YOUR HOUR OF POWER
It is great to be in Vanuatu. Always is! For me personally, it is where all the Economic Theories I been working on the past 45 years has become vindicated. The Parliament of Vanuatu, "Parliament of the People, by the People and for the People" passed the Resolution to enable Economic Democracy in Vanuatu nine years ago this week. With a motto such as that you cannot fail to succeed. Today all Vanuatuans enjoy a booming economy and all those who want to work are.
But Vanuatu’s success with Economic Democracy goes far beyond the statistics. It is difficult to find a person on these islands who is not enjoying self-actualization and feels that they are in control of their own destiny. That is why and how I developed my Concept of Economic Democracy.
There are other charlatan versions of Economic Democracy that lead to the fat cats once again controlling everything and the people are nothing but paid slaves. That is what we have in the United States where 89% of the people are slaves to the 11% who own and control everything.
Now, critics point out that Vanuatu has a population of just 300,000 and it would never work in an economy the size of the one in the United States where there are quite literally over 1,100 times more people and the GDP is 24,500 times as large.
Let me help you out with economics. The Academic Discipline of Economics, the so-called dismal scientists, of which I am one, has what we call “multipliers”. These numbers quite literally betray the fact that there is a multiple of approximately 22.4 times greater economic growth with the greater population. Suffice it to say, if Economic Democracy can work in Vanuatu, the country which has the largest economy in the world should do spectacularly with Economic Democracy. But then I repeat myself.
And, oh by the way, I have developed an insurance program called Living Security. You know about how well it works here as well. Living Security will take care of most insurance needs from cradle to grave including a never-before-seen income insurance component which is designed to make sure no one falls below a certain subsistence level.
While determining what that subsistence level is exactly and making it sound sufficient to the regulators has been difficult, we have met with success the past five years in some of the British Commonwealth Countries, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Portugal. The United Kingdom and France are the European countries who first colonized these islands and which Vanuatu declared its Independence in 1980.
Now, all this has put me in a great deal of trouble with that 11% in America I was talking about earlier. The Life & Health Insurance Industry is the largest industry in the history of the world and anybody who messes with that will be driven out of business; or, worse, will suffer 18 assassinate attempts; separation from your family; over 425,000,000 Felonies committed against you; know financial ruin several times over; and know that the very people who are responsible for protecting you are in fact the ones behind it.
In the height of my Career in Financial Services, I made over $160,000 a year in Missoula, Montana, USA. Montanans are incredibly trusting and parochial; and a good many of them were in love with their State Farm Agent. I don’t know how many times I heard something like, “Grandpa Joe went with State Farm; my Daddy went with State Farm, so I am going with State Farm.” This despite the fact I could give them three times the amount of insurance protection for same cost or give them the same amount of coverage for about 35% of the cost. On paper it never made sense, but it happened again and again nonetheless.
I am not trying to pick on State Farm, it is a good company. The point is that people can arrive at a mindset which is detrimental to them and they simply refuse to change. Fortunately, the vast majority of Vanuatans are not that way and you are much better off than the average Montanan, even though both economies are primary agricultural and Montana’s population is just over three times as large. There should be little difference in the general mindset, but there is an enormous divergence that is almost frightening.
Open-mindedness is defined by a person’s willingness to search actively for evidence against one's favored beliefs, plans, or goals, and to weigh such evidence fairly when it is available. This is at the heart of another one of my Concepts, General Semantics of History.
If you are either incapable of or unwilling to change your viewpoint when the evidence warrants it, then you may be heading for an irreparable train wreck in your life. Inevitably, people in this situation blame everyone but themselves but simply the only person responsible for their predicament is staring right back at them in the mirror in morning. It is that person you have to deal with first, not the rest of the world.
No matter where you live or are from, what matters is what have you learned from your mistakes and what are you willing to do to create the life you want. I have always paid attention to Richard Nixon’s last 24 hours as President of the United States. In his resignation speech, he said:
“Around the world, in Asia, in Africa, in Latin America, in the Middle East, there are millions of people who live in terrible poverty, even starvation. We must keep as our goal turning away from production for war and expanding production for peace so that people everywhere on this earth can at last look forward in their children's time, if not in our own time, to having the necessities for a decent life.
