BS: Have things changed that much?

Subject: BS: Have things changed that much?
From: kendall
Date: 20 May 05 - 10:19 AM

> "Should any political party attempt to abolish social security,
>
> unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs,
>
> you would not hear of that party again in our political history.
>
> There is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes that you
>
> can do these things. Among them are a few Texas oil millionaires,
>
> and an occasional politician or businessman from other areas. Their
>
> number is negligible and they are stupid."
>
>
Who wrote that?
Former President Eisenhower.

Subject: RE: BS: Have things changed that much?
From: Rapparee
Date: 20 May 05 - 11:00 AM

It is very unfortunate, in many ways, that the political parties in the US have power and its retention as their primary concern and not the people they claim to serve.

I include in that statement unions, businesses, political action committees, lobbyists, and all groups of similar stain.

Subject: RE: BS: Have things changed that much?
From: CarolC
Date: 20 May 05 - 12:29 PM

I think it would be very cool to be able to sit down with President Eisenhower if he could be brought back today and if he was completely aware of what's been going on in this country and in the world since he passed, and have a nice long talk with him about it.

Subject: RE: BS: Have things changed that much?
From: Ebbie
Date: 20 May 05 - 12:33 PM

Rapaire, that is something that really bothers me. I am not a registered Democrat but most of the candidates/office holders/issues that I support these days are Democrat. So most of the mail that I get that is soliciting funds comes from the Democrats.

I WISH they would make it clear to everybody- ESPECIALLY themselves - that the reason they want to get the other party out of office and the Democrats into office is because Democrats believe in and support issues and causes that are essential for the country and the community.

*Sometimes* it is not clear. *Sometimes* it sounds like it is a simple issue of position, of prestige and power

Some years ago an acquaintance told me that Chicago, his hometown, was corrupt, that his brother had to pay $20,000 under the table to get onto the Chicago police force. He paused and I thought he was going to cite more corruption statistice. Instead he finished with "I don't have $20,000".

*Sometimes* that is how the Democrats sound to me.

Subject: RE: BS: Have things changed that much?
From: gnu
Date: 20 May 05 - 12:53 PM

What amazes me is that the politicians (it's happening here in Canada as well on many issues like schools, hospitals, highways, prisons, Canada Pension, public utilities, etc.) think we are so stupid that we can't see that the same service will cost more to proivide because private enterprise has to extract a fee for their services, including profit.

We are definitely getting serviced.

Time for another Tea Party, eh what?

Subject: RE: BS: Have things changed that much?
From: Peace
Date: 20 May 05 - 01:20 PM

Ain't THAT the truth, gnu.

Subject: RE: BS: Have things changed that much?
From: number 6
Date: 20 May 05 - 04:23 PM

Eisenhower ... and he was a Republican at that.

Off the topic of the thread (it's probably going to drift from the intended subject anyway) but I have to mention a documentary I watched last nite called the Goebbels-Experiment. It was a narrated voiceover of a journal Goebbel's kept from 1924 to 1945. Interesting and very frightening. Sometime things comeback in full circle, and not necessarily from where it started.

sIx

Subject: RE: BS: Have things changed that much?
From: kendall
Date: 20 May 05 - 07:17 PM

Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. You can see what happens when one party controls the White House, the Senate, the House AND the Supreme Court.

Subject: RE: BS: Have things changed that much?
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 21 May 05 - 04:46 AM

Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose!

DT

Subject: RE: BS: Have things changed that much?
From: George Papavgeris
Date: 21 May 05 - 05:21 AM

Good quote Kendall. I wonder what DougR's take would be on it.

I still vote; it was drummed into me from early on that it is my civic responsibility, and I have to use whatever tools are at my disposal - vote is one.

I have found since I was 25 or so however, that none of the parties in the political spectrum represent me. Worse than that, they seem to actually "represent" very little, whether I agree with it or not.

We are, all over the Western world, in a political vacuum. And the only ones trying to fill it are crooks, it seems to me.

Subject: RE: BS: Have things changed that much?
From: freda underhill
Date: 21 May 05 - 06:15 AM

"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, from those who are cold and are not clothed. The world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children." - Dwight D. Eisenhower

Subject: RE: BS: Have things changed that much?
From: mack/misophist
Date: 21 May 05 - 10:29 AM

Eisenhower is also the one who warned us to beware the 'military-industrial complex'. It should be noted, however, that a lot of people in the civil service hated his guts.

Subject: RE: BS: Have things changed that much?
From: number 6
Date: 21 May 05 - 10:52 AM

"He'll make a great president. He was the best clerk I ever had." ... a remark from General Douglas MacArthur in reference to Dwight E.

MacArthur's political leanings were somewhere to the right of Atilla the Hun for those who don't know.

Actually I find some of these quotes of Eisenhower interesting. Thanks to those that are posting.

sIx

Subject: RE: BS: Have things changed that much?
From: GUEST
Date: 21 May 05 - 11:31 AM

And George Washington warned us against the two party system.

O'Meara

Subject: RE: BS: Have things changed that much?
From: kendall
Date: 21 May 05 - 04:22 PM

And Mark Twain said, we should always respect the country, and the government...when it earns it. (I paraphrase)