Yesterday, the EPA ruled that carbon dioxide is a pollutant, which gives them power over our entire economy.

EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson said yesterday that her ruling that greenhouses gases are dangerous pollutants would “cement 2009′s place in history” as the moment when the U.S. began “seizing the opportunity of clean-energy reform.” She’s right that this is an historic decision, though not to her or the White House’s credit, and “seizing” is the right term. President Obama isn’t about to let a trifle like democratic consent impede his climate agenda.

With cap and trade blown apart in the Senate, the White House has chosen to impose taxes and regulation across the entire economy under clean-air laws that were written decades ago and were never meant to apply to carbon. With this doomsday machine activated, Mr. Obama hopes to accomplish what persuasion and debate among his own party manifestly cannot.

This reckless “endangerment finding” is a political ultimatum: The many Democrats wary of levelling huge new costs on their constituents must surrender, or else the EPA’s carbon police will inflict even worse consequences.

The gambit is also meant to coerce businesses, on the theory that they’ll beg for cap and trade once the command-and-control regulatory pain grows too acute—not to mention the extra bribes in the form of valuable carbon permits that Democrats, since you ask, are happy to dispense. Ms. Jackson appealed to “the science” and waved off any political implications, yet the formal finding was not coincidentally announced at the start of the U.N.’s Copenhagen climate conference (see above).

Still think you are free? Still think Obama isn’t a tyrant? The people and their representatives will either cave to his demands, or he will find ways to force compliance. This is nothing but a gun to the head of all of congress.

This ruling has been inevitable since at least April and we warned about it during Mr. Obama’s campaign, but its cynicism and willfulness still astonish. The political threat is so potent precisely because invoking a faulty interpretation of the 1970 Clean Air Act will expose hundreds of thousands of “major” sources of emissions that produce more than 250 tons of an air pollutant in a year to the EPA’s costly and onerous review process. This threshold might be reasonable for traditional “dirty” pollutants (such as NOX) but it makes no sense for ubiquitous carbon, which is the byproduct of almost all types of economic production.

The White House knows this, which is why earlier this fall Ms. Jackson announced a “tailoring rule” that limits this regulation to sources that emit more than 25,000 or more tons a year like coal-fired power plants and heavy manufacturing. Ms. Jackson claims this unilateral rewrite of a statute is a concession, but its real purpose is to dodge a political backlash while still preserving the EPA’s ability to threaten business and recalcitrant Democrats.

In order to avoid a huge backlash, they just willy nilly change the law? Go figure.

For now, this decision moves into the courts, and years if not decades of litigation. Yet the decision really is historic: The White House has opened a Pandora’s box that will be difficult to close, that is breathtakingly undemocratic, and that the country, if not liberal politicians, will come to regret.

via EPA Regulates Carbon as Dangerous Pollutant – WSJ.com.

If the media had any credibility, they’d be outraged about this. The supposed protectors of our freedom are too busy talking about the political calculations instead of explaining how the executive branch is oppressive and tyrannical. Thomas Jefferson is probably rolling in his grave.

We really only have one shot to avoid all of Obama’s edicts. Next year, we need to kick as many Democrats out of office as possible. While I don’t trust the Republicans with all branches right now, I do trust them with the legislative branch. They need a veto proof majority to reign in this oppressive government. Then we need to hold their feet to the fire to rewrite the Clean Air Act, prevent government health care, prevent cap n trade, and to start repealing back all laws that take away our freedoms. We cannot have our freedoms depending on limp wristed Democrats. Obama stops by Congress to bang some Democratic heads, and the next thing you know, we have lost more liberty.

The Vice President of News Corp, has a pretty good op-ed in the Wall Street Journal about the Obama administrations belief that they are so smart that they can make big government work. I’m not sure why everyone says they are so smart. Would you consider someone smart who despite all historical examples still believes that socialism or big government works? That seems pretty stupid to me. I would not consider someone smart because they can explain the dynamics of jumping off a cliff and some how despite all the previous deaths from jumping, they think they have figured out how to jump and survive. Even worse, they think they are so smart that they are going to make us all jump.