Here in America, we are fortunate that most of our people have not only the blessings of liberty but also the means to live full and good and, by the world's standards, even abundant lives. We must press on, however, toward a goal of not only more and better jobs but of full opportunity for every American and of what we are striving so hard right now to achieve, prosperity without inflation.
For more than a quarter of a century in public life I have shared in the turbulent history of this era. I have fought for what I believed in. I have tried to the best of my ability to discharge those duties and meet those responsibilities that were entrusted to me.
Sometimes I have succeeded and sometimes I have failed, but always I have taken heart from what Theodore Roosevelt once said about the man in the arena, "whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes short again and again because there is not effort without error and shortcoming, but who does actually strive to do the deed, who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself in a worthy cause, who at the best knows in the end the triumphs of high achievements and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly."
I pledge to you tonight that as long as I have a breath of life in my body, I shall continue in that spirit. I shall continue to work for the great causes to which I have been dedicated throughout my years as a Congressman, a Senator, a Vice President, and President, the cause of peace not just for America but among all nations, prosperity, justice, and opportunity for all of our people.
As I stated in August on the 50th Anniversary of that speech and Gerald Ford’s Inaugural Address the next morning, my decision to pursue a Career in Public Service started then. Those who are familiar with my Career know President Nixon’s statement about his Life and Career echo my own very closely.
President Nixon was primarily responsible for what I have termed the darkest day in American History. Watergate continues to sour American Politics today. The deep partisan divisions the world sees in America today started with Vietnam and Watergate when I was helpless Child.
But even deeper divisions have inflicted America’s politics when I have not been a helpless Child and the Capital Hill Insurrection on January 6, 2021 is now the darkest day in American History. In 45 months, that event has done more damage to America’s future than Watergate has done in 50 years.
As the International Investigators reminded the world, the difference between the terrorists who struck the United States on September 11, 2001 and those who ransacked the U.S. Capital almost 20 years later are their nationality. Osama bin Laden has had his way and successfully infiltrated the United States with his brand of organized terrorism.
Perhaps, bin Laden has been vindicated in another way and that is the blind support the United States has given Israel against the Palestinians in Gaza. While it is true Hamas, a terrorist group, started the whole mess a year ago, both sides have committed acts which are blatantly against International Law and those responsible must be brought to Justice.
In his letter to the American People explaining his reasoning behind al Qaeda’s 9/11 attack, bin Laden wrote about the unfair way the Palestinians had been denied a homeland like Israel has and he believed the United States supported that injustice and that has contributed to the hardships borne by the Palestinians, thus justifying “9/11.” The last thing the United States of America needs to do is prove Osama bin Laden right!
Believe it or not, there are millions of Americans who believe I am crazy and all the things that have happened to me are justified. Somewhere bin Laden is laughing because he had turned almost a million of my fellow Americans against me just as he planned as, in his mind, just retribution for opposing him and being his only worthy adversary. There is no other way to interpret it!
That is a very dangerous attribution of why the traitors/ terrrorists of the American Organized Terrorism Opprobrium have done to me, my fellow victims and worst of all, to our country.
The major difference between President Nixon and Watergate and President Donald Trump and “1/6” is the former owned up to it. It is beyond anybody’s ability to calculate how many times hell would have to freeze over before Donald Trump would even come close to owning up to all that he has done, let alone "1/6."
On his last morning in the White House, President Nixon said something that echoes in mind all the time because it rings so true for me: Only if you have been in the deepest valley, can you ever know how magnificent it is to be on the highest mountain.
See you on top of the highest mountain!... (Your Hour of Power basics later during the Conference)
PHIL SUTTON
SVC President & CEO
SVC International Executive Committee Septimal Conference
Port Villa, Vanuatu
28 SEPTEMBER 2024