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Old 2012-04-12, 11:10 PM   [Ignore Me] #58
Shanesan
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Re: Santorum Drops Out


Shit. I didn't want to make this into a Ron Paul thread. Oh well. Let me try to clear this up.

Originally Posted by Figment View Post
Department of Defense: 501.000.000.000 (increasing each year)
Department of Veterans affairs: 59.500.000.000 (increasing each year)
Department of Homeland Security: 32.152.000.000 (fixed)
You might want to look at what those budgets are right now. There are cuts in there, in all those departments. Cuts are important in the long-term for the United States. Perpetual debt is dangerous and the wrong road to be on.

Originally Posted by Figment View Post
Education? Who needs education!? That only creates Obama-type smart arses, right?!
You don't need education from the Federal Government. We have departments in both the State and your Local goverments that should be taking care of that. Not only that, but since the DoE's inception, our scores amongst the smartest in the world are plummeting like a bomb from a plane.
http://reason.com/archives/2011/02/2...he-brains-race
We spend how much more per every other country and get what out of it?

Originally Posted by Figment View Post
Not to mention with no department of commerce, you're ruining chances of companies to create new contacts, disrupt chances of entry into foreign markets etc. Energy management? Making sure everyone has access to energy?
There are State departments for all these departments, and you obviously don't know what these departments actually do. This is like saying "The PATRIOT ACT is patriotic. I mean, look at the name!"

Department of Energy. A relatively small target at $27 billion dollars a year, the Department of Energy sets standards for vehicles, provides nuclear security, remediation, nuclear power for military application, pure science, and other services.

Energy spends 6 billion dollars a year for remediation, for example cleaning up the nuclear weapons waste left over from the cold war. That expense is substantially unavoidable, given that several of the major sites are toward the upstream ends of the Columbia and Snake rivers. Areas here include Defense Environmental Cleanup, Non-defense cleanup, and Nuclear Waste Disposal. This should be moved into the military budget. As far as Ron's actual stance on what to do with this, I'm not sure. It would probably be pushed to the DoD where it should be.

Military applications of nuclear energy, mostly weapons cost us about 7 billion dollars a year. The Cold War is over. No country shows any credible urge to attack the United States. Most other nuclear powers are friendly to the United States. Under these conditions, a substantial reduction in the investment in our weapons stockpile and thus the spending here is entirely appropriate. This item can be very substantially reduced, though there is a technical complication raised by the short half-life of tritium. Ron Paul would cut this budget significantly, and thus our huge unnecessary stockpile of nukes, and hand the rest over to the military.
Ship propulsion & R&D, which cost about 1 billion a year, are from submarine and carrier fleets are nuclear powered and need replacement parts. Given the lack of military competition, substantial research on new reactor types is difficult to justify and can be pushed to the free market. This item can be reduced and the rest can move back to the DoD.

Nonproliferation costs a little over $1 billion a year, and it mainly focuses on reducing the supply of weapons-grade plutonium and uranium, which is great. On the other hand, buried in here are various efforts to manipulate the domestic policy of foreign nations that are inappropriate in a foreign policy based on truth and freedom. Some reduction is possible, but the rest is DoD spending. Ron Paul would most likely push it to the military as it's not suggested to remove it completely.

Scientific research is almost 5 billion dollars of the Energy budget. Before World War II, the Federal government substantially did not involve itself in pure scientific research. At the end of World War II, Fermi's first observation of fission (1934) became deployable weapons that turn cities into pillars of fire in less than a decade. The Strategic Bombing Survey made clear that weapons procurement was now the procurement of new laws of nature. After 50 years, it is reasonably clear that this research well has been pumped dry. High Energy and Nuclear Physics may be interesting, but seem extremely unlikely to lead to significant defense applications in the future, especially since nuking places has turned into bad publicity. Buried in here are a variety of materials programs, for example studies of neutron irradiation, that are significant for their remediation, propulsion, and weapons applications. Also buried in here are a wide variety of energy studies, for example biological energy production, that appear appropriate for private universities. Here is an area that could be substantially eliminated and push the rest to the DoD.

Nuclear, delivery, efficiency, renewables, clean coal initiatives and other research costs the DoE $2+ billion a year. The primary investment here is in areas that should return to private enterprise. Wipe it out.

The Strategic Petroleum Reserve costs 300 million dollars every year! The reserve is a response to a near-war situation in the 1970s which is now used during the 4th of July to get you places cheaper. Still, it's really on your dime. Maintaining military stocks makes sense, but the real future is to replace the Strategic Petroleum reserve with a country not dependent on non-renewable foreign fuels that will in any event soon cease to be readily available. Reduce, if not eliminate

And the one we don't know much of - the Energy Information Agency which costs 100 million every year. Here we have one of the many Federal information ("spy") agencies, responsible for collecting information and making it generally available. There are an awful lot of these, and the EIAs work mirrors the work of an international agency that gives very similar answers. Cut, cut, cut!

And that's, finally, the end of the goddamn Department of Energy. Jesus.

Sorry. That was a little much. I'll continue in another post.
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