William Proxmire dies

[rayofreason]

William Proxmire parlayed tireless shoe-leather campaigning, a mile-wide independent streak and golden political instincts into a record 32-year tenure, a place among Wisconsin's political giants and a measure of national fame as a crusader against government waste.

He died early this morning at a long-term care facility near Baltimore, at the age of 90, after struggling for years with Alzheimer's disease.

http://www.jsonline.com/news/state/dec05/377745.asp

Rest in peace with your golden fleece

[quaoar]

1. Proxmire's Top 10 Golden Fleece Awards

http://www.taxpayer.net/awards/goldenfleece/topten.htm

Here are the top 3:

3. How to Buy Worcestershire Sauce

The Department of the Army for spending $6,000 in 1981 to prepare a 17-page document that told the federal government how to buy a bottle of Worcestershire sauce.

2. Great Wall of Bedford, Indiana

The Economic Development Administration of the Commerce Department for spending $20,000 in 1981 to construct an 800-foot limestone replica of the Great Wall of China in Bedford, Indiana.

1. Tequila Fish

The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism for spending millions of dollars in 1975 to find out if drunken fish are more aggressive than sober fish, if young rats are more likely than adult rats to drink booze in order to reduce anxiety, and if rats can be systematically turned into alcoholics.

[Flubadubya]

20. I worked on a research study that won the Golden Fleece Award...

Back in 1978-1980 (around that time) I was a student in Nutrition at the University of Texas and Jean Freeland-Graves had just spear-headed a study of vegeterians and vegeterianism. It was quite a massive study which covered many aspects of the topic and cost lots of $$$$. She had obtained a federal grant for the study and one of the years that it was under way, Senator Proxmire awarded it the notorious Golden Fleece Award. It didn't phase Dr. Freeland-Graves... I think she wore it as a badge of honor. :rofl:

[hvn_nbr_2]

26. I've noticed that virtually any project...

particularly any research project, can be described in an arguably accurate way that makes it seem totally ridiculous. Just imagine for instance, putting dead virus on a sugar cube and feeding it to children!

[Lisa]

31. true! Or paying hundreds of thousands of dollars to drill into a glacier

... and look at the little bubbles trapped in the ice.


At my old university, since profs and grad students often were expected to give media interviews, there was a department seminar series on "how can we make research problems seem more relevant to the public". There were actually prizes for the person who could make his/her research appear to be the most ridiculous (and follow it up with a good explanation of why it was so important).

[xmas74]

2. I grew up listening to the praises of Proxmire.

My dad loved him and gladly voted for him. I remember him being in a local 4th of July parade and my dad running up to shake his hand, dragging me behind him.

(on edit: I admit it-I recommended this. He deserves it)

[sybylla]

10. He used to show up at the farmers markets in Madison regularly

whether it was election season or not. He'd stand on the corner shaking the hands of passer's by - thousands of them. I'm proud to say I was one of them.

Rest in Peace, Senator.

[ClassWarrior]

12. I shook his hand at State Fair when I was like 10.

I told my mom I'd never wash that hand again.

Gonna miss you, Bill.

Never Give Up.

[snacker]

22. Me too...

and I was so thrilled.
What a good man!
RIP

[xmas74]

19. I've heard that he showed up everywhere.

His constituents loved him.

[Zynx]

21. My parents were just walking in a park along Lake Michigan and there

he was, shaking their hands.

[eowyn_of_rohan]

29. Me too.....

I wrote a letter to him once, and I actually got a personal response with his signature in real ink. Feingold doesn't do that. I hope they lower the flags here in Wisconsin. What a great public servant he was.

[AnnieBW]

33. First Gene McCarthy, Now Proxmire

Supposedly bad news comes in threes. Would #3 be Richard Pryor?

[MadAsHell]

36. maybe a more appropriate third is

Gaylord Nelson ...

Wisconsin looses another giant ...

[Ian David]

3. The guy was a luddite.

[Kolesar]

7. Smile when you say that ... eom

[OldLeftieLawyer]

4. Another hero gone

He was great. Unyielding in his integrity, uncompromising in his loyalty.

He did good.

[MaineDem]

5. I loved the Golden Fleece Awards

RIP, Senator.

