson (D-FL) summarizing the Republican health care plan, 10/6/09"It's class warfare, my class is winning, but they shouldn't be." - Warren Buffett"I refuse to live in a country like this, and I'm not leaving." - Michael Moore"People have the odd characteristic of objecting to the slaughter of family members and friends." - Noam Chomsky, on new rebellions in Afghanistan, 2010."I doubt there's ever been a true thing said on Fox. Maybe the weather report, maybe not." - Fran Lebowitz - "Contrary to popular opinion, the hustle is not a new dance step -- it is an old business procedure." and "In the Soviet Union, capitalism triumphed over communism. In this country, capitalism triumphed over democracy.""A nation can be one or the other, a democracy or an imperialist, but it can't be both. If it sticks to imperialism, it will, like the old Roman Republic, on which so much of our system was modeled, lose its democracy to a domestic dictatorship." - Chalmers Johnson (1931-2010) UC professor and analyst for the CIA."I was involved deeply in a system of bribery - legalized bribery for the most part" that "still to a large part exists today." - Jack Abramoff, 2013"The poorest half of the population still owns nothing." - Thomas Piketty, Capital in the 21st Century, Part III, 2014."No one has the guts to just let them wither and die." - John Johnston, GOP candidate for Indiana's 10th District, June 2014, referring to the poor."If you're in a coalition and you're comfortable, you know it's not a broad enough coalition." - Bernice Johnson Reagon"If you don't have a seat at the table, you're probably on the menu." - Elizabeth Warren"Can't govern people if you win by dividing them." - Obama, 10/19/17."A well-regulated militia will not come into our schools and kill our children." - LTE Raleigh News & Observer, 2/26/18."The promise of America, Jefferson thought, was that 'the farmer will see his government supported, his children educated, and the face of the country made a paradise by the contributions of the rich alone.'" - Jill LePore's These Truths, 2018."Fascism = Crony Capitalism + Murder." - Antifa slogan, 2020.