Top 10 Political Quotes

the top 10 percent of humanity have come to hold 90 percent of the planet’s wealth. It is no wonder that the American voting public—like other publics around the world—has turned more resentful and suspicious in recent years, embracing populist movements on the left and right, bringing socialism and nationalism into the center of political life in a way that once seemed unthinkable, and succumbing to all manner of conspiracy theory and fake news.

We’re loyal servants of the U.S. government. But Afghanistan involves fighting behind enemy lines. Never mind we were invited into a democratic country by its own government. Never mind there’s no shooting across the border in Pakistan, the illegality of the Taliban army, the Geneva Convention, yada, yada, yada. When we’re patrolling those mountains, trying everything we know to stop the Taliban regrouping, striving to find and arrest the top commanders and explosive experts, we are always surrounded by a well-armed, hostile enemy whose avowed intention is to kill us all. That’s behind enemy lines. Trust me. And we’ll go there. All day. Every day. We’ll do what we’re supposed to do, to the letter, or die in the attempt. On behalf of the U.S.A. But don’t tell us who we can attack. That ought to be up to us, the military. And if the liberal media and political community cannot accept that sometimes the wrong people get killed in war, then I can only suggest they first grow up and then serve a short stint up in the Hindu Kush. They probably would not survive. The truth is, any government that thinks war is somehow fair and subject to rules like a baseball game probably should not get into one. Because nothing’s fair in war, and occasionally the wrong people do get killed. It’s been happening for about a million years. Faced with the murderous cutthroats of the Taliban, we are not fighting under the rules of Geneva IV Article 4. We are fighting under the rules of Article 223.556mm — that’s the caliber and bullet gauge of our M4 rifle. And if those numbers don’t look good, try Article .762mm, that’s what the stolen Russian Kalashnikovs fire at us, usually in deadly, heavy volleys. In the global war on terror, we have rules, and our opponents use them against us. We try to be reasonable; they will stop at nothing. They will stoop to any form of base warfare: torture, beheading, mutilation. Attacks on innocent civilians, women and children, car bombs, suicide bombers, anything the hell they can think of. They’re right up there with the monsters of history.

You hear it in every political speech, “vote for me, we’ll get the dream back.” They all reiterate it in similar words—you even hear it from people who are destroying the dream, whether they know it or not. But the “dream” has to be sustained, otherwise how are you going to get people in the richest, most powerful country in world history, with extraordinary advantages, to face the reality that they see around them? Inequality is really unprecedented. If you look at total inequality today, it’s like the worst periods of American history. But if you refine it more closely, the inequality comes from the extreme wealth in a tiny sector of the population, a fraction of 1 percent. There were periods like the Gilded Age in the 1890s and the Roaring Twenties and so on, when a situation developed rather similar to this, but the current period is extreme. Because if you look at the wealth distribution, the inequality mostly comes from super-wealth—literally, the top one-tenth of a percent are just super-wealthy. This is the result of over thirty years of a shift in social and economic policy. If you check you find that over the course of these years the government policy has been modified completely against the will of the population to provide enormous benefits to the very rich. And for most of the population, the majority, real incomes have almost stagnated for over thirty years. The middle class in that sense, that unique American sense, is under severe attack. A significant part of the American Dream is class mobility: You’re born poor, you work hard, you get rich. The idea that it is possible for everyone to get a decent job, buy a home, get a car, have their children go to school . . . It’s all collapsed.

They argued, too, against “an unequal and very excessive accumulation of wealth and power into the hands of a few.” Jacksonian democracy distributed political power to the many, but industrialization consolidated economic power in the hands of a few. In Boston, the top 1 percent of the population controlled 10 percent of wealth in 1689, 16 percent in 1771, 33 percent in 1833, and 37 percent in 1848, while the lowest 80 percent of the population controlled 39 percent of the wealth in 1689, 29 percent in 1771, 14 percent in 1833, and a mere 4 percent in 1848.

Over the years Tomsen had concluded that America’s failed policies in Afghanistan flowed in part from the compartmented, top secret isolation in which the CIA always sought to work. The agency saw the president as its client. By keeping the State Department and other policy makers at a distance, it preserved a certain freedom to operate. But when the agency was wrong—the Bay of Pigs, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar—there was little check on its analysis. Conversely, when it was on the right track—as with Massoud in the late 1990s—it often had trouble finding allies in political Washington.11

If the world's most conspicuous emitters, the top 10 percent, reduced their emissions to only the E.U. average, total global emissions would fall by 35 percent. We won't get there through the dietary choices of individuals, but through policy changes. In an age of personal politics, hypocrisy can look like a cardinal sin; but it can also articulate a public aspiration. Eating organic is nice, in other words, but if your goal is to save the climate your vote is much more important. Politics is a moral multiplier. And a perception of worldly sickness uncomplemented by a political commitment gives us only "wellness".

