Thomas Frank Quotes - Page 3

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• A lot of populists after populism died just became socialists. At the beginning of the 20th century, socialism looked like it was going to take off. It didn't, of course, but a lot of people thought it was going to.

  Thomas Frank

  People, Socialism, Century

  Interview with Sam Adams, www.avclub.com. February 18, 2011.

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• People are born in a certain place, and in a certain society. I don't mean to sound like a determinist, but to think we're entirely free to do whatever we want betrays a certain class perspective. For most people who have to work for a living, and work at jobs under conditions they may not like, it's just not simple when it comes to freedom.

  Thomas Frank

  Jobs, Betrayal, Mean

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• Vote to stand tall against terrorists ; receive Social Security privatization . Vote to strike a blow against elitism; receive a social order in which wealth is more concentrated than ever before in our lifetimes , in which workers have been stripped of power and CEOs are rewarded in a manner beyond imagining.

  Thomas Frank

  Blow, Order, Vote

  Thomas Frank (2007). “What's the Matter with Kansas?: How Conservatives Won the Heart of America”, p.7, Macmillan

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• The great goal of the backlash is to nurture a cultural class war, and the first step in doing so, as we have seen, is to deny the economic basis of social class. After all, you can hardly deride liberals as society's "elite" or present the GOP as the party of the common man if you acknowledge the existence of the corporate world - the power that creates the nation's real elite, that dominates its real class system, and that wields the Republican Party as its personal political sidearm.

  Thomas Frank

  Real, War, Party

  "What's the Matter with Kansas?: How Conservatives Won the Heart of America". Book by Thomas Frank, April 1, 2007.

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• Americans have known about mounting inequality and king-sized Wall Street bonuses for years. But we also had an entire genre of journalism dedicated to brushing the problem off.

  Thomas Frank

  Kings, Wall, Years

  "Wall Street Bonuses Are an Outrage" by Thomas Frank, www.huffingtonpost.com. March 7, 2009.

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• Yes, Democrats can prove that America pays more for health care than other countries; yes, they have won the dispute that private health insurance is needlessly expensive. But what they've lost is the argument that we are a society.

  Thomas Frank

  Country, America, Care

  "Why Democrats Are Losing on Health Care" by Thomas Frank, www.huffingtonpost.com. October 18, 2009.

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• I was never a fan of Barack Obama's bipartisanship routine.

  Thomas Frank

  Fans, Routine, Barack

  "Decline with a Chance of Fall" by Thomas Frank, www.huffingtonpost.com. December 6, 2008.

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• Just as the financial crisis has created toxic assets and 'zombie' financial institutions, so has it transformed conservatism into a movement of the living dead.

  Thomas Frank

  Zombie, Toxic, Movement

  "Conservatives and Their Pity Parties" by Thomas Frank, www.huffingtonpost.com. April 4, 2009.

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• Joe Klein is the flower of American political journalism, a sharp raconteur who shows traces of the gonzo style that was in vogue when he was honing his craft at Rolling Stone back in the day.

  Thomas Frank

  Flower, Political, Style

  "Joe Klein's Turnip Day" by Thomas Frank, observer.com. May 1, 2006.

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• It is always a disappointment to turn from forthright consideration of some subject - whether from the Left or the Right, a poet or a plumber - to the Beltway version, in which the only aspects of the issue that matter are the effects it will have on the fortunes of the two parties and the various men in power.

  Thomas Frank

  Disappointment, Party, Two

  "Bipartisanship Is a Silly Beltway Obsession" by Thomas Frank, www.huffingtonpost.com. March 22, 2009.

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• In the subprime mortgage industry, bankers handed out iffy loans like candy at a parade because such loans meant revenue and, hence, bonuses for executives in the here-and-now.

  Thomas Frank

  Bankers, Bonus, Mortgage

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• In the last James Bond movie, the villain was a culture captain, a tycoon of culture, a Murdoch figure. It's not as if people don't know what is going on.

  Thomas Frank

  People, Culture, Tycoons

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• Government is, by its very nature, a destroyer of liberties; the Obama administration, specifically, is promising to interfere with the economy and the health care system so profoundly that Washington will soon have us all in chains.

  Thomas Frank

  Government, Liberty, Care

  "The Left Should Reclaim ‘Freedom’" by Thomas Frank, www.huffingtonpost.com. November 16, 2009.

