O'Neill keeps his eye on the ball
One of the prominent voices in I.O.U.S.A. is getting fed up.
Paul O'Neill, the first Treasury Secretary in the Bush 43 administration, was playing footsie with Barack Obama's campaign just two weeks ago. But you sure wouldn't know it judging from this interview with MSNBC's David Gregory. He says the credit crisis pales in comparison to the core themes of the documentary:
I have not heard either candidate talk about the $53 trillion worth of unfunded liabilities that we have as a nation, that we need to do something about, or we're going to have a problem that makes this current financial crisis look like child's plan not too far down the road.
I haven't heard anybody say in this campaign the 10,000-page tax code that we have is proof that we're not an intelligent people. And so what are the candidates talking about? They're talking about more credits, they're talking about more deductions, they're talking about more complication in the tax code.
Neither one of them are talking about, we need to fix this monster, which is also part of our problem.
Neither one of them has a really credible energy plan. We had an opportunity of June of this year: American people drove 12.2 billion miles less because the price of gas was over $4. I didn't even hear Al Gore say, you know what, we ought to keep the gas price up, because it causes people to conserve, and it reduces the greenhouse gas that we're putting into the environment. When I hear a presidential candidate tell the people, you know what? $4 gas maybe isn't even good enough. Maybe it ought to be $5, then I'll say, this is the truth-teller.
We should vote for this person.
Yes, you probably disagree with good reason on the energy part, although even there lies a kernel of truth similar to one Obama clumsily hit on a few months ago.
O'Neill's earlier interview for I.O.U.S.A. — the full version of it — is now available in the documentary's companion book. Full interview transcripts with eleven more of the featured personalities, including Bill Bonner and Ron Paul, are also included. Even better, the release date has been moved up. It's shipping now.
Comments: