Watchdog Group Quotes

John Adams was keenly aware of the relationship between secrecy and corruption in government and the preservation of liberty. Many of the Founding Fathers understood the importance of transparency in a nation’s rulers. James Madison wrote that “A popular government without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a Farce or a Tragedy, or perhaps both.” Thomas Jefferson said that “If we are to guard against ignorance and remain free, it is the responsibility of every American to be informed.” Judicial Watch has always believed that knowing the “characters and conduct” of the individuals who serve in the government and ensuring that the public is “informed” about what its government is doing is crucial to preserving our great republic. That is why for over twenty-two years we have been the most active user of the federal Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) to promote transparency, accountability, and integrity in government, politics, and the law. We are the nation’s largest and most effective government watchdog group that works to advance the public interest. Transparency is all about self-governance. If we don’t know what the government is doing, how is that self-governance? How is that even a republic? When we were founded in 1994, we used the FOIA open records law to root out corruption in the Clinton administration. During the Bush administration, we used it to combat that administration’s penchant for improper secrecy. But the Bush administration pales in comparison to the Obama administration. Today, our government is bigger than ever, and also the most secretive in recent memory.

beautiful granddaughter at his side, guarding it like a pair of faithful watchdogs. Although they were all nearly at the end of their tether, Jim roused the camp again before dawn. Using a span of oxen, and with much shouting and cracking of long whips, they heaved the overturned wagon back on to its wheels. The robust vehicle had suffered little damage, and within a few hours they had repacked its scattered load. Jim knew that they must leave the battlefield at once. In the heat of the sun the corpses would very soon putrefy, and, with the stench of their rotting, sickness and disease would come. At his orders they inspanned every other wagon in the train. Then Smallboy and the other drivers fired the long whips and the oxen trundled the vehicles out of the gruesome laager and into the open grassland. They set up camp that evening among the deserted thatched huts of the Nguni town, surrounded by the vast herds of humpbacked cattle, with the piles of ivory securely enclosed within the wagon laager. The next morning, after breakfast, Jim summoned all his men to the indaba. He wanted to explain to them his future plans, and to tell them where he would lead them next. First he asked Tegwane to explain how the Nguni used their cattle to carry the ivory when they were on the march. ‘Tell us how they place the loads, and secure them to the backs of the animals,’ Jim ordered. ‘That I do not know,’ Tegwane admitted. ‘I have only watched their advance from afar.’ ‘Smallboy will be able to work out the harness for himself,’ Jim decided, ‘but it would have been better to use a method to which the cattle are accustomed.’ Then he turned to the small group of herd-boys and said, ‘Can you men’ – they liked to be called men and they had earned the right at the barricades – ‘can you men take care of so many?’ They considered the vast herds of cattle that were scattered down the full length of the valley. ‘They are not so very many,’ said the eldest, who was the spokesman. ‘We can herd many more than that,’ said another. ‘We have vanquished the Nguni in battle,’ squeaked Izeze, smallest and cheekiest of the boys, his voice not yet broken. ‘We can take care of their cattle, and their women also, when we capture them.

head of an industry watchdog group, as deputy undersecretary of education, and when the market closed that day, an index of education company stocks had dropped almost seven points.

Afterward, the Constitutional Accountability Center, a watchdog group, revealed that the judges in the majority had previously attended one of the all-expenses-paid legal seminars for judges that were heavily funded by the Kochs’ foundations.

As Charles Lewis, the founder of the Center for Public Integrity, a nonpartisan watchdog group, put it, “The Kochs are on a whole different level. There’s no one else who has spent this much money. The sheer dimension of it is what sets them apart. They have a pattern of lawbreaking, political manipulation, and obfuscation. I’ve been in Washington since Watergate, and I’ve never seen anything like it. They are the Standard Oil of our times.

