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Ross Perot Has Died
- gdubs 7y agoMany remember Perot as the goofy rich guy who ran for president in 92, but what many don’t know is that he funded NeXT computer - Steve Jobs’ post-Apple venture that was later acquired by Apple and transformed computing for the next decade. Interface Builder and the NextStep core libraries were arguably one of the biggest catalysts of the iPhone App ecosystem. In many ways iOS exists because of NeXT. So while it was considered by many to be a failed company, behind the scenes its technology has continued to be influential. Perot deserves credit for seeing the magic there, and staking a significant chunk of change on it.
- jasode 7y ago>, but what many don’t know is that he funded NeXT computer - Steve Jobs’ post-Apple venture Ross Perot also tried to buy an early Microsoft in 1979 when it only had 28 employees: http://community.seattletimes.nwsource.com/archive/?date=19920614&slug=1497096 http://community.seattletimes.nwsource.com/archive/?date=199... Some accounts said one reason Ross Perot's enthusiastic investment in NeXT happened was because he regretted missing out on Microsoft and didn't want to repeat the same mistake.
- lizknope 7y agoNothing you said is wrong except that NeXTSTEP was first ported to Mac hardware and became Mac OS X which in turn led to iOS.
- armadsen 7y agoOP didn't say otherwise.
- steve19 7y agoI remember him as the guy who did everything he could to save employees stuck in Iran, two of whom were imprisoned, during the revolution. He didnt go rescue them himself, but he funded the rescue and was personally invested in the rescue. Not many CEOs would do much more than pay some K&R firm to negotiate a ransom/bribe, while simultaneously getting the lawyers to work out how little each life is worth they need to settle with the families. RIP Mr. Perot
- tunap 7y agoHe also flew into Iran during that time to visit the imprisoned employees to assure them he was doing everything in his power to get them out. If he had been spotted, he surely would have been arrested, too. On Wings Of Eagles https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_Wings_of_Eagles https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_Wings_of_Eagles
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- twoodfin 7y agoI was curious enough to play out how much that chunk ended up being worth. Perot reportedly acquired 16% of NeXT for his $20M investment[1]. I don't know the details of the cash/stock split but Apple ultimately acquired NeXT for $350M after paying off its debts[2]. That's $56M for Perot if he maintained that 16% stake. If he kept it all in Apple stock (unlikely I know, but fun to play this out) he'd have had about 2.3 million shares of Apple at the time. AAPL has split 28X since then[3], so if he held it, today he'd own 64.4 million shares. Total present-day value, not counting significant dividends in the meantime: $12.9 billion. Really, it doesn't matter if he kept it. By the uncaring math of Wall Street, that $20M investment ultimately generated $12.9 billion worth of value. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/1987/01/30/business/company-news-perot-reportedly-invests-in-next.html https://www.nytimes.com/1987/01/30/business/company-news-per... [2] https://www.cnet.com/news/apple-acquires-next-jobs/ https://www.cnet.com/news/apple-acquires-next-jobs/ [3] https://www.fool.com/investing/2016/08/10/apples-stock-split-history.aspx https://www.fool.com/investing/2016/08/10/apples-stock-split...
- microtherion 7y agoThat assumes that NeXT did not undergo any dilution post-1987. Not sure this was the case — IIRC, they had to raise several more rounds of investment.
- ccozan 7y agoYes, but even so, the (fictional) RoI on the start money is a few orders of magnitude. Which is not quite ordinary.
- microtherion 7y agoSure, but how much was Perot being lucky vs. him being smart? If Apple had gone with acquiring Be instead of NeXT (which I think was a distinct possibility), Perot's investment could quite possibly have ended up a write-off.
- 7y ago
- walrus01 7y agoIt really glosses over and ignores the actual history of OSX by going directly from describing NeXT, to iphone stuff. The first releases of OSX were basically NeXT with a weird half baked apple GUI on top of it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mac_OS_X_Server_1.0 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mac_OS_X_Server_1.0 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mac_OS_X_Public_Beta https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mac_OS_X_Public_Beta As OSX has evolved as its own product, of course it's been diverging from its roots, but even as recently as v10.4 or v10.5 it was blindingly obvious where it came from, when you started poking around under the hood of the OS.
