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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TimF who wrote (5934)	11/30/2005 5:18:06 PM
From: Lane3	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 542129

I don't understand the relevance of the question. I was trying to find a clearly necessary program to make the point that one person's program is another's pork to a great extent is not the case. Amtrak is an iffy program so it's not a good example. I was trying to get you to look at your generalization when it applies to a necessary program. A program does something that enough people want done that a majority vote for it because they think it's in the national interest. Pork is pure patronage.

To: TimF who wrote (5934)	12/1/2005 5:55:53 AM
From: Ilaine	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 542129

In a more abstract sense government in general is about extortion. This is one of the things our ancestors struggled with long before we did. About a hundred years ago, more or less, one of the things that good government types came up with was getting rid of the spoils system of government, and putting in civil service. If you don't benefit directly from patronage or bribes, then you exercise independent and professional judgment (hopefully). The way to get rid of bribes is prosecution, that's all I can see. But the way to get rid of patronage -- we still have a long way to go. I think we need to extend the civil service higher than our ancestors did. We need to reform civil service, get rid of as many political appointees aka hacks as humanly possible. It's the only way.

To: TimF who wrote (5934)	12/1/2005 8:39:48 AM
From: JohnM	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 542129

In a more abstract sense government in general is about extortion. Tim, you and I have exchanged thoughts over several forums on SI. But this sentence above is the clearest statement I've seen of the basic differences in our approach to government. I see it as about providing essential collective services, the provision of which sometimes gets corrupted. I gather yours is that government is essentially extortion which, much to our surprise, provides some interesting services now and then.