Peter Foster from the National Post notes:

It conforms to a broad view — long and fondly promoted by fans of Big Government — that capitalism is essentially short-sighted and greed-driven (just look at the subprime crisis!). This stance is not merely appealing to activist politicians and bureaucrats, it is pure gold for the vast and growing army of radical NGO environmental lobby groups, whose raison d’être — and fundraising — are closely related to the degree to which nature is seen to be “endangered.” It is also appealing to rent seeking businessmen who see the profit potential in the vast array of controls and subsidies.

One of the biggest reasons to be skeptical of global warming is that its proponents argue for a dramatic expansion in state control. Rarely is the justification for expanded state control commensurate with the proclaimed threat in the real world. Global warming most certainly reeks of this proposition. Thus, it seems more reasonable to be skeptical than affirming of it.

Andrew Roth from Club for Growth writes:

If you want to see a free market in action, look at eBay. There are very few “regulations”, there’s only a nominal “sales tax” in the fee that eBay charges you to sell something, and that’s about it. The reason why eBay is so successful is because of their premise that “people are good.” The free market works precisely because people want to better themselves through trade. And they know that the best way to do that is through voluntary exchange, not coercion or manipulation. That’s a powerful lesson and a beautiful thing.

Often those that oppose free markets do so out of a deep seated mistrust of people. As a supporter of free markets, I know that on the whole, people are good.

God this kind of profiling pisses me off so bad.

The investigation went years without apparent progress until Tuesday, when Garrido showed up on the campus of the University of California at Berkeley with his two daughters and tried to get permission to hand out literature and speak, Kollar said. He did not know the subject of either the literature or the planned talk.

Police officers “thought the interaction between the older male and the two young females was rather suspicious,” so they confronted them and performed a background check on him, Kollar said.

That check revealed that Garrido was on federal parole for a 1971 conviction for rape and kidnapping, for which he had served time in the federal penitentiary at Leavenworth, Kansas.

These officers should not be allowed to characterize the interaction between individuals as being ’suspicious’ and then do checks on them. People have every right to act suspicious without law enforcement thinking that suspiciousness could be suspicious. When will the state learn that you can’t just put people in boxes. This makes me so mad.

The story gets worse. After the cops unfairly profiled this guy they discovered that he kidnapped a little girl and has been keeping her hidden in his backyard for close to 20 years. Basically, the cops stereotyped some behavior and then ruined this guys life by taking away the women he had forcibly kept hidden in his backyard. Furthermore, he apparently sired some children with her, and now the state is going to deprive these children of their father. This underscores the importance of why all profiling should be eliminated. The cops involved in the case should be thrown in jail for the pain and suffering they have caused this happy submissive family.

Check out this link for a list of car in good condition being destroyed as per the requirement for the cash for clunkers program.

This program combines the alarming economic ignorance of democrats with the religious zeal of environmentalists to showcase just how inane government programs can truly be. Its laughable to think that some people honestly believe that it’s justified to waste all these automobiles simply to reduce co2 emissions. How stupid do you have to be to honestly believe something that ridiculous is worth the cost?

Quick question: why are we not hearing about Cindy Sheehan’s bravery protesting the Obama administration war policies.

After spending weeks dogging George W. Bush’s presidential vacations, anti-war protester Cindy Sheehan is now trying to make life uncomfortable for President Barack Obama.

Sheehan used to pitch a peace camp near Bush’s ranch in Crawford, Texas, becoming a symbol of the anti-war movement after her son Casey died in action in Iraq.

On Thursday, she and a band of anti-war protesters turned up outside the media center used by journalists covering Obama’s vacation on the well-heeled east coast resort island of Martha’s Vineyard.

I remember one summer month during the Bush administration she was given massive amounts of coverage by the MSM. Why are we not seeing that kind of coverage now? What could the possible difference be?

You can read the House bill here. After skimming the first 100 pages or so, it became obvious that this bill would require a massive new bureacracy to oversee and enforce all the new provisions. I don’t know how people can think this is a good thing.

Obama caves to health care industry in record time:

It says the White House agreed to oppose any congressional efforts to use the government’s leverage to bargain for lower drug prices or import drugs from Canada — and also agreed not to pursue Medicare rebates or shift some drugs from Medicare Part B to Medicare Part D, which would cost Big Pharma billions in reduced reimbursements.

