Shecky, your Democrat-controlled Congress has done nothing for two years. You are fooling yourself if your small business is going to be as successful as it is right now with Obama in office. Healthcare for everyone will mean that small businesses will be required to have healthcare for all their employees, yet you complain that your costs have already gone up. As a company owner, you must be one of the rich ones. I’m glad that you’re excited to vote for Obama…you’ll be asked to pay more in taxes to continue to help those who don’t work.

Domestically produced ethanol? How about domestically produced OIL? Bush did about as much as your other hero, Clinton, with alternative fuels. Brazil drills in their own country..don’t they? I believe they also just found two huge oil fields in the Gulf of Mexico…something that we have been prevented from doing by our environmentalist wackos.

Keep “free” trade free. We produce the best products in the world..let’s get them out there. Let’s also hold other countries’ feet to the fire on fair tariffs.

Logicprevails,

You say:

“Keep “free” trade free. We produce the best products in the world..let’s get them out there. Let’s also hold other countries’ feet to the fire on fair tariffs.”

Could you give us a list of these great products that America is manufacturing and producing that the world is missing out on?

I thought America became the biggest service industry long ago?

Talk about people living in a fantasy world removed from reality.

Thats a silly statement notscott. If youre older than 34 you cant fight in the war and McCain has changed his stance on the war. At least higher gas prices will keep the riff-raff off the road which is a great thing. Its already easier to go places on the roads with less traffic.

Can I nominate Tim for the Hoover award? Riff-raff? That sounds like what Hoover is best known for–disregarding American suffering.

Oh, and that sounds like Bush and Blunt, too. I find the comparison, whether plagiarized from McCain or a magazine story, ironic.

(ill)LogicPrevails (ha, now that’s rich): First, check the facts, the economy and the markets typically perform better under Democrats than under Republicans. I’d gladly trade the Clinton economy for either of the Bush economies. As an employer, I’m committed to providing health care for my employees because it’s the right thing to do. I’m not “one of the rich ones,” I’m one of the responsible ones.

I’m also one of the ones who is smart enough to realize that whether I’m paying insurance premiums or higher taxes, it’s still money out of my pocket. And it would be hard to come up with a less efficient means of paying for health care coverage than we do today. I don’t like paying more taxes, but to be honest, I hate paying my insurance premiums even more. And those keep on going up every single year.

If we got rid of the ongoing concern of not being able to pay for coverage, I’d feel a lot more confident about expanding and creating even more new jobs. Right now though, I don’t know how much my insurance costs will go up by next year, so I’m reluctant to commit to someone I may not be able to afford come January 1. The cost of health care is a probably the single biggest obstacle for me and countless other small business owners and potential entrepreneurs who are afraid to take the plunge because they’ll lose their coverage.

Let me ask you this, (ill)Logic, have you ever created a job? Have you ever had to meet a payroll or provide health insurance for someone else? For some reason I doubt it.

As for Domestically produced ethanol, that’s exactly how Brazil has done it. Thanks to the wise use of sugarcane, they actually produce more ethanol than they need and they are 100% energy independent. Instead of blaming the “whackos,” you should be asking why we can’t do the same thing here. Again, check the facts. Is drilling honestly the only answer you can come up with? Surely there might be other options, right?

Also, Republicans like you always point to drilling in Alaska and elsewhere as the solution, but guess where most of the oil from Alaska is going today? China and India. So if you think ANWR is going to solve our problems, you’re wrong. Once more, check the facts.

Finally, as for your free trade nonsense, I have no idea what that has to do with anything I or anyone else has said. I’m all for free trade. I practice it daily. I’m a businessman, an entrepreneur and an unabashed capitalist. But I’m also someone who believes in looking for the most affordable and most effective solutions so I get the most from every dollar I spend, whether that’s on taxes, insurance premiums, or anything else. I don’t believe in running my business based on some dogmatic political beliefs that have nothing to do with the realities I face.

Shecky, please see: http://www.nationalreview.com/nrof_comment/carter200402260852.asp Of course, you’ll dismiss this since it is from the National Review, but I do believe the facts check out. I want to make sure I understand you correctly, you want the government to pay for healthcare for all so that you can expand your business and create more jobs? Socialized healthcare means very long waiting times for doctor visits and surgeries..meaning your new workers will be working in pain at times (dentist visits in England, for instance, can be months away…even for “emergency” dental procedures).

No, I have not created a job..but I have managed restaurants, hotels, and retail stores for over 20 years so I understand the cost of healthcare premiums and meeting payroll. I’ve also worked with the poorest in society and seen what entitlement programs have done to these individuals. I think it’s great that you’re providing healthcare for your workers…but supporting the most liberal senator in Congress doesn’t seem to make sense…since Democrats traditionally do not support small business.

