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Technology Stocks : Semi Equipment Analysis -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Cary Salsberg who wrote (5350)	9/9/2002 11:20:25 AM
From: Kirk ©	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 95574

OT: Government spending at the local level is held hostage by fringe groups. Go to San Francisco and PacSmell park and see what the SF Giants do to appease all the special interset groups. I lived in Berkeley California for 4 years and vowed I'd not live in another city like that again as a few with signs who make a nusiance of themselves get far more of their share of tax dollars than is just. Extortion by intimmidation! Now I live in a smaller, conservative city where the politics seems to be controlled by developer money... which I don't like much either but it seems better than Berkeley, San Francisco or Palo Alto... Then again, SF's "conservative" Democrats are controlled by developer money (Richard Bloom, Lady Di Fi's hubby who finances Mayor Willy Brown)... Anyway.. politics rant off... :) Kirk

To: Cary Salsberg who wrote (5350)	9/9/2002 2:54:53 PM
From: willcousa	Respond to of 95574

OT - Everything that government does is said by the politicians to be "what the public wants". Some of it is, much of it is not. If politicians really believed the public wanted a lot of government they could simply give the public the money and let them exercise their democracy by how they spend it. For instance - the interstate highway system. The public had already built the interstate highway system it wanted before the federal government ever got involved. It ran from New York to Chicago and only the people who wanted it paid for it. The rest of us did not. Once the feds got involved the politicians made the decisions on who got what. Pittsburgh went for many years with nearly nothing. Columbus got more than it needed. My hometown was turned from a thriving community to a ghost town. The middle class was given easier commutes so they left the large cities for the suburbs. The ghettoization of the cities was the result. Finally, as fewer interstate highways are being built the middle class is returning to the central cities to live.