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From: preece@uicsl.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.politics
Subject: Re: earmarking tax money - (nf)
Message-ID: <3863@uiucdcs.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 16-Nov-83 04:35:07 EST
Article-I.D.: uiucdcs.3863
Posted: Wed Nov 16 04:35:07 1983
Date-Received: Thu, 17-Nov-83 05:59:00 EST
Lines: 32

#R:hou2a:-16300:uicsl:16300032:000:1718
uicsl!preece    Nov 15 11:05:00 1983

One of the reasons we delegated the taxing and budgeting authority to
those folks in Washington is so we don't have to know enough to make
those decisions. I don't want to have to know that much about everything
the government does. I would like, however, a plan that allowed
earmarking a small portion of our taxes for a particular purpose.
I don't have any objection to providing methods for us to express our
preferences to our representatives; I do have objections to trying to
replace their judgement with a direct poll. We pay them to represent
our interests and to do the homework we'd rather not have to do.
I don't see any reason to assume the various interest groups wouldn't
vote their interests just as their representatives do, so the net
result would be that those of us who take it seriously would spend a
lot of extra time balancing priorities and the money would be spent just
the same.

I agree with laura that advertising is bad for continuity and pacing of
dramatic works and that television would be better off if ads were
limited to between programs; I'd also like to see advertising kept out
of programming oriented to small kids (so far mine have not objected
too strenuously to their tv diet not including commercial tv for kids).
On the other hand, advertising does have certain uses.  It does provide
information about WHAT is available, even if further research is needed
to find out if a particular product meets your needs.  How did you find
out that National Semi, Motorola, etc. were the places that might have
CPUs to suit your needs? Most likely, either from their ads or from
coverage in magazines that are basically supported by their ads.

scott preece
ihnp4!uiucdcs!uicsl!preece