Quotes & Sayings About Government Agencies

Anyone who knows Western businesses, government agencies, or educational institutions knows that their managers make far too many small decisions as a rule. And nothing causes as much trouble in an organization as a lot of small decisions. — Peter F. Drucker

Try this thought experiment. Pretend you're a tyrant. Among your many liberty-destroying objectives are extermination of blacks, Jews and Catholics. Which would you prefer, a United States with political power centralized in Washington, powerful government agencies with detailed information on Americans and compliant states or power widely dispersed over 50 states, thousands of local jurisdictions and a limited federal government? — Walter E. Williams

The failure to work out sensible budgets makes it impossible for government agencies to make long-term plans, and instead leaves them scrambling to spend money in the short term. — Matt Taibbi

We will continue to work with agencies across the government to unleash the power of open data and to make government data more accessible and usable for entrepreneurs, companies, researchers, and citizens everywhere - innovators who can leverage these resources to benefit Americans in a rapidly growing array of exciting and powerful ways. — Todd Park

Millions of people around the world suffer daily from the harmful health and environmental impacts caused by indoor cooking fires and inefficient cookstoves. Together with the Global Alliance on Clean Cookstoves, we are taking action to address this critical problem and to promote a cleaner, healthier environment. I am pleased to celebrate the launch of this Alliance and proud to say that agencies from across the U.S. Federal Government will continue to play an important role in this initiative. — Nancy Sutley

It is easy to prescribe improvement for others; it is easy to organize something, to institutionalize this or that, to pass laws, multiply bureaucratic agencies, form pressure groups, start revolutions, change forms of government, tinker at political theory. The fact that these expedients have been tried unsuccessfully in every conceivable combination for 6,000 years has not noticeably impaired a credulous unintelligent willingness to keep on trying them again and again. — Albert J. Nock

I think it is important that independent government agencies be put in charge of investigating misconduct so that police departments are no longer allowed to police themselves. There is a conflict of interest there which, I believe, allows police to excuse their own behavior. — Bernie Sanders

Nine out of every 10 large corporations and government agencies have been attacked by computer intruders. — Kevin Mitnick

Self-government does not and should not imply the use of political agencies alone. Progress is born of cooperation in the community - not from governmental restraints. — Herbert Hoover

In the Internet age, it is inevitable that corporations and government agencies will have access to detailed information about people's lives. — Rebecca MacKinnon

We need to ensure that the government agencies that are supposed to be regulating the financial system are actually doing their jobs. We must shrink the federal government and hold it accountable - and to do that, we need a leader who understands how bureaucracies work and how to cut them down to size. — Carly Fiorina

Large companies and government agencies have a lot to protect and therefore are not willing to take big risks. A large company taking a risk can threaten its stock price. A government agency taking a risk can threaten congressional investigation. — Peter Diamandis

In China, going public has a cachet from a branding standpoint. It will improve our image to ad agencies, government regulators. — Victor Koo

David Cameron has already said, and I have said, that a Conservative government would be giving the security agencies and law enforcement agencies the powers that they need to ensure that they are keeping up to date as people communicate with data. — Theresa May

Advertising is a tax paid for being unremarkable.*" If that is true, then this tax is rising fast, which is good news for the government - not to mention production companies, media sellers, and agencies - — Joseph Jaffe

The field of U.S. cancer care is organized around a medical monopoly that ensures a continuous flow of money to the pharmaceutical companies, medical technology firms, research institutes, and government agencies such as the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the National Cancer Institute (NCI) and quasi-public organizations such as the American Cancer Society (ACS). — John Diamond

In the nineteenth century, government agencies in Washington had, almost without exception, flatly refused to hire even one female. — David Brinkley

If there is one point on which all authorities on Japan are in agreement, it is that Japanese institutions, whether business or government agencies, make decisions by consensus. The Japanese, we are told, debate a proposed decision throughout the organization until there is agreement on it. And only then do they make the decision. — Peter F. Drucker

