Paul Thomas had a good article in the NZ Herald yesterday, where he describes the work Jimmy Carter has been doing since he lost the US Presidency in 1980.
Apparently, he’s on the verge of eradicating the guinea worm – a parasite that is ingested from drinking water and grows to around a metre in length, then erupts from blisters (eewww I know!)
The Carter Foundation’s campaign of education and distribution of water purification strainers has reduced the number of cases from three million reported cases in 1980 to 1700 last year, mostly in Sudan.
Yet, as Paul Thomas says :
(Jimmy Carter)… remains the benchmark of liberal ineffectuality and a prime target of that curious pejorative, habitually delivered with a curl of the lip, do-gooder.Carter is routinely described as a peanut farmer, which is true as far as it goes. He was also a naval officer involved in America’s nuclear submarine programme and a modernising governor of Georgia, but those parts of his CV don’t conform to the narrative.
Sarah Palin, who during the 2008 presidential campaign sneered at Barack Obama’s background as a community organiser, recently joined the dots. Asked to summarise Obama’s presidency, she offered, “Two words: Jimmy Carter.”
This is the same Sarah Palin who, since she resigned her Alaska governship, has made $16 million through books, speaking engagements and appearances on Fox News.
It says something about today’s society that we (some) hang on Palin’s every tweet and treat her as a serious political figure when all she seems to be good at, or interested in, is self-promotion, while continuing to deprecate Carter despite his measurable contribution to mankind.
I agree. And don’t we see it here? The denigration of those whose work involves helping others, rather than themselves and whose causes are about more than building personal wealth.
We need to value and respect those who are dedicated through their work or community involvement or activism, to doing good and to fighting for important causes.
Because if they don’t, who will?
meanwhile Sarah Palin appears to have succeeded – in soliciting murder.
I’ve often thought that jimmy Carter is the most underrated president of modern times, his foundation has done some fantastic work over the years.
capatalism – a love story is currently screening on sky movies.
having watched this last night it has re-afirmed why i will never vote national or act.
the goody too shoes do gooders and nanny staters are the people who advance society, have compassion for others and are the ones who will always be there to lend a hand.
those people who believe that they deserve more than their fair share of the pie can be summed up in 2 words, selfish and greedy.
At the end of that film, Moore makes a pronouncement: “Capitalism is an evil, and you cannot regulate evil. You have to eliminate it and replace it with something that is good for all people and that something is democracy.”
In an interview with Moore, he was asked what he meant by that: “What I’m asking for is a new economic order,” he says. “I don’t know how to construct that. I’m not an economist. All I ask is that it have two organising principles. Number one, that the economy is run democratically. In other words, the people have a say in how its run, not just the 1%. And number two, that it has an ethical and moral core to it. That nothing is done without considering the ethical nature, no business decision is made without first asking the question, is this for the common good?”
1/ Is this the ideal world you want to live in?
2/ Will this lead to people being poorer and less free?
“That nothing is done without considering the ethical nature, no business decision is made without first asking the question, is this for the common good?”
1/ Is this the ideal world you want to live in?
2/ Will this lead to people being poorer and less free?
Very good questions, but if you make descisions based on the common good, not on the good for the few , then the majority will always come out on top, surely that is what democracy is about.
You can’t expect Sarah Palin to give an un-biased view of Obama or Carter. Just like we wouldn’t expect a positive view of Palin from the Left.
Not sure what the timing of this post is meant to signal – perhaps a backdoor way of suggesting what Dorothy has said above?
@Frontrower – no signals – just struck me that this article says a lot about how we value people’s contributions – and especially those in public life.
Yeah good post Darien always cracks me up when I hear anti union talk as well.
Dorothy 1.22pm – you draw a long bow and one with no credibility whatsoever.
Dorothy @1.22 – thats a pathetic and poor statement to make. Using your logic the Target corporation have been looking for a shooting in each if its 1,743 stores.
Do you really hate people like her so much that you are willing to put your own name to saying that she has solicited the murder of a person – simply for using a graphic of a target in an targeting campaign?
