Skeptic,

1. There are thousands of duplicate federal programs dealing with "helping little people". MOST are failures.

Head Start is a failure, they could be teaching learning skills but are basically a Federal babysitting agency. The main beneficiaries are the unskilled "workers".

The Post Office is a failure (just got a rate hike, wants to cut services), AMTRAC is a failure, the IRS is a failure (should be audited for fraud themselves), HUD is a failure, the Dept of Education (lost $450M to fraud) is a failure. All entitlement programs by virtue of their eternal need for higher funding having failed to accomplish their individual mission are failures.(Except of course for their actual purpose, which is to create jobs for unionized bureaucrats wherein they are great successes).

2. You mention that Republicans love their children and family and so on. I agree. I just don't think that W and his backers in Washington care about children, family or any of the other values you list all that much. ....Their primary concern is their favorite special interest group: Big Business

No, their favorite "special interest group" is......Republican voters. W ran on the slogan "no child should be left behind" and I believe he will make good on that.

Small businesses tend to be what they should be: local employers, involved in the community and responses to community needs. Concerned with profit, true. But not obsessed by it. These are the "Chamber of Commerce" types. There concerns are community oriented.

Yes, and what makes this economy tick are those small businesses, not the major corporations. Did you ever notice how it's the DOW Industrial 30, or the S&P 500 (big business) and the Russell 4500? (dollar and penny stocks)? This is not to mention those thousands or millions of noncorporations which take a chance on their own money, provide jobs and pay taxes.

I don't see W and his backers as caring much about them.

Who do you suppose those "tax cuts for the 'rich'" were for? Those business owners who do all of the above, usually work long hours and their efforts and investment which result in community development and employment should be rewarded, not punished.

Their focus is on big business whose focus is obsessively and solely with profits. Support for community values starts and stops with a ROI analysis

Community/Faith Based Organizations?

3. The issue of CO2 is not why it's there, but that it is and too much of it isn't a good thing. If it is, in part, based on natural causes and if too much is bad, then why add to the problem.

That's a BIG IF. The premise has not yet been proven. Volcanos and forest fires have not been included in the equation which contribute far more CO2 and actual pollutants than auto exhaust.

The fact that sea level has actually fallen in the last 100 years really blows that theory anyway.

4.The general reason people don't want to be counted by the census is that the distrust the governments motives. Sometimes to the point of pathology. But the do exist and deserve to be counted. Statistical modeling and validation is a lost less esoteric than some of the financial analysis I've seen come out of some of the companies I've worked for. The question is, I suppose, why not count them?

You gave the answer yourself..."people don't want to be counted"

Sorry for not responding to all your posts, I need to catch up.

Regards,

mav out