[DemonFighterLives]

6. Rest in Peace!

That Alzheimers is a nasty thing.

[malaise]

8. RIP you good man

Does anyone have his anti-genocide speeches?

[joeybee12]

9. I sort of recall a Time profile of him many years back...

...he jogged every day to keep in shape.

R.I.P.

Can anyone take up his Golden Fleece mantle today?

[Robert Cooper]

11. I was just thinking yesterday of how we need someone like him...

...to do what he did with his Golden Fleece awards.

The world is poorer for none have stepped up to carry the torch he bore so well.

Indeed, "rest in peace with your golden fleece".

[FSogol]

13. I remember one election where he spent $100 and his opponent spent

over a million dollars. And he won of course.

[xmas74]

23. I asked my dad and he remembered the same thing.

It was exactly $145.10 and he won 64% of the vote.
The people knew who they wanted and it was Proxmire. He was a great man.

[CornField]

14. You think the current deficits did him in?

If he was still "all there" he had to be beside himself about the current affairs in our nation.

RIP Proxmire. You will be missed.

[eyesroll]

15. He was 90, and had Alzheimers.

Recent stories have suggested he hasn't been even close to "all there" for awhile.

I think it was just his time.

[CornField]

17. I know

I should have better clarified in my original post. I wish he would have been spry and quick witted over the past few years. No doubt we call could have learned from the things he would have to say about Washington big spenders today.

[Dudley_DUright]

16. Having grown up in WI, I think that Proxmire was one of my early

political heroes with his golden fleece awards and his penny pinching ways. He would have had a target rich environment for his fleece award in today's political environment. He would have to give away a whole flock of them every day and he still would not be able to keep up with the BushCo outrages. RIP Bill.

[sofa king]

18. I propose sending his casket into space.

And then, using my golden fleece awards as a weapon, I'll pare down his budget until we spread his ashes on a roman candle.

Seriously, William Proxmire starved the American space program beyond repair. He is intellectually if not personally responsible for all fourteen of our space shuttle deaths, as it was under his budgetary cudgeling that America was forced to rely upon such a compromised and dangerous system. He is certainly the propagator of the fallacy that its better to solve our problems here on earth rather than gallavant about in space, an argument as disingenuous and damaging as Senator Slade Gorton's "spotted owls or jobs" argument has been against the environment.

For this, I shall never forgive William Proxmire, nor shall I forget.

[AtTheEndOfTheDay]

25. The shuttle blew up because

of piss poor design and incompetency regarding the freezing and icy conditions. Your charge is ludicrous.

[sofa king]

32. The shuttle blew up because of Proxmire's piss poor design.

Starting with this:

"Senator William Proxmire (D-WI), who successfully led the fight against the SST in 1971, called Nixon's decision to go ahead with what he estimated to be the "$15.5" billion shuttle project, "an outrageous distortion of budgetary priorities." The President, Proxmire said, had chosen the Space Shuttle over schools, public health, housing, mass transit, open space, environmental needs and other vital programs."

http://history.nasa.gov/SP-4219/Chapter12.html

Proxmire leaned on Nixon, and Nixon had the OMB hold NASA to roughly $3.5 billion for the next three years. With the constricted budget, the design of the Shuttle was instantly changed from http://www.astronautix.com/lvfam/shuosals.htm">fully reusable to partly reusable, with a high reentry delta wing shape as required by the Air Force. The piss-poor design of one partly reusable component of the shuttle was the solid propellant booster, which killed the Challenger crew. Other safety compromises included the use of heat-shield tiles, which killed the Columbia crew, and the omission of a full-envelope escape system and overshoot return rockets.

All of those design decisions were a direct result of the strangulating budget policies initiated and best exemplified by William Proxmire. So I say it's his damned fault.

[Name removed]

37. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[sofa king]

38. Nope, Proxmire hit it first, then it went to hell.

Read those links I gave above, and tell me I'm lying.

You guys can wiggle all you want, but the fact of the matter is that NASA went on the cheap because Proxmire axed the design budget of the Shuttle project from the beginning, in 1971. Everything bad and unsafe about the Space Shuttle stems directly from the budgetary corners which had to be cut from conception to final product, and William Proxmire was at the forefront of that crusade. Moreover, Proxmire continued to attack the Shuttle budget for the remainder of his career, and in the wake of the Challenger disaster, Proxmire cited it as another example of the fallacy of technology.

