From: fierro@uts.amdahl.com (Doug Fierro)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.misc
Subject: Re: Perot speaks
Date: 9 Apr 92 23:21:21 GMT
Organization: Amdahl Corporation, Sunnyvale CA

In article <1992Apr8.213227.921@morrow.stanford.edu> GA.JRG@forsythe.stanford.edu (June Genis) writes:
>Christian Science Monitor, scheduled to run 4/7/92
>
>Op-Ed Column on Ross Perot
>
>By Williamson M. Evers
>
>What would an America run by H. Ross Perot look like?  Perot, the
>latest candidate running for President of the United States, would
>run America from the top down as a business executive runs a
>business. He is a manager who wants to apply what he calls "the
>engineering process" not merely to trestles and cantilevers or
>electronic circuitry, but to political decisions governing our
>lives, property, and liberty.
>
>At the same time, Perot says he would want considerable feedback
>from the stockholders (the voters). In his March 18 speech to the
>National Press Club, in an interview the same day with Brian Lamb
>on C-SPAN, and on the March 25 Phil Donahue Show, Perot outlined
>plans to replace the representative institutions of a
>constitutional republic with what he calls an "electronic town
>hall." Apparently this would be some sort of "Love
>Connection"-style electronic plebiscite in which the public pushed

  I have read the C-SPAN transcript that Evers makes refrence to 
throughout his article, and he has read a lot into Perot's speech.

  No mention AT ALL is made by Perot to replace Congress; it is merely
a way to get the public's direct opinion for a given issue quickly
and efficiently.  The idea is to eliminate special intrest groups.
Some quotes from his actual speech to the National Press Club on the
subject:

---
  With this knowledge you can make sound decisions.  Then you can respond, and
  Congress will know.  If you say, "Well, generally, what are you talking about,
  Ross?" you saw the CBS program after the State of the Union.  You can do that
  sort of thing now.  You can do that sort of thing much refined now, and when
  interactive television comes, you can do it right on the bull's eye.

  You just wide around the special interests.  You say, "Even those dudes from
  Asia that are spending $400 million a year in this country?"  Yes.  They're
  going to listen to you because you own the country if you act like owners.  
  The American people will then understand the problems and the alternative 
  solutions.

---

Perot merely wants the people to be more informed on the issues, and have
a hands-on attitute when it comes to making decisions.

  I don't see anything wrong with this- in fact I think it will cause
more people to become active in this country's political process, and
apparently that scares the shit out of some people.

>Perot told Brian Lamb that he wouldn't let the Constitution stand
>in the way of federal election reforms he wants: a time-limit on
>campaigns and a ban on exit polls. Perot revealed something of his
>mindset when Lamb suggested that Perot's proposals would violate
>the First Amendment's protection of freedom of speech and the
>press. Perot replied: "We'd probably have to get about 30 lawyers
>on that one." If there's an obstacle, just send in the hired-gun
>attorneys. "We can amend this dang Constitution, if we have to,"
>Perot told Lamb.
>
>Nor would Perot let the Constitution interfere with his policies
>on street crime and on drugs. He told the National Press Club how
>much he admired authoritarian-run, crime-free Singapore ("a jewel
>of a city; when you're there, you're looking at tomorrow").

   This is definitely reading a lot into what Perot said.  He was
referring (in the speech) to how some cities are over-riden with crime, 
and he made a reference to Singapore as being a jewel of a city.  No where
in that speech did he say that he would take the same path Singapore did 
to achieve such a society.  Last time I checked, the President did not
have such powers.  

  I don't know what the paranoia is from people thinking that Perot 
is going to turn this country into another Nazi Germany or some kind
of dictatorship.  He has some hard-line views, and maybe that is what
is needed to get this country back on the right path, but he is also
a stauch supporter of our constitution.  From what he said at the same
speech:

-----
    I make no bones about it, and I think I speak for most everybody here.  I
    love this country, and I love the people in this country.  And I love the
    principles this country was founded on, and I am sick and tired of seeing 
    these principles violated. 
-----

 ...doesn't sound like a man who is going to plow over people's rights.

