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Politics : Liberalism: Do You Agree We've Had Enough of It? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Kenneth E. Phillipps who wrote (102204)	4/1/2011 11:11:30 AM
From: JakeStraw	6 Recommendations Respond to of 224737

>>He has already acted as pro-business "Acted" is right! LOL! Obama the, Soros puppet, now has to ACT like he's pro-business to get re-elected. He's just another phony politician.

To: Kenneth E. Phillipps who wrote (102204)	4/1/2011 12:23:57 PM
From: TideGlider	2 Recommendations Respond to of 224737

Just 21% Say U.S. Has Clearly Defined Mission in Libya Thursday, March 31, 2011 Email to a Friend ShareThis.Advertisement Despite President Obama’s address to the nation Monday night, most voters still aren’t clear about why the U.S. military is engaged in Libya. A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that only 21% of Likely U.S. Voters think the United States has a clearly defined military mission in Libya. Fifty-six percent (56%) disagree and say the military does not have a clearly defined mission. Nearly one-in-four voters (23%) are not sure. (To see survey question wording, click here.) The president apparently did not close the sale with his address explaining his decision to commit U.S. forces to Libya. The survey was taken Monday and Tuesday nights, and the findings from the first night prior to the speech and the second night after the speech showed little change. The numbers also didn’t change over the two nights when voters were asked if Libya is a vital national security interest for the United States these days. While the president is hopeful that longtime Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi will step down, it is not a stated U.S. policy aim. But 62% of voters think it is at least somewhat likely that Gadhafi will be removed from power as a result of the military action now being taken by the United States and other countries. Just 23% say it’s unlikely. These findings include 30% who say Gadhafi’s removal is Very Likely and only three percent (3%) who believe it’s Not At All Likely. Fourteen percent (14%) are undecided. (Want a free daily e-mail update? If it's in the news, it's in our polls). Rasmussen Reports updates are also available on Twitter or Facebook. The survey of 1,000 Likely Voters was conducted on March 28-29, 2011 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/- 3 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. Field work for all Rasmussen Reports surveys is conducted by Pulse Opinion Research, LLC. See methodology. Prior to the president’s decision to commit U.S. forces to Libya, Americans were lukewarm to the idea of involvement in the political situations in Arab countries like Libya. But, at the same time, 76% of voters feel it’s generally good for America when dictators in other countries are replaced with leaders selected in free and fair elections. Male voters feel more strongly than female voters that America does not have a clearly defined military mission in Libya. But men are more confident that Gadhafi will be removed from power because of the military action by the United States and other countries. Seventy-three percent (73%) of Republicans and 67% of voters not affiliated with either of the major political parties feel the United States does not have a clearly defined mission in Libya. A modest plurality (38%) of Democrats disagree and think the mission is clearly defined. Democrats also feel strongest that the Libyan mission will drive Gadhafi from power, although a majority of GOP voters also think it’s likely. Unaffiliated voters are more skeptical. Sixty-two percent (62%) of the Political Class feels the United States has a clearly defined military mission, but 67% of Mainstream voters don’t share that assessment. Both groups are in general agreement, however, that the military action in Libya is likely to remove Gadhafi. Last week, 45% of all voters supported the president's decision to take military action in Libya. Thirty-four percent (34%) disagreed with that decision, and another 21% were not sure about it. In early December, just 28% of voters believed the United States has a clearly defined military mission in Afghanistan. Forty-nine percent (49%) said the mission in the nine-year-old war is not clearly defined, and 23% more were not sure. Thirty-one percent (31%) of Americans described Libya as an enemy of the United States in August 2009 when the British released the terminally ill terrorist convicted of blowing up a Pan Am jet over Lockerbie, Scotland so he could return home to die. Only two percent (2%) viewed the North African country as an ally. For 52%, it fell somewhere in between an ally and an enemy. Even before America’s stepped-up involvement in Libya, 58% of Americans worried that the political unrest in Arab countries like Egypt and Libya may get America into another big war.

To: Kenneth E. Phillipps who wrote (102204)	4/1/2011 2:42:04 PM
From: jlallen	Respond to of 224737

LMAO!!!!!

To: Kenneth E. Phillipps who wrote (102204)	4/1/2011 5:00:49 PM
From: chartseer	2 Recommendations Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 224737

Is being pro GE actually being Pro business? citizen chartseer

To: Kenneth E. Phillipps who wrote (102204)	4/1/2011 5:10:02 PM
From: Bald Eagle	Respond to of 224737

LOL!