- bdcravens 7y ago> it was blindingly obvious where it came from Why so many APIs in the Apple ecosystem start with NS
- dlivingston 7y agoOh man, I hadn't made that connection before but it's so obvious now
- cpeterso 7y agoFirefox has its own historical code with NS- prefixes inherited from Netscape. The joke now is that NS standards for "namespace". :)
- saagarjha 7y agoIt's still quite obvious where it comes from. Many of Cocoa's controls can trace their way back to NeXTSTEP.
- B1FF_PSUVM 7y agoEDS - a large company in the 1990s - should also get a mention: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_Data_Systems https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_Data_Systems
- adventured 7y agoAnd Perot Systems, which was sold for $3.9 billion to Dell. It had 20,000 employees and $2.8 billion in revenue by 2008, before the acquisition. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perot_Systems https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perot_Systems
- chiph 7y agoThe Perovians were known to out-IBM IBM in terms of company culture. They all had short hair, no beards or mustaches, and a freshly starched shirt. From what I heard, they generally did a good job for their customers. Unlike the Big Five accounting firms, who would only run up your laser printer toner bill.
- KirinDave 7y ago... Wait. Are we giving investors specific credit for interface builder when their contribution throwing money at the founder of one of the most famous companies in the 20th century? I have more to do with Interface Builder than Ross Perot does, and I was like 13 at the time I was there doing user testing for it. Shower me with the appropriate praises please.
- mdanger007 7y agoRIP, Ross Perot. Inventor of the iPhone.
- mberning 7y agoRoss Perot was way ahead of his time. We are finally getting an idea of how terrible some of these deals have been. https://www.washingtonpost.com/video/politics/perot-in-1992-warned-nafta-would-create-giant-sucking-sound/2019/07/09/1f2a84e9-a56c-4487-9c43-892ab1b0c782_video.html?utm_term=.4e1d05e84d82 https://www.washingtonpost.com/video/politics/perot-in-1992-...
- sequoia 7y agoThis debate footage is so remarkable to watch in 2019, for several reasons. 1: They allowed a third party candidate in a general debate 2: The candidate is able to take breaths & even pause without someone cutting jumping in, allowing him to make an complete point 3: No one is talking over him while he talks. Sure the candidates are tougher to manage in 2019 (especially after Trump changed the game in '16), but the debate moderation we've seen so far is truly pathetic, and I blame the moderators for robbing voters of the more meaningful discourse that might be possible if moderators did their jobs by actually enforcing time limits & forbidding interruptions (by cutting mics).
- refurb 7y agoRoss Perot was a very significant third party candidate, which makes his appearance on the debates much more understandable. Ross got 19% of the popular vote in '92, which was just shy of half of what Clinton and Bush got. Pretty remarkable showing honestly. Most 3rd party candidates never get more than a few percent.
- mikeash 7y agoThey’d allow a third party candidate now if they did as well. To qualify, a third party candidate need to poll at 15% or above and be on enough state ballots to have at least a possibility of winning. Nobody has even come close to that since Perot.
- Nuzzerino 7y agoGary Johnson reached 12% in August 2016. Clinton started running ads against Johnson around this time as well, to prevent him from getting to the 15% mark. Then the Aleppo gaffe happened in September, which effectively killed his remaining chances.
- ChowWi 7y agoI always liked the guy. He lived not far from me. Back in the day in an old job I did a service call at his home. Never got to meet him though. He seemed to be a decent, forward thinking gent.
- secfirstmd 7y agoIf you are looking for a contrast with a typical tech bro modern day CEO leadership I highly recommend the book "On wings of Eagles." It describes Ross Perots efforts to gather a mix of staff and hired guns to go into Iran and break some of his staff out of prison during the Iranian Revolution. They actually succeeded. Partly crazy, partly courageous...only in America!