The official line is that, after the war, women couldn't wait to leave the offices and assembly lines and government agencies. But the real story was that the economy couldn't have men coming home without women going home, not unless it wanted a lot of unemployed vets. So the problem became unemployed women. "How you gonna keep us down on the farm after we've seen the world,"' she ad-libs to the old World War I tune. 'Enter the women's magazines, and cookbook publishers, and all these advertising agencies carrying on about the scourge of germs in the toilet bowl, and scuffs on the kitchen floor, and, my favorite, house B.O. Enter chicken hash that takes two and a half hours to prepare. I can just hear them sitting around the conference tables. 'That'll keep the gals out of trouble. — Ellen Feldman

The invasion was undertaken with the expectation that it probably would increase the threat of terror. That was the advice given by the government's own intelligence agencies and by others, by lots of specialists on terror, who said it was very likely to increase terror, for — Noam Chomsky

Among our responsibilities is to make sure that 23 percent of all government contracts go to small businesses. That's about $150 billion annually, from all the government agencies. — Karen Mills

When it comes right down to it, this story is not primarily about spies and secret government agencies; it's about violence against women, and the men who enable it. — Stieg Larsson

Government is the greatest combination for forces known to human society. It can command more men and raise more money than any and all other agencies combined. — David Dudley Field II

As a digital technology writer, I have had more than one former student and colleague tell me about digital switchers they have serviced through which calls and data are diverted to government servers or the big data algorithms they've written to be used on our e-mails by intelligence agencies. — Douglas Rushkoff

The Federal Reserve, the Treasury, all the regulator agencies - if there's a problem of the financial mechanism in society, the only one to fix it is government. They've got a legitimate role. — Dick Cheney

people (to quote the researchers) had achieved an astonishing amount (Kell et al., 2013). They had become high-ranking politicians, CEOs of companies, high-ups in government agencies, distinguished academics, journalists for well-known newspapers, artists and musical directors. They had been awarded patents, grant money and prizes, and had produced plays, novels, and a huge amount of economic value. They had, in other words, made incalculable contributions to society, for everyone's benefit. — Stuart Ritchie

Unfortunately, corruption is widespread in government agencies and public enterprises. Our political system promotes nepotism and wasting money. This has undermined our legal system and confidence in the functioning of the state. One of the consequences is that many citizens don't pay their taxes. — George Papandreou

The Bush administration actually started out with an open mind towards Iran, by all indications. In fact, early in the administration, the White House tasked the various agencies of government to do an inter-agency review of Iran policy, as it did with Iraq policy and most of the big areas of the world. — Elaine Sciolino

In housing you have jingle mail and you can walk away and leave the bank holding the bag. In the case of student loans, the debt follows you through life, and the banks or government will turn it over to collection agencies that are not very nice people and can do all sorts of harassing things to you. It's becoming a nightmare. — Michael Hudson

Distrust of executive agencies leads to demands for more legal checks on administration, which reduces the quality and effectiveness of government. At the same time, demand for government services induces Congress to impose new ========== America in Decay (Unknown) - Your Highlight at location 159-160 | Added on Wednesday, 14 January 2015 20:39:14 mandates on the executive, which often prove difficult, if not impossible, to fulfill. Both processes lead to a reduction of bureaucratic autonomy, which in turn leads to rigid, rulebound, uncreative, and incoherent government. — Anonymous

When the Commander-in-Chief of a nation finds it necessary to order employees of the government or agencies of the government to do things that would technically break the law, he has to be able to declare it legal for them to do that. — Ronald Reagan

When I went to Harvard and studied planning, I found I didn't have the skills or the strength to become the kind of public person who could go out and lobby government agencies. — Frank Gehry

Federal agencies that own bridges have some of the worst records for on-time inspections. Nearly 3,000 bridges owned by U.S. government agencies went more than two years between checkups. — Bill Dedman

The reality of split government puts a premium on creativity within the administration. President Obama needs to put the right people in charge of the agencies and then have them push the bounds of administrative power to change policy through those agencies. President Obama has a pretty good track record of this. — Eliot Spitzer

But withholding information about vulnerabilities in US systems so that they can be exploited in foreign ones creates a schism in the government that pits agencies that hoard and exploit zero days against those, like the Department of Homeland Security, that are supposed to help secure and protect US critical infrastructure and government systems. — Kim Zetter

