Is the Federal Government the Most Interesting Tech Startup For 2009? 148
With all of the recent focus on technology and the promises to continue "getting stuff done" by the US government, Techdirt's Masnick suggests that they might just be the most interesting tech startup to watch this year. "But, of course, talk is cheap (especially in politics). And, while Chopra (and Vivek Kundra, the government's CIO) both actually have a nice track record of accomplishing these sorts of goals in their past jobs, the proof is in what's actually getting done. We'd already mentioned at least one success story with the IT dashboard at USASpending.gov, but can it continue? I have to admit, a second thing that impressed me about Chopra was that, even with such a success, he didn't focus on it. The fact that he got together such a site in such a short period of time is impressive enough, and while he mentioned it in his talks, most of them were much more focused not on what he'd already done, but on what he was going to do — and the plans all seemed quite achievable.
No, it's the stupidest tech startup (Score:5, Funny)
No competent tech startup would pay $18 million for recovery.org
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It could have been worse... [thedailywtf.com]
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Re:No, it's the stupidest tech startup (Score:5, Funny)
...unless they could get VCs to foot the bill.
Obama's smarter than you. He gets taxpayers to foot the bill.
Why the hell was the parent funny? (Score:2, Insightful)
Spending $18,000,000.00 of my money is funny!?
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Your money? Some of that was mine, asshole!
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Oh, waaaaah! Lighten up.
Anyway, $18 million of your money? I doubt that you have ever had that much money to your name, let alone paid $18 million in taxes.
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Obama's smarter than you. He gets taxpayers to foot the bill.
And the bully "taxes" your lunch money. Does that mean that he is smarter than you too?
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It's the burn rate that'll kill ya...
Re:No, it's the stupidest tech startup (Score:5, Informative)
No competent tech startup would pay $18 million for recovery.org
Well, it was recovery.gov [recovery.gov] not org and really the comments the first time we discussed it noted worse problems [slashdot.org]. I mean, if they have a full time staff for the site and lots of servers and a lot of research going on, $18 million is about on par with what the government drops on crap like that. Fine. The fact that it was bidless and the company that got it gives tens of thousands of dollars to house majority leader Steny Hoyer (D) is what we really should be upset about. I thought the days of Haliburten were over ...
Re:No, it's the stupidest tech startup (Score:5, Insightful)
I thought the days of Haliburten were over ...
What would make you believe that? Because the Democrats are in charge? Pa-lease. That just means the no-bid contracts will be going to their friends instead of those of the GOP.
Amazing how the new kind of politics looks and smells a lot like the old, isn't it?
Re:No, it's the stupidest tech startup (Score:5, Funny)
That just means the no-bid contracts will be going to their friends instead of those of the GOP.
I do believe that that would fall under the definition of change.
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That just means the no-bid contracts will be going to their friends instead of those of the GOP.
I do believe that that would fall under the definition of change.
Especially when prefixed by "not much" and with "there" on the end.
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I do believe that that would fall under the definition of change.
Or, more precisely, chump change.
Oh, I make funny! :)
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thank you for correcting the .org/gov - too hasty in posting
Re:No, it's the stupidest tech startup (Score:5, Informative)
Where did you get the idea that it was a no-bid contract? Or did you just mean that the bidding process was accelerated [informationweek.com].
Smartronix won the Recovery.gov contract over two other bidders, SRI International and Accenture, in an accelerated bidding process that only included companies who are part of the multi-vendor Alliant contracting vehicle.
By law, Recovery.gov must be up and reporting stimulus spending in detail by October 10, but Pound said that the normal, full, and open competition process takes an average of 267 days to award a contract. "That's unacceptable and people would be screaming for our heads," he said. Now, the RATB expects the site will be up as early as late August.
Re:No, it's the stupidest tech startup (Score:5, Informative)
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So you're telling me that there aren't any other qualified people out there who offered to build the site for less than $18,000,000? I find that hard to believe since even if they did it for $4,000,000 they would have a massive profit on it. Surely someone would have offered a better deal.
Oh well, the CIO position just mirrors so much of the rest of America. Either offshore all tech/information jobs or bring in cheap labor from India, like Kundra. I know some might take that as a racist comment. Or at least
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So you're telling me that there aren't any other qualified people out there who offered to build the site for less than $18,000,000? I find that hard to believe since even if they did it for $4,000,000 they would have a massive profit on it. Surely someone would have offered a better deal.