- baud147258 7y agoI remember reading that book. In the end, I don't think they had to break people out of prison, but they still successfully extracted his staff from Iran
- protomyth 7y agoNo, the prison kind of broke down which caused quite a bit of chaos itself. Revolutions are not stable environments.
- cgy1 7y agoApparently an Iranian EDS employee helped to lead the mob to break down the prison and helped to shepherd the imprisoned EDS employees to safety.
- toomuchtodo 7y agoI think I'll add, "Are you willing and able to extract me from a country I'm located in (in the course of our work) while a revolution is actively in progress?" to my list of interview questions.
- jeffrallen 7y agoThen you might like working for Doctors Without Borders, who can actually answer yes to that.
- brighter2morrow 7y ago
- fdavison 7y agoNone of what I've read today on his passing have mentioned this interesting story of the rescue of his employees from Iran during the revolution: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_Wings_of_Eagles https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_Wings_of_Eagles A mini-series was produced about it starring Burt Lancaster
- thomasjudge 7y agoI enjoyed the book, never saw the tv program, although I also just found this counter-narrative: https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-1992-07-09-9203020097-story.html https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-1992-07-09-920302...
- basch 7y agoBack when the Chicago Tribune thought it was Buzzfeed, I dont think they liked him. "26 REASONS WHY ROSS PEROT DOESN`T DESERVE YOUR VOTE" https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-1992-10-08-9204010175-story.html https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-1992-10-08-920401...
- WalterBright 7y agoThe obituary in the Seattle Times does: https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/nation/texas-billionaire-h-ross-perot-dies-aged-89/ https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/nation/texas-billi...
- tomatocracy 7y ago
- drfuchs 7y agoI chanced to be next to him in line for the buffet at the big NeXT unveiling event at SF’s Davies Hall and chatted briefly with him. Nobody seemed to be aware of who / what he was at the time. I wonder how many zillionaire investors are semi-anonymous these days.
- peter303 7y agoI was there too but only saw Woz and some of the original Mac team. Started late as was Steves habit in the early years (and probably flakey computers too). The essence of the demo was multimedia capabilities- uncommon in that era. I was Stanford faculty that time. The computer was aimed ar education, but I did not why it was so much better than others. An OS mostly OOP ground up was nifty.
- uses 7y agoWhat a quaint time when the oddball outsider candidate was a mentally stable human being calmly explaining ideas in a way anybody could understand.
- twoodfin 7y ago"Mentally stable" does not really capture the American electorate's impression of Perot's candidacy in 1992. He was significantly damaged by his choice to drop out for a few weeks in the middle of the summer—while leading in the polls!—blaming shadowy Republican operatives for threatening his daughter's wedding.
- colordrops 7y agoAre you implying he was lying or hallucinating? Edit: genuinely curious as to why my question is being down voted.
- jandrese 7y agoIIRC the news outlets at the time weren't painting an especially flattering picture of him either. I have a vague memory of stories where the implication was that he was a nutjob with no chance of winning. My local newspaper was pretty conservative leaning though.
- 5trokerac3 7y agoThat doesn't sound wholly unbelievable, from a 2019 point of view.
- brighter2morrow 7y ago>"Mentally stable" does not really capture the American electorate's impression of Perot's candidacy in 1992. Don't mix up the American people with the Mainstream media
- Theodores 7y agoSomething about your comment makes me compare and contrast with the oddball outsider who did make it into the White House - the current occupant. At the time there were many people who cursed Perot for splitting the two party vote, however he did get 18.9% and that is pretty incredible considering how entrenched attitudes were at the time for voting Democrat to make sure the Republican didn't win and vice-versa. I have watched Perot's political adverts from the era and I thought he was a breath of fresh air. If I was American and of voting age at the time I like to think I would have voted for him and not succumbed to the peer pressure to vote Democrat. Even the idea of a third party candidate was ahead of its time. Ralph Nader must have been informed by the success of Perot.
