Morris addresses health, economy and technology

If the former adviser to President Bill Clinton is right, 20-year-olds could live longer than they might’ve expected.

“There’s a good chance you’ll live to 150,” said Dick Morris, the author and political commentator who spoke in Cartwright Hall last night.

Morris personally greeted audience members before the speech. He stood at floor-level

and spoke without a microphone to the audience of about 75 people. He spoke about social issues, including changes in healthcare and battery-operated cars.

He said new technology, including organ growth and nanorobots that clean arteries, will make current medical technology look like “bleeding with leeches” in past centuries.

Morris focused on the economy and how its current problems developed.

He said the mortgage crisis today resulted from lenders putting bad mortgages with good mortgages and offering to sell people shares of that pool. He described the bad mortgages in the pool as a “cancer” in an otherwise healthy organism.

Morris said this is the beginning of a series of bad economic events.

“This is a hell of a time to graduate,” he said sarcastically.

Despite current economic problems, Morris said this won’t be a repeat of the Great Depression.

“The economy isn’t going to fall apart; it’s going to slow down,” he said.

On the other hand, he said countries focusing their industry on oil are likely to crumble because they based their spending structures on high oil prices.

“Anyone who’s making their money on oil is going to go out,” he said. “They’re not producing what they used to.”

Morris also said to be weary of politicians who say they’ll bring manufacturing jobs back. He described that rhetoric as “absolute bull,” and said developments in manufacturing allow the country to produce more while more people find work outside of manufacturing.

He said he doesn’t stick to a particular party but thinks John McCain and Barack Obama are both good candidates.

“I’m an independent,” Morris said. “I hate both parties equally.”

He said he likes Obama, but doesn’t like what Obama would do in office. He criticized Obama’s stance against cutting capital gains taxes, adding that lowering the taxes “almost doubled our revenues from capital gains tax” because people are more willing to sell stocks when the tax is lower.

He said he would vote for McCain, but McCain “screwed it all up” when he suspended his campaign to return to Washington to work on the bailout.

“I can’t think of a less courageous thing to do,” he said.

Terri Buzzelli, a business owner from Rootstown, got an autograph and a picture with Morris before the speech.

“He tells you what they’re doing on both sides,” she said.

Contact general assignment reporter Bo Gemmell at [email protected].