Some mistakes are so big that only smart people are tempted to make them. One is the faith in Big Government.

Many of the people in the Obama administration, the president included, enjoy all the credentials we associate with the best and the brightest: the right schools, the good grades, the successful careers. Alas, whether it be allocating health care or defining the kind of jobs the economy ought to create, the policies they favor suggest a strong belief that they know what’s best not just for themselves, but for everyone else too.

Of course, the kind of people who are apt to push for government-imposed solutions are those who are also apt to believe they will be the ones imposing decisions, not the ones who have to live with decisions imposed by others. Sometimes that’s because they enjoy the wealth that gives them escape hatches unavailable to the less affluent, such as their ability to ensure that their own children never have to set foot in a public school. Mostly, however, their trust in government reflects their confidence that they have all the answers and that it’s government’s job to enforce them.

Does this sound any different than any king, dictator or General Secretary of the Communist Party? They all believe they know what is best for all of us lower peasants, and they all preclude themselves and their children from the policies they impose.

Detroit is in decline because its automotive giants no longer build the kind of cars Americans want to buy? Let’s have the president sack the CEO of General Motors, and then use the bailout money as leverage to appoint a car czar and get GM and Chrysler to build the kind of cars that Washington wants.

Wall Street execs are getting sweet bonuses at a time when millions of other Americans are unemployed? Well, instead of encouraging these financial concerns to pay back the Troubled Asset Relief Program monies and get the taxpayers off the hook, send in Ken Feinberg to set their salaries.

Health-care spending is inefficient? The answer is obvious: Expand the Department of Health and Human Services and give its secretary more power. Under the bill now before the Senate, for example, Kathleen Sebelius would have the authority to decide what care insurance companies could offer, who could get an abortion under a government-run plan, what prices were fair, and so on.

Of course we shouldn’t draw any conclusions from an advisory task force that recently created a stir when it suggested women get fewer mammograms—and Ms. Sebelius’s disavowal in the face of public heat. She pointed out that the task force does not set government policy. But at some point some government task force will—and there will be fewer ways around it.

Is there any difference between Obama and the King of Dubai? The King thought he was visionary (so did the media), and he was doing what is best for his people. Instead of letting the free market develop his country, he issued dictates from his palace.

That’s government by the smart. The good news is that it doesn’t seem to be selling. According to a recent poll, 57% of Americans believe government is doing things that should be left to business and individuals. Not only do most Americans object, Gallup says the opposition is the “highest such reading in more than a decade.”

via William McGurn: My Big Fat Government Takeover – WSJ.com.

This may be true, but that won’t stop anyone. Health care is about to be jammed down our throats even though 85% of people like their current plans. It does not matter what the people want when the “king” decides he is a visionary, when he’s going to “fundamentally transform the country”, or when the media repeatedly tells him he’s the smartest President in history. Obama thinks he knows what is best for all of us, and he’s going to use government force to make us comply to his vision. There used to be a word for rulers like this that no one seems to use anymore. That word is TYRANT.

Found this on The Daily Paul. It provided much entertainment for me this evening.Even my 9 year old was laughing at how stupid these people are.

Tony Blankley in his op-ed this weekend explained the vulnerability we have that is growing substantially under Obama.

It is vital to understand that a weak dollar driven by excessive public debt directly threatens not only our prosperity but also our sovereign ability to protect our liberty in this heartless world. There is no better evidence than an event 53 years ago: the Suez Canal crisis.

When Egypt nationalized the British- and French-owned Suez Canal, Britain took offense and organized its retaking. But U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower disapproved of the effort. Unfortunately for Britain, it relied on America for financial help.

Britain could not maintain its currency, the pound sterling, at the pound’s needed reserve currency value of $2.80 without America’s help. Also, Britain needed petroleum, which was being cut off by the Suez crisis.

The “genial” Eisenhower had had enough. He instructed his Treasury secretary to sell off the pound, break the British currency and economy and refuse to sell Britain any American oil until Britain gave up its military action.

