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"One's ethics are determined by what we do when no one is looking" Nugget
Star Trek: Gamma Quadrant
Star Trek: Legacy
Read them, rate them, got money, film them

"...and I remain on the far side of crazy, I remain the mortal enemy of man, no hundred dollar cure will save me..." WoV

Now, the answer to Jay's question is:

1.) While redundancy in the space shuttle's systems is good, redundancy in government spending is bad.

2.) The federal government should never step in and do what state and local governments are quite capable of doing on their own. Stopping it from doing so is good.

It's basically advertising. Basically telling them that "hey, we're good people since we're sponsors, go buy our product". They don't actually have to do it, but since it furthers their name and contributes to more sales, who gives a rats ass? It's called Corporate Influence. While such corporate influence is good, too much is bad. Pretty soon, you'll have Pizza Hut sponsoring schools, General Motors sponsoring Libraries, and Citibank sponsoring libraries, etc. etc.

And when companies sponsor, or give some form of donation to a public institution or program, that money comes with Strings attached. That means, the institution or program has to do what the Company wants, or they lose the money. Depending on the amount of the sponsoring or donation, the company could basically "own" the public institution or program by telling them how to run day-to-day operations.

That's Corporate influence. It's happening here in Canada. And if you don't think it is a bad thing, well......

But the government does the EXACT SAME THING!

Take the new Internet Filtering Bill, that ties Library funding to whether or not the library has filters on its computers, as one example.

ALL money has strings attatched.

Tell me, would you rather have a capitalist corporation, in which you have no stock ownership and thus no control over, out for almost nothing but fame and profits, dictating your libraries? Or perhaps you would like a governmental body, whom you have the power to elect and the right to speak to, guiding your educational institutions?

You failed to take into account that said capitalist corporation OWNS the politicians who we "have the power to elect" into office.

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In this crazy world of lemons, baby...you're lemonade!

How really funny.

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"In a completely unrelated news story, I have a date tomorrow night."
- Omega, in trying to explain why pigs are now flying, why Microsoft products are now working perfectly, hell freezing over, and George W Bush giving a flawless speech. 04/06/01, 12:17AM

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"Instructed by history and reflection, Julian was persuaded that, if the diseases of the body may sometimes be cured by salutary violence, neither steel nor fire can eradicate the erroneous opinions of the mind."

-Edward Gibbons, The Decline and Fall of The Roman Empire.

Tell me, would you rather have a capitalist corporation, in which you have no stock ownership and thus no control over, out for almost nothing but fame and profits, dictating your libraries? Or perhaps you would like a governmental body, whom you have the power to elect and the right to speak to, guiding your educational institutions?

I'd rather have the capitalist corporation. They actually care about their money, and want to see it used efficiently. History has shown that the government, OTOH, at least when run by liberals, doesn't care how much money they waste, because it's not theirs.

How much money did Reagan waste on weapons, again? Or was that not waste?

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I'll kill you, you bloated museum of treachery!
~ C. Montgomery Burns

How much money did Reagan waste on weapons, again?

Military spending went from ~18% of total spending to ~23% of total spending during the Reagan administration. Tax revenues went from <$500 billion to >$900 billion, adjusted for inflation. We ended up hugely in debt, yet the money wasn't spent on the military. So what was it spent on? Well, ask the Democrats. They controlled the money at the time. They controlled the House.

And since the next two posts have no intellectual content whatsoever...

It's called Puppet String Pulling, in which they use their influence on politicians to create laws that benefit corporations more than the people, the environment, etc. etc. etc.