After a series of promotions—store manager at twenty-two, regional manager at twenty-four, director at twenty-seven—I was a fast-track career man, a personage of sorts. If I worked really hard, and if everything happened exactly like it was supposed to, then I could be a vice president by thirty-two, a senior vice president by thirty-five or forty, and a C-level executive—CFO, COO, CEO—by forty-five or fifty, followed of course by the golden parachute. I’d have it made then! I’d just have to be miserable for a few more years, to drudge through the corporate politics and bureaucracy I knew so well. Just keep climbing and don't look down. Misery, of course, encourages others to pull up a chair and stay a while. And so, five years ago, I convinced my best friend Ryan to join me on the ladder, even showed him the first rung. The ascent is exhilarating to rookies. They see limitless potential and endless possibilities, allured by the promise of bigger paychecks and sophisticated titles. What’s not to like? He too climbed the ladder, maneuvering each step with lapidary precision, becoming one of the top salespeople—and later, top sales managers—in the entire company.10 And now here we are, submerged in fluorescent light, young and ostensibly successful. A few years ago, a mentor of mine, a successful businessman named Karl, said to me, “You shouldn’t ask a man who earns twenty thousand dollars a year how to make a hundred thousand.” Perhaps this apothegm holds true for discontented men and happiness, as well. All these guys I emulate—the men I most want to be like, the VPs and executives—aren’t happy. In fact, they’re miserable.  Don’t get me wrong, they aren’t bad people, but their careers have changed them, altered them physically and emotionally: they explode with anger over insignificant inconveniences; they are overweight and out of shape; they scowl with furrowed brows and complain constantly as if the world is conspiring against them, or they feign sham optimism which fools no one; they are on their second or third or fourth(!) marriages; and they almost all seem lonely. Utterly alone in a sea of yes-men and women. Don’t even get me started on their health issues.  I’m talking serious health issues: obesity, gout, cancer, heart attacks, high blood pressure, you name it. These guys are plagued with every ailment associated with stress and anxiety. Some even wear it as a morbid badge of honor, as if it’s noble or courageous or something. A coworker, a good friend of mine on a similar trajectory, recently had his first heart attack—at age thirty.  But I’m the exception, right?

The United States over the last thirty years has seen a growing gap - indeed, a deepening gulf - between rich and poor. The gap is significantly greater than in any other developed nation. Moreover, the growing gulf between rich and poor is the result of social and economic policy, not because some classes of people worked harder and others slacked off over the last thirty years (all of us, according to most studies, are working harder). The differences among countries generate the same conclusion: social policy, not simply individual effort, is responsible for the distribution of wealth. Our recent social policy may not have been intended to produce this result, but it has. The consequence is increased suffering and desperation among the poor and potentially grave consequences for the society as a whole. Moreover, many people in the middle, who are most often struggling financially, support the individualistic ideology underlying our social policy - namely, the notions that we each have worked hard for what we have and ought to be able to keep all of it, that government is bad (or at least inefficient and wasteful - and hungry for our tax dollars), and that things will be better for all of us if we let the wealthiest people in our country make and keep as much money as possible. Many of us seem not to realize that the people who benefit the most from our politics and economics of individualism are the wealthiest 10 percent, especially the top 1 percent. People will support a tax cut that saves them $300 a year, without considering that the same tax cut will save the very wealthy tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands a year, with significant damage to the social fabric, including not only decreased help for the poor and disadvantaged but also cuts in services such as public schools, road repairs, parks, libraries, and so forth.

Much of the cultural divide over abortion grafts readily, but not perfectly, onto tensions over class. Of a large survey of pro-life and pro-choice activists, 94 percent of pro-choice women worked outside of the home, and half of them enjoyed incomes that placed them in the top 10 percent of all working women in the nation. Many were in the most affluent percentiles in the country. In contrast, 63 percent of pro-life advocates did not work outside of the home (and those that did were unmarried). The personal income of pro-life women activists was very low, if there was any at all. The story was similar in terms of education and occupation. Where pro-choice women tended to be well-educated professionals, pro-life activists tended to be housewives or in traditional female occupations. For working-class families, “ family values” was not a political slogan but a belief in sacrifice, fate, belonging, character, and the sanctity of parenthood.