And so effectively ended the British empire, not at the hands of an enemy but by the ungentle touch of its closest ally.

Now the stately Financial Times is suggesting that the United States may be imminently vulnerable to a not-so-friendly China playing Ike’s role of spoiler of American sovereignty to our role as the dear old broke Britain of 1956.

We basically have become China’s lapdog with all our debt that is being held by them. While our leaders like to act tough for the mainstream media in our country when it comes to China, the truth is China could tell the President right now what to do. They could blackmail our President with the threat of dumping the dollar and causing catastrophe for our economy. Every time the President goes to China it reminds me of the old EZ-E lyric, “you come talkin that trash, we’ll pull ya card”.

That is why the United States should not accept the shrewd but not yet inevitable prognosis of the Financial Times. In the next few years, we must start radically cutting our spending until our fiscal condition supports a strong dollar and low taxes.

Wonder if he was laughing as he wrote this? I’m sure he knows this will never happen with Obama and Democrats in charge. I don’t think it would happen with Republicans in charge, at least the ones that were in charge before this current Bolshevik revolution. We need people like Ron Paul, who understand economics, in order to ever make progress on this.

It is an open political question whether the majority of Americans love our country enough to make the painful sacrifice (vast reductions in entitlement benefits) necessary to guarantee our sovereign and prosperous future.

Are we Americans still brave enough to remain free? My guess is that neither the two major political parties nor the majority of the public loves America enough to campaign and vote on the hard, bitter truth about our condition.

via The price we pay for debt – Pittsburgh Tribune-Review.

Unfortunately, I think Tony knows the answer. America has become a country of people standing in the government breadline waiting for their handout. While there is a huge group of Americans that want to remain free and want to work hard to take care of themselves, there is just as big of a group who wants the rest of us to pay for them. Then their is the largest group. They are those who feel that if something doesn’t effect them then they don’t care. Who cares if the government is taking freedom from my neighbor, just as long as they don’t take mine. This is what the politicians count on. This is why they say things like “95% of Americans will get a tax break under my plan”. So most of that 95% doesn’t care that the government pillages the other 5%.

Local legend, Glen Meakem,  writes an article in the Pittsburgh Tribune Review about the comparison to what we have spent on wars as compared to entitlements.

Since the beginning of President Lyndon Johnson’s “War on Poverty” in 1964, American taxpayers have spent $16 trillion (in inflation-adjusted 2008 dollars) on support programs for low-income people.

In contrast, American taxpayers have spent a total of $6 trillion (again in 2008 inflation-adjusted dollars) on all of America’s wars combined.

In return for the $6 trillion America invested in wars, we earned individual and national liberty, an end to slavery, a unified country across the North American continent, victory over multiple totalitarian tyrants and a more secure world.

But what have we earned in return for our $16 trillion investment in poverty programs?

Considering where our current national debt sits at, it is not hard to see that we would not have any debt without the entitlement programs. It would be my guess as well, that we wouldn’t have anywhere near the tax level we have, the government control over out lives, or our current vulnerability (economic and currency collapse) that can be exposed by China any time they choose.

In 1964, there were approximately 36 million people in America receiving aid. By 2007, that number had increased to 39 million. And the amount we are spending per person — in inflation-adjusted 2007 dollars — increased from $1,516 in 1964 to $16,840.

Under President Obama’s policies, by 2014 American taxpayers will be spending $1 trillion per year on welfare programs.

Today, people on government assistance in America receive free cash, food, housing, medical care and even cell phones. The standard of living of America’s poor has increased dramatically since 1964. But family breakdown, crime and dependency have exploded.

In 1964, only 7 percent of American children were born into single-parent homes. Today, 40 percent are born to unwed mothers. Children raised without their biological fathers living in their homes are much more likely to be poor and abused than children raised by their mom and dad. This is true across all racial and ethnic groups.

While I don’t think this is completely the fault of welfare, there is no doubt the destruction of the black family has been caused by welfare programs, specifically the incentivization of having more children to receive more money.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 64 percent of children with unmarried parents and 31 percent of children with divorced parents grow up in poverty. But only 8.4 percent of children in two-parent families grow up poor.