  And I know a lot of you would bring up his stance on Gun Control right
now; he wants to make it harder for criminals to obtain guns, and I don't
see anything wrong with that.  People who collect guns or hunt would not
be affected by any policy he might have.   Check out the quote from him
below later on in this article.
>
>The Constitution protects citizens against warrantless searches
>and confiscations of firearms; it requires "equal protection of
>the laws," regardless of race. In 1986, during a crime wave in
>Dallas, Perot set up a series of roundtable meetings between
>police officers and people in the news media. In those meetings,
>according to former Dallas bureau chief for Business Week Todd
>Mason in his 1990 biography of Perot, he "espoused cordoning off
>minority neighborhoods and searching door-to-door for weapons and
>narcotics."
>
>On NBC's "Today Show" on Oct. 25, 1989, Perot called for
>suspending constitutional rights and declaring martial law to
>combat the drug trade: "You can declare civil war and the drug
>dealer is the enemy. There aint't no bail....[Drug dealers] go to
>POW camp. You can start dealing with the problem in straight
>military terms. We can apply the rules of war."

  Unless you are very naive, it is basically a war out there today.
I know it doesn't look like that from the reporter's widow who wrote
this article, but Perot is not afraid to look and tell the truth:

-----
    Let's take a hard look at utopia.  We're the largest debtor nation on Earth.
    We're the most violent, crime-ridden nation in the industrialized world.
    Millions of innocent people have created their own prisons.  They have to 
    put bars on their windows, bars on their doors because we've abandoned 
    their neighborhoods to crime, and you don't have to go 10 minutes from 
    the White House or 10 minutes from the Capitol of the United States to see 
    that.  That's inexcusable.
-----
>Perot would be the Boss of America. The economy in America is a
>process of interchange between thousands of separate business
>firms as well as consumers. But when Brian Lamb asked Perot about
>economic issues, his answer revealed that he would treat each
>company as if it were a division of one big Perot-managed firm:
>USA, Inc. "You're going to have to work on [the jobs] problem on
>an industry-by-industry basis," he said. "You're going to then
>have to have a plan company-by-company, on the big companies in
>trouble." Such a national industrial policy would make as many
>mistakes as Soviet-style central planning. Can-do claims and
>executive-suite jargon can't disguise what amounts to subsidizing
>losers.

  Here is how Perot himself described his general recipe for solving
problems in this country; the following quote was an answer he gave
to someone who asked what he would have done to fix an ailing company
in the auto industry  (GM) :

----
    PEROT:  I don't know.  I'm not close enough to the details.  Let me tell 
    you, beware of anybody that gives you simple solutions to complex 
    problems.  Anything you want to ask a question about, let's go through the 
    engineering process.  Number one, take it to pieces.  Number two, find the 
    best system in the world that works, study it, take it to pieces.  Number 
    three, get the best people who know that industry.  You say, "No, wait a 
    minute, Ross.  Conflict of interest." I say fine.  You ought to have poets 
    and economists and lawyers do it?  No.  You've got to have people who 
    know the industry.  

    [...]
    We've got to have strategic plans industry by industry.  There are
    industries we've got to keep in this country, and we're losing them 
    right and left.  We've got to target them.  They will create millions of 
    jobs.  We've got to make sure that we're first and best.  In Japan, that's 
    called MITI [Ministry of International Trade and Industry].  Study it, 
    analyze it, improve on it, instead of trying to dismantle our companies.  
    In Washington, the principal contribution to American industry is to 
    try to break its legs every day.
-----

>
>In fact, subsidizing losers is Perot's program for education as
>well. Rather than advocating parental choice and privatization
>that would break the debilitating monopoly of the public school
>system, Perot advocates reforms that haven't worked (like higher
>pay for teachers). Doron Levin, in his book Irreconcilable
>Differences (1989), describes Perot during his 1983 educational
>reform efforts in Texas as supporting higher taxes "like some New
>Deal Democrat" in order to turn over more money to public-school
>teachers and administrators.

