Policies are judged by their consequences but crusades are judged by how good they make the crusaders feel.
The law of unintended consequences, far more than the Constitution, is what governs the modern presidency.
In the anointed we find a whole class of supposedly “thinking people” who do remarkably little thinking about substance and a great deal of verbal expression. In order that this relatively small group of people can believe themselves wiser and nobler than the common herd, we have adopted policies which impose heavy costs on millions of other human beings, not only in taxes but also in lost jobs, social disintegration, and a loss of personal safety. Seldom have so few cost so much to so many.
If you follow this policy you're going to have the deaths of some brave people on your conscience.
encouraging liberation movements in Eastern Europe Referring to Hungary
In fact, the whole thing about prohibition is this: it isn't the initial cost, it's the humidity.
This president has been reluctant to hold anybody accountable. No one was held accountable after September the 11th. Nobody's been held accountable after the clear flaws in intelligence leading up to the war in Iraq.
No very deep knowledge of economics is usually needed for grasping the immediate effects of a measure; but the task of economics is to foretell the remoter effects, and so to allow us to avoid such acts as attempt to remedy a present ill by sowing the seeds of a much greater ill for the future.
A .. characteristic of progressive politicians is that they tend to be high-IQ stupid people. They are bright and well-educated but can’t comprehend the implications of policy.
Every plausible policy must be followed by the question 'And then what?'
All laws have unintended consequences.
This is so classic. Government comes along under the guise of fairness, fixes something, gonna make it fair, gonna make it equal, gonna make it affordable, maybe even make it free. What they end up doing is blowing it all to hell, screwing it up worse than it's ever been screwed up, then their voters bellyache and complain about it. And the same Democrats come back and demand that something be done, because their voters need a second chance.
It is vital for officials and regulators to have input from people within our businesses who understand the intricacies of how financial markets operate and the consequences of certain policy decisions.
Because of the caste system, because of the fact that there is no social link between those who make the decisions and those who suffer the decisions, the Indian government just goes ahead and does what it wants. The people also assume that this is their lot, their karma, what was written. It's quite an efficient way of doing things. Therefore, India has a very good reputation in the world as a democracy, as a government that cares, that has just got too much on its hands, whereas, in fact, it's actually creating the problems.
The politician being interviewed clearly takes a great deal of trouble to imagine an ending to his sentence: and if he stopped short? His entire policy would be jeopardized.
You want to trace California's move to the far left, you go back to the 1986 Simpson-Mazzoli bill. Simpson-Mazzoli was where we granted amnesty to, at the time, what was three and a half million illegal aliens. And that's it. We were told that would be it. We would start being strict about guarding the borders and making sure that there wasn't any more illegal immigration, but that didn't happen. That was the design. Ted Kennedy, Simpson-Mazzoli, it was their idea here and it's worked out magnificently for them to this extent.
No amount of promises to the needy at election time will make the wrong policies rights; nor would lessen the enormous price we have to pay for them.
There are potential policy consequences to a president who doesn't believe in our election system and believes that there's rampant voter fraud.
When the Statist makes a wrong decision, its impact is far-reaching, for he uses the power of government to impose his decision on as many individuals and businesses as possible, which distorts the free market itself.
In too many cases, if our Government had set out determined to destroy the family, it couldn't have done greater damage than some of what we see today.
What I saw was a cabal between the vice president of the United States, Richard Cheney, and the secretary of defense, Donald Rumsfeld, on critical issues that made decisions that the bureaucracy did not know were being made. Now it is paying the consequences of making those decisions in secret, but far more telling to me is America is paying the consequences.
This is a government which is proposing to put at risk our manufacturing industry, to penalise struggling families, to make a tough situation worse for millions of households right around Australia. And for what? To make not a scrap of difference to the environment any time in the next 1000 years.
Donald Trump said that his plan now is to just let Obamacare fail. He's not gonna own it. He's just gonna let it fail. Which he's been saying for months. He said, you know, the smart thing politically for him to do is to let it fail and let the Democrats absorb all the blame.
There are two Americas. One which influences government and economic policy and the other which must live with the results.
I think the recovery hasn't been stronger because the hole that was dug for President Obama by the Bush administration was far worse than anybody could imagine, first of all.
The great challenge to the White House is that nothing inconsequential every comes there.