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I mean, people who say that the Tea Party isn't a grassroots movement, I think, are incorrect. I think in some respects, it is a grassroots movement.
Matt Taibbi -
In the old days, when you took out a mortgage, it was probably through a local bank or a credit union, and whoever gave you your loan held on to it for life. If you lost your job or got too sick to work and suddenly had trouble making your payments, you could call a human being and work things out.
Matt Taibbi
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Politics is about a lot more than winning and losing. I think politics at its best is about compromise, shades of grey and about issues.
Matt Taibbi -
The failure to work out sensible budgets makes it impossible for government agencies to make long-term plans, and instead leaves them scrambling to spend money in the short term.
Matt Taibbi -
Amendments occupy a great deal of most legislators' time, particularly those lawmakers in the minority. Members of Congress do author major bills, but more commonly they make minor adjustments to the bigger bill.
Matt Taibbi -
This is America: Corporate stealing is practically the national pastime, and Goldman Sachs is far from the only company to get away with doing it.
Matt Taibbi -
By creating an urgent crisis that can only be solved by those fluent in a language too complex for ordinary people to understand, the Wall Street crowd has turned the vast majority of Americans into non-participants in their own political future.
Matt Taibbi -
Everybody I knew, practically, was a journalist when I was a kid - my father, all of his friends. I never wanted to be like those people.
Matt Taibbi
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Comparing your family budget to the sovereign debt of the United States is a little like comparing two kindergartners tossing a paper airplane to the Apollo 11 mission.
Matt Taibbi -
The individual incentive not to commit crime on Wall Street now is almost zero.
Matt Taibbi -
The joy of being a consumer is that it doesn't require thought, responsibility, self-awareness or shame: All you have to do is obey the first urge that gurgles up from your stomach. And then obey the next. And the next. And the next.
Matt Taibbi -
The one thing that I do is take really complicated systems and subjects and make them accessible to regular people.
Matt Taibbi -
Like wars, forest fires and bad marriages, really stupid laws are much easier to begin than they are to end.
Matt Taibbi -
I try to be outraged by things that other people are just very accepting of, as though they're normal and can't be changed. A lot of what I write about is, 'Hey, you know, this stuff is really awful, and it doesn't need to be, and that's why it's so offensive.' Things should be better.
Matt Taibbi
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One of the great cliches of campaign journalism is the notion that American elections have long since ceased to be about issues and ideas.
Matt Taibbi -
In reality, everybody in Congress is a stand-in for some kind of lobbyist. In many cases it's difficult to tell whether it's the companies that are lobbying the legislators or whether it's the other way around.
Matt Taibbi -
I'm a product of an East Coast liberal arts educational system.
Matt Taibbi -
The race for the White House is normally an event suffused with drama, sucking eyeballs to the page all over the globe.
Matt Taibbi -
It would be inaccurate to say the Tea Partiers are racists. What they are, in truth, are narcissists.
Matt Taibbi -
We may be many things, we Americans, but we always get the job done.
Matt Taibbi
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The only reason investors haven't run screaming from an obviously corrupt financial marketplace is because the government has gone to such extraordinary lengths to sell the narrative that the problems of 2008 have been fixed.
Matt Taibbi -
You might think otherwise, but it doesn't naturally follow that because a law has been passed by Congress and signed by the president, said law actually has to be implemented.
Matt Taibbi -
Bush is our fault. He's our fault because too many of us found it easier to hate him than find a way to love each other. If we work on the second thing a little harder, we won't need to rely on the cynics in the DLC to come up with the right 'formula' the next time around. Because happiness and hope have a way of selling themselves.
Matt Taibbi -
What makes us feel pessimistic about the world, ultimately, is the way the media encourage us to believe that our fate hangs on the every move of the promise-breaking, terminally disappointing Teflon liars in Washington.
Matt Taibbi