It was the Republican Party that demolished the shining city on the hill my father built. It was the Republican Party that was 100 percent responsible for the end of the Reagan Revolution...[T]he Republican Party abandoned the trail leading to that shining city on the hill to become itself a quasi-Left-wing organization which looks at the Democrats’ welfare programs and says ‘me too’.more Michael Reagan quotes | Politics is supposed to be the second oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first.more Ronald Reagan quotes | Politics is supposed to be the second oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first.more Ronald Reagan quotes | I just wanted to speak to you about something from the Internal Revenue Code. It is the last sentence of section 509A of the code and it reads: 'For purposes of paragraph 3, an organization described in paragraph 2 shall be deemed to include an organization described in section 501C-4, 5, or 6, which would be described in paragraph 2 if it were an organization described in section 501C-3.' And that's just one sentence out of those fifty-seven feet of books.more Ronald Reagan quotes | Are you entitled to the fruits of your labor or does government have some presumptive right to spend and spend and spend?more Ronald Reagan quotes | After the 16th Amendment was ratified, an income tax was imposed starting in 1913 with rates ranging from 1 percent to 7 percent with the top rate applying only to incomes in excess of $500,000. By 1916 that top rate had risen to 15 percent, on income in excess of $2,000,000. The top rate exceeded 90 percent at its peak in the early 1950s. The first 1040 form -- instructions and all -- took up only four pages. Today there are some 4,000 pages of tax forms and instructions. American workers and business are forced to spend more than 5.4 billion man-hours every year figuring out their taxes. Since those hours could be put to a more productive use, and almost surely would be in the absence of today’s incomprehensible tax code, the result is a large dead-weight output loss of some $200 billion each year. ... The IRS now has more enforcement personnel than the EPA, BATF, OSHA, FDA, and DEA combined. With its 115,000-man workforce, it has the power to search the property and financial documents of American citizens without a search warrant and to seize property from American citizens without a trial. It routinely does both. Economist James L. Payne has written a most revealing analysis of the IRS, a 1993 book entitled Costly Returns. He arrives at a stunning conclusion, the total cost to collect our federal taxes, including the effects on the economy as a whole adds up to an amazing 65 percent of all the tax dollars received annually. The U.S. tax system, says Payne, has produced hundreds of thousands of victims of erroneous IRS penalties, liens, levies, and tax advice. In answering taxpayer questions, for example, the IRS telephone information service has in previous years given about one-third of all callers -- as many as 8.5 million Americans -- the wrong answers to their questions. A 1987 General Accounting Office study found that 47 percent of a random sample of IRS correspondence -- including demands for payments -- contained errors. Incredibly a GAO audit of the IRS in 1993 found widespread evidence of financial malfeasance and gross negligence at the agency. The IRS could not account for 64 percent of its congressional appropriation!more Dr. Lawrence W. Reed quotes | If you look at Washington, you see permanently camped on the banks of the Potomac spread around in concentric circles an army representing thousands of selfish interests. The sole purpose of their presence is to plunder, by hook or crook, the public treasury for the benefit of their particular people or corporations.more Charley Reese quotes | Washington, of course, aside from being one of the most mismanaged, crime-ridden cities on the planet, is a place where 535
federal legislators and about 38,000 lobbyists work at confiscating and redistributing the incomes of the American people.more Charley Reese quotes | If we could manage our own finances the way the Congress does the nation’s, we’d all be living in high cotton and eating high on the hog.more Charley Reese quotes | If Americans wish to preserve a country they will recognize, then the first step is to recognize the enemy. Public education is the enemy. The entertainment industry is the enemy. The corporate culture is the enemy. The advertising industry is the enemy. And most of the politicians in both parties are the enemy. An enemy is defined as anybody, or any organization, which is attacking the traditional beliefs of Americans.more Charley Reese quotes | The dirty little secret is that both houses of Congress are irrelevant. ... America's domestic policy is now being run by Alan Greenspan and the Federal Reserve, and America's foreign policy is now being run by the International Monetary Fund [IMF]. ...when the president decides to go to war, he no longer needs a declaration of war from Congress.more Robert Reich quotes | At each and every stop, in items large and small, the greedy hand of government has its sticky fingers in every pocket. With bread, a recent study by Price Waterhouse shows that 30 different taxes imposed on the production and sale of a loaf of bread account for 27 percent of the average retail price. Buy some new tires and it’s $36 on every $100 that goes to the taxman. On the price