Douglas Rushkoff: The debt-based economy was invented so that people with money could get richer by having money, that's what it's for. I'm not saying it's evil, it was an idea. But, it doesn't actually work. If the number of people who want to make money by having money gets so big that there are more people existing that way than actually producing anything, eventually the economy will collapse.
Jack Abramoff: Two fancy Washington restaurants that became virtual cafeterias for congressional staff, the best seats to every sporting event and concert in town, private planes at the ready to whisk members and staff to exotic locations, millions of dollars in campaign contributions ready for distribution. We had it all. But even with these corrupting gifts, nothing beat the revolving door. Staff members who thought they might be hired by our firm inevitably began acting as if they were already working for us. They seized the initiative to do our bidding. Sometimes, they even exceeded the lobbyists' wishes in an effort to win plaudits. From that moment, they were no longer working for their particular member of Congress. They were working for us. Eliminating the revolving door between Congress and K Street is not the only reform we need to eliminate corruption in our political system. But unless we sever the link between serving the public and cashing in, no other reform will matter.
Harold Bloom: I am moved by the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations but remain skeptical that you can achieve a lessening of money's influence upon our politics, since money is politics. Obsessed by a freedom we identify with money, we tolerate plutocracy as if it could someday be our own ecstatic solitude. A dark truth of American politics in what is still the era of Reagan and the Bushes is that so many do not vote their own economic interests. I wonder though which is more dangerous, a knowledge-hungry religious zealotry or a proudly stupid one? Either way we are condemned to remain a plutocracy and oligarchy. I can be forgiven for dreading a further strengthening of theocracy in that powerful brew.
Jane Mayer: The lineup promoting TransCanada's interests was a textbook study in modern, bipartisan corporate influence peddling.
Lawrence Lessig: The question isn't whether money is speech. The question is whether we should allow money to so dominate the political system that candidates become more focused on their dependency upon money than upon the People.
Bill McKibben: We're not going to do you the favor of attacking you.
John Kenney: Do you know that feeling, upon waking at 4 A.M., heart racing, your mind looking twenty, thirty years down the road, wondering how you are going to make ends meet? Worrying about what would happen if you lost your job, asking yourself how you're going to pay for your kids' college or retire? Well, I don't. But I read a story about it once and remember thinking, I'm so glad that's not me.
Douglas Rushkoff: Any man that has a mortgage to pay is not going to be a revolutionary.
Lawrence Lessig: Whether or not you believe in capitalism, nobody believes in crony capitalism, and crony capitalism is what we've got.
Surely the cronies believe in it, right? | 
