Desk 88 Quotes

“Conservators, in the words of John Kenneth Galbraith, are “engaged in one of man’s oldest exercises in moral philosophy, that is the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.”
― Sherrod Brown, Desk 88: Eight Progressive Senators Who Changed America

“I learned that, to a trade unionist, strikebreakers—scabs—are the lowest form of human life.”
― Sherrod Brown, Desk 88: Eight Progressive Senators Who Changed America

“the role of government was to help the little guy; the big guys can take care of themselves.”
― Sherrod Brown, Desk 88: Eight Progressive Senators Who Changed America

“Most of the progressive changes in this country—from civil rights to Medicare, from strong environmental laws to Obamacare—happened in the face of southern resistance, with few southern votes in the Congress.”
― Sherrod Brown, Desk 88: Eight Progressive Senators Who Changed America

“Never mind the fact that trickle-down economics never quite seemed to trickle down to white working-class voters either—that tax cuts and trade agreements favored Wall Street and the Republican donor class, that the real welfare fraud is large U.S. corporations’ fleeing overseas to hire cheap labor and avoid environmental rules, and then collecting a tax break from their allies in the White House and Congress.”
― Sherrod Brown, Desk 88: Eight Progressive Senators Who Changed America

“President Reagan ran on practically the same platform that I ran on in 1948: less federal intervention, less federal control, and less federal spending.”
― Sherrod Brown, Desk 88: Eight Progressive Senators Who Changed America

“By 1968 you can’t say ‘nigger’—that hurts you. Backfires. So you can say stuff like forced busing, states’ rights, and all that stuff.”
― Sherrod Brown, Desk 88: Eight Progressive Senators Who Changed America

“Mostly Gore lost because he was unwilling to sacrifice his principles for another term in the world’s preeminent legislative body. His political courage—his opposition to ultraconservative southern Supreme Court nominees, his willingness to confront special interests on the Senate’s tax-writing committee, and his early and sustained opposition to the Vietnam War—ultimately brought him down after thirty-two years on Capitol Hill: fourteen in the House of Representatives and eighteen in the Senate.”
― Sherrod Brown, Desk 88: Eight Progressive Senators Who Changed America

“He had lost touch with citizens of his state, a common illness that afflicts many an elected official.”
― Sherrod Brown, Desk 88: Eight Progressive Senators Who Changed America

“And just as in the George W. Bush years, war spending plus huge tax cuts conspired to produce gargantuan budget deficits.”
― Sherrod Brown, Desk 88: Eight Progressive Senators Who Changed America

“Gore opposed the tax cuts, always slanted toward the wealthiest Americans, because of the unmet spending needs of the United States—education, highways and bridges, health care, housing, water and sewer systems, and nutrition.”
― Sherrod Brown, Desk 88: Eight Progressive Senators Who Changed America

“Mississippi Governor Ross Barnett had tried to block the entrance to the University of Mississippi of James Meredith, an African American veteran of the United States Air Force. Georgia Senator Richard Russell, after whom one of the three United States Senate office buildings is named, lauded the “great and courageous governor of Mississippi” and lamented: “It is regretful that we have no one on the Supreme Court that recognizes the fundamentals of democracy.”
― Sherrod Brown, Desk 88: Eight Progressive Senators Who Changed America

“the poverty still far too common in rural South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi has meant significantly more social spending coming to those states—federal taxpayer dollars, of course—than to any other region of the United States.”
― Sherrod Brown, Desk 88: Eight Progressive Senators Who Changed America

“Speaking to Ohio Democratic Women in Akron in February 1946, he contrasted a conservatism that was “putting the brakes on progress” with the progressivism of Roosevelt and Truman. “Laws and institutions must go hand-in-hand with the progress of the human mind.” He warned that Republicans were “settling ever deeper into the mold of conservatism.” Instead Gore wanted to look forward; his populism led him to be pro-worker, but he was ambivalent about labor unions, at least in the first decades of his federal legislative service.”
― Sherrod Brown, Desk 88: Eight Progressive Senators Who Changed America

“true believers in the ability of government to do good—often find it difficult to limit themselves to a few issues.”
― Sherrod Brown, Desk 88: Eight Progressive Senators Who Changed America

