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Thomas Frank Biography

Thomas Carr Frank (born March 21, 1965) is an American political analyst, historian, and journalist. He co-founded and edited The Baffler magazine. Frank has written several books, most notably What's the Matter with Kansas? (2004) and Listen, Liberal (2016). From 2008 to 2010 he wrote "The Tilting Yard", a column in the Wall Street Journal.

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Thomas Frank Quotes

The thing now is to seem concerned in a vaguely social-democratic way.

Concerned, Democratic, Social, Vaguely, Way

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.

Fund, Including, Parking Meters, Together, Years

Conservatives may believe that impoverished borrowers destroyed Wall Street. But we liberals will not fool ourselves that stupid bankers sank conservatism for good.

Believe, Conservatism, Street, Stupid, Wall

Under the administration of George W. Bush, you will recall, federal spending grew pretty significantly. At the same time, the number of people directly employed by the federal government shrank. One of the factors that explained the difference was contracting.

Differences, Government, Numbers, Pretty, Same, Shrank

Just as the financial crisis has created toxic assets and 'zombie' financial institutions, so has it transformed conservatism into a movement of the living dead.

Created, Movement, Toxic, Zombie

In America, we no longer have an institutionalized, organized way of calling business to task - of taking them to account for what they've done - and this is especially true in the cultural realm.

America, Calling, Realm, Task, Tasks, True

[The right] may never bring prayer back to schools, but it has rescued all manner of rightwing economic nostrums from history's dustbins. Having rolled back the landmark economic reforms of the sixties (the war on poverty) and those of the thirties (labor law, agricultural price supports, banking regulation), its leaders now turn their guns on the accomplishments of the earliest years of progressivism (Woodrow Wilson's estate tax; Theodore Roosevelt's anti-trust measures). With a little more effort, the backlash may well repeal the entire twentieth century.

Prayer, School, Supports, Thirties, War

Whereas liberals are thought to erupt self-righteously whenever they feel like it, conservatives believe that they themselves are never permitted to say what they really think.

Believe, Conservatives, Like, Self, Thinking, Thought

Governing was always difficult for conservatives, but as they return to the opposition, they are rediscovering their skill at blame evasion.

Skills, Return, Blame, Rediscovering, Difficult

Most of Roosevelt's innovations have been the law of the land for 70 years now, and yet we are still a free society free enough, that is, to allow tens of thousands of protesters to gather on the National Mall and to broadcast their slogans and speeches to the world via C-SPAN.

Broadcast, Land, Law, Protesters, Society, Years

The great fear that hung over the business community in the 1970s was death by regulation, and the great goal of the conservative movement, as it rose to triumph in the 1980s, was to remove that threat - to keep OSHA, the EPA, and the FTC from choking off entrepreneurship with their infernal meddling in the marketplace.

Business, Goal, Rose, Infernal, Marketplace, Remove

In the last James Bond movie, the villain was a culture captain, a tycoon of culture, a Murdoch figure. It's not as if people don't know what is going on.

Captain, Culture, Movie, People, Tycoons

In the subprime mortgage industry, bankers handed out iffy loans like candy at a parade because such loans meant revenue and, hence, bonuses for executives in the here-and-now.

Bankers, Bonus, Iffy, Mortgage

While Democrats fussed with the details of health care reforms, conservatives spent months telling the nation that the real issue is freedom, that what's on the line is American liberty itself.

Conservatives, Fussed, Issues, Liberty, Line, Real

Markets are interested in profits and profits only; service, quality, and general affluence are different functions altogether. The universal, democratic prosperity that Americans now look back to with such nostalgia was achieved only by a colossal reigning in of markets, by the gargantuan effort of mass, popular organizations like labor unions and of the people themselves, working through a series of democratically elected governments not daunted by the myths of the market.

Gargantuan, Government, Like, Myths, Organization, People

There are few things in politics more annoying than the Right's utter conviction that it owns the patent on the word 'freedom' that when its leaders stand up for the rights of banks to be unregulated or capital gains to be untaxed, that it is actually and obviously standing up for human liberty, the noblest cause of them all.

Annoying, Capital, Leader, Liberty, Politics, Rights

What is at stake in the debate over health care is more than the mere crafting of policy. The issue is now the identity of the Democratic Party.

Democratic, Identity, Issues, Party, Stake

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.

Conservatism, Contentment, Doctrine, Smug, War

When done right - or wrong, depending on how you look at it - deficits remove liberal options from the table. Suddenly there's no money for building bridges or inspecting meat. Not surprisingly, running up a deficit is a strategy favored by the wrecking crew for its liberal-killing properties.

Bridges, Look, Meat, Running, Wrong

Promises to get beyond partisanship are the most perfunctory sort of campaign rhetoric, almost as empty as the partisanship itself.

Campaigns, Empty, Partisanship, Perfunctory, Promise, Sort

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