- protomyth 7y agoYou can call him "goofy", but he was anything but. I got to watch him give a speech in Fargo during the 92 campaign and it was amazing. At the time, I got into the habit of reading each candidates "book" they put out during the election. His was short, to the point, and very specific on what needed fixing. He was a serious man that ran into the establishment and got hammered.
- defen 7y agoDidn't he also "disappear" (from the public eye) during a crucial point in the campaign? My memory of this is hazy as I was only 12 at the time, but I recall my father being interested in his candidacy, but then around July or August he withdrew from the campaign. Then re-entered in September or October, so he came across as "flaky".
- madengr 7y agoHe talked about a conspiracy by the Republicans to ruin his daughters wedding. I thought he was crazy at the time, but now I believe him. I remember his hour long presentations with the flip charts of how things were screwed up. Too bad he didn’t win. Instead we got the scumbag Clintons.
- protomyth 7y agoAt the time, I thought it was all conspiracies and a really weird publicity stunt. I had no intention of voting for Bush or Clinton, so I went ahead and voted for Perot. Looking back, and seeing some of the stuff that has come out about the other candidates, I too now believe it was all true.
- akhilcacharya 7y agoBill Clinton left office with a 60+% approval rating, higher than Reagan when he left. Bill won both elections with 370+ electoral votes. I think the American people were mostly pleased.
- 7y ago
- davidw 7y ago> ran into the establishment What he ran into was the inevitable math of a first past the post electoral system. You want third parties, you need ranked choice voting or something similar. Even if you're fine with the main parties, RCV is probably better in terms of electing who most people want. You could argue that Bush senior might have won with it if the Perot voters ranked 1) Perot 2) Bush. Bush junior might have lost had the Nader voters ranked Gore second. Similar question marks hang over the election of Trump with Jill Stein and Gary Johnson and the extremely thin margin of victory in the electoral college.
- protomyth 7y agoNo, the United States has an Electoral College for very specific reasons that are just as true today and they were when the Constitution was written. It is a shame that political parties formed in the first place, but George Washington couldn't have his way all the time. It has nothing to do with the voting. It had a lot to do with the who controlled information. I get the feeling with the internet of today he would have fared quite a bit better (92 was 2 years before Netscape was founded).
- davidw 7y agoThe EC and ranked choice voting are two different, and compatible things. You could have RCV within each state, for instance.
- protomyth 7y agoRanked choice might work for parliaments, but it would just create unwelcome surprises in the US. I cannot help but think what happened in a sport (NASCAR) with its switch from winner take all to a series of rankings would mean if it were something as important as voting. You might find sports is not a serious argument, but this is the US and the reaction shows some tendencies towards other aspects of life.
- nothrabannosir 7y ago
- melling 7y agoRemember his famous “Giant Sucking Sound” comment? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giant_sucking_sound https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giant_sucking_sound
- influx 7y agoI'd say he was right: "We have got to stop sending jobs overseas. It's pretty simple: If you're paying $12, $13, $14 an hour for factory workers and you can move your factory South of the border, pay a dollar an hour for labor, ... have no health care—that's the most expensive single element in making a car— have no environmental controls, no pollution controls and no retirement, and you don't care about anything but making money, there will be a giant sucking sound going south. ... when [Mexico's] jobs come up from a dollar an hour to six dollars an hour, and ours go down to six dollars an hour, and then it's leveled again. But in the meantime, you've wrecked the country with these kinds of deals.[1]" Perot ultimately lost the election, and the winner, Bill Clinton, supported NAFTA, which went into effect on January 1, 1994.
- pessimizer 7y ago> the winner, Bill Clinton, supported NAFTA, which went into effect on January 1, 1994. Which ultimately ended up damaging Mexican wages, too, because we showered Mexico with heavily subsidized corn (and other agricultural products) forcing rural Mexicans into the cities and the maquiladoras.
- mieseratte 7y agoI’ve heard it argued that NAFTA set the stage for that increased immigration North as well.