of a new car, an Americans for Tax Reform study shows that the total taxes reach 45 percent of the showroom sticker price. Add some gas and 54 percent of what you pay for a fill-up goes for 43 different federal, state and local taxes rather than to the oil producer and retailer.more Ralph Reiland quotes | | Most people prefer to believe that their leaders are just and fair, even in the face of evidence to the contrary, because once a citizen acknowledges that the government under which he lives is lying and corrupt, the citizen has to choose what he or she will do about it. To take action in the face of corrupt government entails risks of harm to life and loved ones. To choose to do nothing is to surrender one's self-image of standing for principles. Most people do not have the courage to face that choice. Hence, most propaganda is not designed to fool the critical thinker but only to give moral cowards an excuse not to think at all.more Michael Rivero quotes | The tax that was supposed to soak the rich has instead soaked America. The beneficiary of the income tax has not been the poor, but big government. The income tax has given us a government bureaucracy that outnumbers the manufacturing work force. It has created welfare dependencies that have entrapped millions of Americans in an underclass that is forced to live a sordid existence of trading votes for government handouts.more Paul Craig Roberts quotes | If we have Senators and Congressmen there that can't protect themselves against the evil temptations of lobbyists, we don't need to change our lobbies, we need to change our representatives.more Will Rogers quotes | The test for whether one is living in a police state is that those who are charged with enforcing the law are allowed to break the laws with impunity.more Jon Roland quotes | | | We cannot afford to differ on the question of honesty if we expect our republic permanently to endure. Honesty is not so much a credit as an absolute prerequisite to efficient service to the public. Unless a man is honest, we have no right to keep him in public life; it matters not how brilliant his capacity.more Theodore Roosevelt quotes | These men - ..., the politicians, ... - use their position, their knowledge, and their power of disseminating misinformation to arouse and stimulate the latent instinct for bloodshed. When they have succeeded, they say they are reluctantly forced to war by the pressure of public opinion.more Bertrand Russell quotes | Using aggression to stop drug abuse kills more people than the drugs themselves! If we honored our neighbor’s choice, the people now enforcing the minimum wage and licensing laws would be available to go after the real criminals. In 1987, drug offenders made up 36% of the federal prison population. As the War on Drugs escalates, more of our law enforcement dollar will be spent on drug-related crimes and less on rapists, murderers, and thieves. Is this the best way to deal with the drug problem? ... People who drink an alcoholic beverage in the privacy of their own homes are not using first-strike force, theft, or fraud against anyone else. Nor is a person smoking a joint or snorting cocaine, under the same conditions, guilty of anything more sinister than trying to feel good. We see no contradiction in arresting the cocaine user while we enjoy our favorite cocktail. Are we once again sanctioning aggression-through-government in an attempt to control the lives of others? In the early 1900s, many people supported aggression through-government to stop the consumption of alcoholic beverages. As we all know, Prohibition was tried, but it just didn’t work. People still drank, but they had to settle for home-brews, which were not always safe. Some people even died from drinking them. Since business people could no longer sell alcohol, organized crime did. Turf battles killed innocent bystanders, and law enforcement officials found they could make more money taking bribes than jailing the bootleggers. Aggression was ineffective—and expensive, both in terms of dollars and lives. When Prohibition was repealed, people bought their alcohol from professional brewers instead of criminals. As a result, they stopped dying from bathtub gin. The turf fighting subsided, since there was no turf to fight about. The murder and assault rate that had skyrocketed during Prohibition fell steadily after its repeal.more Dr. Mary J. Ruwart quotes | | | | The bigger the information media, the less courage and information they allow. Bigness means weakness.more Eric Sevareid quotes | Because we fear the responsibility for our actions, we have allowed ourselves to develop the mentality of slaves. Contrary to the stirring sentiments of the Declaration of Independence, we now pledge "our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor" not to one another for our mutual protection, but to the state, whose actions continue to exploit, despoil, and destroy us.more Butler D. Shaffer quotes | Our lack of constant awareness has also permitted us to accept definitions of freedom that are not necessarily consistent with the actuality of being free. Because we have learned to confuse the word with the reality the word seeks to describe, our vocabulary has become riddled with distorted and contradictory meanings smuggled into the language.more Butler D. Shaffer quotes | The idea of creating systems designed to threaten, coerce, and kill, and to imbue such agencies with principled legitimacy, and not