Your response, Ms. Sue, is illustrative of why someone like me has a great deal of difficulty voting for either party these days.

Although I'm sure I come across as fairly conservative to anyone who is familiar with my meager output on plastic and now here, I am a registered independent and find the current state of the Republican Party to be frightening at best. I think GWB is tied for the title of "Worst President of the Modern Era" with Jimmy Carter, and that the hijacking of the entire conservative movement in the US by fundy christians is cause for deep concern. I think the Iraq war has the potential for becoming an even worse foreign policy blunder than our involvement in Vietnam.

At the same time, if I understand your use of "Communitarian" in this context, I am definitely not one. I freely admit to being a small-"l" libertarian when it comes to matters of personal privacy. I don't appreciate right-wing nannies trying to protect my morals any more than I do left-wing nannies who know better than I do how to take care of me and mine.

So I'll likely be sitting out 2008 just as I sat out 2004 and 2000. Neither party seems to give a flying fuck about my concerns.

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Seat belts, for example, since you mentioned them: When I see children not belted up in a car, I wish I could just magically make a police officer appear. It infuriates me.

Other nannyisms of mine: I am grateful that I live where smoking is no longer allowed in restaurants and bars; I wish my little town, known for weekend partying, had more, not fewer, DUI checkpoints and crowd control measures for the drunk and disorderly (I even like MADD); I appreciate regulation (government interference?) when it comes to our food; and I approve of reasonable age-of-consent statutes and other measures to protect children.

Confession is good for the soul  

Wow, you paint me with a wide and somewhat unwarranted brush.

I am all for personal freedom - and personal responsibility for one's actions - as exercised by adults. Just because I support an adult's right to choose to be an idiot and not wear safety belts, it does not follow that I support a parent's "right" to endanger the lives of their minor children. I completely support child safety seat, booster seat, and seat belt laws.

Similarly, as an ex-smoker I cannot get too worked up over smoking bans in public places. I do wish that movement had been undertaken more honestly and the hysteria, junk science, and outright lies over the supposed effects of second-hand smoke had never been brought into it. But I can't argue with the end result: I hate to go into smoky clubs as much as anyone.

I do think that MADD's ultimate agenda is to resuscitate some form of Prohibition, and as such I cannot support that particular bunch of wackos, however I have no problem with DUI enforcement stops - as long as they are limited to DUI enforcement. I have a major problem with DUI enforcement stops used as a pretext for simply hassling everyone driving down a particular section of street.

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T.S., I wasn't painting you at all. I was just listing a few areas that I know for a fact put me in the nanny camp, according to many here.

As for seat belts, although you didn't qualify your initial reference, I should have made it clear that I favor seat belt laws for everyone, not just children.

At the same time, if I understand your use of "Communitarian" in this context, I am definitely not one. I freely admit to being a small-"l" libertarian when it comes to matters of personal privacy. I don't appreciate right-wing nannies trying to protect my morals any more than I do left-wing nannies who know better than I do how to take care of me and mine.

Funny how we tend to describe ourselves with what we think are attractive labels yet depict our opposition (such as it is) in caricature form.

Funny how we tend to describe ourselves with what we think are attractive labels yet depict our opposition [...] in caricature form.

I don't think that "communitarian" is in any way an inaccurate term for how you see yourself. I certainly wasn't trying to throw it back at you in any sarcastic sense. Perhaps you think I'm being too easy on myself when I choose the label "libertarian"?

In other words, I'm not 100% sure what you mean.

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I think "communitarian" is as accurate a term as any, and I took no offense whatsoever. Hey, I'm the one who threw it out there.

No, I was referring to the N word. But I wasn't singling you out. I think no matter which part of the political spectrum we call home, we all have that tendency.

As has been pointed out downthread, Reagan was in office when the drinking age became 21, so that doesn't support your argument.

While Ronnie signed it, it was passed by a House that was owned by the Democrats and a Senate with only a narrow (53-47) Rep. majority. The main mover and shaker on the bill was Senator Charles Lautenberg, Democrat from NJ.

And while I agree the assault weapons ban was a joke ("Scary black guns are baaad"), it's a joke that is almost sure to be just as unfunny the second time around when President Obama is almost guaranteed to pressure Harry Reid and the boys to cook up another one.

I do not share your optimism that the feds can only get "so" involved in interfering with gun ownership, generally.

My problem with Democrats and small business is regulatory, not economic. But as far as making small business owners criminally liable if they hire undocumented aliens, I fully support that.

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My problem with Democrats and small business is regulatory, not economic. But as far as making small business owners criminally liable if they hire undocumented aliens, I fully support that.

So you're okay with some regulations of small businesses, but not others?  Which ones are okay?

Q: What do you think of western civilization? Gandhi: I think it would be a good idea.

