I'm voting Republican.

Being a Democrat was sexy there for a bit, but now reality's kicking in and Obama's about to drop a nuke on my home region with Cap and Trade. Not only does thousands of our jobs rely on coal, but it also relies on manufacturing jobs which are partially here due to us having some of the cheapest electricity in the U.S.

So basically he's going to reduce our disposable income through taxing our health benefits and letting the "Bush Tax Cuts" expire, likely give us the highest unemployment rate in the country, and then double or triple our utility rates. Not that we aren't already suffering enough from the persistent economic downtime we've had for a while before he even took the job.

Working in the coal industry has also made me HIGHLY skeptical of increased government presence. Not only is the government inefficient with your tax dollars, it's damn near criminal how they just bleed money. Between the MSHA inspectors, support personnel, and management for the MSHA office in our little region, I can estimate that at least $8-10 million is being spent annually to police 5 mines.

These guys very rarely do anything constructive. In fact, most of them just write citations to justify their existence. These guys might be present at work for 40 hours a week, but the actual "work" they do consists of leisurely being driven around by a company representative for a shift, tying up a person and a vehicle.

Sounds like they should be able to cover a lot of ground, right? Well, the government doesn't think so. They're hiring more inspectors as we speak. Scores of them. It probably costs $100k to train each one also. The candidate and his/her family is transported to a resort in West Virginia where training is held for 6 months. As a rule of thumb, we estimate that benefits are around 50% of the salary of a person for budgeting purposes. So each new inspector puts a burden on federal tax payers of roughly $100k.

[/rant]

How about you guys?