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

To: Lane3 who wrote (8020)	12/26/2005 12:44:40 PM
From: Mary Cluney	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 542970

Seems to me it's more enlightened to encourage those with vast fortunes to set up aggressive foundations, to be philanthropists. Has a more positive and constructive and, dare I say, enlightened ring to it, seems to me. I am not a policy wonk. Generically I am for things that do more good than harm. It just seems to me most of the foundations and philanthropies are tax dodges. They are used to funnel money to friends and family and dubious causes. I am not one to design public policy for the greater good. Intuitively I know that you can design public policy that can do a lot of good or you could implement really stupid public policy without even meaning to favor special interest of dubious nature. At this stage in the development of our civilization, by not doing anything and by letting nature take its course is unlikely to be any good. Yes, in more primitive societies, not doing anything is probably better than having stupid people implement stupid policy. I think we could be and should be better than that. It could be however, I am a bit early on this bandwagon.

To: Lane3 who wrote (8020)	12/26/2005 12:48:10 PM
From: Mary Cluney	Respond to of 542970

Seems to me it's more enlightened to encourage those with vast fortunes to set up aggressive foundations, to be philanthropists. Has a more positive and constructive and, dare I say, enlightened ring to it, seems to me. I am not a policy wonk. Generically I am for things that do more good than harm. It just seems to me most of the foundations and philanthropies are tax dodges. They are used to funnel money to friends and family and dubious causes. I am not one to design public policy for the greater good. Intuitively I know that you can design public policy that can do a lot of good or you could implement really stupid public policy without even meaning to favor special interest of dubious nature. At this stage in the development of our civilization, by not doing anything and by letting nature take its course is unlikely to be any good. Yes, in more primitive societies, not doing anything is probably better than having stupid people implement stupid policy. I think we could be and should be better than that. It could be however, I am a bit early on this bandwagon. But definitely, what I am advocating now has to be in our future.

To: Lane3 who wrote (8020)	12/26/2005 1:45:44 PM
From: Lane3	Respond to of 542970

"Artifact: Dinosaurs vs. Darwin Jesse Walker It was Claude Bell, the proprietor of an inn on Interstate 10, who erected the dinosaurs of Cabazon, California. First came Dinny the apatosaurus, built in the ’60s and immortalized in the 1985 film Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure. Then came a giant Tyrannosaurus rex, left incomplete when Bell died in 1989. Like the original dinosaurs, these beasts have evolved with the times: First they were denounced as eyesores, then they were embraced as icons, and now they’ve experienced a religious conversion. The Los Angeles Times reports that creationists have been buying roadside dinosaur parks around the country and turning them into anti-evolution museums. Visit the Cabazon Dinosaurs today, and you can pick up Darwin-bashing literature at the gift shop; at similar attractions you’ll see the evidence, such as it is, that dinosaurs lived in the Garden of Eden and were transformed from vegetarians to carnivores by man’s original sin. “Go to Disneyland, they teach evolution,” the evangelist Kent Hovind of Pensacola’s Dinosaur Adventure Land complains to the Times. “It’s subtle—signs that say, ‘Millions of years ago.’ This is a golden opportunity to get our point across.” As a card-carrying evolutionist, all I can say is this: Keep the faith, Dinny. Roadside attractions should be weird. And better a private park than a public school." reason.com