“Gore was one of the last of Tennessee’s Roosevelt Democrats to hold office; men unafraid of the word liberal, if it meant they stood up against powerful corporations and political interest in favor of ordinary people.”
― Sherrod Brown, Desk 88: Eight Progressive Senators Who Changed America

“In his Sunday morning radio broadcast on WSM, Gore intoned, “Senator McCarthy continues on his reckless and irresponsible way … The time for proving his many charges is overdue. He hasn’t proven one yet.”
― Sherrod Brown, Desk 88: Eight Progressive Senators Who Changed America

“nineteenth-century Populist Party leader Tom Watson as he spoke to his white and black followers: “The accident of color can make no difference in the interest of farmers, croppers, and laborers … You are kept apart that you may be separately fleeced of your earnings.”3”
― Sherrod Brown, Desk 88: Eight Progressive Senators Who Changed America

“The Bourbons’ “basic goal,” Gore believed, “was to lure Northern capital and industry southward by promising what was to become a standard package: tax benefits; a large, docile, and non-union pool of cheap labor; minimal restrictions and regulations; and sympathetic local governments and police.”
― Sherrod Brown, Desk 88: Eight Progressive Senators Who Changed America

“Fundamentally, special-interest Washington does not understand—or care to understand—collective bargaining: that workers give up wages today so that they can provide for their health care and a secure retirement; those were the legacy costs that Republican senator after Republican senator criticized.”
― Sherrod Brown, Desk 88: Eight Progressive Senators Who Changed America

“To New York voters, Lehman’s courage and honesty shone through. Herbert Lehman, the labor official George Meany wrote, “was the ideal public servant … He had none of the average politician’s guile, the average diplomat’s evasiveness, the average banker’s greed, or the average statesman’s aloofness.” For Herbert Lehman, life was always about public service.”
― Sherrod Brown, Desk 88: Eight Progressive Senators Who Changed America

“fight is worthwhile,” Lehman said, “even if you know you’re going to lose it. It’s the only way to crystallize attitudes, educate people.”
― Sherrod Brown, Desk 88: Eight Progressive Senators Who Changed America

“An arbitrary age limit for children should not be set by the legislature or Congress “any more than you can tell when a pig becomes a hog,” stated W. W. Kitchin, the legal counsel for the Cotton Manufacturers in 1916. Yes, he actually said that. That same year, a company doctor testified, “Eleven hours’ work a day is not excessive for a twelve-year-old girl.”
― Sherrod Brown, Desk 88: Eight Progressive Senators Who Changed America

“In 1957, General Douglas MacArthur said, “Our government has kept us in a perpetual state of fear—kept us in a continuous stampede of patriotic fever—with the cry of a grave national emergency … Yet, in retrospect, these disasters seem never to have happened, seem never to have been quite real.”
― Sherrod Brown, Desk 88: Eight Progressive Senators Who Changed America

“Democracy implies government by the people. Aristocracy implies a government of the rich … and in those words are contained the sum of party distinction.”
― Sherrod Brown, Desk 88: Eight Progressive Senators Who Changed America

“A man doesn’t think of change when he is ignorant of any alternative.”
― Sherrod Brown, Desk 88: Eight Progressive Senators Who Changed America

“the public has always loved Social Security; they do not want it to change; they like it the way it is. In fact, the only real criticism from the public is that the cost of living adjustment (the COLA) is inadequate in keeping up with rising costs.”
― Sherrod Brown, Desk 88: Eight Progressive Senators Who Changed America

“The public intuitively understood that Social Security, as FDR’s grandson James Roosevelt, Jr., wrote, “could not be better managed. It returns more than 99 cents to beneficiaries on every dollar collected … I dare you to find a private retirement plan that can claim that.” In a matter of only a few weeks, President Bush’s privatization scheme was dead.”
― Sherrod Brown, Desk 88: Eight Progressive Senators Who Changed America

“The minimum wage has been increased dozens of times, but not often enough to keep pace with the cost of living.”
― Sherrod Brown, Desk 88: Eight Progressive Senators Who Changed America

“He knew how dignity of work meant that a hard day’s labor should provide a decent standard of living.”
― Sherrod Brown, Desk 88: Eight Progressive Senators Who Changed America