Ross Perot - Prairie Prophet & Presidential King Maker

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Exactly 24 years ago George Bush, Sr.,  was running for re-election as president of the United States and being challenged by a young, upstart Democrat and Governor of Arkansas named Bill Clinton.  And then there was that shrill talking, billionaire from Texas named Ross Perot who was trying to launch the first successful third party campaign since Teddy Roosevelt just after the turn of the last century.

For historians let me set the record straight.  Yes Teddy was elected vice president in 1900 and became president when President William McKinley was shot September 6 and died September 14 of 1901, his first year in office.  Teddy was then elected by a landslide in 1904.

In 1908 he supported his secretary of war, William Howard Taft for president and Taft won.  By the end of Taft's first term Roosevelt felt Taft no longer served the people and when he failed to beat Taft at the GOP convention he started a third party, the Bull Moose (progressive) party to oppose the president.

This is where the parallels between Ross Perot and Teddy Roosevelt become intertwined as if history was simply repeating itself about 100 years later.

In the election of 1912 Republican President Taft got 23% of the vote, Independent Roosevelt got 27% of the vote, and Democrat Woodrow Wilson became president with just 42% of the vote.  Thus Roosevelt blocked Taft from being re-elected and made Wilson President.

After his first term in office in 1992 President Bush was running for re-election riding the popularity of Desert Storm when Ross Perot, a former Republican like Teddy Roosevelt, came out of nowhere with his Independent campaign.

In the election of 1992 Republican President Bush got 38% of the vote, Independent Ross Perot got 19% of the vote, and Democrat Bill Clinton became president with just 43% of the vote.  Thus Perot blocked Bush from being re-elected and made Clinton President.

During Clinton's first term Ross Perot sought to influence the national agenda focusing on three issues, the NAFTA economic treaty, Health Care Reform and rebuilding our educational system.

He opposed NAFTA, an issue Clinton co-opted from the GOP because he was in danger of losing his re-election campaign.  Perot warned passage of NAFTA would lead to the destruction of our manufacturing industries and we would lose millions of jobs to Mexico and other countries.  Clinton got it passed and the final nail was driven into the coffin of America's once dominate manufacturing base.

On health care Perot warned the lack of cost controls would bankrupt America, and any government entitlement programs regarding health care like Medicare and Medicaid would drive the American deficit beyond our capacity to pay.  In 1996 the US national debt was $107.4 billion under Clinton and by 1998 would become a surplus through Bush in 2001.

Today the National debt stands at a record $20 trillion, thanks in large part to runaway entitlement costs as predicted by Perot.  In fact America spends more per capita than any other nation on health care yet ranks just 37th in the world in terms of quality of health care.

Finally, Perot was so disgusted with the deficiencies in our education system that he started his own high school in Dallas and was to set records for educational achievement and college attendance by urban youth.  Today our educational system continues to spend more per pupil than any other nation and we still are failing in terms of the quality of educational care.

Sooo, Ross Perot, the caricature from Texas who dared challenge the American two-party system was a figment of historical déjà vu showing up 100 years after Teddy Roosevelt played the same role for America.

Both were prophets in terms of warning of the dangers faced by America and both greatly influenced the national agenda and debate.  A couple of obscure Democrats owe their fortune and fame (Wilson and Clinton) to these political rebels.  At the same time, the failure of our government to heed the warnings of these two left us floundering in the winds of indecision as our judicial system seemed to collapse, our health care costs spiraled out of control, our manufacturing base vanished away, our educational system continued to flounder and our national debt reached epic proportions.

More on the Prairie Prophet from Texas later as the story of Ross Perot and his unbending care for the nation, commitment to veterans, exceptional patriotism and whose incredible rescue of his employees from the prison of Iran after the failure of President Carter to protect our own embassy in the fall of Iran to the Ayatollah is one of the greatest stories of courage to ever take place in our nation.

US hostages in Iran 1979

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Where are Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton when you need them? Extreme Radical Right Conservatives reject Trump and Republican Party

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Threaten Independent candidate for Extremist Agenda

If only the good old days were here, you would find the Extreme Radical Right Wing Conservatives challenging a presidential candidate to a duel and there would be a 50-50 chance they would lose.

