Suggested Answers to Short Quiz

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johnkarls
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Joined: Fri Jun 29, 2007 8:43 pm

Suggested Answers to Short Quiz

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Question 1

Is the title of our focus book, “Gardens of Democracy,” a metaphor comprising a simple plea for Americans (and, as a result, their national government) to pull together?

Answer 1

What do you think?

Question 2

Who is Grover Nordquist?

Answer 2

Grover Nordquist is a famous lobbyist who raises money from donors to combat tax increases. He supports for election/re-election candidates who sign his "pledge" and recruits/funds candidates to oppose anyone who has violated one of his pledges.

Nordquist's "Taxpayer Protection Pledge" promises "to oppose any and all efforts to increase the marginal income tax rate for individuals and business; and to oppose any net reduction or elimination of deductions and credits, unless matched dollar for dollar by further reducing tax rates."

Question 3

How many Republican Congressmen, Senators and Presidential Candidates have signed his pledge?

Answer 3

Currently 238 of 242 House Republicans and 41 of 47 Senate Republicans and all of the Republican Presidential Candidates have signed the pledge.


Question 4

How does Grover Nordquist enforce the pledges?

Answer 4

Please see Answer 2.

Question 5

Who was Ross Perot?

Answer 5

Ross Perot is the self-made multi-billionaire who ran for President as an independent in 1992 and 1996 because the First President Bush violated his “read my lips” Nordquist-style pledge NOT to raise taxes.

Please note in passing that the so-called “Bush Tax Cuts” are nothing more than a reversal of the tax increases of the First President Bush and a return to Reagan-era tax rates.

Because of Republican outrage over the violation by the First President Bush of his no-tax-increase pledge, in 1992 Ross Perot took 18.9% of the popular vote, enabling Bill Clinton to sneak in with 43.0%, and in 1996 Ross Perot took 8.4% of the popular vote enabling Bill Clinton to sneak in with 49.2%.

Question 6

Is Grover Nordquist the re-incarnation of Ross Perot? [Assuming a person can be re-incarnated before her/his demise.]

Answer 6

Yes, they are/were both enforcers of the no-tax-increase pledge.

Question 7

Who is David Boren?

Answer 7

David Boren was Democratic Governor of Oklahoma 1975-1979 and Democratic U.S. Senator from Oklahoma 1979-1994. He resigned from the Senate in the middle of his third term to become President of the University of Oklahoma.

Question 8

Who is Christie Todd Whitman? Has she been importuned by David Boren?

Answer 8

Christie Todd Whitman was Republican Governor of New Jersey 1994-2001 and headed the US Environmental Protection Agency 2001-2003. She has been inportuned by David Boren to lead with him a bi-partison America Elect Party that will appear on the ballot in all 50 states (for more information about America Elect, please see the transcript of a PBS Newshour interview of Boren and Christie posted in "Reference Materials" section for this meeting on this bulletin board).

Question 9

Does David Boren, with the assistance of Christie Todd Whitman, aspire to be the Ralph Nader of 2000?

Answer 9

Yes.

Although Nader came in third with only 2.74% of the popular vote, he won 97,488 votes in Florida, handing the Florida electoral votes and the national electoral-college election to Bush. [At no stage of the 2000 Florida ballot couting did Bush's margin exceed 1,000.]

Like Nader in 2000, Boren and Whitman have no realistic hope of winning any electoral-college votes and only present the danger that enough votes will be drawn away from President Obama that just like Nader did with Florida in 2000, Boren and Whitman will enable crucial states to be won by the Republican candidate and permit him to be elected.

Question 10

Is 2012 shaping up, at both the Presidential level and the Congressional level, to be a referendum on the Perot/Nordquist principle of no tax increases vs. the philosophy of the Democratic Party and “Gardens of Democracy” that more resources need to be devoted to governmental programs that will make our society more decent, particularly for the disadvantaged.

Answer 10

So it would appear.

Question 11

Is the American electorate likely to continue to exhibit its Jeckyll/Hyde propensity to divide control of the White House, the Senate and the House of Representatives?

Answer 11

Of course!!!

Question 12

If the Jeckyll/Hyde personality of the American electorate continues to prevail, will the United States go the way of Greece, Italy, Spain, etc., despite the pleas of our authors in “Gardens of Democracy”?

Answer 12

Of course!!!

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