There is a reason it used to be a crime in the Confederate states to teach a slave to read: Literacy is power. Matt Taibbi More Quotes by Matt Taibbi More Quotes From Matt Taibbi In America, it takes about two weeks in the limelight for the whole country to think you've been around for years. Matt Taibbi country years thinking In the years just after 9/11, even being breathed on by a suspected terrorist could land you in extralegal detention for the rest of your life. Matt Taibbi rest-of-your-life land years At root, the Tea Party is nothing more than a them-versus-us thing. Matt Taibbi party roots tea The national debt is totally unlike a family budget for about a gazillion reasons, not the least of which being that families cannot raise money by fiat or deflate the size of their debt unilaterally and that family members die instead of existing infinitely. Matt Taibbi size debt family Obviously the commercial news media tries to get you worked up and terrified so you'll buy products that they're advertising. Matt Taibbi news media trying Once you give an NFL player permission to have thoughts, you invite all kinds of mischief. Matt Taibbi nfl player giving One of the great cliches of campaign journalism is the notion that American elections have long since ceased to be about issues and ideas. Matt Taibbi issues long ideas Being in the building with Sarah Palin that night is a transformative and oddly unsettling experience. It’s a little like having live cave-level access for the ripping-the-heart-out-with-the-bare-hands scene in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. Matt Taibbi heart night hands For a country founded on the idea that rights are inalienable and inherent from birth, we’ve developed a high tolerance for conditional rights and conditional citizenship. Matt Taibbi rights country ideas 'Prop trading' is just a fancy term for banks gambling in the market for their own profit. Matt Taibbi profit gambling fancy Ratings agencies are the glue that ostensibly holds the entire financial industry together. Matt Taibbi glue agency together Politics is about a lot more than winning and losing. I think politics at its best is about compromise, shades of grey and about issues. Matt Taibbi issues winning thinking I mean, people who say that the Tea Party isn't a grassroots movement, I think, are incorrect. I think in some respects, it is a grassroots movement. Matt Taibbi party mean thinking Like wars, forest fires and bad marriages, really stupid laws are much easier to begin than they are to end. Matt Taibbi stupid fire war 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 party tea people The print magazine and print journalism industry is obviously in a great deal of trouble, and one of the things that happened when this business started to give way to the Internet and to broadcast television is that a lot of organizations started cutting specifically investigative journalism and they also started cutting fact-checkers. Matt Taibbi cutting organization giving An unregulated derivatives market essentially gives Wall Street a way to place hidden taxes on everything in the world. Matt Taibbi wall giving world The threat posed by Bank of America isn't just financial - it's a full-blown assault on the American dream. Where's the incentive to play fair and do well, when what we see rewarded at the highest levels of society is failure, stupidity, incompetence and meanness? If this is what winning in our system looks like, who doesn't want to be a loser? Matt Taibbi dream winning play There are some who think that the government is limited in how many corruption cases it can bring against Wall Street, because juries can't understand the complexity of the financial schemes involved. But in 'U.S.A. v. Carollo,' that turned out not to be true. Matt Taibbi wall government thinking America has two national budgets, one official, one unofficial. Matt Taibbi budgets two america
