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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Lane3 who wrote (12695)	2/18/2006 9:55:16 PM
From: JohnM	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 541957

The steel protectionism was neither left nor right. Simply, crass political protection. The prescription drug bill does not meet left/right distinctions because it's clearly a bill to repay the drug industry for campaign financing support. Conservatives are free traders and anti-welfare-state. You, of course, are free to frame those actions as you will but they're sure not conservative. Clinton pushed bills which could be labeled free trade. And it's a bit hard to argue that "fair trade" is anti-free trade. Nor is there much doubt that conservatives have supported various forms of protectionism. Moreover, some elements of the business community will support unadulterated free trade but then when it hits their industry, will jump off the boat. You may recall that Perot was against free trade. Reasonably conservative guy. As for the steel industry stuff, as I recall, Bush reportedly did what he did on the advice of Rove, that he needed it to keep/win PA. Purely a political act. Not a left/right act. On the prescription drug stuff, I agree it's not conservative (right) but it's not liberal (left) either. It's something else. Not even a hybrid. As for laptop keyboards, I'm getting better. And more comfortable. The only serious problem now is that this older Dell keyboard has a bug that if I brush the wrong key, the cursor jumps up some unknown number of lines. If I'm concentrating on my typing I may discover the mistake after I've screwed up. It's a copy/paste mess then.