I'd recommend looking at what that $18m contract actually has in it. The first $9m or so goes to the initial build-out.
They have to build a massive site in 6 weeks time, setup all hardware in redundant disparate locations. And if you just consider what that entails alone, I bet you can imagine all the little administrative costs and cost of labor alone. Not to mention some of contract requirements(WTF is an XML firewall?) put some weird strain on the price.
The rest of the contract is for two years o
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Having worked in Federal Government IT for 15 years, I can say that it certainly DOES NOT have any kind of start up mentality. Startups can be dumb or smart, but usually they are quick to act, for better or for worse. Fed programs are slower than a snail running a cross pattern, and usually don't have nearly so clearly defined a direction. They spend good money after bad to get the best solution, and always end up being at the mercy of their vendors.
I worked for the hosting and proserv provider for USAsp
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"I thought the days of Haliburten were over ..."
And, not to put too fine a point on it, the services contract to which you refer WAS bid. Companies bid on the cost of their services - labor rates, markup on subcontractors, etc. They won it. Did there scope increase dramatically with the start of the war? Sure. But the only differences between KBR and, say, Bechtel doing the work are:
1) We would have paid MORE for Bechtel
2) No one would have heard about it because of the lack of connection to Cheney
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No, it's the not-a-startup-iest "startup". (Score:3, Insightful)
I thought the defining features of a startup were being small and not having any money.
Re:No, it's the not-a-startup-iest "startup". (Score:5, Insightful)
Yea it's like calling Microsoft the most recent Video Game Console start-up.
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How many Trillions in debt do you need to be before people think you don't have any money?
Actually they are a startup, the features are... (Score:2)
I thought the defining features of a startup were being small and not having any money.
No, they are having a ton of hubris and burning other people's money at prodigious rates.
Fits the government to a T. Why buy one private jet, when you can buy three just in case...
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Stephenson's foresight (Score:2, Funny)
It's the Government of the United States
Where hackers go to die
The largest, and yet the least efficient, producer of computer software in the world.
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I think you have them confused with IBM.
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Don't worry, I'm sure they'll listen to Reason.
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I decided to spent between fourteen and fifteen seconds reading your post. It's better for higher uid's to spend too long, to show that they're intelligent, not noobish. It's better for lower uid's to go a little fast, to show good editor potential.
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Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:If they want a lasting legacy... (Score:5, Insightful)
They should work with Obama to get executive orders and statutes written to position the federal government's management to not only hire 1099s like the private sector can, but to have that become the norm.
That will never happen. The public sector unions are huge supporters of the Democratic Party. Care to take a wild guess as to what they would think about a plan to increase the number of independent contractors working for government?
Re:If they want a lasting legacy... (Score:4, Interesting)
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Re:If they want a lasting legacy... (Score:5, Insightful)
Only if more people vote for the union than vote against it. That's what elections mean, whether the votes are cast by checking a card or by raising a hand or by super-secret, computer-tallied, proprietary Sequoia machines.
Remember, the decline of the number of union workers in the US exactly tracks the decline of real income of American workers, which has been inexorable since the election of Ronald Reagan (who coincidentally, was also anti-union). People who like to spread FUD about unions and organized labor generally really ought to take a look at how organized labor was instrumental in creating a prosperous middle class in America who could count out safe working conditions and reasonable working hours. You can also bet that the people who are most decidedly opposed to organized labor really would rather the middle and working classes be a little less prosperous.
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Remember, the decline of the number of union workers in the US exactly tracks the decline of real income of American workers, which has been inexorable since the election of Ronald Reagan (who coincidentally, was also anti-union).
Causation does not mean correlation. The decline in income is due to the decline in Manufacturing Jobs. The decline in Manufacturing Jobs is because of myopic management, out of control (union) wages and cheap foreign labor. You can just as easily blame the Chinese as Regan. Large-Scale economic trends almost always have more than one contributing factor. Or was WWII just because of Hitler?
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Are you kidding?
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Unions in a lot of businesses are just there to make sure that incompetent people can't get fired, which just make
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Re:If they want a lasting legacy... (Score:4, Insightful)
Only if more people vote for the union than vote against it. That's what elections mean, whether the votes are cast by checking a card or by raising a hand or by super-secret, computer-tallied, proprietary Sequoia machines.
Except if you make me raise my hand in front of my co-workers and boss I'm potentially subject to intimidation and coercion by either side. Tell me, why are the Union folks so eager to see the elimination of the secret ballot?
