I just meant that I perceive those to be essential government services that shouldn't be privatized. And, by and large, privatization attempts in those spheres haven't worked. In Philly Edison school have, at best, merely equaled the performance of public schools and non-profit charter schools. And states around the country are having problems with for-profit prisons that skimp too much on health care, food, etc.

Obviously governments can be very inefficient in those areas as well - but the solution is to improve the way government operates those systems, not to privatize them.

alesis - you should care what gets funded by the federal government. Government support of CPB may not be as high as government support for Alaskan bridges to nowhere, nor is it as egregious, but anyplace we can cut waste we should. I will concede that the OP's numbers were off, and I'm not going to get into a debate about the exact amount of tax dollars that go to CPB, but the important part is that some of them do go there and they shouldn't.

And it's silly to say we need to "get into politics" if we want to change things. Not all of us can actually enter politics, but certainly we all should be paying attention to political candidate's spending priorities and vote against those who are all too willing to waste money on PBS or on Alaskan nowhere bridges or whatever.

Regarding your example about grapes in Idaho - it does sound like a good investment, but I'm still not convinced that federal money should have gone to the effort. It's not like the US was facing a critical grape shortage and we needed the federal government to intervene. I'm sure Idahoans would like to see their grape business expand, but from the point of view of the federal taxpayer I could care less whether my grapes come from ID vs. CA vs. PA vs. wherever. Why couldn't the Idaho state government, or some sort of private agricultural association, footed the bill?

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