Political Quotes

“The 114th Congress will be remembered as the Congress that tried and tried again to unravel the extraordinary and great achievements of that American President of a century ago, Theodore Roosevelt. President Roosevelt was a Republican. He believed in capitalism, he believed in profit, he believed in commerce. But he understood something that this Congress seems to forget: The axiom that power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely, applies to Wall Street and to large corporations as much as it does to oligarchs and despots. Mr. Speaker, this legislation does end any realistic opportunity for consumers who are hammered by corporate negligence or irresponsibility or outright deceit from joining together to get the justice they are entitled to by using the only practical means available to obtain it, the class action lawsuit. Instead, this legislation would deny class action status to all consumers affected by the exact same corporate misconduct--say, faulty brakes--unless they suffered the identical injury, a broken arm, but not a broken leg. In a case of current moment, of real corporate misconduct and actual deceit, Volkswagen lying about its emissions control and, really, fudging the numbers on its mileage, the 3,000 Vermonters and 11 million Americans would have to file individual suits unless each suffered the same exact economic loss. What is the justification for building this barrier to access to the courts? There is none.…”