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From: simard@loral.UUCP (Ray Simard)
Newsgroups: net.politics
Subject: Re: defense budget a payoff?
Message-ID: <310@loral.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 25-Jul-84 21:08:25 EDT
Article-I.D.: loral.310
Posted: Wed Jul 25 21:08:25 1984
Date-Received: Sat, 28-Jul-84 07:49:54 EDT
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Organization: Loral Instrumentation, San Diego, CA
Lines: 31

Mike:

A few points:

The $300 billion defense budget (I think that number is high, but won't
press it) may seem enormous, but look at it sometime in constant dollars,
which is the only approach that means anything.  On that basis,
a smaller part of each hour you work, and pay taxes on, goes to defense
than did during the Kennedy administration.

The Democratic party does not contain the "entire civil rights movement"
unless you mean only the certain orthodox vocal pressure groups arguing for
more government social engineering all the time.  Reagan has
opposed only pseudo-civil-rights policies that were designed to
treat persons of a certain race or sex preferentially; de facto
discrimination (forget this 'reverse' garbage - equal opportunity
either means what it says or nothing at all).

On Soviet life: my comments of life under the Soviet government
are based on the testimony of current and former Soviet citizens
who have found the opportunity to speak freely of their experiences,
and the known history of the USSR, the enslavement of eastern Europe,
and expansionist adventures in southeast Asia, Cuba, Angola, and
a little disagreement with the population of Afghanistan, in which
the government policies are communicated to the populace with
military force, nerve gas and mycotoxins.  Charming group, they.
-- 
Ray Simard
Loral Instrumentation, San Diego
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