People who like to spread FUD about unions and organized labor generally really ought to take a look at how organized labor was instrumental in creating a prosperous middle class in America who could count out safe working conditions and reasonable working hours.
And people who drink the Union kool-aid really ought to look a hard look at the downsides of organized labor. Tell me, would you rather work somewhere that rewards you for competence or somewhere that rewards you based on seniority? Guess which system is more likely under the unionized shop?
Unions were necessary back in the day. Anybody who has ever taken a tour of an old coal mine and seen the working conditions those poor bastards worked under can attest to that. The problem is that many of the Unions ceased to be about the workers a long time ago. Now they are all about protecting the institution and expanding it's power and reach. This tends to happen with most organizations after awhile and is one of the many reasons why I'm skeptical of unions.
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Because, since at least 1980, the large corporations have spent enormous resources to learn to fight any organization by their employees using any and all tactics including intimidation and firing anyone who even mentions the word "union". And not just the corporations, but chambers of commerce, right-wing think tanks and conservative "activists" have determined that the most effective way to guarantee a low-cost work fo
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Remember, the decline of the number of union workers in the US exactly tracks the decline of real income of American workers, which has been inexorable since the election of Ronald Reagan
US total real compensation per hour (the total of wages and benefits, such as health coverage, life insurance, and 401(k) plans) has been rising monotonically since at least 1950, with the notable exception of a plateau between 1992 and 1997. Graph here [econbrowser.com].
Moreover, US real median family income rose during the Reagan era (19
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Because the cost of health insurance has so skyrocketed, but the level of service has not,
I'd like to see you data that backs up the fact that "the level of service" has not increased.
The cost of health insurance has risen in the US, but my impression from looking at cost breakdowns is that it is mostly due to access to newer drugs, new imaging technology, and increasing state mandates on minimum insurance coverage.
Whether any of these actually enhance average health or not remains to be seen, but anecdotal
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how organized labor was instrumental in creating a prosperous middle class in America who could count out safe working conditions and reasonable working hours.
Organized labor has historically claimed credit for these achievements, but they did not come about primarily or even mostly because of unions. The decline of hours worked, increases in productivity, and improvements in standards of living were all the results of sustained economic growth and would have occurred even in the absence of unions. Sustained economic growth explains why the average American today is hundreds of times wealthier, on average, than similar people living in third world countries; no
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I think you're wrong.
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OK.
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GP's plan was to reform government contracting so that individual technical contractors were directly supervised by civil service employees who would run the projects, rather than projects having the substantive work done by firms with technical contracts while the project over
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It could work if you could offer the public workers some incentive similar to incentives offered to managers in the private sector. This would be a change for government, rewarding based on merit of managed projects alone, but it might work. For instance, if a project manager can manage to hire three workers on 1099 with very little ramp up time, they could potentially save a lot of money over public sector workers. Perhaps a yearly bonus would be useful?
This really isn't a stretch from the current model, w
Re:If they want a lasting legacy... (Score:5, Insightful)
They should work with Obama to get executive orders and statutes written to position the federal government's management to not only hire 1099s like the private sector can, but to have that become the norm.
As someone who has worked a portion of their life living off of 1099s, I have to frown on that simply because contract work does not induce economic stability if done on a large enough scale. People want permanent jobs (well most people).
Living off of contracts month to month is great when you are young because you can take as much vacation as you need and you don't have to worry about having a boss you don't like for that long.
But sometimes work gets slow and you have to turn to other work besides IT especially in a down turn.
I've always believed in having internal IT not because of the efficiency aspect but because it provides economic stability for those involved. Its more of an ethical thing to me.
I'd rather have my tax dollars go to that.
Re:If they want a lasting legacy... (Score:5, Interesting)
Instead of making it easier for the government to hire individual contractors that are supervised by regular government employees to reduce the waste from the government hiring integration contractors to manage development contractors, why not just have the government hire, as regular employees, the technical staff to meet its ongoing technical needs so you also in-source the work itself rather than just the management of the work.
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why not just have the government hire, as regular employees, the technical staff to meet its ongoing technical needs so you also in-source the work itself rather than just the management of the work.
Because it's really hard to lay off government employees when they are no longer needed. Building a Web site requires a lot more people than maintaining it.
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I think you missed the phrase "ongoing technical needs", and, additionally, have failed to consider that the overall technical staff needs of a very large organization (like the government) may be far less variable than the
The most interesting tech startup... (Score:5, Funny)
Quite simply, the Federal Government is....The Most Interesting Tech Startup in the World!