Taxpayer-funded welfare in America is marketed by liberals as a “safety net.” But in reality it has become a multigeneration way of life.

I wouldn’t call it a way of life. It is imprisonment. You are imprisoned in your government squalor, and you are punished by any action you take to get out of it.

We need all American adults of able mind and body to contribute to our society by working (inside or outside the home), supporting their own families, and raising their own children. More women and men must step to the plate by getting and staying married.

In the coming years, once conservatives regain control of our government, we must enact policies that enable American adults to take responsibility for their own futures and their own children. We can afford the time and money to win “a war of necessity.” What we cannot afford, what is truly unsustainable, is our growing culture of dependence.

via The dependent class – Pittsburgh Tribune-Review.

I agree with Glen’s general article, but this is where conservatives start heading in the wrong direction. We do not need to “enact policies that enable American adults to take responsibility for their own futures and their own children.” All we need to do is take away the incentives of not taking responsibility for you and your children. To do that, we should set a path to end all entitlement programs. I know we couldn’t do it cold turkey, but we should set a plan to do it over the next decade. We should make people understand that no one owes them anything, and that they will need to take care of themselves and their families. Families, neighors, and churches will pick up the slack for those who can’t fend for themselves. This is how it used to be done, and people were much better off.

In order to appear as if he’s doing something, Obama held the “Jobs Summit” at the White House. Here are some of the ideas that are supposed to help small business.

On Thursday, about 130 small-business owners, financial experts, union leaders, economists and CEOs from across the country convened at the White House to discuss their best ideas for stimulating job growth — and staving off another uptick in the unemployment rate, which climbed to 10.2% in October.

While many small-business owners and advocates welcome the attention being paid to boosting employment, there were plenty of skeptics in attendance. Some complained that sustained economic recovery — not new jobs bills — are needed to kick-start hiring. Others pointed out that job losses have already moderated in recent months, and called into question the necessity of any moves.

I wonder how quickly the guys who questioned the need for any government involvement were thrown out of the room. Maybe we’ll see them on TV today as the Job Summit Crashers.

Work-Share Tax Credit

A jobs-sharing initiative, which already exists in 17 states, has gained traction among several members of Congress. In August, Rep. Rosa L. DeLauro (D., Conn.) introduced the Keep Americans Working Act, which would allow employers to reduce their employees’ hours in order to hire new workers to pick up the slack. Although employees’ hours would be reduced, their pay would remain the same, as the government would pay the balance. Notably, Paul Krugman, economist and Nobel prize winner, also backed the work-share idea.

They must be looking to Europe’s job market for this idea. Europe has instituted ideas like this in the past and made it illegal to have anyone work over a certain number of hours. This is supposed to spread the hours out among more workers. It’s a stupid idea. It does not take into account all the cost involved. For example, if I have a guy who has been working for several years, he knows how to do his job. I know what his productivity is. If I cut his hours back and hire a new person, that person needs trained, doesn’t know the job, and is less efficient. My company’s productivity will have declined. Not only that, I have to deal with a new person. I know my current employee and his work habits. I know if he’s late, takes days off, has family issues, etc. I have no clue what kind of person I may be bringing in that has to be able to produce as much as my current employee. I also have to deal with another person’s benefits, health-care, etc. Will this person cost me more in health care when government passes health care legislation? Will he drive up my unemployment, because I’m more likely to have to lay him off if the economy declines again? These are all concerns that this does not address.

What it does do is steal money from tax payers and give it to businesses so one person doesn’t have to work a normal work week. This is just crazy. You take money from people who work full-time to give it to another person who you are taking hours from in order to hire someone who is unproductive. Do they realize wealth is based on what is produced, not jobs.

Jobs Tax Credit

By contrast, jobs tax credits are largely welcomed by small-business advocates and economists. One plan from the Economic Policy Institute, a Washington-based research organization focused on labor issues, calls for the government to provide refundable tax credits of 10% to 15% against payroll taxes for each new hire over two years.

