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From: clyde@ut-ngp.UUCP (Clyde W. Hoover)
Newsgroups: net.followup
Subject: Re: Senator William Proxmire and The Golden Fleece Awards
Message-ID: <769@ut-ngp.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 23-Jul-84 11:00:56 EDT
Article-I.D.: ut-ngp.769
Posted: Mon Jul 23 11:00:56 1984
Date-Received: Fri, 27-Jul-84 07:21:47 EDT
References: <915@ulysses.UUCP>
Organization: Comp. Center, Univ. of Texas at Austin
Lines: 33

> Senator William Proxmire, from Wisconsin, was so fed up with
> government waste, particularly with govenment funding of research,
> that he began the Golden Fleece Awards for outrageous spending.

> The awards are amusing, until you realize you are paying for them,
> and they are informative, because they have implications about
> what is worth doing and what is not.

> Required reading for academicians, you can mail requests to:

BULLSHIT! Proxmire is an anti-technologist of the first degree.

May I remind you of his leadership (with Fritz Mondale in tow)
in killing the SST, his frequent attempts to gut the Apollo
program, dismantle NASA and scrap the Space Shuttle.

This man has no concept (judging from some of the Fleeces he
has given out) of pure research.  While some of the Fleeces were
quite justified, he has also ridiculed a number of researchers and their
work just because he can't understand what they are doing.
One such maligned soul (I do not recall who) sued Proxmire for slander and won.

If you add up ALL the money bemoanded by the Fleeces, I suspect it
MIGHT be enough to pay a for year of price-supports and subsidies
to Wisconsin dairy farmers.

If this self-appointed guardian of the public purse strings really wished
to save 'our money', I would suggest he start there.
-- 
Clyde W. Hoover @ Univ. of Texas Computation Center; Austin, Texas  
(Shouter-To-Dead-Parrots)
"The ennui is overpowering" - Marvin 
clyde@ut-ngp.{UUCP,ARPA} clyde@ut-sally.{UUCP,ARPA} ihnp4!ut-ngp!clyde