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They have software processes so convoluted, you need GPS navigation to make sense of them
That doesn't sound very convoluted. GPS is typically used by people too stupid to read a fucking map. So, you're basically saying that their processes are straightforward enough that anybody with basic map-reading skills can easily make sense of them.
ha interesting... very funny (Score:1, Insightful)
If your idea of interesting is running 10 year old operating systems on 15 year old hardware then yes it is interesting.
If your idea of interesting is trying to run something new and being shut down by 10 year old policies, having the network gate keeper with the only word in there vocabulary is no then yes it is interesting.
If you think its so interesting head on over to usajobs.gov and waste some of your life. I'm heading back to private industry where were driven by profit or efficiency. Find the problem
Re:ha interesting... very funny (Score:5, Insightful)
There's companies out there like that? Every one I've ever worked at has been find the problem, pass the buck, blame others, pass again, hire an outside consultant too much to fix the problem, let him do a half assed job, declare success, give the manager in charge a bonus. Private is no better than government, government just has more due to scale and gets more publicity on their problems.
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The larger any organization becomes, the more bureaucracy is encountered. The pre-breakup AT&T rivaled the dividon of motor vehicles for its bureaucracy.
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My last few trips to the DMV were very surprising. The service was excellent and efficient, the prices were less than expected, the waits were short and the staff was knowledgeable. And this is in a solidly liberal big city, where coincidentally, Obama has his family home. I don't know in what backwater you had problems with the DMV, but if you ever have to get something done in the DMV here in Chicago, you may find that yo
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Actually the last time I visited the DMV it was also a good trip. My wallet had been stolen, and it only took five minutes and five dollars (and a bank statement to prove I was me) for them to give me a duplicate license. I didn't even have to be rephotographed.
In years past, a visit there was pure hell. You live in Chicago I see (Obama), I'm down in Springfield. It seems that our SoS is doing a damned good job, far better than most of the goofs that came before him.
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There's companies out there like that? Every one I've ever worked at has been find the problem, pass the buck, blame others, pass again, hire an outside consultant too much to fix the problem, let him do a half assed job, declare success, give the manager in charge a bonus. Private is no better than government, government just has more due to scale and gets more publicity on their problems.
What you described is the typical publicly traded corporation, not a private company. Private companies are managed in a much tighter way, and mid-managers get away with much, much less crap than the chaotic world of publicly traded corporations where executives only pretend that they have the shareholders' interest at heart, while all they want is a very-short-term semblance of improvement, and then cash in and leave, and then join another such company.
Vivek Kundra is a liar (Score:1)
Vivek Kundra lied about his credentials, he was CEO of a company with only one person and he is only in his current position due to the widespread practice of cronyism.
Is the writer on the Government payroll? (Score:2, Troll)
Re:Is the writer on the Government payroll? (Score:5, Informative)
No company in their right mind would pay 18 million for a website. There are many many websites that get more page views are were made for much less. To consider that website a success is a joke.
This was discussed to death the first time this information was posted on Slashdot [slashdot.org]...
But it isn't like they paid 18 million for a single, static page. From the original link [abcnews.com]:
The contract calls for spending $9.5 million through January, and as much as $18 million through 2014, according to the GSA press release.
Roughly $27.5 million over five-ish years is $5.5 million a year. Consider they're paying for servers, electricity, bandwidth, data processing, updates... That doesn't seem like a huge amount to me.
It's a lot of money, sure. But it isn't like someone went out and spent $18 million to shine up their Facebook page, which is what some people would lead you to believe.
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Roughly $27.5 million over five-ish years is $5.5 million a year. Consider they're paying for servers, electricity, bandwidth, data processing, updates... That doesn't seem like a huge amount to me.
Is that $27M total, or $18M total of which $9M is this year?
Assuming the lower amount, that comes to, what, maybe 15-25 people full-time plus $4M of initial expenses (hardware and executive/sales bonuses, I guess)?
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Roughly $27.5 million over five-ish years is $5.5 million a year. Consider they're paying for servers, electricity, bandwidth, data processing, updates... That doesn't seem like a huge amount to me.
Is that $27M total, or $18M total of which $9M is this year?
Assuming the lower amount, that comes to, what, maybe 15-25 people full-time plus $4M of initial expenses (hardware and executive/sales bonuses, I guess)?