Isn’t social security and medicare already bankrupt? How does it help long term to take money away from them? I’m all for getting rid of them both, but that isn’t going to happen. Instead, this just leads to more government debt. Also, 15% of a new hire’s payroll tax is not that much incentive. You typically aren’t going to pay a new hire much money, and the company’s share of payroll taxes is 7.5% of their salary. How much incentive is 15% of 7.5% of their salary going to provide? I maybe reading this wrong, but that is how I read this proposal.

If I have this write, here is what it would look like. You hire a new employee and pay him $30,000 a year. You pay $2250 a year in payroll taxes on him. You get a tax credit back in the amount of 15% of his payroll tax, which is $337.50. Wow, let’s start hiring. Even if they are looking at the entire payroll tax, which is around 15%, it still doesn’t provide much incentive. The new hire seems pretty risky in today’s environment, and a few hundred dollars sure isn’t going to change that equation.

‘Cash for Caulkers’

Former President Bill Clinton and others have suggested a cash-for-clunkers style initiative that would task construction workers and contractors with weatherizing homes. By employing unspent stimulus funds, Clinton’s plan, popularly known as “cash for caulkers,” involves weatherizing houses and apartments, as well as commercial and industrial buildings. Depending on how many property owners take up the initiative, the plan could not only provide jobs to the hard-hit construction sector, it would limit carbon emissions and reduce owners’ energy costs.

Does this sounds like money down the drain or what? I can just imagine the scamming that is going to take place by a group of people, that while many are the salt of the earth, many others are about as shady as you can get. Believe me. I’ve worked construction for my dad when I was in high school and when I got laid off in the tech bubble. This is going to lead to scamming old people, the government, and all of society in general. Then again, maybe I’ll start a fake caulking business and make some extra income.

Public Works Projects

Similarly, a range of economists and nonprofits support instituting some form of directed public jobs works programs. Similar to Depression-era New Deal jobs programs, the government could create jobs in targeted places that have high unemployment. The focus would be on rebuilding infrastructure for roads, clean-up or school repair, says Mark A. Price, a labor economist at the Keystone Research Center, a think tank in Harrisburg, Pa.

Can we just admit that the people who want public works all the time are communists. Let’s not act like it’s anything else. There has already been so much wasted money on road projects. They are tearing up and rebuilding roads that don’t even need it. All this does is destroy the wealth of our country by taking money that would otherwise be going into wealth creation and putting it into things that do not increase our wealth. If we have a road before this begins and a road after this begins, but we spent billions, we are not wealthier. While proponents will claim it creates jobs that will lead to personal consumption, they are overlooking that it is taking that money from other consumers. It’s not even a wash, because the government project isn’t as efficient and productive. Government projects never create wealth, unless you are one of the cronies who gets the project and line your pockets with tax payer money.

Payroll Tax Holiday

Leading up to the first stimulus package, small-business advocacy organizations such as the National Federation for Independent Business supported a six-month payroll tax holiday.

I’m all for tax cuts, but I’m getting tired of tax cuts without spending cuts. Also, are you going to hire people for a six-month payroll tax holiday? If you do, there is a chance again, as stated above, that you are going to have to lay the new hires off shortly in the future, leading to increased unemployment insurance. Also, if I’m a small business, I’m going to take savings on payroll taxes to increase my profits. If my clients aren’t demanding more of my goods or services, I’m not going to hire more employees. Also, what is a payroll tax holiday going to do when you have this health care monstrosity hanging over your head?

Capitalizing Community Banks

President Obama has already dispatched calls for giving small companies looking to expand — and, thus, create jobs — greater access to capital by way of community banks. Making it easier for community banks with less than $1 billion in assets to access funds from the Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP, would give small businesses a greater chance of landing loans, says Obama.

via Small Business: The White House Works It – WSJ.com.

TARP should be called To Anyone Requesting Program. It was passed against the will of the public for a specific purpose, and then the government decided on its own that it will do whatever it pleases with it. One of the best things they could do is announce the end of TARP. That would signal that they believe the crisis is coming to an end. Of course they won’t because they love the power that they can exercise with all the TARP money. Look at the power they have exercised over banks, automotive, etc. Last thing I would want is my community bank being at the end of the government’s leash. We’ve already seen how they change the terms of the agreement after the fact.

