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Comment by epoxyhockey | Hacker News Reader

Please don't make this a democrat/republican debate. This is the crooked way that all of our US government is spending our tax money. We need corporate money out of politics if we want to prevent these outlandish contracts from being awarded to the corporations that donate enough money to campaigns.

It's not a democrat/republican or big/small government thing. It's about corruption of the system.

Out of your comment, I agree most with that our government needs to help educate our children. Without an educated population, things only get worse.

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how is this not a big/small government thing? We gave away billions of dollars in a stimulus program with little to no oversight that is very clearly getting wasted here.

While the republicans are certainly guilty of lots of spending and many things, democrats are clearly the party that is guilty of more spending and even bigger government.

There are plenty of countries whose governments are far to the left of the Democrats who spend money much more wisely, so I don't see it as inherently tied. For example, the Scandinavian countries have much larger governments proportionally, but generally spend more wisely, and have more transparent bidding/provisioning of their state-funded services, so they get more service and less waste in return for their money.

They probably do spend more wisely, but that doesn't necessarily mean they are spending on something they should be. For example in this case buying the cheaper routers would be spending more wisely, but could pretty easily be argued that this isn't something we should be spending money on. Certainly not at the federal level. Why is my tax money in Tennessee being spent on routers in WV?

There are a few components to this particular screw-up. 1 is big government spending (with little oversight) and 2 is one idiot in WV with a big budget who failed miserably at spending it.

But it could pretty easily be argued that it's something that we should be spending money on. The existence of an argument against a course of action doesn't, on its face, preclude taking that course of action. Such a line of thinking is, well, bizarre.

"1 is big government spending (with little oversight)"

The obvious problem here isn't "big government" spending. It's spending without oversight. This problem occurs all the time everywhere, in sectors both public and private. To claim that private businesses are immune to this by nature of their ability to fail and thus inherently a better mechanism than government is an absolute farce.

Take ownership of your government. To view the elimination of government as a solution to bad governance is both a lazy approach to problem solving and toxic to proper governing.

Private sector isn't immune, just not as bad.

Nobody said anything about elimination of government, just less of it.

Thank you. Finally some common sense to counter the libertarian anti-government sentiment. Whenever they tell you that government run schools are failing, ask them why the government run schools in other countries are performing so much better. Whenever they say that government can't allocate resources efficiently, point them to the governments that have balanced their budgets. It is possible. You don't have to throw the baby out with the bathwater. The solution to bad government is not to abandon it, but to work ever harder to improve it.

Getting the money / corporate influence out of government would be the place to start.

democrats are clearly the party that is guilty of more spending and even bigger government.

Let me guess... military spending doesn't count as "more spending". The $800 billion allocated for 10 years of stimulus is a paltry sum compared to the $700+ billion we intended to spend every year on military, and we all know that money is spent very efficiently.

Meanwhile, federal spending has increased every year under both parties for the last two decades, so you don't really have a leg to stand on with regard to your "democrats are the big government spenders" FUD.

consider this statement politically agnostic, but military spending is the closest thing we have to govt subsidized R+D in this country. there several enormously useful and successful military inventions that no commercial company would have touched.

gps and the internet are two of the most notable and visible examples with astronomical infrastructure costs. no private company would undertake a risk like this yet both have substantially improved society. the microwave and digital cameras are two others that a private company may have eventually created.

this isn't an argument for military spending, just the fact that without a government body that focuses entirely on applied research and development the military is the next best thing.

Are you kidding? Look at the budgets (or lack thereof) under Bush and Obama. They aren't even in the same neighborhood. I'll be the first to agree that there is a lot of waste in defense spending. My first job was at a defense contractor working with the air force. I've seen it.

Just because there is waste in defense, doesn't mean there isn't more elsewhere. Defense is one of the few things are government is actually tasked with. All the other shit we waste money on isn't part of what they are supposed to be doing. Roads and armies, that's all I expect. I don't need the government to feed me or wipe my ass.

It's not a big/small government thing because you are being played by what people told you the two party system is about, i.e. republicans are for small government and democrats are for big government. It's a bunch of bullshit.

I'm sorry to burst your bubble, but our current presidents and congress members do what will appease the general population in the very near term, no matter what they are supposed to do according to their party lines. They are all equally guilty of spending.

You know, the TSA in the airports, which has a larger budget than the FBI? Guess who created and nurtured that entity? Your small government friends. And, who spent so much money on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that it is bankrupting the country. We can't even get involved in another war right now because we simply can't afford it. It is questionable if we will ever be able to lead a war like that again, due to budget constraints.

Then, we have the wall street bailouts. Which, by the way, aren't republicans supposed to be the only friends of wall street? Not if letting the banks fail mean that you are going to have to line up for the bread line tomorrow morning.

The big government people aren't exactly cherubs either. How many RIAA lawyers have been appointed to the Justice Department by the current administration? I think it's 5, so far. Enjoy additional Internet censorship.

Sorry to be such a downer, but things are just getting worse and the current two party system is a complete facade. I'm envious of countries like Germany that are seeing a surge in pirate party support. Unfortunately, it's going to take decades to undo this mess and, frankly, a large majority of baby boomers are going to need to expire naturally before the voting population comes back into balance.

As a Canadian I find the persistance of the "small vs. big" government narrative in American politics bemusing - there is no small government party in the states, only branding.

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