My understanding is that it was $18 million in addition to the original $9 million... But I could be mistaken.
Google's paid rather more for a website :-) (Score:2)
On the other hand it does something useful....
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I have to say I find it rather sad that "conservatives" don't have enough flat out failures to whine about that when the government actually produces something that's good and cheap (compared to the vast majority of government projects) that th
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Well it all depends on what you mean by "web site" - $18 million is cheap for some web sites. I have worked on an internal web site for a medium size company (few thousand employees globally) and the development costs ran to over $1 million. For the amount of work that went into it, that was a pretty good deal. It's not just html pages these days - when you have developers spending several years writing, refining, and maintaining complex backends with custom databases, a few million $s begins to look cheap.
Kundra's Credentials (Score:4, Informative)
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The Irony (Score:3, Interesting)
Kundra is at worst a fraud and at best someone who is clueless.
And you attempt to demonstrate this by linking to well-known clueless fraud, John C. Dvorak? Excuse me while my head explodes.
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Anybody who knows anything about technology journalism. He's a well-known troll. Hell, even the screed you link to contains the ridiculous "OMG, a website cost $18 million!!!!" bullshit argument. The only way anybody could take Dvorak seriously is if they are gullible and don't understand the subject. I mean, he's personally admitted to being a troll.
I'm amazed that you aren't even aware of his widespread reputation... but I guess that explains his readership.
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You're the clueless one here, so look it up. The guy is a joke. He makes wild ass predictions that mostly have no basis in reality (like Sun and Apple merging) and complains about technical details he obviously doesn't understand. Examples of the latter include complaining about "the idle process" taking 95% of his CPU and slowing down his computer, as well as stating that website SEO is useless (because when he changed _all_ his sites page names to SEO friendlier ones, his traffic dropped. No, he didn't kn
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In a word . . . (Score:2, Informative)
No.
"Startup"? No. (Score:4, Insightful)
No, its not. The US Federal Government has been in business continuously since the late 18th Century. Its not, by any sane standard, a startup.
It remains, as it has been for the whole time compting has existed, one of the biggest customers for (and funders of) new computing technology, and any major initiatives it has in that area will have potentially wide-ranging impact on the industry, but an established institution engaging in one or more new technology initiatives is a different beast than a tech startup.
Yep (Score:2)
Yep, sounds like a startup to me. Well, all except for step four, quietly fold up show and go away. That hasn't happened yet.
YET.
realistically (Score:3, Insightful)
initially:
AND in the end:
Gov't the new tech startup? This is looking bad. Really bad.
Talk isn't cheap (Score:2)
Talk is really expensive in politics. But most of the cost is hidden.
Feds? (Score:2)
yey! (Score:2)
Re:Do NOT work for the government (Score:5, Insightful)
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Xerxes: Brought peace!
Reg: (very angry, he's not having a good meeting at all) What!? Oh... (scornfully) Peace, yes... shut up!"
Re:Do NOT work for the government (Score:5, Insightful)
Also labor laws that keep your employer from killing you for the sake of money; environmental laws - before the EPA you could NOT drive past Monsanto in Sauget with the windows down, even in 100 degree heat and no AC; government is there to write and enforce laws that protect me from you.
Anyone should be able to see from the Bush/Cheney years what happens when you have people who think government is always the problem running the government.
Good job, Brownie.
Re:Do NOT work for the government (Score:4, Insightful)
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Do you really want anarchy in the skies when you fly?
No. I mean, anarchy in the sky is the same as terrorism. Please save my war on terrorism. Also, I don't want junkies shooting up and smoking pot on airplanes so please save my war on drugs. And I don't want prisoners flying, so please keep my prisons. Oh god, do we need government to save my war on terrorism, my war on drugs, my prisons, and my police! It's the Conservative thing to do!
I hate it when Liberals talk about getting rid of the government I love so much!
</CONSERVATIVE HYPOCRISY>
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Your wasting your time. He hasn't even thought about what would happen without his mommy yet.
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Finally someone on the same page as me! :) My comment above was "-1 Overrated", and the GP is outright a troll now...
The whole point of this posting was about the Federal government largesse, somehow it deteriorated into the predictable "But, who would build the highways!!!??? OMG!" argument. :(
For the record, the first trans-continental US highway was built using private funds (the original Lincoln Highway, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lincoln_Highway [wikipedia.org]); in any case highways now are supposed to be funded by
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Who is John Galt?