Committee Quotes - page 16
The wisdom of crowds works when the crowd is choosing the price of an ox, when there's a single numeric average. But if it's a design or something that matters, the decision is made by committee, and that's crap. You want people and groups who are able to think thoughts before they share.
Jaron Lanier
Your Senate Committee on Finance conducted two budget hearings on this matter, Mr. President, to gain a more thorough knowledge on the various projects involved in this measure. All national government agencies and government-owned or controlled corporations that shall implement the said projects served as resource persons for the consecutive hearings.
Francis Escudero
The Senate version of the 2015 National Budget will define savings in FULL COMPLIANCE WITH THE SUPREME COURT DECISION on the Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF) and the Disbursement Acceleration Program (DAP). Our committee accepted all of Senator Miriam Defensor Santiago's points and took note of her concerns. I believe Senator Santiago based her speech on the NEP version, NOT the one the Senate has amended. However, the Senate version is never going to adopt the version of the NEP as regard to their definition of savings.
Francis Escudero
As the year draws to a close, the Congress of the Philippines is once more mandated by the Constitution to enact a national budget for the ensuing year. Section 29(1), Article VI of the Constitution provides that "No money shall be paid out of the Treasury except in pursuance of an appropriation by law.” And so today, Mr. President, I rise to sponsor, as Chairman of your Committee on Finance, the General Appropriations Bill for Fiscal Year 2015.
Francis Escudero
• Again in keeping with the Supreme Court ruling on Augmentation, the committee proposed the insertion of the following statement in Sec. 70 entitled "Rules in the Realignment of Allotment Classes and Reprioritization of Items of Appropriations which states that: "In all cases of realignment, the existence of an appropriation in the Object of Expenditure and Allotment Class is necessary for realignment.”.
Francis Escudero
John Baldwin was Examined before the Reconstruction Committee - He was asked if Jeff Davis could be tried before a Jury in the South & convicted of Treason. He replied - Yes - that Mr. Davis (& himself) had been guilty of treason & if they were tried for it he saw no reason why they shouldn't be convicted. Tell Hugh (for me) that the difference between me & him is that I committed Treason & am proud of it - he committed Treason & is ashamed of it. Baldwin's testimony was in 1867. Dick Smith in [struck: the] an Editorial [inserted: in the Enquirer] was very severe on him [struck: on him]: Baldwin replied in a letter. If Sam Yost has files of his paper no doubt you can find it.
John S. Mosby
I worked with Ted Kennedy. He was the chairman of my committee, and I loved Ted Kennedy. But on this issue, when you have one of the large Latino organizations in America saying vote no and you have the AFL-CIO saying vote no and you have leading progressive Democrats, in fact, voting no, I don't apologize for that vote.
Ted Kennedy
If anything were required to convert me to the need for Scottish Home Rule, I think it was that solitary experience I had upon a Private Bill Committee... [P]urely local, and if I may say purely provincial questions ought to be delegated to purely provincial and-I am not afraid to use the word-national assemblies.
David Lloyd George
Do you remember that there was going to be a study released by the Senate, that the senator from Iowa or from Kansas who was the Republican head of the Senate Intelligence Committee was going to do this study to determine whether the administration had, in fact, misused the intelligence information to mislead us into the war with Iraq? Well, I've never seen that study. I'd like to know where that study is. I'd like to know why we've spent three years investigating Scooter Libby, when we should have been investigating why this country went to war in Iraq.
Wesley Clark
The key to the four modernizations is the modernization of science and technology. Without modern science and technology, it is impossible to build modern agriculture, modern industry or modern national defence. Without the rapid development of science and technology, there can be no rapid development of the economy. The Central Committee of the Party decided to call this national science conference in order to bring home to the Party and country the importance of science, to map out a programme, to commend advanced units and individuals and to discuss measures for speeding up the development of science and technology in China.
Deng Xiaoping
What still needs to be accomplished can be summed up by the lovely album released on my birthday last year by Solange-A Seat at the Table. How much significant, systemic progress and change can be made if you still don't have a seat at the table? Walter Mosley was organizing around this question in the early 90s via PEN's Open Book Committee, which I believe he founded, to help bring more people of color into the publishing industry. Why is that vital? Because different people at the table ask different questions, seek different voices, and have a different relationship to all the things we are told are "universal.” Intersectionality matters. Consider what work we wouldn't get to read if other talented people didn't get a seat at the table, a chance to guest edit, an opportunity to curate, to be a juror, to host, promote, celebrate, read and review, be reviewed, speak ...
Walter Mosley
Any public committee man who tries to pack the moral cards in the interest of his own notions is guilty of corruption and impertinence. The business of a public library is not to supply the public with the books the committee thinks good for the public, but to supply the public with the books the public wants. ... Censorship ends in logical completeness when nobody is allowed to read any books except the books that nobody can read. But as the ratepayer is mostly a coward and a fool in these difficult matters, and the committee is quite sure that it can succeed where the Roman Catholic Church has made its index expurgatorius the laughing-stock of the world, censorship will rage until it reduces itself to absurdity; and even then the best books will be in danger still.
George Bernard Shaw
Some years ago I was at a committee meeting where one of the group suddenly launched upon one of the other members an astounding onslaught of abuse, vilification, and loathing from which only failing breath and imminent seizure caused him to desist. It was in fact my first experience of academic debate. The chairman, visibly shaken by the vehemence of this tirade, offered the right of reply to the person attacked, who then spoke as follows: "Mr Chairman, I did not say what I said with the specific and deliberate intention of reducing my colleague to spluttering apoplexy; that this has in fact happened I can only regard as a bonus."
From that meeting I took away an important recognition - the lurking Bonus Factor In Otherwise Unpromising Situations.
Brian Matthews
These people can't even wrap up genocide. We've been hearing about this slaughter in Darfur forever - and they still haven't finished. The aggressors are moving like termites across that country. It's like genocide by committee. Who's running this holocaust in Darfur, FEMA? This is truly a war in which we have absolutely no interest. But liberals want our boys to go fight scimitar-wielding dervishes.
Ann Coulter
