Guess again.
Though Google and Ixquick are good, I'm very fond of Yahoo.
Search term: +highway +construction +california +federal +funds
Number 3 in the result list: "Senate committee OKs more California highway funds - 2002-06-04". Excerpted quote:
Under the budget proposal from President George W. Bush, California would receive only $1.9 billion in funds for its highways, some $327.8 million less than the level approved by Congress in 1998.
And you know what? Maybe some of that tax money is mine, and I have never set foot in California. But it doesn't bother me: I'm serving a California red tonight that got to Pennsylvania partially because my taxes contributed to your roads. Maybe you had a New York sharp cheddar or some Vermont maple syrup recently that got to California using roads financed in part by your Federal taxes. We are all in this together whether you want to admit it or not.
Your counterargument about electrification wouldn't power a flashlight. There was no rural market until the government stepped in to provide the service. Only after the service was provided did the rural population find new ways to use it that created a worthwhile market for private companies to go after. The government seeded the development.
I like the deal about not buying one's house from the same person whose disregard for one's safety caused a catastrophic loss. This assumes that a) one has survived the house collapse; b) one has not lost a family member to the house collapse; and c) one has anything left with which to rebuild, or in the alternative, sufficient insurance to replace the loss of almost everything one owned. Are we not responsible as a society for providing some level of standards to protect our fellow citizens and ourselves from incompetant and/or dishonest business practices? And don't kid yourself: if those unfortunate people were insured, we who are also insured are all paying for their misfortune, too. Unhappily, money is all we can offer them for their losses, some of which are not replaceable.
The bit about education: yeah, yeah, I've heard it before. It impresses me every bit as much today as it has in the past. Have you gone to your children's teachers, all of them, and told them to their faces that they are union tools working for a corrupt and inefficient failure of a system financed by money extorted from you personally and you would like nothing better than to put them out of a job? No? Why? Is it just "the organization", and not the people you know? I've heard the same argument used by radical environmentalists to condemn industry, "oh, but not Harry and Joe! They just work there." Yeah, right. The people are the organization.
Now, I think that experiments in education are fine, because it's a very good way to learn about alternative approaches, of which we have too few considering how diverse our population is. I don't think it's OK to dismantle an entire system to finance an experiment, especially when some of the system is functioning well, and other parts are functioning well enough. The very last thing that impresses me is some libertarian clown judging the entire education infrastructure of the United States by the performance of the Rich Man/Poor Man School System found in Oz On The Potomac, to which, I remind you, I am close enough for it to be local news.
If I could be God for a year, I would give you your wish not to be your brother's keeper. The United States would go completely private except for the police and the armed forces, and I would make sure that you received the benefit of every breakdown in public service and safety that that implies short of the actual death of you or anyone you love. The poor get left behind one way or another every day, but you don't see it because it doesn't happen much among people you know. Since you don't seem to get that, I would make sure that it was impressed upon you physically. A house just has to fall on some people.
Regards--
Mary Anne