response 169 of 264:

Aug 29 14:20 UTC 2003

Sorry, Arnold can never be *elected* president, since he's not a US citizen
by birth.  I'm not sure if he could even run as vice president, for the same
reason.  The only way he could become president is to hold a high office (e.g.
Sec. of State) and then terminate the others ahead of him in line of
succession.  :-)

response 171 of 264:

Aug 29 17:57 UTC 2003

Or Secretary of State, as a person with a vaguely similar accent
once was.

response 173 of 264:

Aug 30 00:02 UTC 2003

Re 172:  The new (as of GW Bush) way to send email to the President involves
several web pages of questions.  And the first question boils down to "friend
or enemy?".   Eep!

response 175 of 264:

Aug 30 01:06 UTC 2003

My understanding is that certain foreign-born Secretaries of State were
excluded from the "just in case" line to the Oval Office because of their
foreign birth.....yep, the Constitution specifies (II.1.5) that *only*
natural born Citizens are eligible to be President.

response 177 of 264:

Aug 30 06:55 UTC 2003

Schwarzenegger didn't exactly say he was against gay marriage.  He said he
thinks gay marriage should be between a man and a woman.

response 179 of 264:

Aug 30 13:29 UTC 2003

Re #164:
                                                                               
                                       
>That argument is easy to make if you look at government spending in
>isolation, pretending that all that money gets poured into a hole >somewhere
and buried.

Government spending can be very destructive, if it chokes out more
efficient ways of providing the same thing.  For instance, you could
"eliminate" unemployment by paying one half of the unemployed people
to dig holes, and the other half to fill them in again.  The problem
is that the supply of goods and services demanded by those make-workers
wouldn't be increased in the slightest by the make-work, and everyone
else (the taxpaying public) gets poorer by the combination of higher
taxes and demand-pull inflation.  If you can get the unemployed into
real jobs making desired goods and services, the public benefits.
                                                                               
                                       
>But the fact is all of it gets spent on services, all of which benefit
>*someone*, and cutting those services is always politically painful.

Was that intended to refute the idea that government money isn't as
good as poured into a hole?  If so, it's a faulty argument.  The
hole-diggers and hole-fillers will militate to keep their arrangement
intact because their senecure is at stake, while the taxpayers have
other concerns.  This does not mean that the hole-diggers and hole-fillers
should not be pink-slipped at the earliest opportunity.  Employing ten
thousand government workers to provide a given service when one thousand
will do IS money down the rathole; the public could otherwise enjoy the
services as well as more money in their pockets from lower taxes.
This is one example where the interests of public "servants" and their
unions are directly opposed to those of the people being "served".
                                                                               
                                       
"We do these things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard." 
Reforming government might be harder than going to the Moon, but it is also
more worthwhile.

Re #166:  I think that the problem is California.  It's so screwy that
a few niggling PC transgressions get you thrown out of the Democrats,
and the Republican party is the only real game left.

response 181 of 264:

Aug 31 22:29 UTC 2003

#179 is such an obvious straw-man argument I'm not sure it's worth
responding to.  It's obvious that a hole-digging/hole-filling project has no
benefits to society at large, but real-life government programs are never
that clearly useless.

response 183 of 264:

Sep 1 01:06 UTC 2003

Really?  _Nothing_ was learned from that venture?

(NB:  I didn't expect a working missile shield from "Star Wars", but I'm very
surprised that nothing new was discovered/invented/worked out.)

response 185 of 264:

Sep 1 01:14 UTC 2003

Such as? (Besides, that it wouldn't  work, which was known before millions
of $$$ were spent.)

response 187 of 264:

Sep 1 01:37 UTC 2003

I'm sure there were at least *some* technological spin-offs.

response 189 of 264:

Sep 1 14:21 UTC 2003

Re #181:
>It's obvious that a hole-digging/hole-filling project has no benefits
>to society at large, but real-life government programs are never
>that clearly useless.
                                                                               
                                       
Consider ethanol subsidies which (at least in some analyses) consume more fuel
in the form of diesel for cultivation and pesticides, and then natural gas for
nitrogen fertilizers and distillation, than the ethanol yields.  (Then there is
the siltation and other environmental damage...)  And that's just one little
part of agricultural subsidies, which is just one little part of government.

The bigger and more complex government gets, the more likely (some would
say inevitable) it is that parts work at cross-purposes to worthwhile
goals and even each other.  Say what you will about private enterprise,
at least it goes out of business if it can't support itself.  Government
has no such reality check, and anything it does beyond maintaining the
level playing field for everyone else requires heavy scrutiny.

response 191 of 264:

Sep 2 00:26 UTC 2003

Re #189:
    I contend that the playing-field-leveling activities of government require
heavy scrutiny as well.

response 193 of 264:

Sep 2 16:35 UTC 2003

It is much more complicated than that. Even the agricultural lobby makes
the main claims for ethanol that it reduces dependence on foreign oil
imports, creates jobs, helps farmers by creating a more stable market and
- yes - reduces some vehicle emissions. There are details at
http://platts.com/features/altfuelvehicle/ethanol.shtml.