From: carroll@cs.uiuc.edu (Alan M. Carroll)
Subject: Re: Apportioning blame
Organization: Technophiles Inc. - Engineers with Attitude
Distribution: usa
Date: Tue, 29 Sep 1992 02:22:53 GMT

The Evil Capitalist relies;

In article <1992Sep29.002858.681@morrow.stanford.edu>, HF.GTD@forsythe.stanford.edu (Gabrielle Daniels) writes:
> in order not to face certain real life realities.

That's sort of ironic, coming from you.

> The programs Johnson instigated nevertheless helped a lot of people,
> myself included.  Without loans, work-study, and other grants, a lot
> of students during the 1970s would have never gone to school.

The putative results of these programs are not clear. There are
studies showing the assimilation rates slowed or did not increase
after these programs. It's always easy to point to people who
benefitted from government largesse, it's much harder to identify
businesses not started and jobs not created because of the costs.

In addition, those programs that do appear to have been successful
were small, targeted programs (such as Head Start).

> No lie that some people took too
> many advantages of certain programs.  But that was a drop in the
> bucket.

Again, this is not a given. If one counts the bureaocrats in the
system, it could be argued far from being a drop in the bucket, most
of the money went to people taking advantage of the system.

> To think that this and other programs Kennedy, Johnson or
> Roosevelt instigated siphoned off our economic strength is bogus.

Why? I personally think it did. I would agree that a lot of our
military spending did too, but you don't seem to dispute that.

> And you wonder why there are so many potholes and rotting
> bridges all over the U.S.? 

Because of the budget deficit. Taxes are collected fix such things,
but not spent because it makes the deficit look smaller. More
importantly, aren't most roads and bridges maintained by state and
local governments and not the federal government?

> Its
> going to take forever for black Republicans to get up enough capital
> to put those black Bethelehem Steel workers into jobs.

You complain about downsizing (which reduces capital costs for
starting businesses) and then about needing too much capital. In any
event, the future of steel is in "mini" and "micro" mills serving
specialized steel needs. These take a lot less capital than starting a
Bethelehem Steel. The arrival of this type of steel making was a large
factor in doing in dinosaurs like Bethlehem Steel.

> Health care, like
> public schools, is not a privilege, its a basic human right.

False. If you were the only human alive, you'd have neither. Your
"basic human rights" would be violated. But who, exactly, would be
violating them?

> Here in California, nobody, but nobody likes the new budget that
> Governor Wilson kicked and screamed to get his way on.

Keep in mind that this budget is _larger_ than last year's. Yep, the
state government of California (despite the budget crisis) is planning
on spending more money next year than this year. I suppose it's all
going into military spending.

> They talk about getting
> vouchers and putting up more private schools.  This is bullshit!  We
> all knew, by junior high school, where these idiots were putting
> most of the money for public schools...in white, middle-class
> communities.  Nobodys got that kind of money to put their children
> into a private school without going through years, centuries of
> economic hurt.

Most interesting, since support for vouchers is strongest among
minorities and weakest among white suburbanites. Is it not clear that
a voucher system would enable minority parents to put their school
money into their own schools and neighborhoods instead of the "white,
middle-class communities"? I have to wonder how many centuries of
economic hurt Bill Cosby went through to be able to afford to send his
kids to private schools. I knew he was old, but I didn't think he was
_that_ old.

-- 
Alan M. Carroll          "Weren't there yams involved, too?" - J. Ockerbloom
Epoch Development Team   
Urbana Il.               "I hate shopping with the reality-impaired" - Susan
Newsgroups: soc.culture.african.american