Re: Nader

["Charles Jannuzi" <jannuzi@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

"Max Sawicky"
>
> The object of Nader's critique is spending programs that
> provide public subsidies to
> corporations.  I don't necessarily buy his position, but
> it's a perfectly respectable left statement.  This stuff,
> incidentally, is a very small part of the budget. The
> tax breaks are much more important.

I thought a tax break was a form of public subsidy.

To move the topic onto something that might be related, depending on your
state of mind:

When you look at the enormous size of the federal budget and realize just
how little it actually does for most of the American people, you have to
ask,  Why? If you ask why, you see part of the reason is the wastefulness in
government contracting. Huge contracts to companies specializing in
government 'services', and this goes way beyond defense contracts (though
people wrongly think 'defense' contracts are limited to hardware
fulfillment). Some of the companies owned by Carlyle Group are standouts in
overpriced contracts poorly fulfilled. For example, IT Group. It has a long
list of government contracts in an array of services, but, as far as I can
tell, the reason it went bankrupt was that it long ago stopped completing
the services it was contracted for.

Charles Jannuzi