David Cay Johnston on Knowledge

"Citizenship is not something that you can outsource! ...We've got to do the work ourselves, and you've got to know, and you've got to talk to people."

"The super rich... largely control what the government knows about their incomes. And their friends in Congress have slashed budgets for inspecting the tax returns..."

"This is the anti-education presidency."

"He appointed as chief executive of his campaign, and, later, White House strategy chief, Steve Bannon, a known anti-Semite who, in his time at Network, published racist articles and bizarre conspiracy theories..."

"Trump doesn't know anything. ...Trump's own words and conduct ...and his comments on many issues ...show how appallingly ignorant he is. ...e does not have a clue about the Constitution's system of checks and balances."

"He has boasted about not paying banks that loaned him billions of dollars. He conned thousands of people desperate to learn... paying up to $35,000 to attend. ...hese professors turned out to be fast-food managers and others with no experience in real estate, the focus of the "university." Because of... law suits Trump paid back $25 million... so the scam would not follow him into the White House."

"Everything has rules... The rules that we set really determines who benefits and who bears the burden. ...e have all of these policies ...that largely determine what's happening. ...n America... we live in a society... where coming out of the Great Recession, a third of all increased income through 2012 went to the top 16,000 households, that's the 1% of the 1% , 95% of that income went to the top 1%, and the bottom 90 per cent's income actually fell... to the level of 1966... hat happened because the government rules, in many ways, from who gets access to quality education, to who gets proper heath care, to incarceration policies, are shaping what's happening to our society."

"So imagine somebody who has Donald's charisma, but first rate management skills... actually knows how to be an executive and get things done, how to prioritize, how to follow-up, how to select people and hold them accountable, and who doesn't believe you should be able to question what he does."

"Trying to get people to understand, as I'm going to try and do in my next book, that we can have a wholly different tax system that will actually make us wealthier... 'The Prosperity Tax'... It's going to be a tough sell because so many people have been brainwashed on this. ...Trying to tell them that we created this country so that we could tax ourselves."

"I said back in 2012, a year when the average income of the bottom 90% of Americans was lower, adjusted for inflation... than in 1967... that if you ran for president on the economics in my books you would win, because it champions the 90%, in fact it champions... the 99.5%; and that's what Donald did, and I know he watched me on television because he talked to other people about it, who told me..."

"What matters is that we get a new Congress. Donald Trump ran for president based on the economic policies that was in my trilogy on the American economy: Perfectly Legal, Free Lunch and The Fine Print. If you know that uses your tax dollars to build its stores and GE taxes its workers in Ohio to build factories, you know that because of my work; and it's now widespread... even if most people have forgotten I'm the guy brought all that to the fore years ago."

"When I became a reporter in the 60s in California, one of the very first lessons I learned was, your supposed to be watchdogging the government.... looking out for the taxpayers. If the politicians want to spend more money, why? What's it for? Why am I going to give up more of my sustenance to the government? If the government needs it, let's hear the case for it. ...ow we have city councils in big cities in the United States where no reporter goes for months at a time to the meetings; where the city budget doesn't get covered at all."

"Conservatism... means we take the things that we know work and we keep... and maintain them. ...f you want to try something new... you're careful... you're cautious... you're skeptical of it. If it turns out it works we'll try incorporating that, but we have a great skepticism about doing that. Well, that's not what we got. We got radical ideas that no one else in the world is doing. ...hese other countries are having fewer problems, and their middle class is better off, because they didn't do these radical things. They were in fact, conservative. Now the things they did, we might view as liberal, but they were conservative in hanging on to those things."

"We were promised that... markets would provide solutions. A lot of my book is a defense of markets. The Supreme Court says a market is where independent parties, neither under duress or coercion, and with knowledge of the facts, come to an agreement on a price. That's not what a lot of our new markets do. We now have markets designed to thwart competition... Adam Smith's invisible hand of the market, in which there are lots of sellers, and smart consumers who can compare prices, and this drives prices down... to the lowest level at which businesses can continue to operate. We've replaced that, through government policies, with practices that artificially restrict competition... raise prices... inflate profits; all under the guise of conservatism, and "the markets will solve our problems."