Brazil has done a great job with their ethanol production. The US is second in the world in ethanol production. Why didn’t Clinton work to wean us off oil? Why didn’t Carter? Yeah, there’s enough blame to go around. I agree that alternative fuels is the way to go but in the short run, drilling in the Gulf and in Alaska seems to make sense. I’ve not seen any information regarding the oil in Alaska being sent oversees..where can I find that information?

My comment regarding free trade was in response to the original comments in this blog regarding Obama “fixing” NAFTA. He just voted down a free trade agreement with Columbia…which shows that he is not serious about any type of free trade. He won’t fix NAFTA…he’ll dismantle it.

After the first major oil crisis at the end of the Nixon Era and during the Ford term, according to the “FAO COMMODITY AND TRADE POLICY RESEARCH WORKING PAPER No. 1 The Brazilian ethanol programme:impacts on world ethanol and sugar markets by Tatsuji Koizumi”, Brazil started its’ ethanol from sugar beets program in 1975, thus giving it a 30 year head start.

So the question why didn’t Clinton wean us off can just a fairly be applied to every Administration beginning with President Gerald Ford. Also, it was President Carter who had oil prices deregulated and Prudhoe Bay production lessened our need for imported oil. Go figure a Democrat actually increased the rate of domestic oil production. By the way the price went from $16 (approx) per barrel to $39 per barrel in that time. Now we are at $139 per barrel and going up.

Sorry, but history has a way of kicking certain arguments around. Blunt and his crew have done everything possible to rob the Missouri State Treasury and move the wealth into their own pockets. In this, he is different from Herbert Hoover, Hoover was an engineer who had a strong sense of what was right. But wheere Hoover may have made his mistakes based in bad advice, Gov. Blunt seems to hew to “family first”.

(ill)Logic, even if I wanted to presume for a moment that you’re being sincere, your statement that “Democrats traditionally do not support small business” is so full of nonsense it’s laughable. Small businesses thrived under Clinton, but under Bush they’ve had it so good. The GOP prescription for business has almost entirely focused on what will benefit the big boys. It’s the folks who can afford the lobbyists that got the breaks over the last eight years, and anyone who has watched it happen knows it’s true.

As far as your National Review clip from 2004 goes, it’s very dated and uses very selective statistics. The first three years of Clinton’s tenure was the recovery from the Bush I recession. His last three years saw balanced budgets and unparalleled growth. The first three years of Bush’s administration saw that record economic growth collapse and he’s ending his tenure with the economy in horrid shape in just about every measure. How you finish is far more important than how you start.

As for your entirely unoriginal scare story of British socialized medicine, you’re basing it on false GOP and health industry propaganda, and you’re raising a false choice. Who says we have to do exactly what the Brits, Canadians or even Swedes have done? No one. This is America. We’re smarter, we’re more innovative, and when we put our minds to it, we can find a way to land a man on the moon. Surely you’re not suggesting we can’t do better than the Europeans.

And after 8 years of Bush, when exactly will conservatives stop trying to blame Clinton? Bush is president. Why hasn’t he done something other than meekly beg the Saudis for “more please”? Again, this is America. Unless you want to suggest our country can’t compete, then tell me why we’re falling behind a country like Brazil? It’s past time for us to stop trading with totalitarian regimes in the Middle East and start growing our way out of this energy crisis.

Clearly the Bush plan of giving away billions to Exxon hasn’t worked. Maybe it’s time to find some new solutions. Wouldn’t you rather see those billions in tax giveaways and profits going to American farmers instead of Big Oil and OPEC?

Ok Sheck, if slowed economic times during the first 2 years of GWB”s presidency fall squarely on his shoulders, then the first 3 years of Clinton belong to Clinton. You really have triggered my vertigo, cuz you are spinning like a freakin top.

Your short term memory must be gone because during 2000, hundreds of billions of dollars of stock value began to disappear. That continued for the next 2 years. Nearly a trillion dollars were lost as a result of the bursting of the tech bubble. Which man was president during the inflation of the stock bubble and the initial bursting?

The fact is people that rest the state of the economy, the biggest and strongest in the world, on one single person, the president, are severely lacking in brain matter. Garrison is example numero uno.

The Republics have been in control of most of the Federal government for the last 14 years, and yet everything is the fault of the Democratic Party. If, for no other reason than the Republics don’t know how to solve the problems they had a chance to address, voters should turn to the Democratic Party. The Republics had their chance and they made things worse. It is time to throw them out from the White House to the State House.

The Republics do not know how to govern. They use government to enrich their friends at the expense of others. Governor Blunt has proven that a number of times while in office, as has President Bush and Vice-President Cheney, the “Halliburton Brothers.”