  Well, let's see what he really said at his most recent speech:

-----
     We spend over $400 billion a year on education including colleges, yet we
     rank at the bottom of the industrialized world in terms of academic 
     achievement.  We have the largest number of functional illiterates in the 
     industrialized world.  We spend, but, see, we've got all these things 
     that don't work for us.  We spend a lot on education that doesn't work.  

   [...]
     Our educational system has to be the finest in the world.  We know what
     needs to be done.  Let's stop reading to children in school.  Let's stop 
     having two-day summits for governors that don't amount to anything, and 
     let's get down to blocking and tackling and fixing it now because you 
     won't have the benefits for 15 to 20 years.  Every day is precious, and 
     we just talk about it.

-----

  Perot in 1984 also assisted the Governor of Texas in creating, sponsoring
and implementing programs which have resulted in major changes and 
improvments in public schools of his state.  I don't see any other
candidate so firmly committed to education, and with a track record to
prove it.

>Last but not least, under Perot, there'd be a crackdown:
>
>     *on people who dare to invest abroad ("[Capitalists'] job is
>to create and protect jobs in America--not Mexico," Perot says;
>such investment may bother Perot because it would fall outside the
>control of Perot's hands-on management of the economy in America),

  He has said more than once that protecting American jobs with the
huge deficit we have should be the number one priority of this country:

-----

  National Press Conference:

    Philosophically I'm for fair trade.  We don't have free fair trade.  The
    White House is all excited about the new trade agreement with Mexico.  This
    agreement will move the highest paid blue-collar jobs in the U.S. to Mexico.
    This is going to create serious damage to our tax base during this critical
    period.  We have got to manufacture here and not there to keep our tax base
    intact.  

    [....]

    spending beyond our means.  We've got to protect the job base.  "Why do 
    you come to that, Ross?"  That's where the taxes come from.  People  
    who are not working don't pay taxes.  With our $4 trillion debt, we 
    need all the taxes we can get.  You can't sit back and let the job base 
    deteriorate.  When you lay off a worker, never forget--you had a taxpayer, 
    right?  Now you've got a welfare user.  Do you understand that his welfare 
    check will be bigger than his tax deduction used to be?  It's a double 
    hit, and it's more than a double hit.  We need a growing job base to 
    produce a growing tax base.  We need taxpayers, not tax users.  We need
    strong growing companies to keep America at work, and it's got to be our 
    highest priority.

-----

>     *on people who dare to defend themselves and their families
>with firearms (Perot told the National Press Club that he favors
>gun controls "much tighter" than the Brady Bill),

  This is just a plain lie.  Here is what he said in that speech:
-----
    Q:  What is your position on federal gun control?  Do you support the
        Brady bill and a ban on assault weapons?

    PEROT:  You can't sound-bite this one either.  Now, when I was a boy,
    everybody had guns, but we didn't shoot one another.  Right, Sarah?
    Now everybody's got guns and they go out and shoot one another.  I grew
    up with some tough guys in the Depression.  We didn't carry guns to
    school.  A hundred and thirty-five children carry guns to school every
    day.  You can't have learning in that environment.  Obviously we've got
    to clean this up.  The Brady bill is you register and what have you.
    Well, the bad guys--that's not going to slow them down 10 minutes.

    [....]

    Gun control is a very complex issue, but we've got to think, what is the
    objective?  Get the guns out of the hands of the bad guys.  You don't care
    if people collect guns.  You don't care if people have guns for hunting.
    You care like the devil if somebody's just going to show up on the street
    and shoot you because he's bored, and that happens in our country now.
    We've got to fix that and fix it now.  That can be fixed, but you can't
    fix it ducking it and you can't worry about all these powerful lobbies.
    You've got to figure out what is good for the owners of the country and
    do it.
-----

   I support what he says; it makes sense and it needs to be done.

>     *on young people who dare to evade compulsory national
>service, building roads or emptying bedpans for the federal
>government (Perot told Nick Thimmesch in an interview published in
>the April 1983 Saturday Evening Post that the U.S. government
>should make it a "requirement" that "every 18-year-old" young man
>or woman should do one to two years of such work),

We already require compulsory national registration of males 18-25 for the
selective service.  A lot of other countries have a draft, and we
currently don't.  Compulsory national service would not be something
new to this country.  And such an act would require approval of the
people anyway.