Again the left fails to apply the simple logic of personal responsibility. Jimmy Carter was an awful presdient, look at the inflation and recession under his watch. Oh, but that wasn’t his fault, he’s been demonised!
And you see here, even in the face of the recent massacre, the left still looks to blame other than the lunatic who killed people. Instead the left blames Sarah Palin, capitalism, Fox News and God knows what else. This man is insane, if the massacre wasn’t enough for you, he lists two of his favourite books on his YouTube channel as Mein Kampf and The Communist Manifesto – and anyone who likes the two most indirectly murderous books in history is insane.
And Frontrower is right. People are dead and politicians try to score points, it’s the same as Pike River. This, Fenton, is why people don’t value those in public life. I advise you to watch the episode of South Park where they choose a new school mascot, might open your eyes a bit as to why you politician don’t get the respect some foolishly think you “deserve”.
Also I think it’s pretty transparent that Jimmy Carter’s work following his presidency (some of which is very good, he’s a skilled diplomat) is an attempt to make up for how useless he was as prez. He even breaks the unwritten rule that ex-presidents try to stay out of presidential affairs, which to me shows a real lack of class/hunger for attention and relevance.
It’s almost as transparent as the timing of this post.
@capital, please defiine the logic of personal responsibility for us all. this is a cacth phrase used often, and yet companys and corporates get to hide behind limited liability, public liability insurnace ect, etc, etc.
how many managers ceo’s ect go to prison when employees are killed in the workplace and the business is found negligent?
@Capital : wow talk about warped thinking! The post is from a piece in the NZ Herald on Saturday, yet you’ve managed to turn it into something it was not. You confirm the point exactly when you imply that Jimmy Carter is only doing good work for selfish reasons. For goodness sake the man is about to eliminate a serious killing disease from the planet, yet you look for and ascribe motives to him and others that are simply fiction. I hope I never become so mean spirited that I can’t see good in people. And please, call me Darien.
@ Darien, Is it any more warped than stating that Sarah Palin has solicited murder?
Something that passed moderation without comment.
As I recall the US wasn’t in deficit under Jimmy Carter. That all started under his successor who told everyone to unleash their credit cards. His problem is that he wasn’t as good a BS artist as Ronnie.
Palin’s attempts to smear and incite hatred across the world and the us electorate are well documented. Any claims otherwise are easily ‘reffudiated’.
Her website, in having pictures of guns placed over the heads of her political enemies may or may not have contributed to these slayings, but because the right wing have made the atmosphere so toxic and destructive, it’s not outside the boundaries of reason to make the connection, or sadly to assume it won’t happen again.
Capital, just out of interest, can you point me to the public figures who have demanded the release of the young man arrested for the shootings and to the efforts by the “left” to get the hunt for the other man called off?
It always makes me chuckle that some folks think that by questioning what might cause crimes to be committed means those questioning are excusing the person who committed this crime from the consequences of their actions. In my experience they are not, rather they are asking less superficial questions to try to find a way to stop more crimes in the future by others than the current culprit.
I also wonder how Dorothy got past moderation on that, or Darien didnt feel compelled to comment on it.
@Tracey – Didn’t comment because the post wasn’t about that, but others have made it so. Others do moderation.
nice to see the usual mob of nasty reactionary bigots using their usual brand of personality politics to defend the indefensible(chris,capital,pdm).
only the people with the most to gain from pursuing the politics of greed would countenance denigrating the very people who strive to make this world a more compassionate, livable place for everyone.
anything that interferes with the gathering of disproportionate amounts of personal wealth at the expense of the majority must be discredited. otherwise, the majority may well decide to move to curtail the destructive practices of the greed merchants… this can’t be tolerated.
Fair comment Darien. I thought all of you MP’s were moderators. I stand corrected.
I saw a very brief piece from Michael Moore’s film about capitalism and the case of employers insuring their employees lives. I can understand a need for risk management at particular levels and expertise of a business but to collect insurance on an employees death while a widow or widower is left borrowing money for a funeral is hard to swallow.
