I'm cool with the idea, but I do think we have more urgent priorities (though with the attention we're NOT giving our decaying infrastructure that may be the only hope for it. ) Still, that's democracy; the majority may not agree, and we do have a lot of trappings of democracy even if we're ultimately a constitutional republic at the federal level. I assume you realize a lot of the big hardware chains (e.g. Home Depot) already do tool rentals, but that's not quite the same thing.

Exactly, too many people (and I have my moments of weakness ' />) are more interested in winning than being right, but if you're on the wrong side and have your countrys interests at heart winning isn't really a good thing. The healthcare bill is a good example (as it is for so many other things we're doing wrong. ) I happen to think scrapping the whole thing and starting over with town hall meetings about WHAT to do would have revealed the GOP leadership had little more to offer than "tort reform will fix everything" but regardless of whether that's true, scrapping it and starting all over with everyone contributing to the discussion was the right thing to do. Instead everyone dug in their heels and was reduced to "Any bill defeated is Obamas Waterloo and any bill passed vindicates Obama [despite the fact he had virtually no involvement in writing any of them. ]" So instead of writing effective legislation that accomplished something, they wrote legislation they could sell to 60 Senators. That worked great for Ben Nelson and the insurance lobby; the rest of us got screwed.

It's something I did think about, too; they could just figure out how high the on the spot fee would have to be to keep them operating if people only paid when they needed it and put a lien on the guys house if he didn't pay, but 1) that's an actuarial job that's hard to do on the back of a speeding fire truck, 2) it would be a lot more expensive to homeowners than a flat $75 annual fee (hence insurance premiums) and 3) even a lien doesn't guarantee payment, it just prevents sale of the house until payment is made. Which brings up an interesting question, too; I wonder how that fee works for renters. If you're renting from a landlord who doesn't pay it, does that mean you can't pay it yourself and get protection? And if you can, is that protection transferable if you move within the year?

Yeah, I was just messing with you a bit, glad everything's OK though.