washtimes.com — Would you be outraged if you knew your taxpayer dollars were being used to lobby for more government subsidies and higher taxes? Well you should be, because that is exactly what is happening. As a result of earlier abuses, Congress prohibited this misuse of taxpayer money but, unfortunately, the practice has not gone away.
Oct 16, 2006 View in Crawl 4
ponggodOct 16, 2006
Thank you, Uncle Sam, may I have another?
rabiddogmaOct 17, 2006
Yeah? What major Airports have been built without public subsidies? What about major highways? Here is a hint: none. Also I'm pretty sure that your example was done with considerable public help, either with a land grant from the big bad old government or eminent domain.
joybranOct 17, 2006
You're right that there are a lot more abuses to be outraged about than these two items. That doesn't make them any less outrageous, or less important to be publicized.
joybranOct 17, 2006
@ rabiddogma"That may well be true in James Hill's case, however he was the only person ever to be able to do it, so he is the exception not the rule."He was the exception to the rule that most people are willing to accept stolen goods. He was the only one with the integrity to try to build a railroad without the use of stolen land or money. All the other railroad builders took the loot, and none of them were able to make a real success from their ill-gotten gains."And ad homonym attacks on Lincoln doesn't really bolster your case much since Hill started doing business long after Lincoln was dead."An ad hominem attack is when you attack the person making the argument rather than refuting the points they make. Since Lincoln wasn't making the argument, my reference to him as a whore of a railroad lobbyist was a simple statement of fact explaining how it came to be widely accepted that government was necessary for railroad building. If Lincoln hadn't been so good at extracting money and land from the government for his railroad clients (and himself), there might have been more railroads built with private money after the early nineteenth century."There is precious little evidence, well none in fact, that your second claim (that there have been no private highways or airports because government wouldn't allow it) is true."Perhaps "allow" is too strong a word. There are laws against competing with the US Post Office, but I'm not sure if there have ever been actual laws against private highways and airports. It doesn't really matter. Common sense tells you that, if the government uses tax money to build and maintain airports and highways, no private company can afford to build them because they can't charge for things people get from the government for free.And yet, there ARE some private freeways, otherwise known as toll roads. I don't know how they operate or how they came into being, but I do know that people sometimes choose to pay for those roads rather than using government roads.
mynameissimpsonOct 18, 2006
@bigdavediode"No, as far as I know, they don't. Libertarians are the only ones who feel that it's moral to bugger with what news people see with almost religious zeal". Emphasis on you don't know but if we put two and two together we can make a logical conclusion that they are using a mailing list (not that there's anything wrong with that) judging by the amount of articles that make the front page of digg from this relatively unknown site, err blog ( I google searched it and there isn't even a wikipedia entry for it unlike Lew Rockwell's and the Mises Institute). Its either that or liberals are just lazy and prefer to watch video clips over reading because the majority of thinkprogress submissions I have seen have nothing more than a descriptive paragraph and a clip. They don't even qualify as articles and seldom does it qualify as political opinion. Check out the latest 2 submissions on the front page; such and such said such and such, listen to the clip. Thats it, no commentary. If anything it belongs in political news not opinion. Surely there is much more profound material that has liberal appeal that could be dugg up rather than this. I find it hard to believe liberals would digg this up over a plethora of other submissions, given that liberals have bigger brains than everyone else, but hey, the tribe has spoken and low and behold its on the front page. Any theories on how it got there? Why no complaints?Me thinks your issues Dave is not with mailing lists at all but stem from the fact that you are a liberal and dislike libertarians, and libertarian articles on the front page, otherwise you would be making the same childish comments on thinkprogress submissions about spam. Its all politics right Dave, attack the opposition, try and make them look bad. Accuse them of being lame or unethical but never comment directly on the issues. Do us all a favour and take your complaints to the administrators at Digg if you think there is something unethical happening and spare us your whinning. And try a little consistancy.
bwisokOct 20, 2006
Just wanted to mention one of the more obnoxious uses of tax funds is when the government does those "click it or ticket" ads (for all the states except New Hampshire) and my personal worst, "you drink, you drive, you lose." I don't like police-state ads funded by the police state scammers.bw