The John Locke Foundation also sponsored the North Carolina History Project, which aimed to reorient the state’s teaching of its history by providing online lesson plans for high school teachers that downplayed the roles of social movements and government while celebrating what it called the “personal creation of wealth.” In a similar vein, Republicans in the state senate passed a bill requiring North Carolina’s high school students to study conservative principles as part of American history in order to graduate in 2015. The bill stressed the “constitutional limitations on government power to tax and spend.” “It’s all part of Pope’s plan to build up more institutional support for his philosophy,” said Chris Fitzsimon, director of NC Policy Watch, a liberal watchdog group.

Corruption Perceptions Index of the watchdog group Transparency International, reaching 154th out of 178 by 2011 (for the year 2010).

A 2004 report by the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy, a watchdog group, found the Kochs’ philanthropy self-serving. “These foundations give money to nonprofit organizations that do research and advocacy on issues that impact the profit margin of Koch Industries,” it charged.

This culture gave rise to review sites and media watchdog groups (part of evangelicalism’s aforementioned cultural critique) who became moral bean counters, neatly cataloging infractions for concerned parents or easily offended saints. For example, one media watchdog group noted that the popular film The Blind Side (2009), despite a positive portrayal of evangelicals and a redemptive message, contained 10 sexual references, 3 scatological terms, 8 anatomical terms, and 7 mild obscenities — offenses that eventually resulted in Lifeway, one of the largest Christian bookstore chains in the world, removing the movie from its shelves.

Most people find it counterintuitive that a system motivated exclusively by greed and cutthroat competition would bring the greatest benefits to the greatest number of people. We now see that there is a good reason people find this claim counterintuitive: it is false. Abuses are only overcome when governments, multinational agencies, labor groups, consumer advocates, and a well-organized system of checks and balances all serve as watchdogs over market competition.

Nonetheless, the newfound ability to funnel unlimited contributions to electioneering ads without disclosing donor identity is obviously attractive for many groups and donors alike; and it stands to reason that 501(c)(4)s will only become a more popular mechanism for channeling political money. Indeed, according to an audit report from the United States Treasury Inspector General, the IRS saw a sharp increase in 501(c)(4) status applications after the Citizens United decision, with requests rising from about 1,700 in 2009 and 2010, to 2,265 and 3,357 in 2011 and 2012, respectively.17 Since their funding is far less transparent than FEC-regulated political committees like super PACs, reform-minded watchdog groups such as the Sunlight Foundation have classified politically active 501(c)(4)s among “dark money” organizations,

reduction in the risk of embarrassment and feelings of unease in social interaction. No one can see you blush, hear your voice go squeaky, or feel your damp palms. But then again, nor can you pick up on these all-important cues for working out how the other person might be reacting. In 2012, the British communications watchdog Ofcom produced its ninth annual Communications Market Report. The director of research for Ofcom, James Thickett, was acutely aware of the significance of the decline that year’s report found in the number of mobile calls, which dropped by 1 percent, and in the number of landline calls, which decreased by 10 percent. He concluded: In just a few short years, new technology has fundamentally changed the way that we communicate. Talking face-to-face or on the phone are no longer the most common ways for us to interact with each other. In their place, newer forms of communications are emerging which don’t require us to talk to each other, especially among younger age groups. This trend is set to continue as technology advances and we move further into the digital age.2

The regular public schools ... have become more secular ... and more value-free. The education profession's cherished "progressivism" is part of the reason. And the close scrutiny of fierce watchdog groups ... has made schools and educators gun-shy. In recent years, however, perhaps the strongest influences have been postmodern relativism and multiculturalism, which first trickled, then gushed from university campuses into primary and secondary school classrooms. If scholars, teachers, and those who train them abjure fixed distinctions between right and wrong, if all judgments are said to depend upon one's unique perspective or background rather than universal standards of truth, beauty, or virtue, if every form of family, society, and polity is deemed equal to all other forms, and if every group's mores and values must be taught ... who is there (in school) to help children determine what it means to be an American, how to behave, and what to believe?