Ross Perot, self-made billionaire, patriot and philanthropist, dies at 89

[brooklynite]

Source: Dallas Morning News

Ross Perot, self-made billionaire, renowned patriot and two-time independent candidate for U.S. president, has died after a five-month battle with leukemia.

He was 89.

The pioneer of the computer services industry, who founded Electronic Data Systems Corp. in 1962 and Perot Systems Corp. 26 years later, was just 5-foot-6, but his presence filled a room.

"Describe my father?" Ross Perot Jr., his only son and CEO of the Perot Group, asked rhetorically in an interview. "Obviously a great family man, wonderful father. But at the end of the day, he was a wonderful humanitarian.

Read more: https://www.dallasnews.com/business/business/2019/07/09/ross-perot-self-made-billionaire-patriot-philanthropist-dies-89

[Polybius]

1. Very sad news

RIP.

[Meadowoak]

2. Very sad indeed!

[hlthe2b]

3. He was one of a kind...

RIP, Ross...

[BeyondGeography]

4. Excellent summary of his life here

https://www.usnews.com/news/us/articles/2019-07-09/texas-billionaire-h-ross-perot-dies-aged-89

Including this:

In later years, Perot pushed the Veterans Affairs Department to study neurological causes of Gulf War syndrome, a mysterious illness reported by many soldiers who served in the 1991 Persian Gulf war. He scoffed at officials who blamed the illnesses on stress — "as if they are wimps" — and paid for additional research.

Perot received a special award from the VA for his support of veterans and the military in 2009.

[sinkingfeeling]

5. I met him once at a Dallas mall just after I had moved there.

[TruckFump]

6. RIP, Mr. Perot

You were and still are an original.

[Recursion]

7. The line from Perot to Trump is pretty straight and direct

I can't laud the guy's political life, but he was a fascinating character.

[CTyankee]

8. "The American people have to turn up their MiracleEar" is my favorite line from him.

When I heard he had died, that quote sprung to mind.

What a character he was!

[ArizonaLib]

12. Yes!!! 'That sucking sound...'

I wish Clinton would have sided with his views on the free trade agreements. I remember all those charts and all the incoming he took from SNL, etc. That was a crazy election.

[Recursion]

14. The "giant sucking sound" lie, repeated enough, gave us Trump

I just can't celebrate the guy

[Demonaut]

19. it was true with the appliance factories..to some degree

[Recursion]

21. And completely wrong for the South: we actually *started getting* factories

I remember my town in the 80s with every single shop window boarded up, and then what it was like in the mid 90s when a brake pad factory opened as part of a US-Mexico supply chain. You couldn't pay us to go back to the old days.

[Tactical Peek]

9. He could tell it like it is.

I can't think of anything worse than a person in my position to be grasping for some tax advantage. I'm delighted to pay big taxes. Big taxes mean big income.

- H. Ross Perot

[Farmer-Rick]

10. He was NOT a self made man

I don't fault the poster of this very interesting article. I fault our capitalist society that so wants us to believe that it is a meritocracy, that our economic system is fair and anyone can be an oligarch. Perot came from a very well to do family. And he does acknowledge his father's drive for wealth. But in No Way did he do it on his own.

Perot's father was a commodities broker and made a pile of money off of selling cotton wholesale. He sent this son to private school and Junior College. His family has deep roots in Texarkana. And the tax payers picked up the cost of his college years because he went to the naval academy.

And as is the only way you can make big money off of starting your own company and competing in markets controlled by corporations today, Ross Perot sold the controlling interest of his first company to a big corporation for millions.

He was an interesting character but he owes a lot of his excess wealth to his family. He was helped out by a lot of less wealthy people, namely the tax payers.

[BeyondGeography]

11. A lot of people have advantages

Few go as far. Face it, the guy was a total sales animal. If you've ever known any, all they do is work.

[Bengus81]

13. Could have made another fortune off of start-up Home Depot........

But he wanted to own over 50% and call the shots. Blank and Marcus told him they didn't want or need another boss from which they had come. They just wanted investors.

[MarcA]

17. Family with above average wealth plus political connections plus

some talent and workaholic drive means you can be one of the very few
to make big $$$ from the government. While he seemed like a fairly decent
person he wasn't above using his government connections to overturn
state Medicaid contracts awarded to the competition or that no one cut
in on his land deals.

[BigmanPigman]

15. I loved his charts and "voodoo stick" pointer

which was a dried up alligator foot or something.

[Raine]

16. R I P Ross

[Stallion]

20. Well At Least We Didn't Have to Question His Patriotism or Love of His Country

He definitely was more qualified than any Republican in the last 60 years to be President with the possible exception of George "the Less Stupid" Bush. Ross Junior was in my class in High School in Dallas and I knew his daughter Nancy and much of the family pretty well. He was a character for sure. But he worked across party lines, hated George Bush and never bought into the far right wing of the Republican Party. His policies were controversial but serious. He believed in hard work and the importance of education actually leading the charge to pass "No-Pass, No Play" sidelining student athletes from competing in high school athletics in Texas until they passed all their courses.

[AtheistCrusader]

22. The amount of love for him in this thread makes me wonder how much we all know about a person.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/ross-perot-donated-to-trumps-re-election-campaign-before-death-report/ar-AAE6mKA

In his last documented political act, self-made billionaire and two-time presidential candidate Ross Perot wrote out two checks to President Trump’s re-election campaign before succumbing to his battle with leukemia at the age of 89, according to a report.
Perot, who ran for president as a third-party candidate in 1992 and 1996, is largely credited with providing a road map for Trump's presidential campaign.

Like Trump, Perot ran as a billionaire populist against the Republican establishment. His focus on the North American Free Trade Agreement — rather than the national debt — and his use of cable news for laying out his agenda were both familiar elements of Trump’s campaign.

As Democratic strategist James Carville put it in a 2016 podcast: “If Donald Trump is the of Jesus of the disenchanted, displaced non-college white voter, then Perot was the John the Baptist of that sort of movement.”