by Reg NYC
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Fri Mar 09, 2007 at 11:02:22 AM EST
Crossposted from The Clark Community Network
Reg: Hi, I'm Reg. I'm here with General Wesley Clark, former Supreme Allied Commander of NATO and 2004 Presidential candidate. First, I'd like to thank you for your work with VoteVets and stopiranwar.com.
General Clark Thank you.
Reg: Everyone please go and sign the petition
General Clark Please.
Reg: at stopiranwar.com, all one word. But I also know that you're more well-rounded than that. So, I wanted to ask some questions you are not ordinarily asked about.
General Clark Okay.
- Reg NYC's diary :: ::
Reg: Okay. First thing was I was very pleasantly surprised to hear you say at one point that you supported refunding the National Endowment for the Arts.
General Clark That's true. (laughs)
Reg: Culture is our largest civilian export, but a lot of politicians-
General Clark Exactly.
Reg: -in both parties attack the arts, but...
General Clark Yeah. Well, you need all, you need the arts. I mean, if- people have to have a means of interpreting their (chuckle) life experiences. You can't just be mechanical in life. It's about feeling and emotion and the meaning of life, and that's what art does for us in all of its mediums.
Reg: Do you support restoring the grants to individuals instead of just organizations like it is now?
General Clark Absolutely.
Reg: Do you enjoy the arts yourself?
General Clark Yes. Well, I used to paint.
Reg: Oh, I didn't know that.
General Clark And I used to do sculpture and stuff like that. And you know I, (chuckles) I'm a some-time attempted violinist.
Reg: Oh, I didn't know that.
General Clark My, I got a violin from my father. I, I used to play the trombone. Then when I came back from Vietnam, I had this incredible sort of near-death urge to learn the piano. So, I stayed with the piano for about a year and a half until finally common sense overwhelmed my ability to practice an hour a night, and I just, I just couldn't do it where we were living with a one and a half year old in the house. And then when I turned 60, Gert asked me what I wanted for Christmas, and I wanted my violin restored from my father, and I wanted violin lessons. So, I took about six or eight months of violin lessons. So, I can pick out tunes on the violin. I can make some good notes and play the scales, and I feel really good about it. And it's one of these things that's better than golf.
Reg: (chuckles)
General Clark I'm going to get my violin handicap down to zero.
Reg: (laughs out loud) Okay. You were on Fox recently, and you wanted to talk about economics, but Neil Cavuto wouldn't let you.
General Clark That's true!
Reg: Do you think your economic plans that you had '04, like your tax plan, your college tuition plan, do you think they'd still be possible now with all the new debt we've accrued? Would we have to sacrifice that because of the war?
General Clark Well, I want to be really careful about raising taxes. I really am going to try not to raise taxes, but I do believe we've got to take care of people. You have to- I, I've been telling people in business, I said, You know, we've got a potential legitimacy problem. When a CEO makes 400 time what a worker makes, then you have to ask, Why does he deserve that much?
Reg: Right.
General Clark And the answer is the, it's just like in the military. You know, I've always said, Generals don't win battles. They're won by the people at the bottom of the organization - Sergeants and the Privates and the Captains and Lieutenants, not by the Colonels and the Generals. And the same is true in American business. You may make a great trade. If so, you're an investment banker, but when it's your company and you're producing a product or something, you've got to give some of that back to the people who helped you make it. And that's a legitimacy problem. You may not be able to give it all back in salary. I can accept that, but you better give it back in terms of educational opportunities, transportation and healthcare.
Reg: Okay.
General Clark And the arts!
Reg: Thank you. You were on the Ed Schultz Show the other day, and you mentioned personal debt. A lot of people who were unemployed or under-employed in recent years paid some of their bills with loans or with credit cards, and now they're underneath all this debt-
General Clark Education loans you're talking about. Well, education loans are the toughest loans.
Reg: Yeah.
General Clark You cannot skip out on an education loan. They're coming after you. There's a 99.9% repayment rate on education loans.
Reg: (laughs)
General Clark The government just takes it out of your taxes.
Reg: Well, what can be done about that?