To: Kenneth E. Phillipps who wrote (102204)	4/22/2011 12:26:58 AM
From: TimF	2 Recommendations Respond to of 224737

Much too pro-business. Only for business he favors. In any case I don't want "pro-business", some might call handing out the pork to business is pro-business (except for the fact that its probably at the cost of other businesses), I want pro free market. --------- “Free Market” Doesn’t Mean “Pro-Business” Sep. 20 2010 - 9:20 pm Is a “free market” agenda the same thing as a “pro-business” agenda? Economists of a libertarian persuasion find this frustrating because our enthusiasm for free markets is often mistaken as enthusiasm for specific businesses or corporate interests. But just because something is good for General Motors does not mean it is necessarily good for America. I propose that we dispense with the rhetorical conflation of “pro-business” and “free market.” Or at the very least we should understand the difference between the two. One of the key features of a free market is that it is a system of profit and loss. The “free” part of “free market” means free entry and exit. In a market economy, you are free to earn and enjoy enormous profits as your just reward for taking the world as you found it and producing some kind of new good or service that makes the world a better place. In economists’ parlance, you earn profits by creating wealth. At the same time, you are free to enjoy enormous losses as your just punishment for taking the world as you found it and producing something that actually makes it a worse place. In other words, you earn losses when you destroy wealth and waste resources. Here I will invoke my friend Steven Horwitz’s First Law of Political Economy: “no one hates capitalism more than capitalists.” Matt Ridley says it well in his recent book The Rational Optimist, and I agree with him: "I hold no brief for large corporations, whose inefficiencies, complacencies, and anti-competitive tendencies often drive me as crazy as the next man. Like Milton Friedman, I notice that ‘business corporations in general are not defenders of free enterprise. On the contrary, they are one of teh chief sources of danger.’ They are addicted to corporate welfare, they love regulations that erect barriers to entry to their small competitors, they yearn for monopoly and they grow flabby and inefficient with age." Consider the following scenarios and ask what the “pro business” and “free market” outcomes would be: 1. A private company wants a patch of ground on which to build a hotel, a grocery store, a shopping center, or an office building. The “pro-business” solution is to seize the land via eminent domain and claim that the increased tax revenue is a public benefit (if increased tax revenue is going to be our standard, why don’t we compel labor force participation and make everyone sell their property to special interests?). The free market solution says “if the owner will sell to you, it’s yours, but don’t expect to be able to get government officials with guns to go get it for you.” 2. A private company is struggling to make ends meet. It manufactures a product that no one wants to buy. The “pro-business” solution is to raise taxes and give the proceeds to the company or lend the proceeds to them at a reduced interest rate. The “free market” solution says “either get better at what you’re doing, or get out of the way of those who can.” 3. A private company faces competition from foreign producers. The “pro-business” solution is to regulate or tax foreign products to make them more costly relative to the domestic product. The “free market” solution says “get better at what you’re doing, or relinquish the resources under your control to those who can better serve consumers.” Do free-market solutions sound harsh? Perhaps. Is it cruel to leave the fate of a business up to the vicissitudes of market competition? I don’t think so. In a free market, people compete to see who can best secure others’ cooperation. Government, on the other hand, works by the threat of violence. If we’re going to use government to protect a business, we can only do it by threatening violence against its potential competitors. I teach economics, and I write for a couple of different websites. If I were to insulate myself from foreign competition by hiring the mafia to prevent potential foreign economists from teaching classes that compete with mine or from writing articles that compete with mine, it would be a criminal act. Change “teach economics” to “make cars,” “mafia” to “government,” and “foreign economists” to “foreign car-makers” and you have flag-wrapped American industrial policy. In a free market, you are welcome, and indeed encouraged, to enter the mousetrap industry if you think you can build a better mousetrap or find a way to make similar mousetraps more efficiently. The other side of that coin is that you will be encouraged to leave the mousetrap industry if it turns out that your mousetraps are not better, but inferior. A “free market” agenda is not the same thing as a “pro business” agenda. Businesses should not be protected from competition, losses, and bankruptcy when they fail to deliver for the customer. All three are essential to truly free markets and free enterprise. blogs.forbes.com