Candidates don’t want to be associated with poor people, people who have jobs or are ugly; they want to be associated with a certain middle class demographic, so as a result they leave those others out completely. – Matt Taibbi
Democracy doesn’t require a whole lot of work of its citizens, but it requires some: It requires taking a good look outside once in a while, and considering the bad news and what it might mean, and making the occasional tough choice, and soberly taking stock of what your real interests are. – Matt Taibbi
By creating an urgent crisis that can only be solved by those fluent in a language too complex for ordinary people to understand, the Wall Street crowd has turned the vast majority of Americans into non-participants in their own political future. – Matt Taibbi
You know what an effective deterrent to crime is? Jail! And do you know what kind of criminal penalty actually makes people think twice about committing crimes the next time? The kind that actually comes out of some individual’s pocket, not fines that come out of the corporate kitty. – Matt Taibbi
In the ’50s and ’60s, journalism wasn’t a profession. It wasn’t something you went to college for – it was really more of a trade. You had a lot of guys who came up working in newspapers at the copy desk, or delivery boys, and then they would somehow become reporters afterward and learn on the job. – Matt Taibbi
Like wars, forest fires and bad marriages, really stupid laws are much easier to begin than they are to end. – Matt Taibbi
The problem with the Tea Party is that it’s been used in a way that scares people into supporting an agenda that’s counter to their own interests. – Matt Taibbi
2008 was to the American economy what 9/11 was to national security. Yet while 9/11 prompted the U.S. government to tear up half the Constitution in the name of public safety, after 2008, authorities went in the other direction. – Matt Taibbi
You know, I used to live in Russia where you had officers in the military opening up the warehouses at night and taking weapons out and putting them into a truck and selling them to foreign powers. That type of stuff doesn’t happen in the United States. We still have a very functioning and relatively civil society. – Matt Taibbi
Obviously the commercial news media tries to get you worked up and terrified so you’ll buy products that they’re advertising. – Matt Taibbi
The moral angle to the foreclosure crisis – and, of course, in capitalism we’re not supposed to be concerned with the moral stuff, but let’s mention it anyway – shows a culture that is slowly giving in to a futuristic nightmare ideology of computerized greed and unchecked financial violence. – Matt Taibbi
Criminal justice, as it pertains to the Goldmans and Morgan Stanleys of the world, is not adversarial combat, with cops and crooks duking it out in interrogation rooms and courthouses. Instead, it’s a cocktail party between friends and colleagues who from month to month and year to year are constantly switching sides and trading hats. – Matt Taibbi
If the law doesn’t apply equally to everybody, then you don’t really have a system of law. – Matt Taibbi
In reality, everybody in Congress is a stand-in for some kind of lobbyist. In many cases it’s difficult to tell whether it’s the companies that are lobbying the legislators or whether it’s the other way around. – Matt Taibbi
‘Prop trading’ is just a fancy term for banks gambling in the market for their own profit. – Matt Taibbi
I actually never thought that Barack Obama was anything but a typical Democratic party politician, which to me meant that he was probably in bed with Wall Street. – Matt Taibbi
The one thing that I do is take really complicated systems and subjects and make them accessible to regular people. – Matt Taibbi
I try to be outraged by things that other people are just very accepting of, as though they’re normal and can’t be changed. A lot of what I write about is, ‘Hey, you know, this stuff is really awful, and it doesn’t need to be, and that’s why it’s so offensive.’ Things should be better. – Matt Taibbi