Thomas Frank Quotes


Old-fashioned values may count when conservatives appear on the stump, but once conservatives are in office the only old-fashioned situation they care to revive is an economic regimen of low wages and lax regulations…. The leaders of the backlash may talk Christ, but they walk corporate. Values may "matter most" to voters, but they always take a backseat to the needs of money once the elections are won


Citations

Thomas Frank, Journalist & Columnist, What's the Matter with Kansas? 2004

Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations

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Leaders of nations for years only trusted as truly patriotic those man—usually nobles of the aristocracy—who owned land. If an invader came and seized their land, they would lose their wealth. However money is fungible, and a banker can easily move his money abroad and join another nation or side in a war. If the country is ruined by war, the manufacturer cannot obtain labor or raw materials, The financier depends on none of these and so hs not the vested interest in the welfare of the nation.


For many general government regulations—labor, environment, non discrimination—the small business has a proportionately heavier burden of compliance. So large businesses have always been able to count on small business to lobby against regulation and for deregulation. However, when it comes to financial regulation such as the Dodd-Frank regulations essentially apply to large businesses. As a matter of fact, small businesses were on many ways the most frequent victims of the large banks and investment bank excesses in the Meltdown of 2008. Before most of the regulations could even take effect, the financial industry was already trying to get small business to lobby to roll back the protective regulations preventing future meltdowns and bank failure resulting from loose regulation and greedy irresponsible financial industry behavior. The President campaigned to convince the small business not to support the finance industry over their usual “knee jerk” reaction to any regulation.


This statement during the First World War so frightened the Woodrow Wilson administration that they jailed Debs for saying it and other similar statements like {640245}. The statement was generally suppressed with few newspapers carrying it. The problem for the administration was that enlistments might decrease and force them to draft the wealthy and their sons which was, with very few exceptions, not acceptable to the “upper classes”.


The two politicians were amazed as they learned more and more about some of industrial leaders of the country. This is the language they used in private communications.


Thomas Frank
Thomas Frank
  • Born: March 21, 1965
  • Nationality: American
  • Profession: Political Analyst, Columnist, Historian, Journalist

Thomas Carr Frank is an American political analyst, historian, and journalist. He co-founded and edited The Baffler magazine. Frank is the author of the books What's the Matter with Kansas? (2004) and Listen, Liberal (2016), among others. From 2008 to 2010 he wrote "The Tilting Yard", a column in The Wall Street Journal.