Truth in Politics

“An environmentally compatible economy will bring prosperity”

“The climate change sceptics, just like Kermit the Frog, are wrong - it is getting easier to be green.”

Rob Oakeshott Port Macquarie NSW

I quote Robbie first up here because he has said something many potential Obama supporters want to hear from the probable Democrat candidate. First up, Oakeshott is no more honest than Obama, but his constituency is far more ready to hear the message.

Just backtracking, I have been discussing Obama and truth in politics on this and other blogs. That a candidate might be cautious and circumspect in commenting on issues seems a fair call to me. After all, putting faith in the electorate to accept Jeremiah like prophesy is a big ask.

Here I’m talking about people who find themselves in deep financial straits because:

• They enter contracts and agreements on terms they cannot possibly meet
• They ignore or rationalize bills as they come in
• They ignore or dodge those attempting to collect supposed debts
• They fail to try and negotiate a resolution (often fanciful these days anyway.)

In short, they ignore the hard economic reality before them.

It goes even further, however, to the corporations, banks and business who extend debt to people who obviously cannot met the terms of agreements. Of course there is a strong element of corporate corruption in all this, as debt is a saleable commodity up an increasingly slippery finance chain.

But the personal debt issue can be turned back to the political argument. Can you save people (a country) from themselves by telling them the hard truth? And what is the hard truth anyway?

Oakeshott can make his statements safely in a country which has just endured a decade or so of water restrictions and some fairly brutal weather extremes. Even my sub-tropical paradise has registered extreme low night time temps through this winter.

Yes, we know there is something big happening out there. Can we prove it scientifically? Well I can’t, and I don’t believe Oakeshott can either. But we believe, almost as a nation now, in the need for positive action even at personal cost.

So that is the economics of environment; what about personal finances? Surely nearly every household is touched first or second hand by the debt trap or housing crisis. The remedies in Australia and the US would be quite different, but initially would still call for a major overhaul of personal aspiration and acquisition.

It would be a brave politician, in either country, who would put forward an effective plan of attack as an election agenda. The question is, does avoiding to spell out the hard detail amount to lying? I think not. But I do agree with those who are aggrieved at representatives who claim to care and still don’t take action when they have the power.