Ross Perot missed his calling. Instead of a billionaire entrepreneur, he should have been a teacher.
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We got a good glimpse of his professor side when he hauled out his charts during his presidential campaigns in 1992 and 1996.
Now, he’s back with Perotcharts.com, a Web site launched this week to support his view that the budget of the U.S. government “has reached its tipping point.” The spending trend for entitlement programs is not sustainable, he says in a video on the site. The country hasn’t seen such economic challenges since the Great Depression.
“With a personal investment of some $300,000, Perot has built a real teaching tool,” columnist David Broder wrote of Perot’s site.
Broder is right. The site offers a great primer on the Federal budget and its challenges. Along with charts detailing optional and mandatory spending, such as Social Security, Perot offers some homespun comparisons. For citizens trying to grasp the magnitude of a $9.4 trillion national debt, Perot suggests thinking of a train of boxcars 1,400 miles long loaded with dollar bills.
To illustrate the difficulty of the job ahead in taming the budget, Perot invokes the Pioneers Creed: “The cowards never started. The weak died on the way. And only the strong survive.”
(Virginia Senator Jim Webb also writes about the Pioneers Creed in his 2004 book, Born Fighting. Webb is often mentioned as a possible running mate for Democrat Barack Obama.)
Perot, 77, says his site is non-partisan, but it has the look and feel of a candidate site: waving flags, patriotic music, bald eagles, Mount Rushmore, Lady Liberty, lots of red, white & blue.
It’s hard not to think back to when Perot ran for president. He thought the country was in financial trouble then, too, and partly blamed the first George Bush. Running as an independent in 1992, Perot received about 19 percent of the national vote. In 1996, he received about 9 percent. Both times, a Democrat, Bill Clinton, won.
In this year’s presidential primaries, Perot supported Mitt Romney. He has long feuded with John McCain.
Early this year, Perot called Newsweek’s Jonathan Alter and ripped McCain for the way McCain treated his first wife. Carol McCain had been in a serious car accident during the time McCain was a POW in Vietnam.
“After he came home, he walked with a limp, she [Carol McCain] walked with a limp,” Perot told Alter. “So he threw her over for a poster girl with big money from Arizona [Cindy McCain, his current wife] and the rest is history.”
If McCain gets beat in November, it’s clear there won’t be many tears at the Perot home on Strait Lane in Dallas.
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1 Comments
#1. Kathy Gates 10.20.2008
Back in 1992, Ross Perot used his teaching talents to made it plain to Americans what was going to happen and how we can fix it in his book, “United We Stand: How We Can Take Back Our Country.” It was a warning to us.
In the book, Perot warns, “…our economy is perched on the edge of a cliff. Either we work together to climb back to safety, or we must brace ourselves for potential disaster. This book provides a plan to pull our nation back from the brink… You are the owners of this country. Nobody else can do the job. Our system has been corrupted because we weren’t exercising our responsibilities as owners… As owners you and I established the incentives. How could we be surprised with the results?… Why do we find it strange that the Senate voted itself a 23 percent pay increase last year? Did YOU get a 23 percent increase last year? They blamed that deficit on somebody else and got on to the really important business of taking care of themselves. We did exactly what they expected us to do: nothing.”
“The cowards never started. The weak died along the way. Only the strong survived.” –The Pioneer’s Creed
Let us each do our part from where we are. Do what you can with what you have. The courageous of this nation will take this country back.
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