From: jxxl@taurus.cs.nps.navy.mil (John Locke)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.misc
Subject: Re: Perot speaks
Date: 9 Apr 92 17:08:23 GMT
Reply-To: jxxl@cs.nps.navy.mil (John Locke)
Organization: Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey CA

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

It might be interesting to compare Perot's own words with Mr. Evers'
characterization of them. All quotes are from Perot's speech to the
National Press Club on March 18, 1992.

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.

Well, that sounds pretty fookin' opressive. Let's see how Perot describes
"the engineering process":

  In the engineering process, you do pilot projects.  I'd love to see three
  great health care plans being piloted with you, the American people,
  knowing all the details about all three, and the people responsible for
  each of the three having the ability to fine-tune, fine-tune, fine-tune,
  so that at the end of the pilot it is obvious which one best serves the
  American people.

More on "the engineering process" later.

# 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
# buttons to pick among different plans--possibly while President
# Perot himself described the plans on television.

Outrageous! But how does Perot describe it?:

  You've got to be fully informed.  How can you become fully informed?  Not
  with sound bites.  We've got to have, using television, an electronic town
  hall where we explain each of these issues we're talking about today in
  great detail to you, and with the current technology we have today, you
  can respond by congressional district and send a laser-like signal to every
  congressman in Washington about what you want as a way of clearing their
  heads. 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.

Looks like Evers lied to us. Perot's wants to inform the electorate, not
circumvent the Congress.

# 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.

Yup. He said that:

  Shorten the time for campaigns. Cut them to five months.

  No exit polls.  A criminal offense if anybody prints exit polls. And
  no data from East Coast polling booths until the last booth closes in
  Hawaii so that you don't influence the election.

# 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").

Perot:

  We've got the murder capital of the United States here [in Washington].
  Fifth- and sixth-graders in this city, 31 percent of them have witnessed
  a shooting, 43 percent have witnessed a mugging, 67 percent have witnessed a
  drug deal, and 75 percent have witnessed an arrest. Think about it. Is this
  an alabaster city gleaming undimmed by human tears? That's what the rest
  of the world thinks we are. That's what we had been. That's what we can
  be, but that is not what we are today. Now go to Singapore. There's a
  jewel of a city. When you are there, you're looking at tomorrow. Some of
  our cities, you leave and you think you've seen yesterday.

# 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."

This was not repeated in the NPC speech and owing to the distortions among
Perot detractors, I'll withhold judgement until I hear it from Perot.

# 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."

Ditto.

# 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.

Perot:

  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. Anybody that's a businessman will tell you that.  People
  in Washington do not know how to do this. Take a page out of FDR's book.
  Bring up people who do, pay them a dollar a year, pay them nothing.  Have
  them figure it out, get it done. Right now our government will not accept
  that kind of outside assistance. Until you change that, you won't have the
  people up here you need.  We think 10 minutes ahead. Japan thinks 10 years
  ahead.  I suggest we start thinking 15 years ahead and ace them.

# 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.

Perot:

  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.

# 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),

Perot:

  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.

#      *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),

Perot:

  The Brady bill is you register and what have you.  Well, the bad guys--
  that's not going to slow them down 10 minutes.  Your big-time dope dealer,
  you can buy guns from all over the world, right?  You got all the money
  in the world to go buy those guns.  You're going to have to have a much
  tighter plan.  Let's go through the engineering process.  Let's figure out
  what we have to do to really nail this thing. Go through each of these
  issues.  Number one, how do you fix it?  Get two or three plans. Experiment
  with those plans.  See which ones really work. Come to the American people
  over the electronic town hall and television and say, "All right, here we
  are on gun control"--one, two, three, four, five--"and we believe this is
  the answer."  You just send a bullhorn message back to Congress--we want
  that, we don't want that, we want plan B, whatever you want--and we will
  move swiftly and surely, fix that and move on to the next one.

#      *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),

God forbid. Think of all the beer parties they'll miss.

#      *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

#      *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).

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

Perot:

  ...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.

Yes. let's reform the government by getting them to work out their
problems with pencil and paper.

# H. Ross Perot might well make Amtrak run on time. But he'd run
# over our liberties to do it.

Uh-huh. Sounds like you've been sheepdipped in paranoia, Evers.

# Williamson M. Evers is a political scientist and a visiting fellow
# at Stanford University's Hoover Institution.

And a dunce.

John
Newsgroups: talk.politics.misc,alt.activism,soc.women,soc.college