"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