I know he focuses on the extreme, much like some here do when demonising unions, but if *I* cant randomly decide to take a policy on any old joe bloggs, why can an employer?
@Tracey – interesting question. I haven’t seen the Michael Moore film yet, but this practice sounds venal.
Darien it’s called “dead peasant” in the insurance industry
http://deadpeasantinsurance.com/
darien, you should give it a look, with a semi open mind of course, but it makes the policys of those who look after the top 1% of earners look very suspect.
I wonder what chris, capital or PDM would have to say on mother teresa, they may well laugh that someone so gifted and talented would waste there time with the poor, when she cleary could have made a mint in the corporate world.
“nice to see the usual mob of nasty reactionary bigots using their usual brand of personality politics to defend the indefensible(chris,capital,pdm).”
So a ‘leftie’ says “meanwhile Sarah Palin appears to have succeeded – in soliciting murder”
and I’m the one using personality politics to defend the indefensible? The irony runs deep on red alert.
While I fully agree that murdering people (including young girls) is 100000000% indefensible – Im more of a personal responsibility kind of guy.
So Im not blaming Palin any more than Im blaming the Democrats for attempting to have people assassinated (because its obvious they are not)
See here for a really good example:
http://www.verumserum.com/?p=13647
To me the shooting in Arizona was partly due to the gun culture in the US. The right for citizens to carry guns is something that some Democrats advocate, including Gifford. Even Jimmy Carter agrees with this, in spite of the fact that he has done much good in other areas.
Carter, though, only advocates using guns, mostly for hunting, maybe for self defence:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/27/opinion/27Carter.html?_r=1&ref=opinion
But he doesn’t use the argument, often seen as one of the reasons for the right to bear arms in the US, that citizens should be able to have access to and to use guns against an undemocratic government. The problem with this is, who decides if and when a government is undemocratic?
But this right to bare arms in the US is so deeply ingrained in their belief about democracy, it’s hard for any mainstream politician to strongly disagree with it.
“bear”
Well, they needed guns back in the 1700′s to “defend” themselves from marauding Indians whom they were stealing land from. I’m sure we can all see that similar circumstances exist in the USA 300 years later.
@Tracey – OMG. Let’s hope insurance companies don’t get onto that here – although they are probably going to be too busy snapping up private insurance with the privatisation of the ACC work account.
@waterboy – I will definitely see the film when I can locate it.
@Carol – I simply don’t get the gun culture thing. It’s so foreign to NZ and I hope it stays that way.
I am aware of companies who regard the practice as part of risk management. A hard to replace employee with particular knowledge and skill, the sudden loss would impact on the business etc etc BUT the documentary suggested something more
“macabre” than that a kind of game of bet on the employee life span.
If you have SKY it’s currently playing.
@capital, please defiine the logic of personal responsibility for us all. this is a cacth phrase used often, and yet companys and corporates get to hide behind limited liability, public liability insurnace ect, etc, etc.
You make it sound like I actually care/spoke about that. Here’s my logic about personal responsibility: if you kill someone, it’s your fault, not the government’s, not the media, not Jodie Foster’s, yours. Essentially it’s based on one of the base facts of life, you make your bed, you lie in it; something the left rails against.
The logic carries over to business as well. You won’t find many right-wingers outside of a political party who support corporate welfare for instance. However we do see business as important, as opposed to evil and repressive like you people do.
As I recall the US wasn’t in deficit under Jimmy Carter.
Yes it was. And Reagan even admitted it as his greatest failing, however he was not a domestic affairs president, in terms of his overall scope. I can’t imagine the Soviet Union falling when up against a caring and sharing Carter or Mondale government. Even leftists like Obama admit that his presidency was important in beating the most murderous nation in human history (China pending).
Regardless of the horrific debt, he gave the US an economic boom it hadn’t seen in years.