Two courses were open to us. We might have done nothing. That would have been utter ruin. Instead, we met the situation with proposals to private business and to the Congress of the most gigantic program of economic defense and counterattack ever evolved in the history of the Republic. We put that program in action. Our measures have repelled these attacks of fear and panic ... We have used the credit of the Government to aid and protect our institutions, both public and private. We have provided methods and assurances that none suffer from hunger or cold amongst our people. We have instituted measures to assist our farmers and our homeowners. We have created vast agencies for employment. — Herbert Hoover

described the relatively low number of fatalities as a miracle.1 President Bill Clinton ordered his National Security Council to coordinate the response. Government agencies swung into action to find the culprits.The Counterterrorist Center located at the CIA combed its files and queried sources around the world. The National Security Agency (NSA), the huge Defense Department signals collection agency, ramped up its communications intercept network and searched its databases for clues.2 The New York Field Office of the FBI took control of the local investigation and, in the end, set a pattern for future management of terrorist incidents. Four features of this episode have significance for the story of 9/11. 71 — Anonymous

I was reading about all of these medical and psychological experimental programs that the government and various intelligence agencies had run throughout the 20th century. Any book you can read on that, there's some really horrifying and fascinating stuff that goes on there. — Caitlin Kittredge

Why is this mediocre? We love to point out how broken our systems are. We enjoy getting angry at hotels or government agencies or airlines that are so obviously doing a poor job. Idiots! But we almost never look at merely mediocre products and wonder why they aren't great. Mediocre services or products do what they're supposed to, but have set the bar so low that it's hardly worth the energy to cross the street to buy them. A resolute generic sameness pervades this mediocrity. Why isn't every restaurant meal a fabulous buy for the money? Why isn't every tax dollar spent with the intensity and focus it could be spent with? It seems as though we are willing to accept mediocre as long as the product, the service, or the organization isn't totally broken. — Seth Godin

Under the leadership of religious professionals, modern worship has become passive - listening to a message and singing some songs. Seldom is there a call to service or an invitation to trust Christ. Baptisms take place inside the church where it is safe and comfortable rather than in public where there is opportunity to give witness to the saving grace of Christ. The great needs of society are left to para-church groups, government agencies, and other social service organizations. All the while the church is losing its muscle tone, its biceps are becoming loose and flabby and its belly is becoming round and soft. Not a pretty picture for one who once was toned and buff - a lean, mean fighting machine. — Craig Olson

Mortgage securities. Pooled together from thousands of mortgages around the United States, these bonds are issued by agencies like the Federal National Mortgage Association ("Fannie Mae") or the Government National Mortgage Association ("Ginnie Mae"). However, they are not backed by the U.S. Treasury, so they sell at higher yields to reflect their greater risk. Mortgage bonds generally underperform when interest rates fall and bomb when rates rise. (Over the long run, those swings tend to even out and the higher average yields pay off.) Good mortgage-bond funds are available from Vanguard, Fidelity, and Pimco. But if a broker ever tries to sell you an individual mortgage bond or "CMO," tell him you are late for an appointment with your proctologist. — Benjamin Graham

If we stuck to the Constitution as written, we would have: no federal meddling in our schools; no Federal Reserve; no U.S. membership in the UN; no gun control; and no foreign aid. We would have no welfare for big corporations, or the "poor"; no American troops in 100 foreign countries; no NAFTA, GAT, or "fast-track"; no arrogant federal judges usurping states rights; no attacks on private property; no income tax. We could get rid of most of the agencies, and most of the budget. The government would be small, frugal, and limited. — Ron Paul

The big fear of the 1980s mortgage bond investor was that he would be repaid too quickly, not that he would fail to be repaid at all. The pool of loans underlying the mortgage bond conformed to the standards, in their size and the credit quality of the borrowers, set by one of several government agencies: Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae, and Ginnie Mae. The loans carried, in effect, government guarantees; if the homeowners defaulted, the government paid off their debts. — Michael Lewis

We have never really had absolute privacy with our records or our electronic communications - government agencies have always been able to gain access with appropriate court orders. — Dorothy Denning

Temporary teams of trusted people are generally sent to all Departments and to major agencies of government to assist in planning and to acquaint the incoming administration with the civil servants and bureaucracy that will remain in place in the new Administration. — Richard V. Allen