The ones that are not ok are the ones that put absurd compliance burdens on small firms.

I outsource my company's state and local regulatory compliance reporting to a company that specializes in it. I have to. If I tried to do the reporting myself, I'd already be in jail.

Payments to that company are the fourth largest line item in our budget, behind only the cost of the products we sell, salaries, and the fuel it takes to run out fleet. We pay them more than we do our insurance carrier for product liability insurance.

Running an I-9 to see if the SS# comes back legit hardly compares.

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There is no doubt in my mind that a great deal of the business regulations present in current American law do not exist for the safety of the consumer or the employee or anyone else along the chain of production but have been put there solely to raise the barrier of entry against entrepreneurship and innovation and in favor of existing larger businesses.

It is easy to buy small plaster models of what you think life is like.

I agree with you 100%.

Also many of these regulatory initiatives act as stealth government employment programs. All the enforcement officers, auditors, inspectors, etc. plus their associated back office support personnel have to come from somewhere. In North Carolina, just the enforcement arm of the state DOT's regulatory compliance division employs a couple of thousand people.

And while I'm on a rant here, just where do they find these assholes, anyway? I remember the first time we got hit with a DOT audit and I informed the "lady" on the phone that we used "XYZ Services, Inc." to handle our DOT compliance, and that a representative of said company would be joining us for the audit, you could hear the annoyance and disappointment in her voice. She went from being merely brusque and faux officious to being downright rude and hostile. She knew then that there was very little chance that she would find anything of substance wrong with our stuff, so her chances of scoring a big fine were slim.

Now if these regs were really put in place to protect anyone, shouldn't she be happy that we comply fully with the law and run a safe operation?

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Damn that was eerie. Who knew the McCain campaign reads TnT?

Its amazing that we can both read the same article and arrive at different interpretations.

First off -- as you note at the end of your comment - refraining from adding to the deficit is a plank of the Democratic party in its entirety, not merely its conservative wing. They actively campaigned on the issue in the last election. This bill doesn't do what they say it does in terms of cost vs. revenue even over the selective time horizon chosen.

Second -- it seems clear (to me) that Ross (dunno why I wrote Rose) made his comment after receive support from the party's leadership.

The idea earned support from House leaders at a late afternoon meeting of top Democrats, including Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California.

This is not some small faction of the Democratic party deviously trying to kill the bill by including a poison pill. This is the Democratic party (in its entirety) trying to maintain its pretense that its fiscally responsible by raising taxes to meet new spending initiatives and then having its appointed "conservative" representative (armed with agreed upon talking points) saying people won't miss the money.

Third -- I'll point out that I -voted- for Jim Webb (D- VA) the main sponsor of the senate legislation in the last election (and am on record as doing so here on TnT), so its not like I have a long-term animus against the democrat party. I have no inherent objection to giving veteran more benefits (providing that there were commensurate spending offsets). What I object to, what I despise is that  raising taxes (again) is being cast in the cloak of  fiscal responsiblity and not only am I supposed to believe that (look fiscally responsible democrats!) but that the people who are affected won't actually feel any effect.

Memory is a strange bell, jubilee and knell.

Second -- it seems clear (to me) that Ross (dunno why I wrote Rose) made his comment after receive support from the party's leadership.

I guess our biggest disagreement is basically whether Ross's comment actually reflects what the leadership believes.  It seems quite likely to me that he made the comment off the cuff and that the Democratic leadership as a whole is not so cavalier as to believe that "nobody will miss that little bit of money".  Much more likely, they simply realize that the money has to come from somewhere and they believe that the upper income brackets aren't taxed enough (which, depending on how you spin the numbers, could go either way - obviously the rich do still pay most of the taxes, but as a percentage of their overall income their rates are certainly at historical lows).  They would rather take away the ability of some people to have an extra vacation each year than the ability of some middle class family to meet their mortgage payments.

What I object to, what I despise is that  raising taxes (again) is being cast in the cloak of  fiscal responsibility and not only am I supposed to believe that (look fiscally responsible democrats!) but that the people who are affected won't actually feel any effect.

Well, it's more responsible to raise taxes than to borrow, I suppose.  I generally agree with your point that this is an unnecessary and irresponsible use of funds, but I think you get into the range of hyperbole when you start taking Ross's comments personally and when you start extrapolating the positions of the Democratic leadership from his loose lips.  Let's look at this another way - the Congressional Black Caucus is at least as powerful (or even more powerful) than the Blue Dogs are - but if the leader of the CBC made some off the wall Al Sharpton inspired comment about race relations in America while promoting some civil rights bill (which the Democratic leadership just endorsed that morning) would you take that as proof that the Democratic leadership really thinks that all whites still harbor a secret desire to string up African Americans?  That's all I'm saying.