http://www.helloquizzy.com/results/the-amuseing-test/?fromCGI=1&var_Calliope=15&var_Thalia=0&var_Urania=15&var_Clio=10&var_Erato=0&var_Euterpe=0&var_Melpomene=10&var_Polyhymnia=0&var_Terpsichore=0

I love unintentional comment irony.

BUT the lack of oversight also provides risk that a powerful class or interest will interfere. For an example look at the refusal of every TV marketing firm to take Adlai Stevenson as a client in the 1952 presidential race. This was an example of oligarchs acting like oligarchs.

On to the list:
* oil windfall taxes are just demagoguery. Charge appropriate royalties for public land and tax profits as for any industry. Done.

* Minimum wage - do you oppose the idea of the minimum wage entirely? I would say that it is clear that without it economic equilibrium involves some people working for less money than is required to stay alive.

* I do not know the details of this `scabs’ provision. I prefer that the government limit itself to protecting the right to organize and the right to strike.

* payday loans.. many states already cap interest. This is an industry that caters to (or exploits, if you will) poor and vulnerable people, so I can see the argument for a public interest in capping the rate.

* The FMLA and small businesses.. the FMLA in general is a response to our conversion to a two-working-parent society.. tension between natural economic action (fire the temporarily unproductive in some cases). Somebody’s freedom of action is going to get curtailed.

* ‘Crack down on Excessive Energy Speculation’ - more demagoguery. No clue what it means in terms of proposed laws.

The larger question - the pendulum swinging in any modern society - is between creativity and growth on the one hand, and stability and safety on the other. The point that a society can stultify - foul its own nest - is well taken. I whole heartedly agree.

The flip side is you must have the panopoly of modern acronyms - OSHA, SEC, FEC, FCC, FAA, USDA, FDIC, NCUA, etc. This is not primarily because societies can self destruct left to their own devices, but that the alternative is a form of anarchy, and anarchy in large groups always collapses into a new form of control.. if not by representatives of the public then by someone else.. or by blind forces which surge through markets like waves…

McCain is easy, I don’t have to look at his current platform, I just have to say the magic words: McCain-Feingold. So much for “Freedom of Expression”. You may feel that this particular limit on our freedom is legitimate, but it’s still a limit, and one that benefits the currently-powerful and the current washington establishment, at the expense of all of us who do not have political pull.

Going through Obama’s laundry list of “lets socially engineer the US to be a worker’s paradise” platform:

Obama’s “Windfall Profits Tax” on Oil is both economically shamanistic (i.e. something I would expect out of a primitive witch doctor instead of a modern educated person), and freedom-revoking (Obama is basically setting the precedent that the government gets to decide how much money companies are allowed to make, and how that money should be spent)

His plan to raise minimum wages also represents a declaration that the Government knows better than individual business owners how much the employees should be paid, and yet hurts those same low-skilled people by making the alternatives (overseas labor and automation) more attractive.

His plan to ban the replacement of striking workers is also manifestly anti-freedom. Again, you may feel that it is important to allow workers to strike “in a cocoon of safety” but it still represents a taking of freedoms away from one of the major groups of people who made this country great (the entrepreneurs)

Capping payday loan interest rates is shamanistic and freedom-restricting.

Changing the FMLA to apply to >25 employee organizations (down from >50) - that’s taking away freedoms…

Require 7 sick days for any job…

Require that every employer provide an IRA…

‘Crack down on Excessive Energy Speculation’ - who defines ‘excessive’? The government. And, more importantly, this is more primitive shamanism, pretty much on par with ‘banning short selling’

Depending on the implementation of “Universal Health Care”, it will probably force Drug Companies to sell their drugs at a price the government sets. (Which I believe will have the ancilliary effect of decimating new drug research, but Obama won’t get any flak for that)

Most of the freedoms Obama wants to take away are ones currently held by business owners. Which is hardly surprising, since businesses are the source of all that is evil in the world.

My primary concern is that business is the Golden Goose that makes the US so powerful, so creative and so rich. The more ways we bind and weigh down the Goose, the harder it is for the Goose to lay new eggs.

You may not care much about these freedoms, but I do, because I’ve started businesses before, and know firsthand just how painful, scary and frustrating it is today. Add a bunch of new regulations and worker’s rights, and it’s even more scary, painful and frustrating.

I’m sure both men consider themselves paladins of individual freedom.. BUT

the history of the modern world falls into increasing regulation of economic life (in secular societies), or increasing regulation of moral life (in religious societies), or both.

The US, now more than ever, has legal guarantees for freedom *of expression* which do not exist even in Western Europe.. and unlike the past the system strives to protect those who exercise unpopular & hateful speech. Try pulling Fred Phelps’ act at a military funeral, even in Britain. You will find you have no protection for your speech.

Perhaps you could enumerate more specifically which freedoms are threatened directly by the candidates. Are we talking about.. the risk of nationalization of banking..? or New Deal regulated economy? or medicaire bring socialism? communists in the Pentagon?

But that’s a minor nit, in any case. The reason I hate them both is because they are both (Obama and McCain) bound and determined to take away our freedoms and centralize more power in Washington.

On the merits - well, he really does talk a lot about earmarks, and he just voted for a bunch of ‘em. Which makes me point out that you might be guilty of holding the earmark devil himself (Biden - actually I doubt he count even as a lieutenant compared to Byrd) to a higher standard than Saint John McCain, and where does that leave us?

I’ll most likely be looking for a mortgage soon, and I would expect a fair amount of scrutiny