Oversight Quotes - Page 2

• 'The Committee has identified eight senior leaders who were in a position to prevent or to stop the IRS's targeting of conservative applicants,' the Oversight report states. 'Each of these leaders could have and should have done more to prevent the IRS's targeting of conservative tax-exempt applicants.'

  Patrick Howley

  Senior, Should Have, Eight

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• Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty; power is ever stealing from the many to the few. The manna of popular liberty must be gathered each day or it is rotten. The living sap of today outgrows the dead rind of yesterday. The hand entrusted with power becomes, either form human depravity or esprit de corps, the necessary enemy of the people. Only by continued oversight can the democrat in office be prevented from hardening into a despot; only by unintermitted agitation can a people be sufficiently awake to principle not to let liberty be smothered in material prosperity.

  Wendell Phillips

  Hands, Yesterday, People

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• There are benefits in the sense that there's still a certain level of confidence. But there are liabilities because you can coordinate and manipulate better as the instruments of oversight are more under your control. You don't have so many rogue operations.

  Ted Gup

  Rogues, Benefits, Levels

  Source: www.motherjones.com

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• In order to do vigorous oversight, the leadership of the intelligence community has got to be straight with the American people and straight with the Congress. For there to be vigorous oversight, the intelligence community's got to be straight with the American people and the Congress and that has not been the case.

  Ron Wyden

  Order, People, Community

  Source: www.motherjones.com

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• Have a defined mission with clear goals and timelines. I still trust the staff, with as little oversight as possible. Do things to show them that their time is as valuable to you as it is to them. Don’t be afraid to ‘fly solo.’

  Pete Olson

  Clear Goals, Littles, Staff

  "Congress at War". www.politico.com. July, 2015.

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• Cliff Stearns talks about what he did to Planned Parenthood, making Solyndra a household name - why didn't he do this sooner? Why didn't he see it coming? It's the oversight committee, not the hindsight committee.

  Ted Yoho

  Names, Cliffs, Parenthood

  "Upset winner isn't horsing around" by Kate Nocera, www.politico.com. August 26, 2012.

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• And in an issue with this kind of concern to a committee that bears the oversight responsibility, I think you can see that we're very dismayed about it .

  Dianne Feinstein

  Responsibility, Thinking, Issues

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• Given the large size of the illegal harvest, ... I find it difficult to understand how this could have been a casual oversight.

  Peter DeFazio

  Size, Harvest, Illegal

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• Law-abiding Americans deserve to know that their government will not secretly tap their phones, read their medical records, access their library accounts or otherwise invade their personal lives, with no oversight or accountability. Law-abiding Americans also deserve to know that when law enforcement can show an impartial judge clear evidence of criminal activity or a threat to national security, swift and decisive action will be taken to protect the public. That is the balance we must achieve.

  Ralph Neas

  Taken, Law, Phones

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• We need a return to transparency and a system of checks and balances, to a president who respects Congress' role of oversight and accountability.

  Hillary Clinton

  Accountability, President, Balance

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• The mode of founding a college is, commonly, to get up a subscription of dollars and cents, and then, following blindly the principles of a division of labor to its extreme,--a principle which should never be followed but with circumspection,--to call in a contractor who makes this a subject of speculation,... and for these oversights successive generations have to pay.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Education, College, Division Of Labor

  Henry David Thoreau (2014). “Citizen Thoreau: Walden, Civil Disobedience, Life Without Principle, Slavery in Massachusetts, A Plea for Captain John Brown”, p.39, Graphic Arts Books

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• The more powerful a person or institution is, the more transparent - open to public inspection or oversight - its activities should be. The less powerful, the less transparent.

  George Scialabba

  Powerful, Should, Institutions

  Source: thenewinquiry.com

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• I stand by my work on behalf of the citizens of Spokane to further justice and promote civilian oversight of law enforcement.

  Rachel Dolezal

  Law, Justice, Enforcement

  "Former NAACP leader in Washington state could face firing from police panel". www.businessinsider.com. June 18, 2015.

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• There are moments in my life when I feel like I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be, doing exactly what I’m supposed to do. I pay attention to them. They’re my cosmic landmarks, letting me know I’m on the right path. Now that I’m older and can look back and see where I missed a turn here and there, and know the price I paid for those oversights, I try to look sharper at the present.

