David Cay Johnston

“The number one driver of this is campaign finance. The reality is, if you or I got elected to Congress, we would have to spend our time dealing with wealthy people who want favors from the government. There are over 100,000 people in America who's job is to mine the public treasury, or the rules, for their benefit. ...So we've got to change campaign finance... in a way that this Supreme Court, with the radicals on it, can't knock down.”

“Rather than building the economy for all of us, we are mining the bottom to benefit the top.”

“We are mining the 90% to benefit the super rich.”

“The purposes of our country were written down for us in the Preamble of the Constitution, the justice, the general Welfare with a capital "W", common defense, domestic tranquility, liberties... Nothing in the Preamble talks about getting rich. That's a byproduct of these other things. But we have gotten a distorted view of what's happening, and we also... are now at the point where we have 33 years of evidence that Reaganism produces actually exactly what Ronald Reagan said in 1980, if you listen carefully... It's made the rich richer. Now it's doing it at the expense of the 90%.”

“There's a big attack going on in this country on public education. One of the Koch brothers... publicly advocated ending public education, because that's socialism. ...[I]n Wisconsin we saw people call kindergarten teachers thugs. Something I would never have imagined when I was young... [I]t's because we've gone through a fundamental change. We've been living under Reaganism now since 1981, and in Reaganism we worship money, and our measure of the country is money.”

“[W]e have the highest percentage of children who go to bed hungry of any modern country. You wouldn't know from reading the news or watching TV that America has a hunger problem, that all across America we have communities, in the country, in the suburbs, in the city, where volunteers send home backpacks full of food for families on the weekend, because otherwise these kids would not eat.”

“[W]e've had this tremendous weakening of the news media, so that [many] large federal agencies... have no beat reporters... covering them. We have city councils and school boards all across America that get no coverage... and this is terrific for those people who are getting rich by exploiting the rules of the system for their benefit; and you're not hearing about that.”

“[I]n 1968... most journalists were blue collar intellectuals. Today the newsrooms of the major news organizations are full of people who grew up in wealthy households. So... their attitude... is "The world seems to be doing just fine. It's quite just." ...because that's their life's experience.”

“In just a third of a century, the widespread liquidity that nourished the economy—reliable streams of cash going to workers and owners alike—has... dried up.”

“America has been transformed from a land of growing economic plenty into a hollow shell.”

“Citizens United is to the expansion of corporate power what the big bang is to the beginning of existence...”

“Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas insist that they are "originalists,"... interpreting our Constitution as a document fixed in time. No honest originalist could... have signed on to Citizens United, but intellectually corrupt justices who worship corporatism, disdain the poor and enjoy the perks of power...”

“[C]lassical "corporations"... existed not for profit but in service of the state. ...A key tenet ...has changed since ancient times... If a business fails, the chief executive does not have to become a slave to the bank... Corporations... have inverted the Roman equation: ...the state serves them.”

“Workers may toil their entire lives, communities may tax themselves to create infrastructure a corporation needs, and vendors may invest their entire fortune to supply the corporation—but none of these parties, Friedman said, has significant legal rights or moral claims. [T]he idea... was not supported by the development of the law, the regulation of business and the advancement of civilization over thousands of years. But... Friedman's ahistorical thinking has come to dominate...”

“[L]imiting liability... has also obscured a corporation's responsibility to function for the benefit of society. The greater good is an idea that is thousands of years old, but in the recent past corporations have been permitted to lose site of that... notion.”

“Unlike individuals, who must take responsibility for their conduct, corporations' legal responsibility... has benefited from limits to that responsibility established by law. The rationale... is that people who... build a business would not take the same risks if failure meant they would lose... their houses, cars... and everything else. ...[T]hey can go about their corporate business, creating enterprises and generating wealth.”

“If... immortal, amoral and greed-driven people walked the earth, we would have to rewrite our laws governing property. ...[O]ur new class of immortals could just keep accumulating wealth and power forever. In time they would probably own every... asset on earth worth having. ...[That] immortal being is the modern corporation.”

“Wyoming Corporate Services... for a fee, will create a company, set up a bank account, appoint officers and directors... provide a lawyer as a corporate director so the company can invoke attorney-client privilege... [and] make any required regulatory filings... without anyone being able to ascertain, without a court order, who is behind any corporation it creates.”

“[B]usiness has been regulated throughout history. ...[I]n the past four decades, we have forgotten the tried and tested (and therefore profoundly conservative) principles of business developed over thousands of years. ...[O]ur wealth... well being and... freedom are being diminished daily.”

“Legislatures passed these laws, presidents and governors signed them and the courts have endorsed them. In many cases they effectively gut state constitutional provisions and laws banning gifts to business.”