Should the government do every good thing?

An article from Focus on the Family Action is titled "Urge Congress to Preserve Abstinence Funding". I agree that abstinence education is good but I don't think the federal government is good at that or should do that. And when the government does things that it shouldn't, then it generally causes more problems. I usually agree with Focus on the Family and Focus on the Family Action but I disagree when they suggest that the federal government should do things it wasn't designed to do (even "good things"). Abstinence funding should come from families, churches, non-profits, and local school districts.

Being seated in almost empty restaurants

It seems that almost every time we go to a restaurant that doesn't have many people there at the time we are seated near the other people. Why do they do that? I would prefer to be seated away from the other people so that we have more privacy. We have experienced this in a wide variety of restaurants.

Also, are there restaurants where you can just walk in and request a private room? I have tried searching and I can only find restaurants that require you to call so you can "plan your event".

Legislating morality

I often hear "you can't legislate morality" but that doesn't make sense to me. Murder is morally wrong and goverment has laws against murder. Maybe some people mean that laws can't change the morals of the people -- and I agree with that. But laws can change the actions of the people to reduce behaviour that is "immoral". Laws against murder don't prevent all murder but they do reduce it signifcantly. "Moral" laws help prevent people from harming each other.

The question then becomes: Which morals should be made into laws? I believe that answer to that varies by level and location of the government jurisdiction. i.e. Murder is generally a state crime and pet laws (leash, doo doo pickup, etc) are generally local crimes.

Freewill vs. predestination

First, does it really matter? i.e. Does the answer affect how you live your life? In both cases you must strive to serve God so I don't see how the answer matters.

Second, being able to see the future doesn't mean that one determines the future. If I see a car speeding toward a brick wall, I may be able to see what will happen in the future but that doesn't mean that I have any affect on the future. Just because God knows the future doesn't mean that he chose everything that will happen in it.

Do you see any problems with my arguments?

Labor union throws out credibility

This is hard to believe a labor union is hiring non-union workers to picket at construction sites that use non-union labor. So the labor union wants others to hire union labor but they don't!
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/23/AR2007072302011.html

Would Education tax credits starve the government?

I like the idea of education tax credits because a free market in education would be much better then the one-size-fits-all government system. But I wonder what would stop people (and businesses) from starving the government by everyone giving enough to scholarship so that they don't have to pay any taxes? People may choose to give money to an organization that supports their beliefs in preference to the federal government.

For more on education tax credits see http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/2007/05/11/loose-language-sinks-syllogisms/

Electronic voting

If electronic voting is to work well it must be trustworthy. I think the following would accomplish that.
Have the voting machine print the votes of each voter in a standardized and easy to read format. The voter could look at the paper to verify that the vote was correctly recorded.
The votes could be counted by either using the paper to double-check the machines counts or just directly counting the paper votes (like is done for standardized test that use machine readable answer sheets).

As a software engineer I don't trust computers to keep our elections accruate--because there is always the possibility of human tampering.

http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/2007/04/27/the-case-against-e-voting/

Person to person lending

I just learned about http://www.prosper.com/ -- a website where individuals can loan other money. It looks very compelling. They only facilitate unsecured loans but I wonder why it couldn't be done with secured loans also.

First make "right" easy then make "wrong" hard

I think it is best to make it easy to do the right thing and then make it hard to do the wrong thing.
Two examples:
The music industry should have made it wasy to buy and download legal music before making massive prosecutions. Most people will do the right thing when it is easy.
Immigration: We should make it easy to do the right thing (especially for those who aren't currently breaking the law) by making a guest worker program with generous limits, then after that is working well increase border security.

Spring Election

The Spring Election is tomorrow. Details at http://elections.state.wi.us/subcategory.asp?linksubcatid=1865&linkcatid=1846&linkid=155&locid=47