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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices

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To: tejek who wrote (141955)	1/21/2002 1:52:37 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (2) of 1585462

Who was the WI senator who gave out prizes whenever money was wasted on a gov't expenditure........I think he called it the fleecing of America? Well, just about every other one of his 'prizes' was for a military spending blunder. Senator Proxmire. They where the Golden Fleece Awards. Not everyone was for a military spending blunder or overcharge but military spending did result in a lot of these "awards". But that is probably at least as much a reflection on Proxmire's politics and ideas as it was waste by the military. The military at times wastes a lot of money (although there has been more of a tendency now to cancel programs that can't contain costs) but it is hardly alone in this. The government wastes money left and right in any number of areas. And thats not even including programs that may be managed well but have goals that are useless or even counter-productive, so that no matter how efficiently the program is run the existance of the program itself is a waste of resources. I've brought up farm subsidies before, and there are other examples. And as for Reagan, in the 80's, he was pushing hard for star wars when he knew full well that Russia was on the verge of collapse...... 1 - Any country that has a large army and thousands of ICBMs is an enormous potential threat even if their economy was falling apart. 2 - Reagan didn't know exactly how bad their economy is. They didn't even know themselves. Economic predictions are often very inaccurate even with an open society and some attempt at decent reporting, statistics, and accounting. The USSR's stats and accounting where largely fictional works that made Enron's balance sheet look like a model of clarity and truth and responsibility. 3 - When you enemy (even if only in a cold war) is about to collapse you don't let up. You use the situation to help them collapse. The SDI program and helping the opposition in Afghanistan where two ways that Reagan helped the evil empire that was the Soviet Union to collapse. 4 - Even if the Soviet Union had never existed and Russia had no nuclear weapons or ICBMs missile defense is still a good idea. Perhaps Reagan was a bit overoptimistic about what could be achieved in this area and when, but the direction was correct. Tim

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