President Obama’s top intelligence official James Clapper purportedly told Washington Post reporter David Ignatius on January 10, 2017 “words to the effect of 'take the kill shot on Flynn

Between 1972 and 2001 the wage and salary income of Americans at the 90th percentile of the income distribution rose only 34 percent, or about 1 percent per year. So being in the top 10 percent of the income distribution, like being a college graduate, wasn’t a ticket to big income gains. But income at the 99th percentile rose 87 percent; income at the 99.9th percentile rose 181 percent; and income at the 99.99th percentile rose 497 percent. No, that’s not a misprint.

The Army didn’t know who its true friends were; it considered Socialists to be crackpots, just as they were called in America, and the people who knew how to get things done were the powerful ones at the top—the same who had hired the Nazi-Fascist gangsters to put down labor and keep political control in the hands of the well-born and well-to-do. F.D.R. himself understood this quite clearly; but how many in his administration understood it, and how many in Congress

The top 1% of the world’s wealthy control more than 50% of all wealth, according to Credit Suisse’s global wealth report. In the United States, the 1% own more wealth than the bottom 90%. The number of millionaires in the world has tripled in the decades since 2000. And the amount of the world’s wealth controlled by the bottom 50% of the global population? Under 3%. These inequalities are more than numbers. They are fuel for high emotions and mass social change. They have led to the rise of populist political movements and propelled a variety of unlikely candidates into power. The difference between the top 1% and all the rest gets our attention. So much for money. Let’s now consider something infinitely more valuable: happiness. Specifically, the happiness found in Bliss Brain. Here we also find huge inequalities. Historically, Bliss Brainers are a tiny percentage of the population. Few even attempt the journey to enlightenment, and of those who seek Nirvana, even fewer attain it. When a rare spiritual genius, such as Jesus or Buddha, reached that pinnacle, the event was so significant that it changed the entire course of world history. WITHDRAWING FROM EVERYDAY LIFE The lives of the great spiritual masters of history inspired others to follow their example. But like the saints, these aspirants could not reach enlightenment in the everyday world, with its demons and distractions. So for thousands of years, those committed to the spiritual path went to special places such as hermitages, wilderness retreats, monasteries, and convents. They exiled themselves from ordinary society in order to pursue nonordinary states of consciousness. They couldn’t achieve Bliss Brain amid the hubbub of society, so they turned their backs on it. The rest of society stayed in ordinary consciousness, driven by the desires and demons of the Default Mode Network (DMN). In my book Mind to Matter, I call this survival orientation “Caveman Brain.” It’s hard to find Bliss Brain when surrounded by Caveman Brain, and pulling yourself out of that environment and into a sacred space is usually a prerequisite for enlightenment. What percentage of the population undertook the journey? No census of enlightenment seekers is possible, but one proxy is the number entering religious seclusion. In the early 1300s, England had a monastic population of about 22,000, with another 10,000 in other religious occupations.

CHAPTER 4 THE ONE PERCENT The top 1% of the world’s wealthy control more than 50% of all wealth, according to Credit Suisse’s global wealth report. In the United States, the 1% own more wealth than the bottom 90%. The number of millionaires in the world has tripled in the decades since 2000. And the amount of the world’s wealth controlled by the bottom 50% of the global population? Under 3%. These inequalities are more than numbers. They are fuel for high emotions and mass social change. They have led to the rise of populist political movements and propelled a variety of unlikely candidates into power. The difference between the top 1% and all the rest gets our attention. So much for money. Let’s now consider something infinitely more valuable: happiness. Specifically, the happiness found in Bliss Brain. Here we also find huge inequalities. Historically, Bliss Brainers are a tiny percentage of the population. Few even attempt the journey to enlightenment, and of those who seek Nirvana, even fewer attain it. When a rare spiritual genius, such as Jesus or Buddha, reached that pinnacle, the event was so significant that it changed the entire course of world history. WITHDRAWING FROM EVERYDAY LIFE The lives of the great spiritual masters of history inspired others to follow their example. But like the saints, these aspirants could not reach enlightenment in the everyday world, with its demons and distractions. So for thousands of years, those committed to the spiritual path went to special places such as hermitages, wilderness retreats, monasteries, and convents. They exiled themselves from ordinary society in order to pursue nonordinary states of consciousness. They couldn’t achieve Bliss Brain amid the hubbub of society, so they turned their backs on it. The rest of society stayed in ordinary consciousness, driven by the desires and demons of the Default Mode Network (DMN). In my book Mind to Matter, I call this survival orientation “Caveman Brain.” It’s hard to find Bliss Brain when surrounded by Caveman Brain, and pulling yourself out of that environment and into a sacred space is usually a prerequisite for enlightenment. What percentage of the population undertook the journey? No census of enlightenment seekers is possible, but one proxy is the number entering religious seclusion. In the early 1300s, England had a monastic population of about 22,000, with another 10,000 in other religious occupations.

