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

To: TimF who wrote (76405)	7/25/2008 12:10:54 PM
From: Bridge Player	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 543213

The paragraph by de Tocqueville could easily have been written by Ayn Rand in Atlas. And it is very much what is happening today in America.

To: TimF who wrote (76405)	7/25/2008 12:51:20 PM
From: TimF	Respond to of 543213

Marc Fisher Gets Mugged It's been said that a conservative is a liberal who has been mugged... or had their ability to hire a nanny screwed with if you are a certain variety of Montgomery County liberal. From today's Washington Post: From Marc Fisher's "Raw Fisher" blog: Montgomery County, the government that brought you bans on trans fats, smoking and any sales of liquor except by the county's own stores, last week added a new kind of regulation, becoming probably the first place in the country to require residents who hire nannies to do so via a written contract. The move has the usual do-gooder genesis, a reflection of the fact that many domestic workers are taken advantage of by employers. After all, since some nannies are illegal immigrants, it's easy for employers to set onerous working conditions and get away with substandard treatment of workers. What follows is something that would not be out of place on either the Cato Institute or Heritage Foundation websites but hardly to be expected from reflexive liberals: More important, this latest expression of MoCo's nanny reflex is another case of overreach. Domestic workers were excluded from federal labor law for a reason; there ought to be in any society some less formal work relationships that enable newcomers and other strivers to shape their lives in ways that standard rules of employment might not allow. Whether that means working odd hours, taking your children with you to work or arranging to live in a community you could otherwise never afford, there are benefits to domestic work. Obviously, any lack of regulation ought not give employers permission to abuse workers, but the proper remedy to those unfortunate situations is to quit and find other work. Maryland law protects domestic workers, including them in minimum wage and workers compensation provisions. Labor in a free market is based on an agreement between a willing buyer and a willing seller. Why Fisher takes the cudgel to MoCo on this particular issue, and why it has taken him to now to notice the general dunderheadedness of its Age of Aquarius policies, is anyone's guess but I suspect either Fisher or a close friend of his has a nanny. I'm guessing that if Fisher was a business owners he'd find a lot more to object to in Montgomery County that the regulating of nannies. redmaryland.blogspot.com econlog.econlib.org

To: TimF who wrote (76405)	7/26/2008 4:18:36 AM
From: Cogito	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 543213

>>They don't want hard totalitarianism, but they want creeping increases in government control through more regulation, higher taxes, more domestic government spending etc.<< Tim - I'm so jazzed that you quoted de Toqueville to me. ;-) The passage has nothing to do with what any Liberal I know wants, but it's still cool to have him brought in to the discussion. I think that the generalized statement I quoted above is incorrect. At least, it does not apply to this Liberal. I'd like to see a lot of laws taken off the books, myself. I'd start with the so-called Patriot Act. I can think of half a dozen others just off the top of my head. I would also prefer a smaller government, and lower taxes. I'd like to see a flat tax, with zero loopholes. I'd like to see churches pay taxes on investments, if not contributed income. Oh, heck. I'm starting to rant. There are some things I think a government can do better than private industry can, because having a profit motive involved screws them up, and makes them more expensive for everyone. - Allen