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When the entertainers of the right aren’t declaring their disgust with President Obama for groveling before foreign potentates, they’re pretending to fear him as a left-wing thug, an exemplar of what they call “the Chicago way.”

Thomas Frank

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Thomas Frank
Age: 59
Born: 1965
Born: March 21
Historian
Journalist
Kansas City
Missouri
Thomas Carr Frank
Way
Wings
Thug
Obama
Declaring
Aren
Entertainers
Call
Wing
President
Disgusting
Potentates
Fear
Pretending
Exemplar
Left
Chicago
Groveling
Right
Foreign
Disgust

More quotes by Thomas Frank

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Money never seems to be interested in strengthening regulatory agencies, for example, but always in subverting them, in making them miss the danger signs in coal mines and in derivatives trading and in deep-sea oil wells.
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Surrogate motherhood has been the subject of much philosophical and political dispute over the years.
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I was in a bad mood when I wrote that.
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Yes, Democrats can prove that America pays more for health care than other countries yes, they have won the dispute that private health insurance is needlessly expensive. But what they've lost is the argument that we are a society.
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Privatizing bits of the prison industry was a step in the right direction, but what we didn't have - until recently - were proper instruments for incentivizing the judiciary. That's what the 'kids for cash' judges were apparently experimenting with.
Thomas Frank
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People are born in a certain place, and in a certain society. I don't mean to sound like a determinist, but to think we're entirely free to do whatever we want betrays a certain class perspective. For most people who have to work for a living, and work at jobs under conditions they may not like, it's just not simple when it comes to freedom.
Thomas Frank
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Bad government is the natural product of rule by those who believe government is bad.
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Republicans run the machine when it's their turn, and then hand the wheel over to Democrats when the public has had enough.
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Conservatism is not a doctrine of contentment. Not a doctrine for the satisfied and the smug. It's a politics that's at war with the world.
Thomas Frank
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Vibrancy is so universally desirable, so totemic in its powers, that even though we aren't sure what the word means, we know the quality it designates must be cultivated. The vibrant, we believe, is what makes certain cities flourish.
Thomas Frank
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Public borrowing is costly these days, true, but interest rates on municipal bonds are still considerably lower than those borne by corporate debt.
Thomas Frank
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Thanks to a deal finalized in 2008, Chicago’s parking meters will be operated for the next 75 years by a group of investors put together by Morgan Stanley, including the sovereign wealth fund of Abu Dhabi.
Thomas Frank
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If your purpose is to understand the clique of people who dominate Washington today, the emails that really matter are the ones being slowly released by WikiLeaks from the hacked account of Hillary Clinton's campaign chair John Podesta.
Thomas Frank
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Americans have known about mounting inequality and king-sized Wall Street bonuses for years. But we also had an entire genre of journalism dedicated to brushing the problem off.
Thomas Frank
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As you watch the world crumble, try taking your Armageddon with this sprinkling of irony: Over the last three decades, business has got virtually everything it wanted, and its doomsday scenario from the 1970s has come true because of it.
Thomas Frank
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I think the WikiLeaks releases furnish us with an opportunity to observe the upper reaches of the American status hierarchy in all its righteousness and majesty. High-achieving colleagues attempting to get jobs for their high-achieving children. Foundation executives doing fine and noble things. Prizes, of course, and high academic achievement.
Thomas Frank
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The pursuit of the vibrant seems to be the universal job description of the nation's city planners nowadays. It is also part of the Obama administration's economic recovery strategy for the nation.
Thomas Frank
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The revival of the Right is as extraordinary as it would be if the public had demanded dozens of new nuclear plants in the days after the Three Mile Island disaster if we had reacted to Watergate by making Richard Nixon a national hero.
Thomas Frank
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During the financial crisis and bailouts of 2008, it probably occurred to very few average people that we were entering a period of hardship for billionaires.
Thomas Frank
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In small towns, bored teenagers turn their eyes longingly to the exciting doings in the big cities, pining for urban amenities like hipster bars and farmers' markets and indie-rock festivals. Like everyone else, they want the vibrant and they will not be denied.
Thomas Frank