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For The Trustees To Turn Away From The Entirely Reasonable Request Of The Students That A Hearing-impaired Individual Be Made President Of The College Is A Very Unfortunate Expression Of Insensitivity.

-Barney Frank

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For The Trustees To

Barney Frank

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For The Trustees To Turn Away From The Entirely Reasonable Request Of The Students That A Hearing-impaired Individual Be Made President Of The College Is A Very Unfortunate Expression Of Insensitivity.

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Serving In Congress Is Like Having A Second Shot At High School.

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A Leader Can`t Move A Country That`s Not Ready. You Can`t Make The Waves, But When You See Them Coming, You Can Help Direct Them.

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The People Who Started The American Government, The Founders Of The Constitution, Didn't Like Political Parties But They Were Forced To Start Them. Nobody Ever Created Political Parties In England, They Evolved. And There Do Tend To Be Two General Tendencies That Focus Around How Much Government You Think You Need.

Particularly Marijuana, I Think Is A Great Hypocrisy. I Think Frankly It Contributes To A Good Deal Of The Sense Of Unfairness You Have Among Younger People Who Are Told They Shouldn't Do This Because It’s Got All These Negative Effects, But Then Older People Are Engaging In All Kinds Of Things That Probably Have A Greater Impact On People.

For The Trustees To Turn Away From The Entirely Reasonable Request Of The Students That A Hearing-impaired Individual Be Made President Of The College Is A Very Unfortunate Expression Of Insensitivity.

I Smoke A Cigar Or Two A Day. I Did Have A Brownie Once. It Made Me Sleepy.

Take Free Speech: Most Of The Tough Cases On Free Speech Involve Very Unpleasant People Saying Very Obnoxious Things.

I Am Very Proud Of The Role I Played In Getting Legal Equality For People Who Are Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual And Transgender, And In Helping Get Rid Of The Prejudice By Being Visible About It, Helping To Block The Conviction Of Bill Clinton Of Impeachment.

In The Debate Between Those Who Believe In Essentially Unregulated Markets And Others Who Hold That Reasonable Regulation Diminishes Market Excesses Without Inhibiting Their Basic Function, The Subprime Situation Unfortunately Provides Ammunition For The Latter View.

Nato Was A Wonderful Idea. It Was Formed In 1949. We Are As Far Away From Nato As Nato Was When It Was Done In Time From The Presidency Of Grover Cleveland.

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Donald Trump Has Done More For Getting People To Understand The Importance Of Public Policy That Respond To Public Needs In An Affirmative Way Than Anything We Could Have Done On Our Own.

Well, Many Of Us Believe That Excessive Media Concentration Is A Subject That Ought To Be Addressed, And It Is, Of Course, The Intention Of The Majority Party Not To Allow That To Be Discussed.

Trying To Avert Foreclosures, Once You Can't Just Force The Banks To Do It As A Condition Of Getting Aid, Means That You Have To Put Some Public Money Into It Or You Have To Do Other Things That Are Politically Unpopular. From The Macroeconomic Standpoint There Is Overwhelming Need To Help People Reduce What They Owe So That We Don't Get The Foreclosures And We Don't Get People Kicked Out Of Their Homes. On The Other Hand, There Is Great Resistance Politically To Helping People, Not All Of Whom Would Be Worth Recipients Of The Help.

The Most Active People In The Country Know Different Things, And Because Each One Tends To Hear Mostly And Deal Mostly With People With Whom They Agree, They Are Reinforced Not Simply In The Conviction That They Are Right, Which Is Totally Appropriate, But That They Are The Majority. So You Have Both Sides, The Left And The Right, Thinking That The Majority Of The Country Is Really With Them.

I'm Used To Being In The Minority. I'm A Left-handed, Gay Jew. I've Never Felt, Automatically, A Member Of Any Majority.

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Funny Graduation

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When Community Action Was Put Into Federal Law In The Early Sixties As Part Of The Effort To Combat Poverty And Social Injustice, I Supported It Intellectually.

Today, Many People Take For Granted The Notion That People Whose Lives Are Going To Be Very Heavily Affected By Public Policies Should Have A Say In How They Are Formulated And Carried Out.