I have been drawn to Milton Friedman's argument for a negative income tax (NIT) that entirely replaces the existing system of income transfers and social services. The quid pro quo would be that the government withdraw altogether from every other form of interference in the organization of social life. Under such a plan the Department of Health and Human Services would become a check-writing office, and the social service agencies, bureaus, and offices scattered throughout government would close down. — Charles Murray

In government, you are pressed by the security agencies. They come to you with very good information, and they say, 'You need to do something.' So you do need the breath of scepticism, not cynicism, breathing on them. — David Blunkett

We need to understand the more government spends, the more freedom is lost ... Instead of simply debating spending levels, we ought to be debating whether the departments, agencies, and programs funded by the budget should exist at all. — Ron Paul

The words of the Declaration of Independence, as given effect by Washington ... are to be accepted as real, and not as empty phrases ... that in very truth this is a government by the people themselves, that the Constitution is theirs, that the courts are theirs, that all the government agents and agencies are theirs ... It is for the people themselves finally to decide all questions of public policy and to have their decision made effective ... We here, in America, hold in our hands the hope of the world. — Theodore Roosevelt

No-knock police raids destroy Americans' right to privacy and safety. People's lives are being ruined or ended as a result of unsubstantiated assertions by anonymous government informants ... Unfortunately, no-knock raids are becoming more common as federal, state, and local politicians and law enforcement agencies decide that the war on drugs justified nullifying the Fourth Amendment ... No-knock raids in response to alleged narcotics violations presume that the government should have practically unlimited power to endanger some people's lives in order to control what others ingest. — James Bovard

There is ... a huge tacit conspiracy between the U.S. government, its agencies and its multinational corporations, on the one hand, and local business and military cliques in the Third World, on the other, to assume complete control of these countries and "develop" them on a joint venture basis. The military leaders of the Third World were carefully nurtured by the U.S. security establishment to serve as the "enforcers" of this joint venture partnership, and they have been duly supplied with machine guns and the latest data on methods of interrogation of subversives. — Edward S. Herman

Our intelligence agencies will continue to gather information about the intentions of governments - as opposed to ordinary citizens - around the world, in the same way that the intelligence services of every other nation does. We will not apologize simply because our services may be more effective. — Barack Obama

No government in the world today has explicitly assigned the responsibility for planetary protection to any of its agencies. — Rusty Schweickart

The West is evidently no longer a safe place to express our opinions, unless we are prepared to meet a bloody end by doing so. The choice is ours, but we can be guaranteed that our government and law enforcement agencies will continue to support pedophilia, political correctness and multicultural genocide under the guise of religion. — Anita B. Sulser PhD

These people were content with their environment, and felt no particular objection to an impersonal steel and concrete landscape, no qualms about the invasion of their privacy by government agencies and organizations, and if anything welcoming these intrusions, using them for their own purposes. These people were the first to master a new kind of 20th century life. They thrived on the rapid turnover of acquaintances, the lack of involvement with others, and the total self-sufficiency of lives which, needing nothing, were never disappointed. Alternatively, their real needs might emerge later. — J.G. Ballard

All of us - employers, parents, schools, government agencies, and interns themselves - are complicit in the devaluing of work, the exacerbation of social inequality, and the disillusionment of young people in the workplace that are emerging as a result of the intern boom. Informal, barely studied, and little regulated, internships demand our scrutiny. We need a view of the entire sprawling system and its history, a glimpse of its curious blend of privilege and exploitation; we need to hear from interns themselves, and also from those who proffer internships, the people who sell them, the few who work to improve them, an the many who are unable to access them at all. only then can we consider ethical, legal alternatives to a system that is broken, a practice that is often poisonous. — Ross Perlin

The real reason to abolish departments like Energy and Education is not to promote efficiency, nor even to save taxpayers' money. It is that many agencies perform functions that are not Federal responsibility. The founders delegated to the Government only strictly defined authority in Article I, Section 8, of the Constitution. Search the entire Constitution, and you will find no authorization for Congress to subsidize the arts, finance and regulate education or invest tax revenues in energy research. — David Boaz

The Smithsonian Institute is one of the most popular agencies of government in the United States. — Norm Dicks

We have built as a government something called the National Cyber Investigative Joint Task Force, NCIJTF, where 19 federal agencies sit together and divide up the work. See the threat, see the challenge, divide it up and share information. — James Comey