Also, some advice for you all planning to watch Michael Moore’s latest soapbox: I enjoy his films for their style, humour and entertainment value, but for the sake of free thinking, just make sure you do a quick Google search after you’ve watched it to find out where the gross misrepresentations, trick editing and flat out lies are.
Contrary to what you say. The Right Wingers and Republicans inside the big corporates who fund million dollar Washington lobbying efforts seem to love corporate welfare.
After all the capitalist game is about making money. And if you can game money off the government instead of leaving it on the table, its your responsibility to do so – is it not?
(Peter Jackson apparently learnt from the best eh)
Business IS important, and at the same time the way that capital currently treats labour is sometimes evil and repressive.
But its how the top 1% of income earners in the US have taken 23% of the country’s income for themselves, and why real wages for everyone else in the US has stagnated for 30 years.
Which primarily the rich benefitted from. Ordinary workers continued to see their share of GDP fall as real wages stagnated, and a larger and larger share go to the wealthy.
waterboy “I wonder what chris, capital or PDM would have to say on mother teresa”
I’m not speaking for them, but she was an outright sadist. She didn’t seek to save lives, she chose instead to watch people die, usually in pain since she denied them palliative relief.
oh, ok bad example, pays to check your fact first, but you get my drift.
@jack, in regards to personal responsibility, if a company put pressure on its staff to break the rules to maximise profits and something goes wrong, who is at fault.
is it the staff who under duress breaks the rules or the company for putting the staff member in that situation in the first place.
What an excellent blog. Infact so good I stole the idea and reblogged it. I did remember to credit you unfortunatly it was on myspace so the chance of a Kiwi reading it is remote.
Jimmy Carter is a great man, of Ed. Hillary proportions. You join Clare and Grant as an MP who bloody thinks.
“Essentially it’s based on one of the base facts of life, you make your bed, you lie in it; something the left rails against.”
You know, I for one get a bit tired of this nonsense – lets clear a few things up. Statements like that, or that the left think business is bad, is just ridiculous. Once again, the main points have been missed and the tired old smoke screens thrown out. Its like propaganda 101.
The madman who opened fire committed an abhorrent and inhumane act that deserves punishment – no one here disagrees with that. The point, re palin, was how (as I see it anyway) posting hateful and nasty rhetoric on websites that incite violence and hate for another group is so anti humanity its just awful. All it does is give ammo to the crazy lunatics out there. Ten bucks says you would (on the right) be pretty upset if some blog started up with similar rhetoric about Key – just look at the over reaction to when the woman in Invers likened Tolley to Hitler – on her own facebook site to her own mates.
As for thinking business is wrong and we are all anti business – again – its a silly statement. We need business. What causes concern is the businesses that are destructive to society (stamp on people, cut safety corners, use child labour and pollute our world all for a bigger profit etc) – the greedy corporates who pull all the strings and manipulate govts and therefore erode deomocracy. Its these businesses that are the issue.
@Darien – thanks for highlighting the above – too often we demonise those who do good.
Jack, just out of interest, can you point me to the public figures who have demanded the release of the young man arrested for the shootings and to the efforts by the “left” to get the hunt for the other man called off?
It always makes me chuckle that some folks think that by questioning what might cause crimes to be committed means those questioning are excusing the person who committed this crime from the consequences of their actions. In my experience they are not, rather they are asking less superficial questions to try to find a way to stop more crimes in the future by others than the current culprit.
I’m still intrigued to know what you are studying for at University?
“Jimmy Carter was an awful presdient, look at the inflation and recession under his watch.”
The inflation was brought under control by Fed Reserve chairman Paul Volcker, appointed by, guess who? Then the righties went and appointed Randian idiot Greenspan, and hasn’t that worked out swell?
And obviously Carter’s ideas about energy independence were just crazy. Imagine what the US would look like if it had moved away from relying on the ME for it’s energy and developed more renewable home grown solutions. And speaking of the ME, I notice Egypt and Israel are still not fighting. Whose fault would that be? Thanks nobel peace prize winner Jimmy Carter!
Don’t dump on the rich.