Of course back then it was the bad boy Burr who challenged Hamilton, a rising star in national politics, when Burr was Vice President and Hamilton was about to end Burr's political career.  Since dueling was illegal at the time, they moved it from New York to New Jersey where law enforcement has an entirely different meaning.

Hamilton deliberately missed Burr with his first shot, as Burr was up for re-election, because Hamilton already lost a son several years earlier in a duel and he did not want to shoot a sitting vice president.  It was a nice gesture but did not work out so well in the end because Burr thought otherwise and killed Hamilton.

Once Donald Trump secured the Republican nomination this past week, the first thing that happened was the self-proclaimed elite of the GOP establishment, those neocons who dominate the radio and television airwaves and control all the magazines and online super-conservative press, showed their true colors and it was not a pretty sight.

Convinced the American public is stupid and not capable of selecting a president, while ignoring the fact Trump is well on his way to shattering the record for most votes in a Republican primary campaign in history, they pouted, cried foul, and declared the radical right wing conservative philosophy was far more important than the Republican Party.

Are you kidding me?  This was the perfect example of ego, elitism, and intellectual constipation that Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders declared the enemy of our national interest.  In colonial terms, it was an act of treason.  In today's age it is merely the dying breath of an institutional dinosaur that considers itself the sole hope for the future of humankind.

What is a radical right wing Republican?

This is a minuscule group of beltway eggheads, whose only accomplishment since President Obama took office was the idiotic shutdown of the government.  Why idiotic, these self-proclaimed fiscal conservatives managed to cost the US economy between $12 and $24 billion before finally giving up and caving in.

In fact it was the only thing Senator Ted Cruz accomplished since he was elected to the Senate.

So who is it that anointed the radical right wing special interest as the spokesperson for the Republican Party?  No one as far as I can ascertain.  Fact is the Party of Lincoln is grounded in a very centrist view of government balancing the left against the right, liberalism and conservatism, and a strong central government versus state's rights.

The conservative movement became a self-proclaimed dominant force after the term of President Ronald Reagan, a hero they quote often, but whose philosophy of the role of government is not consistent with the radical right.  Reagan was once a Democrat, leader of the Hollywood Screen Actors Guild, and Governor of California, hardly the perfect credentials to lead the conservative cause.

Right wing conservatives consider the highlight of their influence to be when the federal budget was last balanced in the late 1990's, when the wars were launched in the early 2000's, and when Cruz shut down the government a couple of years ago.

Seems a pretty meager benefit for a period of nearly 36 years, since Reagan took over.  Fact is the increase in government spending and the national debt has exploded over the years in spite of the conservative efforts.  Of course, liberal spending during the same time-period has exploded even more.

How did they do balancing the budget and slashing the National debt?

Balancing the budget took place only when Bill Clinton was president so the conservatives can only claim partial credit.  The Bush years reflect the consequences of an aggressive worldwide war policy that did not have favorable results from a debt standpoint.

While Obama did start out with the recession, he promised to get us out of war, and that did not happen, so his liberal agenda helped drive the national debt up even further.  The cumulative result of all the political promises and wasteful spending by both parties will be a 21 trillion dollar debt when the next president takes office.

What can we expect this year?

As you listen to all the new political promises, ask yourself where the money comes from to pay for the campaign rhetoric.  Our economy is stagnate, so new jobs are the
only hope for digging ourselves out of the massive fissure we fell in to and which we stand to bequeath to our children.

    

Here are the facts, starting with the historical data on the national debt.

Here are the years since Reagan became president.  Note even the period when Bill Clinton balanced the federal budget, the national debt continued to increase.

At the same time the debt was increasing so was the annual federal budget.

Here is who owns our national debt and us.

Pay attention to our candidates, a millionaire and a billionaire, as they battle for the hearts and votes of middle class America, the silent majority.

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Obamaville October 21 - Who are the builders and who are the destroyers? Presidential Politics when the Outsiders take on the Politicians

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Well the political pundits and lame street media should pay attention because they are all missing the point when it comes to the will of the people.

"We the people are the rightful masters of both Congress and the courts, not to overthrow the Constitution but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution."

Abraham Lincoln

Americans are fed up with institutional constipation, they are fed up with political polarization, they are fed up with years of government inertia, and they are fed up with lies from politicians and elected representatives.

Those that think they control the will of the American people will no longer get away with their lies, divisiveness, and manipulation.  We have come to the end of an era, when entire classes of people were taken for granted by our political parties.  Truth is in the results, and the results condemn the system we have. 

  

"America will never be destroyed from the outside.  If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves."

Abraham Lincoln

Look at the record.  Our government now spends $3.4 trillion dollars a year.  What do we get for the taxes we pay, more lies, more deception, more excuses, and no action.  Obama brags that he has reduced the annual deficit to $532 billion, but forgets to say he has raised the national debt to  $18.4 trillion.

On January 20, 2009, when Obama took office, the national debt stood at $10.6 trillion and today it stands at $18.4 trillion.  That is over a 73% increase in less than seven years.  Our economy has not recovered, we have simply mortgaged our lives, our future, and our children's future.     

"In the end, it's not the years in your life that count.  It's the life in your years."

Abraham Lincoln

Once upon a time people dared to live the American dream.  No more.  As The Wall Street Journal reported last January:

"The U.S. homeownership fell to its lowest level in 20 years at the end of 2014—levels last seen when national leaders embarked on a broad push to expand homeownership in the mid-1990s.

The Commerce Department’s estimates published Thursday show that, after adjusting for seasonal factors, some 63.9% of U.S. households owned their homes in the fourth quarter, a level last recorded in the third quarter of 1994. The homeownership rate hasn’t fallen below that level since 1988."

"Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt."

Abraham Lincoln

Obama and the mouthpieces for the Democratic Party espouse on the strength of our economic recovery yet millions of people simply gave up seeking a job while millions more took major incomes reductions to work.

Obamacare promised affordable health care to all Americans, and the president signed the bill on March 23, 2010, nearly five years ago.  Today, sadly, the number of uninsured non-elderly Americans in 2014 (the most current statistics) is 32 million and that does not count the eleven or more million illegal immigrants using emergency services.

Health care, prescription drug, food, and education costs have all increased much faster than wages and the number of Americans in poverty has increased since Obama took office from 12.5% to nearly 15%, a total of about 48 million people.  Is that what we were promised?

"My dream is of a place and a time where America will once again be seen as the last best hope of earth."

Abraham Lincoln

So now we are in the midst of another election.  This time it is the outsiders against the insiders with Trump, Carson, and Fiorina on the GOP side and Sanders on the Democrat side.  The principle establishment politicians are Bush and Clinton.  What is that all about?  Twenty-three years ago, it was Bush and Clinton running for president.  Have we not had enough of the Bush - Clinton years?

       

"This country, with it's institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it.  Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or exercise their revolutionary right to overthrow it."

Abraham Lincoln

Here are the hard facts.  Over half of the eligible voters in America refuse to participate in the voting process.  Beyond that, over forty percent of the people who do register to vote refused both political parties and registered as Independents.

That means the all the Democrat or all the Republican Party members make up about fifteen percent of the eligible voters.  It means fewer eligible voters actually vote than any point in our history and what Obama and the lame street media called the Obama mandate from the people in the last election, was a joke.

In fact, in 2012 the Obama mandate came from just 23.5% of the eligible voters.  Or, seventy-five percent of the eligible voters DID NOT vote for Obama - some mandate.          

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Campaign Promises - Campaign 2012 - The Seven Cardinal Sins of Politics - Where do we stand?

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Sins of the past, present & future

1.  Failing to do something about the national debt!

2.  Failing to cut government deficits!

3.  Failing to attack the unemployment and under-employment problem!

4.  Failing to adopt a national energy independence plan!

5.  Failing to stop unnecessary gas, prescription drug and food price increases!

6.  Failing to reduce medical and health insurance costs!

7.  Failing to improve relations with China and Russia!  [They can solve our problems with Iran, Syria, North Korea and the Middle East.]

1.  National debt - nothing.

2.  Government deficit - very little resulting from Congressional restrictions.

3.  Unemployment - down but underemployment way up.

4.  No national energy policy - nothing.

5.  Rising gas, prescription drugs and food - while gas is down thanks to Saudi Arabia, drugs and food on way up.

6.  Spiraling health and medical costs - nothing.

7.  Improving relations with China and Russia - barely with China, Russia nothing.

Now what can the Republicans do about this pathetic performance?
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