- cycrutchfield 7y agoIf you can build a car for cheaper elsewhere, why wouldn't you? If your goal is to keep people gainfully employed, well how about working on improving their skills so that a laborer in a developing country isn't more productive than they are?
- MaconBacon 7y agoIt may not have been preventable, but he was absolutely correct on NAFTA.
- dragonwriter 7y ago> It may not have been preventable, but he was absolutely correct on NAFTA. He was wrong on NAFTA, pushing the nationalist/mercantilist line that it would divert gains from the US to Mexico when the actual problem was that (as is generally the case for neoliberal “free” trade) that it drove gains to the capitalist class in both the US and Mexico (and internationally, as capital is largely globalized) to the relative disadvantage of the working classes on both sides of the border. Bill Clinton was largely rhetorically correct on NAFTA, at least in outline (noting that it would be an aggregate boon but would require additional work to avoid adverse impacts on workers), but while he did impose a labor side agreement on NAFTA it was insufficient to change the basic problems.
- newfriend 7y agoSo companies moved jobs away from the US to the detriment of American workers? How is he wrong then? That's exactly what he said would happen. The US would have been much better off with Perot as president. Both Bush and Clinton supported NAFTA, and Clinton ushered China into the WTO.
- dragonwriter 7y ago> So companies moved jobs away from the US to the detriment of American workers? No, the US experienced strong economic growth (stronger than it would have without NAFTA) and likewise strong job growth (maybe stronger than it would have been without NAFTA, that's less clear), but less job (or at least wage) growth than would have been expected with similar economic growth without NAFTA. Insofar as there was a “sucking sound”, it wasn't of jobs or wealth being sucked to Mexico from the US, it was of relative economic position being pulled to capital from labor in both the US and Mexico (also Canada, FWIW.) > The US would have been much better off with Perot as president. Not, from any evidence, based on first-order policy impacts from the Administration. Perhaps based on missing the impacts on the partisan alignment from the pinnacle of neoliberal consensus and the subsequent rightward surge of the Republican Party as it sought to distinguish itself from the Clintonian neoliberalism in the Democratic Party that was virtually identical (but for comparatively small differences on some culture war issues, but even there Clinton was mostly a rightward divergence for the Democrats) to the pre-Clinton Republican position, sure. Maybe bases on the partisan realignment that would have resulted from the Perot faction displacing one of the major parties, sure. Certainly based on Perot not having strong-but-failed bids in 1992 and then against with his Reform Party in 1996 which, by qualifying for matching funds, brought a number of opportunists to seek the 2000 Reform Party nomination, including David Duke and Donald Trump, the latter of which cited the risk of association with the former as a reason for dropping out, but courted the same White Nationalist constituency when he ran again, this time for a major party nomination, after a decade and a half of retooling his political image. > Both Bush and Clinton supported NAFTA On trade policy, Bush, Clinton, and Perot all favored the capitalist class. Bush did so fairly nakedly, and chose policies well-supported by modern economics given that goal. Perot also did so fairly nakedly, but work mercantilist policies th t both theory and evidence had shown were suboptimal for centuries. Clinton was like Bush, but with some at least rhetorical recognition that supporting the capitalist class in ways which produced aggregate growth could be counterproductive for the larger working class and that at least modest active interventions were necessary to assure that aggregate growth resulted in general benefit. If one agreed with his ideological focus, Bush was the least wrong on policy. Clinton was, at least rhetorically, the least wrong on what was necessary for durable broad progress, though in practical first-order policy terms probably not different enough from Bush to make much difference in outcomes, as his mitigation measures were far too modest. Perot was the most wrong.
- stevespang 7y agoThe devil has a special cell full of sewage, in isolation, the red hot flames of eternity waiting for Ross, alongside Cheney, Pot Pol, Stalin, Hitler. This man pushed a misguided law into Texas that almost got me life in prison. Had I been in Colorado, Washington, Oregon, or California I would have been a local hero. But too many others after the crisp decision DID get sentenced to draconian life sentences and are still rotting in dark cells because of this man.
