What do you mean by “still”? What examples do you have from history that our federal government has ever done anything well? There are some examples, but the number of examples from history are likely at the same good/bad ratio as we have today.
In a recent thread about Galveston, someone mentioned the book Isaac’s Storm. It illustrate how totally screwed up the pre-cursors to the NOAA were circa 1900. Today, the NOAA is an area where (IMHO) our taxes dollars are well spent.
Most of the federal projects that history has considered successes (e.g. the transcontintental railroad) have been accompanied by their share of fraud, waste, and abuse.
Let’s look a NASA for a second. The Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo programs were considered successes. But, don’t forget, the collective ‘we’ were willing to throw a Grand Canyon full of money at those problems. The money was not spent efficiently. NASA doesn’t have thay luxury today and they must make compromises.
The Interstate Highway system is a pretty fine idea. It probably made the country what it is today for better of for worse. The U.S. Postal Service as mentioned is probably the most efficient organization ever developed although, as a libertarian, the semi-privatized part does illustrate a point. The U.S. military is incredibly powerful. If you tell them to blow up a country or take over something, they will do it. The problem comes when politicians unleash the military and then decide to hold half of it back for some reason so that the goal is jeopardized and people get killed for pointless reasons.
The Feds still seem to go into space pretty damn well. One could argue how much longer they’ll have the edge, but I’d say private industry still has a long way to go (I live a 45 minute drive within Scaled Composites, so no one try to get uppity about Mr. Rutan with me!)
Oh, right. NASA’s abilities were already knocked in the OP. Sorry bout that. (They still do it better than anyone else, though).
Slight hijack for trivia: Even though it’s an Urban Legend that every one out of five miles of an interstate must be straight so that a plane can land in the event of an emergency, you can thank Eisenhauer for the system. He was so taken with the German Autobahn system that he started the interstate when he became president. Even before WWII, he had recognized the need for a system whereby troops and vehicles could be mobilized quickly from one point to another. The condition of the “highways” back in the 1920s would have proved disastrous for large-scale rapid troop movements. (This is why Hawaii has an interstate system, even though it connects with no other state; that would be one mean trick! If you look at the interstate roads on Oahu, you see they actually lead from one military base to another. Their interstate status makes them eligible for federal funds.)
The Postal Service’s motto – “Neither snow, nor rain, etc” – is actually a translation of a line from Herodotus praising the Persian postal system:
As I remember, Eisenhower was part of a coast-to-coast military convoy in the early 20th century, where he saw the condition of the nation’s highways, which also convinced him of the need for the interstate highway system.
Yep. Eisenhower gets absurdly little credit for the Interstate Highways system IMHO. In terms of American life, it is at least as important as the telephone and Internet. It doesn’t just affect personal travel, it impacts the way our cities have grown and the way that almost all goods get to us as well as culture. My wife and I couldn’t consider ourselves Boston are area residents for example if we lived 30 miles from Boston and didnt have I-495 connecting to I-90 (Mass Pike) to take us into Boston in 40 minutes. Personal travel and commerce would be unworkable for long distances. That is the good thing about having a General as a President once in a while. They say that peons talk strategy and tactics while Generals talk logistics. That is true in this case and I would say that Eisenhower’s Interstate Highway plan was way more important that JFK’s plan for the moon yet it gets little press.
I recall the the highway system, as origonally designed, was completed not very many years ago. And I think the states are responsible for maintaining those roads within their boundaries, with financial assistance from the Feds. Which is how they got such high compliance with a national speed limit – the threat to take away Federal Highway funds.
If these two things are true, and they might not be – then the remaining Federal role in the system consists of writing checks.
I will certainly grant that the Feds are pretty good at doling out money to states.
Can someone clarify for me whather they still have a more active role in expanding or maintaining the system?
It’s not, and has never been, their official motto. But it is inscribed in really big letters on the huge-ass post office in New York: wikilinky. This nicely lets them have the glory of a stirring phrase while still being able to not deliver the mail when my sprinkler is wetting six inches of the sidewalk. :rolleyes:
I remember when the drinking age went back up to 21 in all the states. Any state that did NOT agree to raise the drinking age back up to 21 got their federal highway funds cut off or back or something drastic. (Tied in with the drunken under-21s causing so much traffic mayhem.) All the states raised the age pronto.
Do you think that the CIA told the Bush Administration that Iraq had WMDs or is it more likely that they told them they weren’t sure but the Bush administration took that as a “slam dunk” case anyway?
So far there has been quite a few CIA officers complaining about how this administration has misused the evidence the CIA has presented to them. George Tenet appears to be the latest. I think he will talk about it on 60 minutes today.
Louisiana found a way out of it. I finished college at Tulane in New Orleans in 1995 and we had a drinking age of 18 the entire time for bars, liquor store, dorms, and everything else. They just kept it legal to sell alcohol to 18 - 20 year olds while making it illegal for that population to buy it just with no penalties. It seemed to work fine although even Louisiana has tightened up since then because of internal pressure. The feds can tell you exactly what the law has to say but they can’t always tell states what it has to do.
No one would deny that the Interstate Highway System accomplished what it was intended to accomplish, namely allowing fast transport of people and goods around the country. Whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing is up for debate. Some folks might argue that since they bypassed small towns in favor of direct routes from city to city, the highways paved the way (yuk yuk) for the destruction of the rural way of life. People driving from place to place no longer stopped in small towns, so businesses in those towns collapsed. Cities grew so large that they swallowed surrounding communities.
I’m afraid that by the standards you are implicitly setting forth, no government, no business, no institution, and no human could be “doing well.” Take the Justice Department: day in and day out, they are maintaining what, like 2 million people (WAG) behind bars; the FBI is using incredibly advanced technology to track down kidnappers, murders, and robbers; successfully prosecutes god knows how many people for criminal or civil violations, and so on and so on. And yet, the main reason thrown out for them NOT doing a good job is because it has become the enforcement branch of the Republican Party – an allegation that, if one pauses to think for a moment, is ridiculous on its face.
But if we’re to judge by the standard implied by the OP, who could pass this test? I could say I am a pretty good employee. But a naysayer could then chime in: “Oh really? You didn’t change the toner in the printer last week when it said Toner Low. A good employee wouldn’t shirk like that.”
The reality is that our government makes mistakes because it is doing plenty of things, and most things it does remarkably well. If you don’t believe it, spend some time in a place where the government does not work well. Like pretty much any country in the developing world.
Interesting how many leftistss take this as an opportunity to bash Bush. Are you guys saying that the government has been effiicent during every Dem administration and inefficient during every Rep administration?
