02-10-2008
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Owner, Green Bay Packers
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Join Date: Sep 2006
Location: SW Michigan
Posts: 10,322
Rep Power: 9
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I think Jody is missing the point that I'm trying to make. It's not the Fed's job to build roads and bridges. It's not the Fed's job to educate our children. Name me ONE federal program that works, aside from the constitutionally mandated DoD.
Aside from the dubious constitutionality of the Fed's building or contributing to the building of roads, why should my state get 92 cents back of every highway tax dollar it sends to Washington, DC? Si I can subsidize the Long Island Railroad? Which is what the money does. Where the hell do you think all that money came from for the Big Dig in Boston? Do you think that the cost over-runs would have been nearly as significant if Massachusetts had been soley responsible for funding the project? As PJ O'Rourke says, 'this is like giving whisky and guns to teen-age boys". What do we expect to happen.
That bridge that collapsed in Minnesota is Minnesota's problem. Where the hell do we get the idea that the Fed's are responsible for everything? I'm tired of my money paying for lousy roads and lousy schools in your lousy state. I've got lousy roads and schools in my own state to deal with.
Every non-DoD dollar that goes to DC, goes with a constituency, ie...somebody who's already got their eye on it. DoD is not immune but, left to their own devices they tend to put the naval bases in the states with ports and usually can be counted on to put the B-52 bases somewhere other than Brooklyn. It takes a federal bureaucrat, empowered by a politician, to end up with a Coast Guard facility in Oklahoma! Yeah, Oklahoma. That's where your USCG license exams go to be graded and the new tests drawn up.
Jody,
It appears you'd best review not only your W-2's but the DoD budget for the Reagan years. Reagan closed useless bases so you could get the pay increase he shoved through. During the post-Viet Nam years, especially under Carter, military spending was slashed and the enlisted men took it on the chin. I sailed with guys, 1st class petty officers no less, in the early eighties who wives were home collecting food stamps-because they qualified and that was the only way to make ends meet. You're obviously confusing the requirements of the US Naval Service with your own desires. I ran into similar individuals at sea with the same problem; begging the question, if you didn't want to go to sea, why'd you join the Navy? But then, in the Merchant Marine we spend all of our time at sea, it's what we do.
I'm not going to get into the teachers squabble; there's another older thread somewhere on it. Suffice it to say that the days of poor teachers are long over. And I might add that test scores are still down. I have some thoughts on professional educators, and they're not pretty.
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“Scientists are people who build the Brooklyn Bridge and then buy it.”
Wm. F. Buckley, Jr.
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