- systematical 7y agoCountry would be in a better place if he had won in 92.
- ChrisArchitect 7y agoThe NeXT thing is neat. Also of course he made it into the Simpsons. "Go ahead, throw your vote away!"
- diafygi 7y agoIf you're ever in Dallas, TX, the Perot museum is one of the best children's science museums in the world. Highly recommended for both kids and adults.
- efa 7y agoWas about to post that. Our family always visits the museum when we are in Dallas. Amazing place.
- FpUser 7y agoI might be naive but I do admire what he did to save his employees held hostage in Iran.
- jason_slack 7y agoI was in high school when Perot ran for President and I was a huge fan. I remember liking how he wasn’t a politician and therefor looked at the problems our country had from a different point of view. This was the first time I had ever watched political debates; because I wanted to hear him speak. He was so different. I also was a huge Apple and then Next fan at that time too. I sent him an email asking if he could help me get a Next computer :-) His books are good reads if you ever get the chance. RIP.
- canada_dry 7y ago> he wasn’t a politician and therefor looked at the problems our country had from a different point of view. This is what many had desired when they propelled the current 'billionaire' non-politican to President. Comparing Ross Perot to Trump is like comparing a Neuroscientist to a Snake-Oil Salesman though.
- brighter2morrow 7y agoFunny enough, after Ross Perot the reform party's next presidential nominee was Donald Trump, who ran on a Perot-esque platform and was the first major presidential nominee to support gay marriage
- saxonww 7y agoHe was briefly involved, but the party nomination went to Pat Buchanan.
- grayed-down 7y agoI liked Ross Perot and he would have been a terrific president but damn him for not at least trying to primary Bush and allowing the Clintons into the White House.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- sambeau 7y agoThe fascinating bromance between Steve Jobs and Ross Perot https://www.cake.co/conversations/DwwvjtB/the-fascinating-bromance-between-steve-jobs-and-ross-perot https://www.cake.co/conversations/DwwvjtB/the-fascinating-br... is a fun read.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- neonate 7y agoThat article is a lot of fun and so is this one that it linked to: https://www.nytimes.com/1986/04/27/business/the-irritant-they-call-perot.html https://www.nytimes.com/1986/04/27/business/the-irritant-the... http://archive.is/q5o3b http://archive.is/q5o3b I had no idea he was that interesting!
- SubiculumCode 7y agoI believe I was around 18 when I heard of Ross Perot. At the time I had been impressed by the charts and no-nonsense approach, although now I realize I could not have judged their content with any actual knowledge. As I know a lot more about the world now, about debt, fiat currencies, and inflation, etc, and how charts can be constructed to not represent reality but one's agenda, beliefs, or misconceptions, I wonder now the extent to which Ross Perot's charts and message were insightful, or merely propagated myths and value-choices. Were his charts deficit hawk debt clocks and scare tactics, or were there real insights that reflected reality? I do not remember now because I did not understand them then. Anyone on HN have an opinion?
- chiph 7y agoHere's his second infomercial. Complete with flip charts. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mPIVI0CbCmg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mPIVI0CbCmg Pretty much every topic he brings up is still relevant today.
- clausok 7y agoHere's a navy seal telling a story about Perot helping him figure out what was wrong with his son -- turned out to be an incredibly rare genetic disorder. https://youtu.be/snMzYfhXScQ?t=5065 https://youtu.be/snMzYfhXScQ?t=5065
- 5555624 7y agoPerot's Presidential candidacy is a good example of why we need the Electoral College and cannot simply go with the "winner" of the popular vote. Clinton had 370 Electoral College votes, Bush had 168, and Perot had 0. Not only did Clinton win easily, he had a majority of ALL the Electoral College votes. In the popular vote, it was 44,909,889 for Clinton, 39,104,545 for Bush, and 19,743,821 for Perot. While Clinton still had the majority, more than half the votes cast for President were not for him -- in other words, the majority of voters did not want Clinton to be elected President. Some sort of system which uses "rounds" to narrow the field down to two candidates could work; but, it's hard enough to get people to vote once, much less several times.
