Mafia Democracy: How Our Republic Became a Mob Racket

by Michael Franzese

Over the years, Murtha figured out how to funnel federal dollars not only to his home state but also to his relatives, former colleagues, and business associates. Sound familiar, President Biden?

“What we have to do is drain the swamp in Washington, DC,” she said in 2006. I guess she meant every swamp but her own.

“Experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms, those entrusted with power have, in time and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny,” Thomas Jefferson wrote.

“Democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself.”

“The downfall of every civilization comes, not from the moral corruption of the common man, but rather from the moral complacency of common men in high places.”

In my state, California, there are thirty lobbying groups for every lawmaker.

Petition as a citizen, not bribe like a mobster.

“Capitalism is the legitimate racket of the ruling class.”

“In order to achieve the widest possible distribution of political power, financial contributions to political campaigns should be made by individuals and individuals alone,” Goldwater said. “I see no reason for labor unions—or corporations—to participate in politics.”

“If you have major responsibility for drafting legislation that directly affects particular companies, then you shouldn’t be trading in their stock,”

“neither the president nor Congress nor the public has any knowledge of whether the billions (if not trillions) of dollars of expenditures to produce and comply with regulations are improving outcomes for the American people.”

Trump signed an executive order requiring that for every new rule that increases regulatory costs, at least two old ones have to be eliminated to reduce regulatory costs by the same amount.