While all of these would probably produce some jobs, they ignore the negative consequences of each one. They ignore the jobs that will be harmed now and in the long term. They also ignore the economic consequences for the future with more government debt. Worst of all they presume that the government can fix the economy, create wealth, and is needed for economic growth. This is disasterous for the long term psyche of our country. Ronald Reagan had it right when he said, “Government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.” Apparently, this has been forgotten.

The only protection you have is yourself. Government can never protect you. Apparently, the Swiss understand that.

Thanks to The Daily Paul

I love these letters to the editor in the Wall Street Journal this morning. Obama needs to get these guy into the Jobs Summit. Instead he has morons like Thomas Friedman. What the hell does Thomas Friedman know about creating jobs?

The clear theme running through Christina Romer’s “Putting Americans Back to Work” (op-ed, Dec. 2) is that the government is now at the point of having to implore the private sector to increase hiring, as the policies that she promotes have not had the intended effect of any significant turn-around of our economy, especially when it comes to jobs. The difficulty for this administration is the dark cloud of uncertainty that will continue to hover over the private sector in terms of the impact of government spending that really has no end in sight.

Those of us in the private sector see increased taxes in our future: increased taxes to pay for ObamaCare, the repeal (or allowing the expiration) of the Bush tax cuts, the increase of the estate tax which hits small businesses so extensively, the potential tax on those who are making more money to pay for the Afghanistan surge. We all know that once this tax is in place, it will be continued and thus be applied to something else. Then there is the continued discussion of a value-added tax as all the taxes previously mentioned are unlikely to be able to pay for the trillions in debt the government has run up and which it plans to run up further, undermining the dollar. No small-business owner, of which I am one, would hire in this unpredictable climate. The current administration cannot have it both ways: You cannot have “fairness” in taxation and expect those of us who are the engine of the economy to hire more people in the current climate, since we are left with so much less money with which to do this.

Until the government provides the business community with relief from its looming, burdensome tax policies, the overall climate for hiring will remain poor no matter how much pleading we hear from the present administration.

Erik Dahl M.D., MBA

Bethesda, Md.

Ms. Romer and President Obama’s job forum is already way too late.

If my company, which makes furniture and sells over the Internet, can be considered a microcosm of how small private business is reacting to bailouts, deficits, climategate, health-care mandates, and financially strapped governments, the unemployment problem is going to persist long after the recession ends.

Simply put, the most profitable business models are being revised to “get around” the roadblocks being constructed by governments, especially the U.S. government. Higher taxes, lack of tort reform, union support, and lack of free-market thinking are all signs to the American business manager that our government is out of touch with reality.

The politicians have greatly underestimated the business owners. When the risk of hiring becomes greater than the potential reward, we will find other ways to make money.

Jeff White

Naples, Fla.

President Barack Obama should immediately announce that he will keep in place the Bush tax cuts. He should lower the corporate tax rate to 10% to make U.S. business more globally competitive, and reduce the outsourcing of jobs overseas. He should lower or eliminate the capital-gains tax to encourage risk taking, entrepreneurship and innovation. He could use the remaining stimulus money to pay for a payroll-tax holiday for all Americans.

That would create real jobs. It’s called Econ. 101, Mr. President.

Samantha M. Marino

Plano, Ill.

via The Administration Talks Jobs but Discourages Them – WSJ.com.

The Wall Street Journal had an op-ed this morning about a case heading to the Supreme Court about the constitutionality of the “Public Company Accounting Oversight Board”, which was established to enforce Sarbanes-Oxley. While I don’t want to get into the case, because it talks about the constitutionality of the board not reporting directly to the President, which I don’t really care about, because I don’t think the board should even exist. The one paragraph that stood out to me though was the cost of this regulation on the economy.