- m1n1 7y agoHave people vote once by ranking candidates. Then the computer can do the rounds.
- agbell 7y agoyeah, a ranked ballot solves this problem. The concept of a condorcet winner, is that the winner would win head to head against all non-winners and various ranked ballot schemes pass this condorcet criterion.
- omegaworks 7y agoAbolish the electoral college, institute national ranked-choice.
- rtkwe 7y agoOr in a way that would be less constitutionally difficult do national ranked choice and proportional electoral college. Most of the benefit without, probably, having to change the constitution. To completely remove the electoral college you'd have to amend the constitution because the constitution spells that out as the method for choosing the president.
- ambicapter 7y agoFrance does two rounds, first round all the candidates, second round top 2.
- codesushi42 7y agoUnfortunately the media establishment discredited Ross Perot by painting him as "nutty" and focusing on his mannerisms, rather than what he was saying. Seeing Bush's and Clinton's smirks during the debates are embarrassing, and did nothing but baselessly discredit the man and his ideas. The media did the same to Ron Paul by framing him as a loon and someone to laugh at. This same strategy by the mainstream media backfired miserably, and quite hilariously with the unfortunate election of Trump.
- shitgoose 7y agowhy "unfortunate"? maybe it is about time the fourth pillar finally gets what it deserves.
- zimpenfish 7y ago> why "unfortunate"? I mean, the kids in cages might find it unfortunate. The farmers being hurt by tariff fights are also finding it somewhat unfortunate. I'm pretty sure the LGBTQ community, too. (I could go on - there's a long list of groups this POTUS is hurting.)
- shitgoose 7y agoi hate doing that, so i will be brief. --- cages - started with Obama. farmers are hurt, other businesses benefit from production returning from China. to early to tell. LGBT - news to me. btw, you forgot to mention that he hates Jews too. sort of. --- peace
- coupdejarnac 7y agoMy dad was a programmer at EDS for a short time before the Iran incident. Dad has a great deal of respect for Perot- Perot was quite the role model and practiced what he preached. He was also very approachable. Dad looks kindly on the times he had short but friendly interactions with Perot on the elevator or wherever around EDS. Dad was slated to join the Iran contract, but he decided being a programmer was not for him(he HATED punchcards). Talking with Dad today, one thing that isn't remembered as well is Perot's support of veterans during the Vietnam War, which was not in vogue then.
- RickJWagner 7y agoThat's awesome. I started in Tech in 1990, I remember stories about Perot and EDS. An incredible time in the business. (Also, the 'must wear a suit' era, which I believe Perot was big on.)
- meerita 7y agoToday also former ex-president of Argentina, Fernando de la Rúa died. He was the president that was part of an opposition strike and derived into the big crisis in Argentina in 2001.
- Kye 7y agoCan you expand on this a bit? The connection to Ross Perot isn't clear to someone not well-versed in the history.
- purplezooey 7y agoLots of people on here probably don't even remember the presidential bid, or maybe saw it in a textbook. Strange days.
