Government Programs Quotes

“The most terrifying words in the English language are: I'm from the government and I'm here to help.”
― Ronald Reagan

“Behind the facade of elected government are a bunch of corporate controlled gangsters running the country.”
― Steven Magee

“You know something is wrong when the government declares opening someone else’s mail is a felony but your internet activity is fair game for data collecting.”
― E.A. Bucchianeri

“Corrupt governments are run by corrupt politicians that run corrupt law enforcement agencies.”
― Steven Magee

“Government scientists are commonly as corrupt as the corporate government that employs them.”
― Steven Magee

“The Unknown Citizen
by W. H. Auden


(To JS/07 M 378
This Marble Monument
Is Erected by the State)

He was found by the Bureau of Statistics to be
One against whom there was no official complaint,
And all the reports on his conduct agree
That, in the modern sense of an old-fashioned word, he was a
saint,
For in everything he did he served the Greater Community.
Except for the War till the day he retired
He worked in a factory and never got fired,
But satisfied his employers, Fudge Motors Inc.
Yet he wasn't a scab or odd in his views,
For his Union reports that he paid his dues,
(Our report on his Union shows it was sound)
And our Social Psychology workers found
That he was popular with his mates and liked a drink.
The Press are convinced that he bought a paper every day
And that his reactions to advertisements were normal in every way.
Policies taken out in his name prove that he was fully insured,
And his Health-card shows he was once in hospital but left it cured.
Both Producers Research and High-Grade Living declare
He was fully sensible to the advantages of the Instalment Plan
And had everything necessary to the Modern Man,
A phonograph, a radio, a car and a frigidaire.
Our researchers into Public Opinion are content
That he held the proper opinions for the time of year;
When there was peace, he was for peace: when there was war, he went.
He was married and added five children to the population,
Which our Eugenist says was the right number for a parent of his
generation.
And our teachers report that he never interfered with their
education.
Was he free? Was he happy? The question is absurd:
Had anything been wrong, we should certainly have heard.”
― W.H. Auden

“Police internal affairs is amongst the most corrupt departments that you will find in governments.”
― Steven Magee

“We believe that only government has the capacity--not to mention the political and moral responsibility--to promote the general welfare.

Father Kramer as quoted in Sweet Charity?”
― Janet Poppendieck, Sweet Charity?: Emergency Food and the End of Entitlement

“I sincerely hope that President Barack Obama’s government will be remembered as the peak of deregulated corporate corruption and not the ongoing rise of it.”
― Steven Magee

“According to an original reading of the Constitution and Declaration, the intrusiveness that is an inevitable part of big government is an offense against its people.”
― A.E. Samaan

“If you are stuck in circumstances in which it takes Herculean efforts to get through the day— doing low-income work, obeying an authoritarian boss, buying clothes for the children, dealing with school issues, paying the rent or mortgage, fixing the car, negotiating with a spouse, paying taxes, and caring for older parents— it is not easy to pay close attention to larger political issues. Indeed you may wish that these issues would take care of themselves. It is not a huge jump from such a wish to become attracted to a public philosophy, spouted regularly at your job and on the media, that economic life would regulate itself automatically if only the state did not repeatedly intervene in it in clumsy ways. Now underfunded practices such as the license bureau, state welfare, public health insurance, public schools, public retirement plans, and the like begin to appear as awkward, bureaucratic organizations that could be replaced or eliminated if only the rational market were allowed to take care of things impersonally and quietly, as it were. Certainly such bureaucracies are indeed often clumsy. But more people are now attracted to compare that clumsiness to the myth of how an impersonal market would perform if it took on even more assignments and if state regulation of it were reduced even further. So a lot of “independents” and “moderates” may become predisposed to the myth of the rational market in part because the pressures of daily life encourage them to seek comfort in ideological formations that promise automatic rationality.”
― William E. Connolly, The Fragility of Things: Self-Organizing Processes, Neoliberal Fantasies, and Democratic Activism

“It is clear that the protective functions of workplace health and safety have transferred to the workers through the process of corporate government deregulation and reduced funding of relevant government departments.”
― Steven Magee

“No government ever voluntarily reduces itself in size. Governments' programs once launched unfortunately never disappear...Get real.”
― Ziad K. Abdelnour, Economic Warfare: Secrets of Wealth Creation in the Age of Welfare Politics

“There is an intentional disregard for human health and safety in many government agencies that are tasked with protecting it.”
― Steven Magee

“NCCIC delivers a full spectrum of cyber exercise planning workshops and seminars, and conducts tabletop, full-scale, and functional exercises, as well as the biennial National Cyber Exercise: Cyber Storm and the annual Cyber Guard Prelude exercise. These events are designed to assist organizations at all levels in the development and testing of cybersecurity prevention, protection, mitigation, and response capabilities.”
― U.S. Department of Homeland Security, DHS Election Infrastructure Security Resource Guide

“This is why the system must be reformed. Welfare should exist only for a certain period of time, unless you’re disabled and can’t physically work. It should not last for a generation or more. There are millions of jobs open, without enough people to fill them or, rather, without enough people who have the necessary skills and training.

This is where the government should come in, providing incentives for real-world training and educating recipients about a life beyond government dependence.”
― Gianno Caldwell, Taken for Granted: How Conservatism Can Win Back the Americans That Liberalism Failed

“Increasing policing and government programs an teaching women how to be safe is not going to correct this situation. Only understanding and a commitment to telling the truth about the cruelty inflicted on our women in the name of settling this country would help change peoples’ perceptions, end their complacency, and stop the continued brutalization and dehumanization of our women.”
― Michelle Good, Truth Telling: Seven Conversations about Indigenous Life in Canada