KOIZ FOR PRESIDENT

America is in a big financial mess.

The budget deficit is spiraling out of control. Our foreign trade deficit has become so large that the dollar may soon become an endangered species. Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security are in such bad shape that they could easily sink the whole economy in a few years. "The war that would pay for itself" is drowning us in red ink.

Yet the Congress, which is responsible for budgeting, seems to be merrily oblivious of our fiscal trauma. In fact, all the senators and congressmen who covet the presidency seem to be bent on making matters worse. In addition to approving elephant-sized budgets for jackal-sized needs, they seem to have developed an addiction to a new form of bribery, a.k.a. "earmarks." In the last budget, our greedy minions on Capital Hill inserted over $29 billion into the federal budget for special projects designed to reward even greedier campaign contributors. As one CEO exclaimed, "Congress is the best investment our company ever made."

Who can we elect to pull us out of our huge mess?

You can forget Senators like Clinton, Biden, Kerry and Dodd. They have helped create the current mess. Republican senators and congressmen are out, too. They all have the identical credentials: poor administrative ability, propensity to waste money on wars, willingness to accept bribes, and a frightening lack of respect for deficits.

Who else is there?

There are fifty governors, most of whom are legally bound to balance their state budgets each year. I won't list their names because the most fiscally challenged governor would make a better President than the best senator. Come to think of it, Mayor Blumberg of New York would make a crackerjack President. The man really understands money, both public and private.

But if we think globally, there is one truly great answer to our financial problems:

His name is Koiz - or Junichiro Koizumi, for long.

Koiz is unbelievably charismatic, winning his last election in a walkaway.

When he originally took office, he was confronted with an economy which had been stagnant for over 15 years. In his first year in office, the economy actually shrank. Although its huge debt was out of control, the government continued to spend recklessly, attempting to keep the economy out of the jaws of deflation. The banking system was drowning in bad loans which Koiz's predecessors were afraid to deal with for fear of putting too many firms out of business. The Post Office badly ran the state bank and insurance company, wasting over $3 billion in assets.

When Koiz took over five years ago, the main business of government was delivering pork to district officials in exchange for campaign donations. (Sound familiar?)

Koiz went over the heads of the politicians, directly to the people. He sold them on a new economic plan which would clean up the economic mess. Winning popular support for his programs, Koiz forced the banks to confront their bad loans, reducing them from eight percent to less than two percent. He privatized the state bank and the state insurance company, freeing up over $3 billion in assets. He dramatically changed the mission of the government from supplying pork to supplying financial solutions. He reversed the economy's one percent decline and pushed it up to over three percent growth last year. Almost singlehandedly, he reversed a nasty economic situation and gave his people both hope and growth.

Yes, Koiz would make the ideal President in these perilous fiscal times. And he is available as of September 30, 2006.

That is the date Junichiro Koizumi steps down as Prime Minister of Japan.

Of course we would have to change the Constitution, which requires Presidents to be native born. But if the Republicans were willing to change the Constitution for a muscle-builder like Arnold Schwarzenegger, we ought to be interested in doing it for a country-builder like Junichiro Koizumi.

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