100 Quotes by Zephyr Teachout

Politicians are expected to spend half their time talking to funders and to keep them happy. Given this context, it's not hard to see how a bribery charge can feel like a technical argument instead of a moral one.

My first job out of law school was representing people on death row in North Carolina, where I often saw the impact of hasty prosecutions.

The structure of private campaign finance has essentially pre-corrupted our politicians, so that they can't even recognize explicit bribery because it feels the same as what they do every day.

I care about dental care, and ending mass private and public surveillance, and funding schools so they can have small class sizes.

We need to ban outside income for elected officials. Transparency alone is not enough; it doesn't solve the problem of creating outside dependencies.

People traverse the dangerous journey to the US because of deep fear. They are often escaping brutality, even life-or-death situations.

Women are routinely demeaned, dismissed, discouraged and assaulted. Too many women's careers are stymied or ended because of harassment and abuse. In politics, where I have worked much of my adult life, this behavior is rampant.

Until the 1980s, candidates spent a fraction of their time talking to donors; just a few weeks a year, a little more right before an election. True, they'd fund raise from the wealthy interests, as they do now, but it was a minuscule part of their job: policy and constituent services were the heart of the work.

In my view, we need to break up Facebook from Instagram and the other potential competitors that Facebook bought up.