In exchange, the Pharmaceutical Researchers and Manufacturers Association (PhRMA) agreed to cut $80 billion in projected costs to taxpayers and senior citizens over ten years. Or, as the memo says: “Commitment of up to $80 billion, but not more than $80 billion.”

So the government agrees not to pressure drug companies, and the drug companies promise to cut $80 billion over ten years. To compare, Americans spent 2.7 trillion dollars on health care in 2007. Assuming zero inflation, in the next 10 years the health industry promises to reduce costs up to, but not more than, 0.3%. Of course there will be inflation, so the real percentage will be much lower, not to mention the difficulty in enforcing this agreement.

This is turning bad even faster than I imagined.

Saw this ridiculous top headline at CNN.

Here let me take a stab a creating news out of whole cloth.

Pretend it’s 2003:

Whats fueling Iraq war protests?

Beyond the angry crowds at downtown locations across the nation is a real fear from ordinary citizens worried that the Iraq War will be started under false pretense some experts say. But after recent town hall meetings, Sen Sara McDougal R-Missouri, said that “people are just getting information that’s flat wrong”

That was easy. Making up news is now that hard after all. I especially how ’some experts say’ allows me to say anything I want and I can remain objective by claiming experts agree with my statement. I should go into journalism.

A story over at the New Scientist talk about how roboticists are working on an operating system that can be implemented in many different robots.

This sorry state of affairs is set to change. Roboticists have begun to think about what robots have in common and what aspects of their construction can be standardised, hopefully resulting in a basic operating system everyone can use. This would let roboticists focus their attention on taking the technology forward.

Once a developing industry crosses a threshold regulation for the purposes of standardizing become essential for the industry to gain greater appeal. Thus regulation, even if in this case it would be voluntary, enables an industry to develop by allowing people to specialize in different aspects of that industry.

This desire has its roots in frustration, says Brian Gerkey of the robotics research firm Willow Garage in Menlo Park, California. “People reinvent the wheel over and over and over, doing things that are not at all central to what they’re trying to do.”

Regulation plays the critical role of creating a bare minimum set of standards that those in the industry will aim to meet, but also, creates expectations about what a product will be capable of doing in that industry. These expectations are what enables specialization as developers no longer need to worry about developing process to meet the minimum set of standards as regulation will ensure they have already been met.

What separate industry regulation from state regulation is voluntary versus mandatory. If the industry is ready for regulation than efforts to develop one will bear fruit. If the industry is not ready it will largely be ignored and no harm will be done. However, when the state gets involved, the industry must follow the regulation even if destroys the development of that industry. Take a look at our space program for the last thirty years. It’s development has been severely stunted by the amount of regulation the state has imposed on the industry.

Certainly state regulation is essential to an industry, however, because it’s mandatory it must be sufficiently limited to ensure it does more good than harm to the industry it regulates.

Apparently the drug companies lobbyist organization has been instructed to spend money on advertising in support of Obama’s health care.

The drug industry has authorized its lobbyists to spend as much as $150 million on television commercials supporting President Obama’s health care overhaul, beginning over the August Congressional recess, people briefed on the plans said Saturday.

Why would pharmaceutical companies be interested in supporting legislation that could eventually result in their demise?

The drug makers stand to gain millions of new customers from the expansion of health care coverage.

Here we see an example of how the state limits competition, by granting access to some companies and leaving out others. Such a setup inevitably leads to politicians having more power. If large business companies sign on to sweeping reforms in their industry, you can pretty much be assured that they stand to gain something from it. In this case we see that the pharmaceutical companies that are represented by these lobbyists stand to gain many more customers by playing along with the state’s demands.

You can’t support state health care while at the same time criticize lobbyists for exerting control over politicians. Those two positions would be contradictory at best. You support legislation that not only will expand lobbyists power, but requires expanding it right outset to even get the legislation passed into law. That is you support legislation that grants lobbyists more control by collapsing health care into the hands of politicians.

Something else I want to point out. Assuming that this legislation is passed, and it does the harm it seems likely to do, in twenty years we will have politicians and people on the left argue that worsening health care system is a direct result of the alliance between health care providers, their lobbyists, and elected officials. They will further argue that to correct this problem, more state take over is necessary. Of course this will translate into a smaller set of people with more control over health care paving the way for yet more influence over politicians via lobbyists. Oftentimes the negative results of greater state control in an industry are used to justify increased state control in that industry. In the current health care debate it’s virtually not impossible to see this proposition at work at least a little bit.