All agree that, the first responsibility for the alleviation of poverty and distress and for the care of the victims of the depression rests upon the locality - its individuals, organizations and Government. It rests, first of all, perhaps, upon the private agencies of philanthropy, secondly, other social organizations, and last, but not least, the Church. Yet all agree that to leave to the locality the entire responsibility would result in placing the heaviest burden in most cases upon those who are the least able to bear it. In other words, the communities that have the most difficult problem, like Detroit, would be the communities that would have to bear the heaviest of the burdens. And so the State should step in to equalize the burden by providing for a large portion of the care of the victims of poverty and by providing assistance and guidance for local communities. Above and beyond that duty of the States the national Government has a responsibility. — Franklin D. Roosevelt

With respect to sticking accelerator pedals, we failed to connect the dots between problems in Europe and problems in the United States because the European situation related primarily to right-hand-drive vehicles. Toyota will increase its outreach to government agencies charged with protecting the safety of motorists and passengers. — Akio Toyoda

Many, if not most, of the difficulties we experience in dealing with government agencies arise from the agencies being part of a fragmented and open political system ... The central feature of the American constitutional system - the separation of powers - exacerbates many of these problems. The governments of the US were not designed to be efficient or powerful, but to be tolerable and malleable. Those who designed these arrangements always assumed that the federal government would exercise few and limited powers. — James Q. Wilson

Today's water institutions-the policies and laws, government agencies and planning and engineering practices that shape patterns of water use-are steeped in a supply-side management philosophy no longer appropriate to solving today's water problems. — Sandra Postel

Almost no one will accept responsibility for his or her role in precipitating a crisis: not leveraged speculators, not willfully blind leaders of financial institutions, and certainly not regulators, government officials, ratings agencies or politicians. — Seth Klarman

Obama needs Facebook to help him get reelected. Facebook needs Obama to keep them out of trouble with Congress and countless government agencies. — Daniel Lyons

As far as cutting jobs, you could cut whole agencies out of the federal government and not miss them. — Wayne Rogers

Because it is a monopoly, government brings inefficiency and stagnation to most things it runs; government agencies pursue the inflation of their budgets rather than the service of their customers; pressure groups form an unholy alliance with agencies to extract more money from taxpayers for their members. Yet despite all this, most clever people still call for government to run more things and assume that if it did so, it would somehow be more perfect, more selfless, next time. — Matt Ridley

I support ensuring that committed gay couples have the same rights and responsibilities afforded to any married couple in this country. I believe strongly in stopping laws designed to take rights away and passing laws that extend equal rights to gay couples. I've required all agencies in the federal government to extend as many federal benefits as possible to LGBT families as the current law allows. And I've called on Congress to repeal the so-called Defense of Marriage Act and to pass the Domestic Partners Benefits and Obligations Act. — Barack Obama

We may as well face the fact, and face it squarely, that we are too much governed. The agencies of government have multiplied, their ramifications extended, their powers enlarged, and their sphere widened, until the whole system is top-heavy. We are drifting into dangerous and insidious paternalism, submerging the self-reliance of the citizen, and weakening the responsibility and stifling the initiative of the individual. We suffer not from too little legislation but from too much. We need fewer enactments and more repeals. — Roland H. Hartley

Every year the Federal Government wastes billions of dollars as a result of overpayments of government agencies, misuse of government credit cards, abuse of the Federal entitlement programs, and the mismanagement of the Federal bureaucracy. — Chris Chocola

I want people in all the government agencies to be communicating with people because for me, we're in an era - which didn't exist before - where you can have instant access to information, and I want to see my government be more transparent. — Hillary Clinton

No one doing big business can avoid some contact with government agencies, regulators, and policy makers. — Mikhail Prokhorov

Her lips curved up then, as if she liked his answer. "Are you working tomorrow?"
Dax nodded. "Yeah. Training stuff." He was running weapons-training exercises with three of his guys and a small team of DEA agents. They liked to do joint operations, especially in Miami, where there was a smorgasbord of government agencies. But he couldn't tell her that.
"When do you get off?"
The way she said "get off" brought up all sorts of images. Hannah must have read his expression, because she shook her head. "Pervert," she muttered.
He grinned, liking the camaraderie between them, as if part of that wall she'd erected had been knocked down. — Katie Reus