expect them to lead to wars, genocides, and other tyrannical practices, expresses an innocence we can no longer afford to indulge.more Butler D. Shaffer quotes | | Give them a corrupt House of Lords, give them a venal House of Commons, give they a tyrannical Prince, give them a truckling court, and let me have but an unfettered press. I will defy them to encroach a hair’s breadth upon the liberties of England.more Richard Brinsley Sheridan quotes | If vice and corruption prevail, liberty cannot subsist; but if virtue have the advantage, arbitrary power cannot be established.more Algernon Sidney quotes | There is no 'slippery slope' toward loss of liberty, only a long staircase where each step down must first be tolerated by the American people and their leaders.more Alan K. Simpson quotes | The entire American political system is a con, a sleazy mix of
legalized bribes, auctioning off of favors, revolving doors between
government agencies and the corporations they enrich and the blatant
hypocrisy of snake-oil salespeople who know the marks (voters) face a
false choice between two parties that are the same poison sold under
different labels.more Charles Hugh Smith quotes | | I think I have served the purpose that I came here for, which was to provide a credible election product for our members.more Brenda Snipes quotes | It also occurred to me that you might have had Ideas to that Purport when you disapproved of the Meetings of the Democratic-Societies, which appeared to me to be a Branch of that Order, though many Members may be entirely ignorant of the Plan. Those Men who are so much attached to French Principles, have all the Marks of Jacobinism. They first cast off all religious Restraints, and then became fit for perpetrating every Act of Inhumanity. And, it is remarkable, that most of them are actually Scoffers at all religious Principles.more George Washington Snyder quotes | Tyranny seldom announces itself. ...In fact, a tyranny may exist without an individual tyrant. A whole government, even a democratically elected one, may be tyrannical.more Joseph Sobran quotes | The difference between a politician and a pickpocket is that the pickpocket doesn't get indignant when you tell him to keep his hands to himself.more Joseph Sobran quotes | In 100 years we have gone from teaching Latin and Greek in high school to teaching Remedial English in college.more Joseph Sobran quotes | These six things doth the LORD hate: yea, seven are an abomination unto him: A proud look, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood, An heart that deviseth wicked imaginations, feet that be swift in running to mischief, A false witness that speaketh lies, and he that soweth discord among brethren.more King Solomon quotes | | Journalists cannot serve two masters. To the extent that they take on the task of suppressing information or biting their tongue for the sake of some political agenda, they are betraying the trust of the public and corrupting their own profession.more Thomas Sowell quotes | Neither your life nor my life, nor the future of this country, will be affected in the slightest by whether Linda Tripp is naughty or nice. But if any president is able to commit crimes with impunity by using the vast powers and perquisites of his office to cover up, then we will have a danger of corruption and abuse of power that can only grow with the passing years and generations.more Thomas Sowell quotes | One of the common failings among honorable people is a failure to appreciate how thoroughly dishonorable some other people can be, and how dangerous it is to trust them.more Thomas Sowell quotes | No matter how disastrously some policy has turned out, anyone who criticizes it can expect to hear: 'But what would you replace it with?' When you put out a fire, what do you replace it with?more Thomas Sowell quotes | | The Rothschilds, and that class of money-lenders of whom they are the representatives and agents - men who never think of lending a shilling to their next-door neighbors, for purposes of honest industry, unless upon the most ample security, and at the highest rate of interest - stand ready, at all times, to lend money in unlimited amounts to those robbers and murderers, who call themselves governments, to be expended in shooting down those who do not submit quietly to being robbed and enslaved.more Lysander Spooner quotes | Vices are those acts by which a man harms himself or his property. Crimes are those acts by which one man harms the person or property of another. Vices are simply the errors which a man makes in his search after his own happiness. Unlike crimes, they imply no malice toward others, and no interference with their persons or property. In vices, the very essence of crime—that is, the design to injure the person or property of another—is wanting. It is a maxim of the law that there can be no crime without criminal intent; that is, without the intent to invade the person or property of another. But no one ever practices a vice with any such criminal intent. He practices his vice for his own happiness solely, and not from any malice toward others. Unless this clear distinction between vices and crimes be made and recognized by the laws, there can be on earth no such thing as individual right, liberty, or property, and the corresponding coequal rights of another man to the control of his own person and property.more Lysander Spooner quotes | |
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