Of course, Proxmire eventually showed his true colors when NASA started up projects in his home state of Wisconsin, which is how the project ever saw its way to completion at all. His appetite for pork was humorously summed up by one commentator who wrote a proposal to turn butter into rocket fuel.

[Redroach]

39. Checked first link.

Here's it for that link -- " Senator William Proxmire (D-WI), who successfully led the fight against the SST in 1971, called Nixon's decision to go ahead with what he estimated to be the "$15.5" billion shuttle project, "an outrageous distortion of budgetary priorities." The President, Proxmire said, had chosen the Space Shuttle over schools, public health, housing, mass transit, open space, environmental needs and other vital programs".

So what exactly has changed from Proxmire's original outlook? Space has become cluttered with the Pentagon's Star Wars crap. And tell me they're not fucking aching for a chance to use it.

& just to keep us rubes' eyes off the ball we get cell phone connectivity, great Hubble pictures, genetically-engineered crops(Good For You!!! Just ask DuPont, etc..) and the capability of staring at the Weather Channel. Major planet-enhancing accomplishments there NASA. And the overall thrust of Proxmire's concerns(as stated in your link) have STILL not been addressed 30+ years later.

:rant:

[EC]

41. The space program should have been and should be a

worldwide project, no one nation can afford it and do it safely. (This will also hopefully keep weapons out of space too, as it should be explorational not exploted for military use.

[hedgehog]

24. There's golden fleece and then there's golden fleece.

Sometimes the Senator went after some basic research that he didn't understand. Wouldn't it be ironic if that research could have eased his last days?

[havocmom]

27. William Proxmire, Senator Who Abhored Waste, Dies

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/121505Y.shtml

William Proxmire of Wisconsin, the longtime gadfly of the United States Senate who thrived on exposing frivolous federal spending and dispensed Golden Fleece Awards to spotlight what he considered bad uses of taxpayers' money, died today at a nursing home in Sykesville, Md. He was 90 and had remained a resident of the Washington metropolitan area after he announced in 1987 that he would not seek re-election, ending a colorful Senate career of 31 years.

Mr. Proxmire, who was also remembered for his championing of regimens of daily exercise (in his prime, he jogged nearly 10 miles a day) and spartan diet, learned he had Alzheimer's disease in 1995 and made it public three years later. A man who was proud of his keen intellect, it was a disease he feared and perhaps had a premonition about: in 1987 The Chicago Tribune reported that shortly before he retired, a full eight years before he received his diagnosis, he asked the Senate doctor what his odds were of living to the age of 80 without getting Alzheimer's disease, which is a degenerative disorder of the brain .The disease did not run in his family but he was worried about it. He said more than once that he did not want to be a senator if his intellect was for any reason diminished. He thought he could see the infirmities of old age on the horizon when he said he would not run again.

Mr. Proxmire, a Democrat, was first elected in 1957 to fill the unexpired term of the late Joseph R. McCarthy, the Republican who was censured for reckless attacks on those he accused of being communists or fellow travelers. McCarthy's successor could not have provided more of a contrast.

Senator Proxmire was fervid in his opposition to unnecessary spending. His Golden Fleece of the Month Award, in which he identified some "ridiculous" government outlay, became "as much a part of the Senate as quorum calls and filibusters," Senator Robert C. Byrd of West Virginia once observed.

I grew up loving his Golden Fleece announcments.

Peace, sir.

[buddysmellgood]

28. Me too. He was a hero to many.

[shraby]

30. He was a great man. I met him in the

mall in Green Bay and about 15 minutes later my co-workers and I were in mcdonalds having lunch and he joined us and had a big mac with us. A very interesting man.

[Serial Mom]

34. He did his job - to keep check on the government!

That is why we have 3 branches and he knew / lived that.

His words have been my sig line for long time!

RIP!

[Raine]

35. R-I-P Senator Proxmire

All the good ones are dying. :cry:

[Violet_Crumble]

40. His fight to get the US to sign the Genocide Convention won me over...

Being Australian, I don't know too much about too many US politicians, but I read about how he stood up every day and read a speech on how the US should sign the Genocide Convention...

RIP...

Violet...