  Karen Marie Moning

  Trying, Here And There, Looks

  Karen Marie Moning (2016). “The Fever Series 7-Book Bundle: Darkfever, Bloodfever, Faefever, Dreamfever, Shadowfever, Iced, Burned”, p.742, Dell

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• It should be obvious that this pattern of systematic holes and gaps in Iraq's declaration is not the result of accidents, editing oversights or technical mistakes. These are material omissions that - in our view - constitute another material breach. It is up to Iraq to prove that there is some other explanation besides the obvious one, that this declaration is just one more act of deception in a history of lies from a defiant dictator.

  John Negroponte

  Mistake, Lying, Editing

  "U.N. officials react to Blix briefing". www.cnn.com. December 19, 2002.

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• They're on you day and night. Their oversight is just too extreme [. . .] That's why our 10-year loan, we paid it back in three years. We couldn't stand the government. The bureaucracy kills you.

  Lee Iacocca

  Night, Government, Years

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• Merging the ability to conduct surveillance that reveals every aspect of a person's life with the ability to conjure up the legal authority to execute that surveillance, and finally, removing any accountable judicial oversight, creates the opportunity for unprecedented influence over our system of government.

  Ron Wyden

  Opportunity, Government, Surveillance

  "White House urges Congress to reject moves to curb NSA surveillance" by Spencer Ackerman, www.theguardian.com. July 23, 2013.

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• We must not falsely teach American history in our schools. We have a law requiring state textbook oversight to guard against frauds like Zinn, and it was encouraging to find that no Hoosier school district had inflicted his book on its students.

  Mitch Daniels

  Book, School, Law

  "Ex-Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels Supports Free Speech - Except When He Disagrees With It" by Andy Kroll, www.motherjones.com. July 17, 2013.

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• It's disingenuous and wrong to say that the attorney general's expanded powers in the Patriot Act come with adequate oversight by the courts, ... In reality, the most troubling provisions in the law make judges little more than rubber stamps in Justice Department investigations.

  Anthony Romero

  Reality, Law, Justice

  "Ashcroft: Patriot Act respects rights, improves security", www.cnn.com. September 11, 2003.

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• On the Glass-Steagall thing, like I said, if you could demonstrate to me that it was a mistake, I'd be glad to look at the evidence. But I can't blame [the Republicans]. This wasn't something they forced me into. I really believed that given the level of oversight of banks and their ability to have more patient capital, if you made it possible for [banks] to go into the investment banking business as continental European investment banks could always do, that it might give us a more stable source of long-term investment.

  William J. Clinton

  Mistake, Glasses, Long

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• He constructed a vast labyrinthine of periods, made impassable by the piling-up of clauses upon clauses-clauses in which oversight and bad grammar seemed manifestations of disdain.

  Jorge Luis Borges

  Made, Grammar, Periods

  Jorge Luis Borges, Andrew Hurley (2004). “Aleph and other stories”, Penguin Classics

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• The methods that will most effectively minimize the ability of intruders to compromise information security are comprehensive user training and education. Enacting policies and procedures simply won't suffice. Even with oversight the policies and procedures may not be effective: my access to Motorola, Nokia, ATT, Sun depended upon the willingness of people to bypass policies and procedures that were in place for years before I compromised them successfully.

  Kevin Mitnick

  Years, Policies And Procedures, People

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• He who knows how to teach a child is not competent for the oversight of a child's education unless he also knows how to train a child.

  Henry Clay Trumbull

  Children, Learning, Teach

  Henry Clay Trumbull (1893). “Hints on Child-training”

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• The most devastating indictment of the president's proposal is that it threatens to destroy virtually everything about American health care that's worth preserving. Under the plan's layers of regulation and oversight, even seeing a doctor whenever you like will be no easy matter: access to physicians will be carefully regulated by gatekeepers; referrals to specialists will be strongly discouraged; second opinions will be almost unheard of; and the availability of new drugs will be limited.

  William Kristol

  Availability, Doctors, Drug

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• An immigration violation should not give the government license to rip up the rule book. By restricting judicial oversight and blocking public scrutiny, the government has exercised virtually unchecked power over those it has detained.

  Jamie Fellner

  Rip, Block, Book

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