- lucas_membrane 7y agoHe did some good things. He was brave enough to recommend that high school athletes (ie football players) in Texas could not play unless they met some minimal standards of participation in academics. OTOH, his business career is not atypical. The deal about starting EDS with $1,000 may or may not be true. He was a successful salesperson for IBM. He sold to the insurance companies in Dallas, particularly Southwestern Life, which he talked into buying a huge 70xx (2nd generation) mainframe computer. Supposedly, IBM then had a maximum commission that a salesperson could earn in a year, so he was looking at a large part of a year with no additional income. Coincidentally, Southwestern Life, having acquired an IBM computer very much larger than it could use productively, had around 2 shifts per day that it could easily be persuaded to lease to Perot's $1,000 new company, EDS. How did Perot get customers? He had an associate who was very close to VP-then-president LBJ, and there was this thing called Medicare that LBJ was starting up, and Perot's new little $1,000 company got the contract to process Medicare claims! So, the man who ran against government had been made a huge success by government money. The government really was a big friend to Perot. The government of Texas built a highway north out of Ft Worth. Perot built an airport out there, but not near the highway, because that land was too expensive. Then he persuaded the great State of Texas to move the highway to serve his airport. The Treasury department started printing money nearby, flying it to Federal Reserve banks through his airport. And Perot systems, the company he started after he exited EDS, early on obtained a very large contract to automate the US Post Office, with IBM System/38 minicomputers everywhere. As an employer, he did some things that are still a little controversial. New tech employees signed contracts, and if they quit too soon thereafter (one or two years, IIRC), they owed EDS $10,000 for training (this was money 40 years ago). EDS also used mandatory overtime, (often six and sometimes 7-day weeks during crunch time), with armed guards at the door monitoring bathroom breaks. A couple of things he said during the 1992 campaign were also a bit fishy. David Frost quoted Peter Lesser directly to Perot, “Ross Perot is a good person, and he’d make a great king. But I think he’d be a bad president.” Perot said he had never heard of Peter Lesser, whom he had met and had discussions with, and who had run for both district attorney and mayor of Dallas in the preceding few years. As a CEO who does not know who ran for mayor in the city in which his business is headquartered, he must have been pre-channeling Trump one way or the other, as he likely was with his bogus claim during the campaign about a Black Panther assassination plot against himself broken up by his dog.
- viburnum 7y agoIIRC he was the only CEO to end equal benefits to gay and lesbian employees (Perot Systems started when he stepped away and ended it when he came back).
- mieseratte 7y agoFor the curious: > https://www.nytimes.com/1998/04/10/us/perot-ends-benefits-for-partners-of-newly-hired-gay-workers.html https://www.nytimes.com/1998/04/10/us/perot-ends-benefits-fo... > In an interview, Mr. Perot, chairman of Perot Systems, said his decision only reflected his fear that heterosexuals would falsely claim committed relationships to win these benefits. Would be interesting to hear if he has other known slights against LGBT or if he truly hates loopholes.
- WheelsAtLarge 7y agoI remember his run in 92. He got branded as out of touch and cooky by the press with the help of the political parties. It didn't help that he quit the race and gave some strange reason and then jumped back in. He even made light of it by picking Patsy Cline's "Crazy" as his theme song. He seemed like a very good man that stuck by his beliefs. Peace be with him.
- travisl12 7y ago"Can I finish...?"
- OBLIQUE_PILLAR 7y agoRoss Perot advocated for and greatly influenced the eventual passing of draconian drug laws in Texas. http://www.issues2000.org/Celeb/Ross_Perot_Drugs.htm http://www.issues2000.org/Celeb/Ross_Perot_Drugs.htm
- Aloha 7y agoNot everyone can be right about everything I'd note. He was a man who made a tremendous influence, mostly good, some bad.
- so-what 7y agoEveryone who advocates for drugs and their legalization can be flushed right down the fucking toilet. I sincerely do not give one single shit who goes to jail for drugs. Black hole the world in supermax prisons. Your precious cannabis is a crutch for the weak. Fuck all of you.
- markhahn 7y agoindependents were always weird, but at least not stupid dicks like you know who.
- brighter2morrow 7y agoHeck yeah I know who ;)
- RickJWagner 7y agoI like Ross Perot, enough to have voted for him in '92. A few favorites: - He used his own money to finance rescue missions for EDS employees caught overseas in unfriendly situations. - He was sort of a cartoon-ish character,short of stature and with over-sized ears. In one of his presidential debates I remember him making the comment "I'm all ears!", cracking himself up with the rest of us. RIP, Mr. Perot
- hakdbha 7y agoAnd he also donated to Trump’s reelection campaign.
- thrax 7y agoReally glad he's dead. He was just another cheerleader for the unfettered greed and capitalism that is destroying the Earth. Good Riddance!