General Clark Well, I think that you've got to emphasize employment in this country, but to do that, I'm favoring - and I've been talking to some of the union leaders - about a new paradigm for American labor. You know, when there was an industrial army in the Industrial Age, and you had massed workforces, and when you couldn't off-shore produce and get away with it, because you didn't have to the communications and control of it, then labor had more bargaining power, and unions emerged to exploit labor's bargaining power. Today, that's not the case. Labor doesn't have that bargaining power in most instances. So, the purpose of joining together if you're working is not to go gouge your employer for more benefits. Maybe that is, but it may not work. What you really have to do is have some self-help societies so that the purpose of it is professional development for the workforce. So, everybody who comes in, even if they are just a high school graduate, they should be given a roadmap and a roadmap that says if you work here you get your next level of skill, you'll take some off-duty vo-tech courses and we'll - I said off duty, but that's because we did this in the military, and it works. You've got, you've got- The most precious gift you can give someone is aspirations and show them that there's a way to better themselves and their family. To move from point A to point B, you must do these things, and you can get there. That's what we need - help, because most people in the workforce have no help. A man came to me on an airplane past week. We were flying out of Little Rock. I asked him what the most, biggest problem was in America, He said, "Well, of course, Iraq." He said, "But it's employment." I said, "Well, why?" I said, "Are you unemployed?" He said, "No, because," he said, "I'm trapped in a job. I'm 53 years old, and I can't get out of this job. I'm, I'm gone 28 days a month. I can't get a pay raise. I can't quit, and I don't have time to find another job. And I've got five kids."
Reg: Right.
General Clark And that's what happens in America. We have a myth of labor force mobility, but it's mostly a myth. When you're right out of college, sure it's easy, but when you're married and have family obligations, kids in school and maybe your wife's got a job and you've got sick relatives, and this labor market mobility's not what it's cracked up to be. You need some professional assistance, and we need to form a new paradigm so that ordinary working men and women can get that professional assistance.
Reg: Okay. Two more questions. One thing you spoke about in '04 that I didn't hear anyone else talking about was corporate welfare. Can you talk about that a little bit?
General Clark Well, actually John Kerry talked a little bit about it too, but you know we do have what we call tax expenditures, which is a subsidy or a- it's the equivalent of a subsidy or it's a special deal that comes through the taxation process. And a lot of this goes to big business. In fact, some goes to businesses who are actually off-shoring their jobs, and so they get a special tax subsidy for doing it. That's wrong!
Reg: Right.
General Clark I think we got to go wipe those out, start with a clean slate. There may be things you want tax expenditures on, assuming you don't completely rewrite the tax code and do away with them. Maybe they make a lot of sense in things like alternative energy.
Reg: Right.
General Clark But that should be a conscious choice of what we do, not a, just an absentminded byproduct of an archaic tax code.
Reg: Okay. The last question. You're very- you have a very big following online. You've made great use of the internet, but you also have a very vibrant online community on your blog. Did that happen organically, or was that by design?
General Clark (chuckles) It wasn't my design.
Reg: (laughs)
General Clark I think it's just a lot of really great people who care about the country, and to some extent, they're tired of politics as usual. They know that there's more to politics than celebrity status, even though some people don't seem to understand that. And so, they're looking for, they're looking for a way to express their ideas and to help shape elections.
Reg: Okay. That website is stopiranwar.com. General Wesley Clark's website is securingamerica.com. Thank you very much, General.
General Clark Thanks a lot. Appreciate it, Reg.
Reg: Thank you.
Comments
1. Reorienting our National Security Posture2. Bringing fairness back to our economic system
3. Developing greater accountability in Government
Sound familiar?
I am very proud and honored to have Wes Clark and Jim Webb as my personal hero's
Well, I want to be really careful about raising taxes. I really am going to try not to raise taxes
I wonder if he just might be planning an announcement soon ...
I also can't provide any timeline, but I know without a doubt now he is running.
Trust me, if I knew when EVERYONE would know.
So.. of course they won't tell me. =(
Chicago, Illinois
March 10, 2008Look folks, I just report. YOU react.
I was at the United Center in Chicago late yesterday afternoon watching the seventh of a ten game basketball tournament, when my cell phone rang.
Here is the bottom line:
General Wesley Clark will be in New York City this coming Wednesday, March 14th to speak as part of a continuing "ROAD TO THE WHITE HOUSE" series.
Taj Lounge
48 West 21st Street
7:30 PM
RSVP Required. Space limited to a couple hundred.