Ross Perot was wacky in some ways, prophetic in others...

[Bread and Circus]

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=df3_1175661204&o=1

It's just amazing how prophetic his "giant sucking sound" statement really was. It's kind of bizarre we allowed all this to happen.

[napi21]

1. If he spoke today, he'd say "I TOLD YOU SO!!!" I actualy voted for

Ross, and I was very disappointed that he dropped out. I'm not sure how he would have governed had he won because business men don't usually do much for the average Joe,, but he would have stopped NAFTA and that would have been GREAT!

[jobycom]

5. He would have stopped NAFTA only because it interfered with his own businesses.

He was a scheister and a crook who had been giving that same speech about running for president for years before Larry King ever heard it. Here in Texas he was always trying to grab control of some part of Texas, and the times he got ahold of it, like with education, the results were collosal disasters. He ruled his corporations as an imperial dictator who would not tolerate, if he even bothered to hear, dissenting views. He had paranoid fantasies about terrorists or political hacks (the story varied) interrupting his daughter's wedding to make him look bad (that's what terrorists do, you know). He was and is as close to insane as one can be without being locked up.

The only good thing that might have happened if he had won is that he'd have made George W look good. Well, maybe not good, but at least better.

[davikim]

2. perot

was the first campaign I ever worked on and I do think lately about how prophetic he was......and a little wacko....

[Johonny]

3. I listen to him talk about American Corporation's

debt management. He was amazingly right about how poor a job Americans did at understanding the debt management of it's corporations.

[jobycom]

4. He was wacky in every way. the giant sucking sound didn't happen until

we got a lousy president who mismanaged everything else. When NAFTA was passed, and for six to seven years afterwards, the economy improved, GDP went up, average wages went up, the number of people below the poverty line went down, and things got better. This was coming off the Reagan/Bush screwups, too, so it wasn't a matter of the economy coasting on Reagan's great economy. Things turned around after NAFTA.

I'm not saying you can thank NAFTA for the turnaround, but I am saying you can't blame it for what's happening now, or at least not only NAFTA. In a Republican-minded economy, with no regulation and a feudalist attitude, nothing works well because there are no internal safeguards. Clinton poured money into the economy in productive ways, increased taxes on the wealthy--which shifts the economic power to the middle and lower economic classes-- and (while he was certainly too weak in this regard, though much of that can be blamed on a Gingrich-led Congress) provided oversight to the economy. The economy responded well.

Bush cut taxes on the wealthy--shifting economic power back to big business away from smaller business--and this shifted the economy towards greater reliance on big business. Big business is least responsive to economic changes, more likely to shift jobs overseas, more likely to pay lower wages, more likely to treat jobs as temporary so that they don't have to promote or give as many pay raises, and more likely to smother competition, preventing the dynamism that keeps growth vibrant. Combine that with his lack of regulation or enforcement of regulations, and his mentality of privatization that funneled tax dollars into non-productive ventures by rich corporate buddies, and you've got a lot more of the cause of the problem than NAFTA could ever dream of being.

[dbonds]

7. The sucking sounded started under Clinton.

This can't be laid only at the feet of the dubya. I was seeing jobs leave in '99.

[NNN0LHI]

6. Little known factoid: Ross and Gabby Hayes were identical twin bothers

I think?

Don