Every year we have a family reunion at a small Pennsylvania amusement park in central PA. I have gone to them since I was a kid. My dad started our company and is the poster child for what an entrepreneur is – mortgaged the house with 2 kids to start a business and is now financially secure after over 44 years of 6 day work weeks.

Anyway at these family reunions we would always end up talking with a cousin. He is a guy who studied art. He rose through academia and went on to be a college professor. I recall as a teenager my dad talking with my cousin at the reunions. They were on opposite polls both politically and philosophically. My dad the conservative, my cousin the typical liberal college professor with a Phd.

The interesting thing that happened was that my cousin decided to leave teaching . His artistic abilities had some serious commercial demand. He did illustrations for National Geographic, designed books, fabrics and his work was bringing top dollar.

My point is this (Daniel). Once he left the comfort of a tenured university position and went into business for himself I noticed a drastic change.

My cousin was starting to agree with my dad. He complained about the high tax rates. He complained about how much the government intruded into him trying to make a living.

The difference was that my cousin exchanged the idealistic viewpoints of what he could hold as a professor with the reality of what needed to be done to run a business and make a profit.

What does that have to do with this article? My point is that there is often a dis-connect with politicians, the media and academia with the difference between idealistic viewpoints and reality.

Case in point. A friend of mine from high school was working at the local weekly newspaper doing the layouts for the paper. He came to our weekly Mac user group meetings. His dad died. The ownership of the paper was divided between his dad and a couple other relatives.

In order to pay the estate taxes the newspaper was sold to a larger publisher. The paper I get every Wed. now is not the same. My friend now has moved on to a new job several years ago as a pilot for a news choper.

The family owned paper is done. The flavor of the news has changed and a local newspaper that had been in operation for over 100 years is being run from a store front next to a pizza parlor – much of the news from other areas.

Why is that? These folks paid their payroll taxes, the state sales taxes, the corporate income taxes and their own taxes. At the end of the day when my friends dad died our Federal Government was there with their hand held out wanting a portion of the value of the company my friends dad owned.

That my friend is the reality of the death tax. You pay taxes your whole life on everything you buy and earn. Once you die the Federal government wants to still take a portion of it.

McCain is in favor of minimiaing that – O’Bama is not.

It’s not as clear cut as you might think when you get down to the family and community level as outlined above where lives and long standing companies are forced to change and close.

You the one reading this and Danile may think you are unaffected by this. If at some point you start a business, are married and have kids and at the later stages of your life the reality hits that the Federal Government wants to get an additional “cut” of the value of what you spent your life creating you very well may have a different opnion.

I realize that a single person sitting in an apartment in the Bay Area can have an entirely different view point on things since they are not affected. Get married, have some kids, start a business, spend 30-40 years of your life creating a business and then talk to me about why the estate taxes are fine the way the democrats want to roll them back/

Daniel: “Is the best you can do to associate Obama with ACORN complaints from two years ago…”

Ummm, my first link is from Sunday. And you want to go back eight years to 2000.

Daniel: “Guess why the Republicans don’t want middle class americans who lost their home from being able to vote?”

You’re showing your naiveté again. You associate Republicans with money and so you automatically blame them for banking problems. But the reality is quite a bit more complex. For example, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac engaged in massive lobbying, and who do you think took more of their money — Republicans or Democrats? Obama or McCain?

Answer: Democrats collected 33% more at the trough than Republicans, and in under four years, Obama helped himself to SIX TIMES MORE questionable $$$ than John McCain did in 19 years.

http://www.opensecrets.org/news/2008/09/update-fannie-mae-and-freddie.html

If you’re wondering why Obama doesn’t rail against Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — well, now you know.

Hope this helped…

Just a few points in rebuttal. First a J.D. is far from a PhD in law, I should know since I have a law degree. A PhD. requires many additional years of classes as well as a dissertation. A law degree is more like a Masters degree regardless of the “Doctor” in the degree. That is irrelevant however since you are comparing Palin’s (VP candidate ) educational credentials against Obama’s (presidential candidate). Whether you despise McCain or not, surely you would agree he is at least qualified regardless of what you think about Gov. Palin.

Biden is certainly far from perfect. Over the past 20 years, MBNA has been Biden’s single largest contributor. Biden’s son Hunter was hired out of law school by MBNA and later worked as a lobbyist for the company. He also supported he 2005 bankruptcy bill, which made it harder for consumers to file for bankruptcy. Bank lobbyist is even have a expression, “Never leave Washington without him”

Why was my leaning towards Hillary a joke? I was only a very reluctant supporter because she was the least of the worst. Much like the decision I am left with between McCain and Obama. And your white football player analogy was really uncalled for as it would appear you are bringing racism into my decision. In any case, as I said before I will reserve my decision until after the debates, or did you miss that part?

I also never said you are not allowed to write your political views. In fact I clearly stated you are allowed to write whatever the muses inspire you to pen. I simply said that it was probably not a wise move since there is a good chance that you offended around 50% of your Mac readership that might support McCain. You are clearly a very intelligent person and I respect your right to express your views. I was just pointing out a likely repercussion of venturing into political discourse on a Mac blog.