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• Financial regulation is the next item on the political horizon, and it doesn't have to be the deathly dull wonk-battle that it sounds like. In fact, if the Democrats do their job, it can just as easily become a platform for addressing the greatest issues of them all.

  Thomas Frank

  Jobs, Issues, Political

  The Real Danger of 'One Big Regulator'" by Thomas Frank, www.huffingtonpost.com. March 18, 2010.

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• What is at stake in the debate over health care is more than the mere crafting of policy. The issue is now the identity of the Democratic Party.

  Thomas Frank

  Party, Issues, Identity

  "Health Care and the Democratic Soul" by Thomas Frank, www.wsj.com. August 25, 2009.

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• Surrogate motherhood has been the subject of much philosophical and political dispute over the years.

  Thomas Frank

  Philosophical, Motherhood, Years

  "Rent-a-Womb Is Where Market Logic Leads" by Thomas Frank, www.huffingtonpost.com. January 12, 2009.

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• Maybe that first, gigantic deficit the Reaganites piled up was an accident, just a combination of deluded 'supply side' tax cuts and a huge bag of good stuff for the Pentagon. But pretty quickly conservatives discovered that deficits, when done correctly, did something really cool: deficits defunded the Left.

  Thomas Frank

  Cutting, Bags, Done

  "No Future for You" by Thomas Frank, www.huffingtonpost.com. October 27, 2008.

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• Most of Roosevelt's innovations have been the law of the land for 70 years now, and yet we are still a free society free enough, that is, to allow tens of thousands of protesters to gather on the National Mall and to broadcast their slogans and speeches to the world via C-SPAN.

  Thomas Frank

  Years, Law, Land

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• While Democrats fussed with the details of health care reforms, conservatives spent months telling the nation that the real issue is freedom, that what's on the line is American liberty itself.

  Thomas Frank

  Real, Issues, Liberty

  "The Left Should Reclaim ‘Freedom’" by Thomas Frank, www.huffingtonpost.com. November 16, 2009.

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• Under the administration of George W. Bush, you will recall, federal spending grew pretty significantly. At the same time, the number of people directly employed by the federal government shrank. One of the factors that explained the difference was contracting.

  Thomas Frank

  Government, Differences, Numbers

  "Obama Takes On Market-Based Government" by Thomas Frank, www.huffingtonpost.com. April 11, 2009.

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• There is something uniquely depressing about the fact that the National Portrait Gallery’s version of the Barack Obama “Hope” poster previously belonged to a pair of lobbyists. Depressing because Mr. Obama’s Washington was not supposed to be the lobbyists’ Washington, the place we learned to despise during the last administration.

  Thomas Frank

  Depressing, Portraits, Lobbyists

  "Obama and the K Street Set" by Thomas Frank, www.huffingtonpost.com. November 30, 2009.

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• There are few things in politics more annoying than the Right's utter conviction that it owns the patent on the word 'freedom' that when its leaders stand up for the rights of banks to be unregulated or capital gains to be untaxed, that it is actually and obviously standing up for human liberty, the noblest cause of them all.

  Thomas Frank

  Rights, Leader, Liberty

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• The revival of the Right is as extraordinary as it would be if the public had demanded dozens of new nuclear plants in the days after the Three Mile Island disaster; if we had reacted to Watergate by making Richard Nixon a national hero.

  Thomas Frank

  Hero, Islands, Would Be

  Thomas Frank (2012). “Pity the Billionaire: The Hard-Times Swindle and the Unlikely Comeback of the Right”, p.11, Macmillan

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• The pursuit of the vibrant seems to be the universal job description of the nation's city planners nowadays. It is also part of the Obama administration's economic recovery strategy for the nation.

  Thomas Frank

  Jobs, Recovery, Cities

  John Summers, Chris Lehmann, Thomas Frank (2014). “No Future for You: Salvos from the Baffler”, p.110, MIT Press

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• The only truly individualistic health-care choice - where you receive care that is unpolluted by anyone else’s funds - is to forgo insurance altogether, paying out-of-pocket for health services as you need them.

  Thomas Frank

  Choices, Pockets, Needs

  "Why Democrats Are Losing on Health Care" by Thomas Frank, www.huffingtonpost.com. October 18, 2009.

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