Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Maurice Winn who wrote (252839)	1/2/2008 12:40:05 PM
From: Katelew	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Thanks, Maurice, for correcting my impression of you. And I can agree with you to some extent about 'buying votes with promises to spend taxpayer dollars to fix things'. It's a feature of our two-party system and current campaign financing structure. And it occurs too often outside the framework of long-term planning. My appreciation of the Chinese govt. way of doing things is growing, lol. At the top you have 9 people standing in front of a big map of the country deciding how many billions of dollars to send to which province to build roads, bridges, railways and all the rest of the necessary infrastructure to support state-of-the art factories that can be built in a few months instead of years. Their input comes from 300 individuals at the provincial level who gather data and present their cases. It's decisive, it's efficient, and it's a cost-effective use of resources. And speaking of resources, going forward we are going to have such a food fight in this country over resources. I saw the very end of a CNBC interview with the president of Dow Chemical. He was angrily calling on the Bush administration to demand higher fuel efficiency from automakers. I assumed it was so that the chemical industry has a more assured supply of its main feedstock, oil.