[marbletiles]

"Good design and good markup go hand-in-hand"

I don't think this is true any more than "good print design and good postscript go hand-in-hand".

I don't think tables are the right way either, but they're too often the pragmatic way until CSS gets dramatically more expressive.

The "restraint" you're talking about is not something designers should have to accept —- not least because CSS appears to be being developed with insufficient concern for what designers would actually like to be able to do. If it wasn't, vertical alignment would have arrived long ago.