I just have to share this tidbit from a friend and fellow blogger.
Jon Talton writes a blog called “The Rogue Columnist.” This is what he said about Carly Fiorina, a recently declared Republican candidate for president of the United States of America.
“So wealthy Republican Cara Carlton Sneed, aka “Carly Fiorina,” is running for president. She represents everything wrong in an America run by oligarchy, including running venerable Hewlett Packard into the ground and laying off tens of thousands of people.
“The two businessmen who became president were Warren G. Harding and George W. Bush. In fact, government can’t and shouldn’t be run like a business. A business, especially a big business today, seeks only its own growth and increasing stock price. Too many of its leaders, Fiorina included, are sociopaths with no notion of the public good. So she’ll fit right with the Republican contenders.
“It tells us something that this supposed titan of technology forgot to register her domain name.”
Here’s the link to Jon’s blog. http://www.roguecolumnist.com/rogue_columnist/
President Harding’s administration was tainted by scandal and near-impeachment because of the “business” he conducted while serving as president from 1921 until his death in 1923. Does the name “Teapot Dome” ring a bell?
President Bush? Well, I don’t recall him espousing too loudly his “business acumen” after he was elected in 2000, although he seemed to take his eye off the financial sector as it was lending lots of money to folks who couldn’t repay the loans, which likely contributed to the economic collapse that occurred near the end of his presidency in 2008.
Jon is right about government being run like a business. It can’t be done. Government’s mission is to “serve the people.” The core mission of every business in America — if not the planet — is to make money.
These missions, as near as I can tell, are mutually exclusive.
You couldn’t be more wrong on Bush “taking his eye off the financial sector.” He repeatedly called for reform of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac throughout his tenure and was rebuffed repeatedly, most vocally by Barney Frank, who accused him of fearmongering and warned he would deny housing to poor people, and Chris Dodd, who called Bush’s reforms ill-advised. Those names might be familiar to you because they repackaged Bush’s reforms they had blocked for years and called them their own. President Bush gets blamed for the crash that happened on his watch, but he was the only one trying to hit the brakes.
Please peruse the list of the times his administration tried to rein in government-backed lending.
http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2008/10/20081009-10.html
Or Karl Rove tells the story for the Wall Street Journal here: http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB123137220550562585
Will do. Thanks.
You couldn’t be more wrong when you say Bush took “his eye off the financial sector as it was lending lots of money to folks who couldn’t repay the loans.”
Since his first budget in 2001, Bush and his administration had been warning of the dangers of the overly large, loosely regulated Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and several times pushed proposals to rein them in a little.
Among the strongest opponents of Bush’s efforts were Barney Frank, who accused him of fear-mongering and pulling the lending rug out from under the poor, and Chris Dodd who threatened to filibuster his “ill-advised” efforts. These names might be familiar to you because after the crash, they attempted to cover for themselves through a combination of repackaging some of Bush’s reforms and shifting blame from out-of-control government to out-of-control Wall Street.
The bursting housing bubble didn’t contribute to the economic collapse, it WAS the economic collapse, and Bush was among the very few who warned of it’s coming.
Here’s a list of his warnings and work to head off disaster. Give it a gander: http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2008/10/20081009-10.html