Massive is the right word. The accounting board’s wide-open mandate—to make whatever rules “may be necessary or appropriate in the public interest or for the protection of investors”—has cost the economy nearly $1 trillion, according to a study by AEI and the Brookings Institution. The benefit is supposed to be investor protection. But despite these costs, the law did nothing to warn about the meltdown of mortgage-backed securities, much less expose Bernie Madoff or other fraudsters.

via Sarbanes-Oxley on Trial – WSJ.com.

Here we are talking about an on going crisis with higher and higher unemployment, and we have this regulation that costs the economy $1 trillion in what, 7 or 8 years. Also, let’s remember what this law was for. It was to make sure an Enron never happened again.

First, how much did the Enron collapse cost investors? According to a source on Google answers, who backs up his answer with citations, it was somewhere around $60 billion. OK, so here we are with another moronic government law. Because someone committed fraud, which was already a crime, they pass another law that costs the economy $1 trillion. There was a crime committed. What don’t they get is that laws don’t stop criminals. It only gives you a means to punish them after the fact.

Second, did this law that cost our economy $1 trillion stop fraud? No, as we all know, the government sponsored entity, Fannie Mae, committed accounting fraud. Who has been tried for that? Also, it did nothing to prevent Madoff or any of the other disasters that just occurred in the “crisis”. Guess what? Ponzi schemes are illegal (well except gov’t ones), and guess what? It did not stop Bernie Madoff or any of the other guys currently in the news for Ponzi schemes.

The government needs to quit with these stupid laws. If fraud is illegal, then prosecute people who commit fraud. You don’t need additional laws and regulations that cost us trillions of dollars. Even better, get rid of the SEC, insider trading laws, etc. If people knew they had to be more careful with investing, because the knew the government wasn’t going to protect them, which they don’t anyways, they would make better investing decisions. If they didn’t, it’s their own damn fault. I’m sure if insider trading wasn’t illegal, there would have been some transactions, insider sell-offs, shorts, puts, etc that would have alerted investors that something was up with Enron, and it wouldn’t have cost the economy $1 trillion.

Can someone ask Microsoft and Google to get into the health care game? This is what happens when capitalistic competition is unimpeded by government. You get more and more for better prices, even free!

SEATTLE — Microsoft Corp. is releasing an updated version of its mapping service with street-level views and new “apps” that tack on tweets, traffic and other location-specific data.

The new version of Bing Maps, released Wednesday in a “beta” test mode, offers slicker technology so users can zoom in more smoothly from the high-up graphical map to the close-up views showing actual streets from a pedestrian or driver’s viewpoint.

With this version of Bing Maps, Microsoft matches Google Inc. in sending cars with cameras down streets to capture images of every block. Microsoft is offering that in 56 U.S. cities for now, while Google has hit all 50 states and expanded the feature overseas.

Microsoft also used lasers to scan the buildings and constructed a three-dimensional map of those cities.

That makes it possible to add on collections of images built with Microsoft’s Photosynth tool, which stitches and layers together multiple photos of the same location to build a virtual model.

For the user, that means not only being able to stand in front of New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, but also being able to “walk” inside to see photos of the art tourists have uploaded.

Clicking a small button at the bottom of the screen pulls up a library of Map apps. Each of the 15 or so apps currently available overlays some type of data on top of the map. One scatters pinpoints for local shops, restaurants and other businesses; another gives a view of recent Twitter messages. There’s another that calls up images of roadside sculptures created by an outside site, VirtualGlobeTrotting.com.

Microsoft said eventually more apps from outside developers will be available.

Bing Maps uses Silverlight, Microsoft’s answer to Adobe Inc.’s Flash, so a small plug-in available for most Mac and PC browsers is required.

via Bing Maps Redesign Challenges Google With 3D Photos, Real-Time Tweets.

While these maps sound extremely cool, they highlight the fundamental fact about competition. It breeds innovation and a better standard of living. Imagine if government took over the internet. I know. I know. They are working on it with net neutrality. Besides that, the internet would not be growing by leaps and bounds like Google, Microsoft, Amazon, etc have helped it grow. With Microsoft and Google going at it, it shouldn’t be long until we can stop by Rekall for a virtual vacation.