We have to allow people in the states to make their own decisions, to get government agencies out of the way and let local people make decisions about what's best for them. — Pete Sessions

It is strange to me that most people assume companies will be imperfect (as they are), but they assume that government agencies will be perfect, which they are not. — Matt Ridley

Agribusiness - with its wicked powerful lobby and its infiltration of top bureaucratic posts - essentially runs roughshod over the government agencies that are supposed to monitor it. It's the rich fox guarding the filthy, overcrowded henhouse. — Jane Velez-Mitchell

I believe that space travel will one day become as common as airline travel is today. I'm convinced, however, that the true future of space travel does not lie with government agencies
NASA is still obsessed with the idea that the primary purpose of the space program is science
but real progress will come from private companies competing to provide the ultimate adventure ride, and NASA will receive the trickle-down benefits. — Buzz Aldrin

I am delighted to be involved in the digital divide campaign to ensure that every school is made aware of what steps it can take to address the digital divide as it affects local children, and provide a range of opportunities for ICT suppliers, government agencies, charities and other organisations to make a contribution. — Estelle Morris, Baroness Morris Of Yardley

In all, the American military, the C.I.A., the F.B.I. and other agencies used at least 1,000 ex-Nazis and collaborators as spies and informants after the war, according to Richard Breitman, a Holocaust scholar at American University who was on a government-appointed team that declassified war-crime records. — Anonymous

Now, years later and with Carnegie's blessing, Frick had launched his plan to further consolidate his rule over their industrial kingdom by destroying the Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers. The labor union, formed in 1876, was one of many that emerged in the industrial age to combat the cruel and oppressive treatment of workers. In the steel mills, workers typically put in 12-hour days, six days a week, for less than a dime an hour. There were no government agencies to inspect the work sites, no forms of compensation in case of injury, and more than 35,000 workers died each year in industrial accidents. Only the unions offered some hope by fighting for higher wages, eight-hour workdays, and improved working conditions. — James McGrath Morris

Efficiency was a concept foreign to most government agencies, not because there was anything wrong with the people, but because nobody had ever told them to do better. — Tom Clancy

There's something about dealing with government agencies that makes you feel like a criminal. — Herb Trimpe

The idea for the Guild first came up at a party. Your father and I met there and, well, I suppose that's a story all its own. But we were both frustrated by the media at the time. We set out to tell the truth when everyone else seemed set on choosing sides. We had grand ideas about how far we could reach. ... Back then, we knew we should be careful, but we had no idea how dangerous it would turn out to be. — Sonny And Ais

I think the over-militarization of local police forces is also true of the over-militarization of the federal government, so I don't really run and hide from the comment that I think there are 48 federal agencies that have SWAT teams. — Rand Paul

I have seen in Japan the voluntary submission of the whole people to the trimming of their minds and clipping of their freedom by their government, which through various educational agencies regulates their thoughts, manufactures their feelings, becomes suspiciously watchful when they show signs of inclining toward the spiritual, leading them through a narrow path not toward what is true but what is necessary for the complete welding of them into one uniform mass according to its own recipe. The people accept this all-pervading mental slavery with cheerfulness and pride because of their nervous desire to turn themselves into a machine of power, called the Nation, and emulate other machines in their collective worldliness. — Rabindranath Tagore

It is unclear exactly how many law enforcement agencies are currently using this capability, but it is reasonable to say that while resource limitations used to discourage the government from tracking you without a good reason, these constraints have largely disappeared. — Ron Wyden

My favorite term for a new kind of performance is "security theater." In this genre, we watch as ritualized inspections and patdowns create the illusion of security. It's a form that has become common since 9/11, and even the government agencies that participate in this activity acknowledge,off the record, that it is indeed a species of theater. — David Byrne