>     *on people who are company presidents and dare to earn more
>than Perot finds acceptable (Perot says he favors confiscating CEO
>salaries that he considers excessive), and

  I would like to know the source of this; he did mention a scenario
in his NPC speech that referred to this- it was sort of a tongue-in-cheek
comment, and from what he said it didn't look like he supported such 
an idea:

-----
    In 1992, we're going to go in for another $400 billion.  You say, "Well,
wait a minute.  Let's just do some radical things and balance the budget this
year.  
  
   [... lots of radical suggestions deleted...]

   Okay, now, let's just go over and take it away from business.  Let's 
   confiscate the Fortune 500 companies' profits.  I don't have half of what 
   I need.  Well, that didn't work.  Okay, year in and year out we're 
   saying to the rich folks, "Let's just tax the rich and fix it."  Let's 
   confiscate the Forbes 400 wealth.  Doesn't give us nearly what we need, 
   but we solved a problem--we're all blue-collar now, right?  But we just 
   took all the wealth, and we don't balance the budget for one year.

-----

  His mention of "taking all the wealth" I believe is a clue that such
an idea would seriously curtail investment in this country.

>     *on people who dare to pay less in taxes than the IRS thinks
>they should (Perot told the National Press Club he wants the IRS
>to acquire a "decent computer system" that would ensure that it
>would take in $100 billion more in taxes; surely, under Perot's
>plan, the Big Brother IRS will inspect every financial detail of
>our lives, especially if we try to pay less than last year).

  Geez I can't believe how bad this guy quotes Perot out of context.
Here is the part of the speech where Perot answered a question about
fraud and waste in the government.  Also note that he doubts such
a system could ever be implemented due to all the bureaucracy:

-----
    Q:  Where would you cut federal spending in order to reduce the federal 
        debt?

    PEROT:  You mean before you had to really start thinking?  Well, the 
    president's own comptroller says we waste $180 billion a year through 
    fraud and mismanagement.  I saw a statement the other day that said, 
    "But, gee, it would take a billion dollars to find it."  Well, that's 
     a nice return!  And everybody that's ever been around the IRS says, 
     "You know, if you had a decent computer system we'd collect another 
     $100 billion a year."  Well, that can't cost very much compared to 
     picking up $100 billion, but by the time they get it through procurement, 
    we'll all be dead under the current system.

>Why does a feisty, outspoken business executive have such a Big
>Government agenda? Perhaps the answer lies in the fact that Perot
>is America's first poverty billionaire. Perot made his money by
>satisfying not ordinary customers in the marketplace, but
>welfare-state bureaucrats. He developed and administered computer
>systems to process Medicare and Medicaid claims in states around
>the country. Perot's Big Government agenda is really no surprise.
>What would be surprising would be if someone who made billions off
>of government medical programs didn't agree that medical care is a
>human right, as Perot did on the Phil Donahue Show on March 25.

  In fact, he does not agree that it is a human right; in his National
Press Club speech he favored means-testing for Medicare:

-----
    Now, if you want to really get controversial, just don't give folks that 
    don't need it their Social Security and Medicare.  For example, I'd get 
    along all right without mine.  Again, I had an economist whose name is a 
    household word now tell me that that would give you $100 billion a year.  
-----
>
>H. Ross Perot might well make Amtrak run on time. But he'd run
>over our liberties to do it.
>-------
>Williamson M. Evers is a political scientist and a visiting fellow
>at Stanford University's Hoover Institution.

   Well, it's nice to see both sides of an argument, isn't it?  I wonder
what political affiliation Mr. Evers is.  My guess is Libertarian :-)

  Anyway, after reading over Perot's National Press Club speech, I'm
convinced even more now that this is the man we need in the White House
if we ever hope to see real change.

   Doug
-- 
                                                     Doug Fierro
                                      |\             UTS System Software
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