Jack, there's a whole lot of local control over our "socialized" schools--unless maybe they've done away with school boards up there in the People's Republic of Minnesota. Ditto the cops. The ones we encounter in Iowa--unless you're an illegal and happen to run afoul of ICE, or find one of the rare FBI's in our state--aren't feds. They work for the municipality, the county, or the state, and are thus far more accountable at a local level. We elect school boards, city councilmen, mayors, county sheriffs, etc. So to compare "socialized" schools and cops to government health care would only work if each city, county, and state had elected officials in charge of health care at those respective levels. I don't think any of the plans being suggested by any of the candidates work that way. Or at least I haven't heard that there's going to be something like a city or county medical board that would be the equivalent of a school board, or a county medical officer that would be in charge of health care the way the county sheriff is in charge of law enforcement.

RMC, while I respect your concerns about McCain, we need to remember what happened the last time conservatives got upset at a Republican candidate--as in GHW Bush, when he went back on his "no new taxes" pledge. The protest vote went to Ross Perot, which gave us 8 years of Bill Clinton. There are only two people that have a legitimate chance of winning the election, and they'll have either an R or a D behind their names. If enough R's sit it out or write in a candidate, that may be enough to get the D elected. Especially in the middle of the war on terror, I'm not at all thrilled about 4 or 8 years with either Hillary or Obama at the helm.

Last edited by L. Brown; 02/18/08 06:32 PM.