Remember when Americans would excuse Mussolini's fascist dictatorship with, "He made the trains run on time"? The apologist today is, of course, one of Obama's Cabinet secretaries. From
July 5, 2012 Foreign Policy:
"The Chinese are more successful [in building infrastructure] because in their country, only three people make the decision. In our country, 3,000 people do," LaHood said in a short interview withThe Cable on the sidelines of the 2012 Aspen Ideas Festival on June 30. "In a country where only three people make the decision, they can decide where to put their rail line, get the money, and do it. We don't do it that way in America."
During his conference session at the festival, LaHood blamed Republicans in Congress, especially the Tea Party freshman class elected in 2010, for the relative lack of progress in moving forward with high-speed rail even though the administration has obligated more than $11 billion to the effort.
Yup! No question: get rid of our messy system of multiple parties and decision making that doesn't involve dictatorship, and we can make all sorts of amazing things happen! And all of them will be right, because Dear Leader knows what the right solution for every problem is!
The problem is more that we've made it so that the Greens have effective veto power over any development. Cut down the paperwork and speed up the reviews and you might actually get something done in this country. Andy Grove noted that the delays and bureaucracy involved made constructing a semiconductor fab in this country 33% more expensive than one in Ireland.
ReplyDeleteLaHood is a thoroughgoing sleaze. He was a ringleader in the plot to force Sen. Peter Fitzgerald into retirement in 2004. That cleared the way for the election of Obama.
ReplyDeleteWas his appointment as SecTrans a quid pro quo? Idunno, but it looked awful funny to me.
You might tack this on for further info:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/18/world/asia/18rail.html?_r=1
Cheers
"The best form of government is a benevolent dictatorship. If you need something done and go to a partisan legislature, all you get is partisan bickering. The dictator, on the other hand, will solve your problem and move on to the next one. If I am elected, I intend to be that dictator."
ReplyDeleteBenito Mussolini in a stump speech
Of course, in China, if you don't approve of what the government is doing then they have tanks they are willing to use to convince you otherwise.
ReplyDeleteThen again, Mussolini didn't exactly have a story book end.
I'd have to agree that the best form of government is "benevolent dictatorship". Of course, the worst form of government is "malevolent dictatorship", and when government is focused on a single person, or even a small group of people, it doesn't take much for that government to transition from benevolent to malevolent. (Sometimes it transitions the other way too, but usually such transitions involve heavy bloodshed.)
ReplyDeleteDemocratic Republics are messy and inefficient; bad for when you just want to get things done, but great when those things that are trying to be done are malevolent!
Of course, the absolute best system of government--whether dictator-based or republic-based--is the form where they mostly just leave people alone, to figure out the best solutions to the problems at hand!
Ever notice that the founding member of a dynasty is frequently known as "Gumbo the Great" while his successor is more often known as "Gumbo the Good" primarily because he didn't have to kill as many peasants as his daddy to hold on to the throne?
ReplyDeleteThe third generation is lucky to be known as "Gumbo the Bald".