Janine R. Wedel > Quotes

“What does it mean when individuals can no longer be embarrassed or shamed?”
― Janine R. Wedel, Shadow Elite: How the World's New Power Brokers Undermine Democracy, Government, and the Free Market

“Flex organizations do more than enable their players to worm out of accountability through their might-be-state, might-be-private status; they supplant the state.”
― Janine R. Wedel

“By the end of his second term, Bush II had issued more than 1,100 constitutional challenges to provisions of law. Further, he employed them in an unprecedented way: to effectively curtail the power of the legislative branch by threatening (via the challenge) to not enforce a law passed by Congress. In effect, Bush claimed to accomplish what the Supreme Court has deemed unconstitutional—a line item veto.”
― Janine R. Wedel

“Collectively, these clans made up the clan-state, in which there is little separation of the clan—with its political and economic agendas—from the state: The same people with the same agenda undertaking the same activities constitute the clan and the relevant state authorities. The clan-state is democracy-challenged: It lacks visibility, accountability, and means of representation for those under its control. The only real counter to a clan's influence comes from a competitor clan, as when one clan sics law enforcement and prosecutorial authorities on a rival one.”
― Janine R. Wedel, Shadow Elite: How the World's New Power Brokers Undermine Democracy, Government, and the Free Market

“I asked the well-known conservative thinker and publisher Alfred S. Regnery, who had just given a book talk on the importance of limiting the size of government, what he made of the fact that three-quarters of employees doing the work of the federal government are now contractors and that the federal budget for services increases by the day. He was taken aback. It was immediately apparent that the subject was not on his radar.”
― Janine R. Wedel, Shadow Elite: How the World's New Power Brokers Undermine Democracy, Government, and the Free Market