In terms of my Apple comments, I just meant that I don’t think I have ever read an article where you disagreed with Apple. Granted I have not read all your articles, but you are certainly one of the very few that thought the crippled Apple TV was revolutionary. I also strongly disagree with your position on the podcast application as do most of your readers judging from the comments. The only reason I even said that is because like you I strongly support Apple and want them to succeed. Were you to focus your keen insight on their shortcomings, someone in Cupertino might even take notice. That is all I meant, it was not intended as a slight.

Although we all live in a vacuum to a certain degree, I like to think I am pretty open minded. But this article I am afraid was about as good an idea as Michael Jordan’s decision to try baseball after he retired.

I am not American and will not be voting, but I do live in America – and watch and listen to the debates with interest.

As someone who has had the privilege of living and working in 4 countries, I can say that the above political debate could easily be mistaken for one from many other countries – especially comments about tax, and socialism, and lying, and government spending etc etc. These are universal themes.

However, I haven’t seen Creationism in political debate in other countries. It seems ironic that although the constitution separates church from state (which was wise ahead of it’s time) the US political process is filled with references to God (and God’s will, and God bless America, and in God we trust etc) and praying and creationism etc. You would think that there would be a way to insist that members of government be elected based on their stated goals & policies (tempered by past behaviors of course) and that any reference to God should rule them out of contention – since if one candidate mentions God, then they will all feel they have to otherwise religious groups might not vote for them – and then there is no longer a separation between church & state … just a thought.
If there is a God – would it not be the same God for all people on earth. Why would God bless you in particular and not everyone else ? Don’t worry – many countries have fallen into this trap with their “God bless [insert your country here]” requests. It seems to me that unless you are saying “God bless all men”, you are effectively asking for God to prefer you to everyone else …

“Socialism” seems to brought up quite a bit too – everywhere in the world. Many, mostly liberal/democratic/labour governments are accused of it. Pure Socialism seems to be the name for the extreme form of a philosophy – which I dare say that only a few nut jobs would espouse. However, less extreme forms exist in every government – it’s just a matter of degree. Even the US is “socialist” to a certain degree (and most people are happy with it, it seems to me). Example: State governments provide free education up to the age of about 18. They collect taxes, and use it to build schools, hire teachers, create a curriculum etc. Is this not a form socialism ? Private schools exist too – but Public Schools ensure that basic education is guaranteed to all (well, that’s the theory) – is this not good (especially given that you always have the choice of private)?. What about roading, water supply & sewerage – once again paid for and owned by “everyone”. Medicare & Medicaid – are social back stops, so another piece of socialsim. It’s funny that no one says Socialist schooling, they say Public Schools – where-as any suggestion that the Govt get involved in providing healthcare is called Socialism.
So, it seems to me that if the degree of socialism is put on a scale from 1 to 10, and the US is (for example) a 4 – then the political debate is about whether it will move between 3.5 and 4.5. Collecting a bit more, or a bit less tax is the debate of every election but doesn’t result in significantly more socialism.

Change is neither good or bad, but it is essential … and inevitable. Making it a campaign slogan is kind of reflective of the how politicians are forced to address the lowest common denominator. It says nothing, but people scream and clap. How sad.

Quire frankly, in this election it is more of a choice between the lesser of two evils. Bob Barr would probably be a better president than either of them. Too bad he can’t even join in the debates. One other thing that angers me about all the attacks on Palin concerning her lack of experience is that they completely ignore the fact that Obama has little more experience that a city councilman. State senators are about as low as you can go in the sate political totem pole. As far as his U.S. senate experience, exactly how many days did he actually serve before announced? Not much more than a year and as soon as he announced he was out on the campaign trail running for office, so I really don’t credit him with 3 years experience. Compare that to Kennedy who served many years in the House and Senate before he ran for president. Why was Obama in such a rush to run this time around? Although I can’t put my finger on it, there is just something about Obama that makes me reluctant to vote for him. I will wait until after the debates to decide, but I am leaning towards Mccain even though I supported Hillary.

Dan certainly has the right to write whatever he likes on his blogs. However, he lost a lot of respect in my eyes. I would wager that the percentage of Mac users who are Republican or Democrat is about the same as the general population. His article reminds me of other left coast liberals that write condescendingly about anyone that dare disagree with them. I also find that his Kool-aid a bit harder to swallow concerning anything Apple. No matter how egregiously or arrogantly Apple behaves, Dan is the first to step to their defense. At this point I wonder if he is even capable of writing an article criticizing Apple on their mistakes or his suggestions.

[Lack of experience in the entrenched trash politics of both parties is an asset, but Obama's lack of "washington experience" is combined with is JD (basically a PhD in Law), and his efforts at building things as a "community organizer." Palin has a BA in Journalism that she spend a lot of years getting here and there, her lack of "washington experience" is only assisted by her small town political squabbling, firing librarians who won't ban books for her, hiring friends in place of competent people, and having her oil man husband draft Alaska's budget rather that working with legislators. So yes, there is some difference here. Both McCain and Biden are career politicians.

If you want to continue to try to make broad generalizations about what you think are my political views and biases, maybe you can start up your own hater blog like John Welch and go nuts in your own vacuum rather than making me waste my time answering your predictable comments about how little respect you have for me. ]