Indeed, Singapore believes so strongly that you have to get the best-qualified and least-corruptible people you can into senior positions in the government, judiciary and civil service that its pays its prime minister a salary of $1.1 million a year. It pays its cabinet ministers and Supreme Court justices just under $1 million a year, and pays judges and senior civil servants handsomely down the line.
From Singapore's early years, good governance mattered because the ruling party was in a struggle for the people's hearts and minds with the Communists, who were perceived to be both noncorrupt and caring - so the state had to be the same and more.
Even after the Communists faded, Singapore maintained a tradition of good governance because as a country of only four million people with no natural resources, it had to live by its wits. It needed to run its economy and schools in a way that would extract the maximum from each citizen, which is how four million people built reserves of $100 billion.
You missed this part.........it is key to his argument. Singapore is willing to pay to get "good governance". Their prime minister makes $1.1 million. We pay our president what $150K?........I made that much as a VP for a small real estate syndicator over 5 years ago. Then we wonder why we get a rich elitist who got C's in college and who doesn't bother to watch the news and who goes to war at the drop of a hat for president. We are getting what we paid.
The discipline that the cold war imposed on America, by contrast, seems to have faded. Last year, we cut the National Science Foundation budget, while indulging absurd creationist theories in our schools and passing pork-laden energy and transportation bills in the middle of an energy crisis.
Unfortunately, I think we are witnessing the decline of the American culture.......not for the reasons so many people complain about......too much graphic sex bla, bla, bla etc but rather because we have become too fat and complacent........looking for immediate gratification at every turn and not willing to cutback when necessary. Tom Delay's little speech is all so typical of the porkies we have become.
The next chapter I think is about to unfold.......purging the gov't of the Bushies and cleaning up his mistakes. How we do that......how much vigor and will we apply will determine if we go down or not IMO. 9/11 was a crossroads of sorts for the American culture. IMO we went down a wrong road. To correct that error, we have to go all the way back and then start down the right road. We'll see if we are up to the task.
ted
|