Around 10:00 p.m. on that February 6, the Obama campaign informed its top contributors that the president would endorse super PAC Priorities USA Action, with the aim of benefitting from its fundraising capacity. In an email later that evening, Obama’s campaign manager Jim Messina wrote to supporters that given the financial dynamics apparent in the Republican primaries, something had to give: In 2011, the super PAC supporting Mitt Romney raised $30 million from fewer than 200 contributors. Ninety six percent of what they’ve spent so far, more than $18 million, has been on attack ads. The main engine of Romney’s campaign has an average contribution of roughly $150,000. The stakes are too important to play by two different sets of rules. If we fail to act, we concede this election to a small group of powerful people intent on removing the president at any cost. (Thrush 2012) The age of the super PAC in presidential politics had begun. The emergence of super PACs represented a new era of American campaign finance. Prior to some groundbreaking federal court decisions in early 2010, almost all money that was funneled into the political system was subject to “hard money” limitations. That is, since the passage of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act in 2002, anyone wishing to donate to a political committee (such as a campaign, PAC, or “527” organization) was constrained by campaign finance law.

It may be thought that administrative legislation at least comes with virtual representation. Although the administrative lawmakers themselves are unelected, they are appointed by presidential authority, and they act under congressional authorization or acquiescence. It therefore could be imagined that they are virtually, even if not actually, acting as representatives of the people. In fact, however, most administrators are not even chosen directly by the president. Although heads of agencies and a few others at the top of each agency are political appointees, selected by the president or his staff, almost all other administrators are hired by existing administrators. Thus, almost all of those who make law through administrative interpretations were never even picked by elected politicians. Far from being elected by the people, let alone elected politicians, they are appointed by other administrators. Their authority thus is not even virtually representative, but is merely that of a self-perpetuating bureaucratic class. Accordingly, the suggestion that their lawmaking comes with virtual representation is illusory. Virtual representation, moreover, is not a very convincing theory, for it traditionally was an excuse for denying representation to colonists and then to women. For example, although women could not elect representatives and senators, they were said to be virtually represented through their husbands or fathers.10 Nowadays, the same sort of theory (whether put in terms of “virtual,” “delegated,” or “derivative” representation) remains an excuse for refusing representation—this time for refusing it to the entire nation. Nor is this a coincidence. As will soon be seen, it was when Americans acquired equal voting rights that much legislation was shifted outside the elected legislature. The virtual representation excuse therefore should be understood in the same way in the past, as a brazen justification for denying representation. Administrative agencies or officers thus are not representative lawmaking bodies, let alone the Constitution’s representative lawmaking body. Perhaps it will be suggested that it is sufficient for administrative power to be mere state coercion. But no one, neither an individual nor a government, has any natural superiority or power over anyone else. Therefore, if a law is not to be mere coercion, it must be made by the people or at least by their representative legislature, and obviously administrative law is not made by either.

The share of income going to the rich remained remarkably constant from the mid-1940s through the 1970s and then began to escalate rapidly. For example, the top 5% of taxpayers accounted for 23.0% of total income in 1981 but 37.2% in 2005. The top 1% accounted for 10.0% of total income in 1981 but 21.8% in 2005; after declining gradually over most of the twentieth century, their share of the pie more than doubled in the course of a single generation.

