ustxtxb_obs_1992_04_10_50_00001-00000_000.pdf

MATT WUERKER PAT LITTLEDOG ON CRAZY WATER Pg. 17 A JOURNAL OF FREE VOICES APRIL 10, 1992 $1.50 Big Money in the Presidential Primary BY THOMAS FERGUSON Boston, Mass. 0 N JANUARY 29, 1848, Alexis de Tocqueville rose to issue an urgent warning to his colleagues in the French Chamber of Deputies.. “I am told,” he said, “that there is no danger because there are no riots…” But “I believe that we are at this moment sleeping on a volcano….Think, gentlemen, of the old monarchy: It was stronger than you are, stronger in its origin; it was able to lean more than you upon ancient customs, ancient habits, ancient beliefs; it was stronger than you are, and yet it has fallen into dust. And why did it fall? Do you think it was by particular mischance? Do you think it was by the act of some man, by the [budget] deficit…No gentlemen; There was another reason: the class that was then the governing class had become, through its indifference, its selfishness and its vices, incapable and unworthy of governing the country….” “Do you not feel,” finally asked the famous author of Democracy in America, “by some intuitive instinct which is not capable of analysis, but which is undeniable, that the earth is quaking once again?” Tocqueville’s fellow deputies listened, but few heard him. Virtually to a man, they were astounded when, a few weeks later, a tide of revolution engulfed Paris and the rest of Europe. For a brief moment this winter, as company after com pany announced massive layoffs, wage cuts, plant clos ings, and cutbacks in health insurance; plummeting real estate values threatened the solvency of banks and insur ance companies; and a genuine credit crunch developed in some regions, many Americans suddenly began hear ing ominous sounds of the earth “quaking once again.” With cash -starved state and local governments chopping Continued on pg. 6