Arjay Martin
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Here are thought-provoking quotes on Politics, Governance, Law, etc.

If you have other interesting ones to add - let me know at: [email protected] or on Twitter / Facebook

 

Note Well - some of these appear elsewhere on www.arjaymartin.com, as previously explained - a lot are US Centric - it'd be great if Australia could have some more Statesmen/Stateswomen in order for me to stick more up here, from here. 

"Sound information is required for sound decisions to be made" - Arjay Martin.

' The Government is good at one thing: 


It knows how to break your legs, hand you a crutch, and say, "See. if it weren't for the Government, you wouldn't be able to walk". ' - Harry Browne 

In 1901 there were 28 Bills Presented to the House of Representatives (Federal / Commonwealth Parliament), with 31 Parliamentary Sitting Weeks, resulting in 17 Acts.


In 2012 there were 210 Bills Presented to the House of Representatives (Federal / Commonwealth Parliament), with a mere 17 Parliamentary Sitting Weeks, resulting in 206 Acts. - Arjay Martin.

Common expressions, such as: "The courts have declared a statute invalid," sometimes lead to misunderstanding.  


A pretended law made in excess of power is not and never has been a law at all. Anybody in the country is entitled to disregard it.  Naturally he will feel safer if he has a decision of a court in his favour—but such a decision is not an element which produces invalidity in any law.   


The law is not valid until a court pronounces against it—and thereafter invalid.  


If it is beyond power it is invalid ab initio -  Then Chief Justice of the High Court of Australia (Latham, CJ).


South Australia v Commonwealth ("First Uniform Tax case") [1942] HCA 14; (1942) 65 CLR 373 (23 July 1942)  


'Government big enough to supply everything you need is big enough to take everything you have...  The course of history shows that as a government grows, liberty decreases' -  Thomas Jefferson.
'The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the Public with the Public's [own] money'. -  Alexis De Tocqueville (about the U.S. Republic America, but the same applies here to our Constitutional Monarchy),
'Don't Steal: The Government Hates Competition!' - Former U.S. Congressman,  Doctor Ron Paul.
'One of the Great Mistakes is to judge policies and programs by their intentions, rather than their results' -  Milton Friedman.  

I would also point out that the same could be stated of 'Stated Intentions for policies and programs'.

'Now bills were passed, not only for national objects, but for individual cases; laws were most numerous when the Commonwealth was most corrupt' -  Tacitus.

'Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other' - John Adams .

'In 1986 there were 

5, 528 Petitions presented to the House of Representatives, a part of the Parliament of the Commonwealth ('Federal Parliament'), 

with an unlisted number of signatures.


By 2000 we were down to 

289 Petitions presented to the House of Representatives, 

with 1, 411, 278 signatures.


Last year, 2012, there were a measly

120 Petitions presented to the House of Representatives, 

with 241, 587 signatures' - Arjay Martin.

'It will be of little avail to the people, that the laws are made by men of their own choice, if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood; if they be repealed or revised before they are promulgated, or under-go such incessant changes that no man, who knows what the law is to-day, can guess what it will be to-morrow' -  Alexander Hamilton.
I've been informed that as of 2011, that Federal Taxation Legislation runs into some 13, 000 pages long - that's right, Thirteen Thousand Pages - and around 9, 500, 000 words - NINE-AND-A-HALF-MILLION-WORDS!  How could this have even been read or comprehended?... 

For the fun of comparison - a quick Goggling of 'how many words are in the King James Bible?', that is of both the Old and New Testaments, reveals that there are 788, 258 words, of which 28364 of them are the word 'and', 28269 are 'the', 21257 are 'of', 12044 are 'that', are 11683 'to', and 11285 are the word 'in'! - Arjay Martin.

'The more numerous the Laws, the more corrupt the Government' -  Tacitus.