These Two Entities Fannie Mae And Freddie Mac Are Not Facing Any Kind Of Financial Crisis. The More People Exaggerate These Problems, The More Pressure There Is On These Companies, The Less We Will See In Terms Of Affordable Housing.

Affordable Housing

Ronald Reagan Believes In The Free Market Like Some People Believe In Unicorns.

I Do Not Believe That The Federal Government Should Treat Adults Who Choose To Smoke Marijuana As Criminals.

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The Public Is Ready Now For A Safety Net For The Middle Class, Something Not Just For The Poor, But For Everyone Who Will Need Help, From Time To Time, In Order To Own A Home, Educate Their Kids, Keep Themselves Healthy Or Have Something To Retire On.

You Know, When I Was In College, There Was A Big Debate: Do Unions Raise Wages? Well, With Regard To Industrial Unions, There Were Arguments Back And Forth -- International Competition. It Is Now Clear, I Think, That Whether Or Not You Think Unions Raised Wages 50 Years Ago, The Absence Of Unions And Their Weakness That Is Inflicted By Anti-union Public Policy Depresses Wages. The Fact Is That People Who Are Not Represented, In The Service Industries In Particular, Are The Victims Of Policies Which Depress Their Wages.

But It Is Also Clear That Left Entirely Untouched By Public Policy, The Capitalist System Will Produce More Inequality Than Is Socially Healthy Or Than Is Necessary For Maximum Efficiency.

Legislators Have A Formal Set Of Responsibilities To Work Together, But There's No Hierarchy.

Working Together

And Unless You Think There Is A Serious Chance You're Going To Jail, Don't Listen To Your Lawyer.

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Alec Baldwin Has Done This Great Donald Trump. I Wish Somebody Would Hire Leslie Jordan To Play Jeff Sessions. The Only Way Is To Put The Two Of Them Out There. It Is The Most Bizarre, Pathetic Silliness I Can Imagine At What Should Be The Most Serious Deliberations In The American Government.

The Fact That Theyre A Congressionally Chartered Group Should No More Incline People To Give To That Group Than The Fact That Its National Pickle Month Should Make Them Eat More Pickles.

The Problem With The War In Iraq Is Not So Much The Intelligence As The Stupidity.

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Dealing With Stress

It Is, Of Course, Further Indication That A Fundamentalist Right Has Really Taken Over Much Of The Republican Party, People Might Cite George Bush As Proof That You Can Be Totally Impervious To The Effects Of Harvard And Yale Education.

People Are Entitled To The Presumption Of Innocence.

Presumption Of Innocence

They Have To Convert Our Agenda Into Something Aggressive. Two Guys Wanting To Be Happy Together Are Invading Their Marriages. Helping A Kid Who's Getting Beaten Up In School Is Promoting Homosexuality. If You Gave Me A Million Dollars, I Wouldn't Know How To Promote Homosexuality.

I Will Tell You, I'm A Lousy Cook, But I Think I'm A Pretty Good Judge Of A Good Meal.

There Is A Correlation Between People Who Attack Same-sex Marriage And Have Difficulty Maintaining Their Own.

There Is Parallels These Two Great Men John Mccain And Ted Kennedy Of Great Impact In The Senate, You Don`t Agree With Everything They Did But Certainly They Had Major Impacts As Senators. Their One Major Political Failure Not To Be Elected President But That Didn`t Stop Them From Having Enormous Impact And At Roughly The Same Age, Exactly The Same Disease. It`s Kind Of A Poignant Sad Parallel.

We Were Giving Advice For The Single-worst Idea To Come Forward From A Group That's Been Rife With Them, It Would Be This: The Idea Is This: Let's Make The Tax Code Of America Better For Very Rich People; Let's Give Substantial Tax Relief To The Richest People We Can Find. Forget About The Person Making $40,000 A Year And Paying Social Security Payroll Tax. Forget About All Those Other People Paying Income Tax; We're Here To Give Tax Relief To The Richest 2% Of America.

I Hope We Will Not So Characterize Religious People As Being So Narrow And So Biased Towards People Not Of Their Own Religion That They Cannot Even Work With Them In This Common Cause To Which You Say They Are Committed.

We All Have The Right To Call Each Other Names. Rudeness Is A Deeply Held Constitutional Value.

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