Originally Posted By: rocky mtn bill
CB, you have a very fatalistic viewpoint. I'd prefer to believe that there are politicians who can be trusted through a whole career. Not everyone is up for sale to the highest bidder. Nowadays, such public servants aren't as plentiful as they were, but many are still in office. Among Republicans we have John Kasich, and the female senators from Alaska and Maine. My senator, John Tester, is in the Montana tradition of Mike Mansfield. Being retired, I don't have a business to stake on Trump, but I wouldn't be inclined to do so at any rate. I grant you, Donald has been good for business as usual--so far. If I were a farmer, I'd be inclined to heed the Muslim adage, " Trust in Allah, but tie your camel."


Bill, I take the position that man is fallible. That power corrupts. Whether in politics or any other sphere of life. As a business owner I made a point of trying to create systems of inventory (and cash) management that did not allow for people to be tempted. I view theft in the workplace to be largely a failing of management through lax controls, not of the individual. Because workplace fraud usually starts very small and only grows larger as the individual discovers they can get away with it. I see no difference with politics or public service.

Of course we can always point to individual examples of those who have resisted temptation. But I would suggest they are few and far between when the history of human governance is examined. In fact, it is the false hope for exemplary behavior that leads, IMHO, socialists to make their fatal errors. Rather than be realists, they are idealists. And the rest of mankind doesn't live up to their ideals.

So I advocate what I believe to be systems that helps men to act in the best public interest, rather than a system that hopes they will act in the public interest.

The world cries out for such: he is needed & needed badly- the man who can carry a message to Garcia