The government is commonly conceptualized as a business. If it is seen as a service industry, taxes can be seen as payment for services provided to the public. Those services can include protection (by the military, the criminal justice system, and regulatory agencies), adjudication of disputes (by the judiciary and other agencies), social insurance (as in Social Security and Medicare and various "safety nets"), and so on. Under — George Lakoff

accommodate, within reason, the religious practices of workers and applicants unless they impose an "undue hardship" on the business. It is the latest in a line of Supreme Court cases that have elevated religious rights over secular interests, whether exercised by powerful corporations, government agencies or prison inmates. The majority opinion by Justice Antonin Scalia stressed two points that outline the role religion can have in the workplace. Employers must do more than handle religious practices in the same way they do secular ones, he wrote, because federal law gives faith-related expression "favored treatment, affirmatively obligating employers" to accommodate things they could otherwise refuse. Moreover, he wrote, an applicant or employee alleging religious discrimination doesn't have to prove the employer was motivated by bias. — Anonymous

Then there are intelligence agencies in the US, which require billions of dollars worth of funds from the Congress and the government every year. This funding issue was not a big problem till the existence of the former Soviet Union but after that the budget of these agencies has been in danger. They needed an enemy. So, they first started propaganda against Usamah and Taleban and then this incident happened [11th September]. — Osama Bin Laden

The First Amendment and Fourteenth Amendment rights in the United States Constitution were being violated in Albany again and again freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, the equal protection of the laws I could count at least 30 such violations. Yet the president, sworn to uphold the Constitution, and all the agencies of the United States government at his disposal, were nowhere to be seen. — Howard Zinn

The harm done by the FDA does not result from defects in the people in charge - unless it be a defect to be human. Many have been able and devoted civil servants. However, social, political, and economic pressures determine the behavior of the people supposedly in charge of a government agency to a far greater extent than they determine its behavior. No doubt there are exceptions, but they are rare - almost as rare as barking cats. That does not mean that effective reform is impossible. But it requires taking account of the political laws governing the behavior of government agencies, not simply berating officials for inefficiency and waste or questioning their motives and urging them to do better. The — Milton Friedman

The built environment is shaped not only by private sector development pratices, but also by the honored and fascinating field of planning. Planners in towns, counties, regional and state government, consulting firms and in economic development agencies translate ideas about human settlements into concrete designs. They can be generalists or specialize in transportation, urban centers, rural land use, economic development and more. At its best, the planning profession aims to mediate tensions between people, social groups, and the natural environment by creating an orderly process for determining common values, shared priorities and elegant principles for transcending conflicts. Therefore planners may find themselves caught in some of the most challenging political crossfire to be found. But they also have the opportunity to educate many sectors and communities. — Melissa Everett

Subliminal perception is a subject that virtually no one wants to believe exists, and
if it does exist
they much less believe that it has any practical application ... The techniques are in widespread use by media, advertising and public relations agencies, industrial and commercial corporations, and by the Federal government itself. — Wilson Bryan Key

People like Mike McConnell don't really move from public office to the private sector and back again; that implies more separation than actually exists. Rather, the U.S. government and industry interests essentially form one gigantic, amalgamated, inseparable entity - with a public division and a private one. When someone like McConnell goes from a top private sector position to a top government post in the same field, it's more like an intracorporate reassignment than it is like changing employers. When McConnell serves as DNI he's simply in one division of this entity, and when he's at Booz Allen he is in another. It's precisely the same way that Goldman Sachs officials endlessly move in and out of the Treasury Department and other government positions with financial authority, or the way that health care and oil executives move in and out of government agencies charged with regulating those fields. In — Glenn Greenwald

If I had been in charge of reorganizing the government's security agencies into a homeland defense organization, I would have divided the responsibilities into two agencies: The Bureau of What the Fuck Was That? and The Department of What the Fuck Are We Gonna Do Now? — George Carlin

For me planting a tree is a very doable thing. It's not complicated, it doesn't require technology, it doesn't require much knowledge, but it can be a very important entry point into communities understanding how they destroy their own resources, but how they can also restore those resources, and not wait for their government or international agencies to come and help them. — Wangari Maathai

Well, you could take several stories off the buildings of most U.S. government agencies and we'd all probably be better for it too. — John Bolton

Nothing is worse, or more of a breach of the social contract between citizen and state, than for government officials, bureaucrats and agencies to waste the money entrusted to them by the people they serve. — Bob Riley

Two thirds of federal disaster aid is weather related,and though we cannot prevent bad weather, we are getting better at predicting it. The Commerce Department's NDRI will help save lives and protect property. We will be working closely with FEMA, the Interior Department and other federal agencies, with state and local governments and with our nation's businesses. — William M. Daley