Part Two: When St. Kari Met Darth Vader, Star Wars Dark Lord of the Sith  “What are those?” Kari shouted grasping Luke’s arm as her eyes jolted nervously into the air. “I’ve never seen such pretty planets before.” Luke tracked her line of vision and grimmed as he spotted three Corellian Imperial Star Destroyers coming out of hyperspace into the same vortex that his own damaged ship was whirlpooled into. They appeared to be stabilizing the vortex opening by their anti-gravity wells maintaining their relative positional orbit. “Hey’st, what are those white things? They look like men. Surely they are not ghosters, are they?” pawed Kari at Luke to get him to see. “Imperial troopers,” shot Luke, grabbing her arm back. “There’s too many of them C’mon, we got to hide.” “What’s does that mean? And what are those red light-thingy’s coming toward us?” Instantly Kari and Luke were inundated by a barrage of suppressing E-11 blaster rifle fire. Luke flinched out of reaction while Kari stood upright seemingly oblivious to the inherent danger. He was struck to see the girl-entity pluck a laser bolt out of the air and examine it with an other worldly look, as if it were a rare flower in a garden. “I like this,” she smiled. “I’ll pin it to my cloak.” And doing so she did, it maintaining its fiery penetrating redness that did nothing more than to adorn the girl’s wardrobe for quite some time momentarily puzzling Luke. Usually they burnt out quickly. “Can I get some more of these?” she politely asked Luke. “Not right now,” drawled Luke peering over a boulder. “If they capture us we’ve had it.” “Had what?” asked Kari naïvely. “Them ghost-men you mean’st? Oh, don’t worry, Walker of the Skies, just leave it to me,” and with that Kari pulled her blade and sashayed toward the Imperial clones humming her favorite Top 10 battle hymns. “Wait!” Luke shouted trying to snatch her back but it was too late. Luke never saw anything such as this. Like Han, he had seen a lot of strange galactic stuff in his time. Kari had become a misty blur and was skipping across the battlefield as some sort of sword-brandishing luminescence, hovering for a short time over those she slain. “Hey, Walkersky, these spirits don’t have any souls,” she yelled looking up from her blood soaked garments. What do you want me to do with the rest, kill ’em?” “I, uh ,” was all he managed to get out of his mouth as he rubbed his jaw. Kari shrugged and went back to work, picking off the whole brigade by herself. “See’st? I told’st thou not to worry” Kari said panting, coming up to Luke and sitting besides him. “What now?” “We gotta get outta here before more Imperials arrive.” “Untruth oats?” (Nether Trans. “art thou nuts?”) “Run from battle?—is that that what means?” “It means Vader’s coming—.” go to part ii con't

After then–Secretary of State Hillary Clinton testified in a congressional hearing that she spoke with the president by telephone at around 10 p.m. that evening (by which point she knew that Ambassador Stevens had been murdered), the president and his other subordinates changed their story, reporting that the president had spoken with Secretary Clinton but providing few details and acknowledging no other contacts with top administration officials who were futilely responding to the attack.

(Cortido) Makes 2 quarts 1 large cabbage, cored and shredded 1 cup carrots, grated 2 medium onions, quartered lengthwise and very finely sliced 1 tablespoon dried oregano ¼-½ teaspoon red pepper flakes 1 tablespoon sea salt 4 tablespoons whey (Whey and Cream Cheese) (if not available, use an additional 1 tablespoon salt) This delicious spicy condiment goes beautifully with Mexican and Latin American food of all types. It is traditionally made with pineapple vinegar but can also be prepared with whey and salt. Like traditional sauerkraut, cortido improves with age. In a large bowl mix cabbage with carrots, onions, oregano, red chile flakes, sea salt and whey. Pound with a wooden pounder or a meat hammer for about 10 minutes to release juices. Place in 2 quart-sized, wide-mouth mason jars and press down firmly with a pounder or meat hammer until juices come to the top of the cabbage. The top of the cabbage mixture should be at least 1 inch below the top of the jars. Cover tightly and keep at room temperature for about 3 days before transferring to cold storage. Variation: Traditional Cortido Omit salt and whey and use 4-6 cups pineapple vinegar. Mix all ingredients except pineapple vinegar together in a large bowl and pound lightly. Stuff cabbage loosely into 3 quart-sized, wide-mouth mason jars and add enough vinegar to cover the cabbage. The top of the cabbage mixture should be at least 1 inch below the top of the jars. Cover tightly and keep at room temperature for about 3 days before transferring to cold storage. Among all the vegetables that

when critics of Al Gore compare his electricity use to that of the average Ugandan, they are not ultimately highlighting conspicuous and hypocritical personal consumption, however they mean to disparage him. Instead, they are calling attention to the structure of a political and economic order that not only permits the disparity but feeds and profits from it—this is what Thomas Piketty calls the “apparatus of justification.” And it justifies quite a lot. If the world’s most conspicuous emitters, the top 10 percent, reduced their emissions to only the E.U. average, total global emissions would fall by 35 percent. We won’t get there through the dietary choices of individuals, but through policy changes. In an age of personal politics, hypocrisy can look like a cardinal sin; but it can also articulate a public aspiration. Eating organic is nice, in other words, but if your goal is to save the climate your vote is much more important. Politics is a moral multiplier. And a perception of worldly sickness uncomplemented by political commitment gives us only “wellness.

for well over a decade now, the ideological and intellectual side of the neoliberal project has been in severe crisis. In 2016, Credit Suisse estimated that there is roughly $256 trillion in total global wealth—with a staggeringly unequal distribution: “While the bottom half collectively own less than 1 percent of total wealth, the wealthiest top 10 percent own 89 percent of all global assets.” Which is why there just aren’t many serious people left who are willing to argue, with a straight face, that giving more to the wealthy is the best way to help the poor.