Are Politicians, by Nature, Hypocrites?

[Bevo Incognito]

I've been thinking about Rick Perry and the fact that Texas' debt has gone from 13.4 billion to 37.6 billion dollars under the last nine years of his watch (an increase of 281 percent, by the way), and how hypocritical his claim to be a conservative is.

It brought to mind the following quote by Thomas Jefferson, warning against inter-generational debt:

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[BurntOrangeOnly]

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[general35]

Jefferson is among the pantheon of the Gods, of course. I mean, he's on freakin' Mt. Rushmore. Yet Jefferson himself died with a massive amount of debt. It's hard for me to calculate it in today's dollars but it was millions of dollars. .
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laws were different then. you inherited debt from your family and jefferson inherited a lot of debt from his father. he also invested his own money in this country and its attempts to get started through the new bonds issued by the united states and i think he got killed on that as well. i would not compare his actions to todays politicians.

 

[ShinerTX]

I've always considered Jefferson one of the great thinkers in our history.

But never a god.

Perry I would put nowhere near that pedestal. Just a hell of a lot better than Barry.

 

[Uninformed]

I think most of today's politicians are afraid to lose votes. They by nature are egotistical and put themselves before their country. Of course that isn't so different from the people they represent.

Dems unabashedly buy votes by the nature of their constituency. Many pubs, especially the RINOs try to play both sides and buy enough votes to stay in power, but not too much to smear their "conservative" name.

 

[SomeMildLanguage]

Texas has the second lowest state government debt per capita in America, the third lowest state debt payments as a percentage of our state budget, and our government debt is a miniscule 2.78 percent of our Gross State Product. Texas received a credit rating upgrade under Perry. Moreover, nearly all debt in Texas is voter-approved, for roads to satisfy our rapid growth, and it's almost entirely (90% or so) self-sustaining (meaning, there's a specific mechanism built in to pay it back over a finite number of years). Texas has reduced its non self-sustaining debt over the past decade by 16%, from $3.4 to $2.85 billion.

The United States has a debt burden that's now higher than our Gross Domestic Product. We recently got downgrade. Voters aren't involved in the process. There's no mechanism to pay it back over a finite number of years. It's just there, dragging down our future.

Throwing around the word hypocrite is absolutely ridiculous in this situation.

 

[buckhorn]

Representative factionalism breeds politicians sourcing and feeding competing schemes, values, etc. Mix in a class of people that have the freedom to both eat and pursue politics and you have a situation where the interests of those who govern are often tangential, or even at odds, with what you desire. Add wildcards like patriotism and xenophobia to the mix, etc.

We get what we deserve, largely.

 

[Bevo Incognito]

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[ShinerTX]

Seems like a remember a politician preaching on the need for transparency in government. 18 month later we need to pass Obamacare so that we can see what's in the bill.

Definitely hypocrites.

 

[ShinerTX]

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[texascoder]

Yes, by nature politicians are hypocrites, among other things

They'll use just about any situation to try to gain a political advantage, saying or doing something that might contradict a previous position they had on a subject.

 

[Crockett]

Politicians are human and exemplify some of the best and worst of human nature, often in the same day. Jefferson's debt was a product of the times. He had most of his wealth tied up in land and property. In an economic downturn the value decreased a lot because of liquidity issues in the country. We now have financial instruments that make it much easier to protect and preserve wealth. I don't think Jefferson was any more pure of heart than Rick Perry, but Jefferson was a very learned man with authentic genius with words and science. Like most of us, Perry has to get by with a less powerful chip and a lot less RAM than Jefferson used to process information.