Quotables

‘He’s just a great guy.’

Former NBA star Dennis Rodman on North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un. The former athlete—who visited the reclusive Communist regime with the Harlem Globetrotters in late February—deflected questions about North Korea’s brutal labor camps that imprison as many as 200,000 people.

‘We don’t need to be having something like sequestration that’s going to cause these job losses—over 170 million jobs that could be lost.’

U.S. Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., on the effects of the March 1 budget sequestration. The United States does not have 170 million jobs. Waters later corrected herself, saying she meant 750,000 jobs, while an aide said she meant 170,000.

‘Raising the minimum wage ... tends to be more popular with the general public than with economists.’

Christina D. Romer, former chairwoman of President Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers, arguing in a New York Times op-ed that increasing the Earned Income Tax Credit would be a better anti-poverty policy than raising the minimum wage. President Obama proposed raising the minimum wage in his State of the Union address.

‘There are actually a group of charities that do pretty well on their own.’

Ken Stern, former CEO of NPR, arguing that public broadcasting could flourish without government support.

‘Greece is that kind of place. Even when you buy an island, even if you are the emir of Qatar, it takes a year and a half for all the paperwork to go through.’

Ioannis Kassianos, mayor of Ithaca, Greece, on the purchase of the Echinades Isles in Greece by the emir of Qatar, Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, for $11 million after 18 months of bureaucratic delays.