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POPSThe US House of Presumptive Meddlers Advocates of government control want you to believe that the serious shortcomings of our medical and insurance system are failures of the free market. But that's impossible because our market is not free. Each state operates a cozy medical and insurance cartel that restricts competition through licensing and keeps prices higher than they would be in a genuine free market. But the planners won't talk about that. After all, if government is the problem in the first place, how can they justify a government takeover?
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POPSFannie & Freddie NOT included in Obama's Financial Regulations In analyzing the mortgage crisis, economist Walter E. Williams has written: “Starting with the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977, that was given more teeth during the Clinton administration, Congress started intimidating banks and other financial institutions into making loans, so-called sub-prime loans, to high-risk homebuyers and businesses. “The carrot offered was that these high-risk loans would be purchased by the government-sponsored enterprises Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Anyone with an ounce of brains would have known that this was a prescription for disaster but there was a congressional chorus of denial,” he added. “The financial collapse of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac is not a failure of the free market because lending institutions in a free market would not have taken on the high-risk loans,” said Williams. “They were forced to by the heavy hand of government.”
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POPSToyota targets Indian car market Toyota Kiroskar Motors has recently launched few car models like Innova, Corolla, Qualis and Fortrunner, Toyota Corolla Altis in India. Toyota has their plan of introducing small 600 cc cars in India in the beginning of 2011.Their future plan is to make India a hub for exporting small cars to neighboring countries.
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POPSThe Root of Much of What Ails Our Health-Care System ~ “Third-Party-Payer Problem”
to create impenetrable bureaucratic barriers between you and their money. There’s a reason why claims forms are so complicated.... There is much to lament about that system, and real reform is needed. A meaningful body of reforms would do three things: 1) establish a real market for health-care services and health insurance, one that is fiercely competitive and driven by consumers who are not beholden to their employers, the government, or any concern other than their own needs; 2) take intelligent steps to reduce the expense of health care and health insurance, and the bureaucracy attached to them; 3) offer intelligently designed support for the poor, the sick, and other vulnerable participants in the market. Here are ten things that would go a long way toward getting that done: 1) Insurance Choice. 2) Real Competition: A National Market for Health Insurance. 3) Price Transparency. 4) High Ceilings for HSAs (and No Taxes). 5) Insurance on Your Insuran
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POPSBeck says Net Neutrality would 'destroy the free market that created the Internet'. Oh really? 
The origins of the Internet reach back to the 1960s when the United States funded research projects of its military agencies to build robust, fault-tolerant and distributed computer networks. This research and a period of civilian funding of a new U.S. backbone by the National Science Foundation spawned worldwide participation in the development of new networking technologies and led to the commercialization of an international network in the mid 1990s, and resulted in the following popularization of countless applications in virtually every aspect of modern human life. Meanwhile, Beck has yet to explain how regulations constraining the mega-corporations that provide our Internet infrastructure from deciding what content we can and can't access would actually take the system "out of the private hands of private business". Maybe Beck can explain to us why Comcast was attacking peer-to-peer file sharing on its network system.
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POPSDrugmaker ads to target Obama idea PhRMA says its upcoming advertisement, which will feature TV talk show host and PhRMA spokesman Montel Williams. "We're going to do an ad campaign that is designed to make people aware of the importance of preserving your free-market health care system," Mr. Johnson said.
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POPSPowerful car bomb in Peshawar market A powerful car bomb ripped through a busy marketplace in Peshawar, killing at least 57 people on Wednesday, officials said. The wind at Meena Bazaar injured 150 people, according to Dr. Zafar Iqbal to the Lady Reading Hospital. The market is a labyrinth of shops popular with women Peepal Mandi area of the city.
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POPSMilton Friedman - Greed In his book "Capitalism and Freedom" (1962) Milton Friedman (1912-2006) advocated minimizing the role of government in a free market as a means of creating political and social freedom. An excerpt from an interview with Phil Donahue in 1979. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milton_Friedman
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POPSThe Warning Watch the Warning in its' entirety here: http://blog.puppetgov.com/2009/10/22/frontline-the-warning/
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POPSACORN foresaw the foreclosure crisis in 2001
More: Moreover, Oakland's law would have gone much farther than requiring that borrowers could afford loans. In 2001, ACORN officials already recognized that the driving force behind the subprime lending was the ability of brokers to chop up risky mortgages, repackage them with good loans as "securities," and sell them to other banks on a largely unregulated market. When homeowners who couldn't afford their loans later defaulted on them, these securities became widely known as "toxic assets" and were the primary cause of the world financial crisis… But if Oakland's law had been widely adopted, the bailout likely would have been unnecessary and the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression probably averted. Why? Because the city's ordinance not only would have held mortgage brokers liable for making bad loans, but also every other bank that later bought pieces of those bad loans after they were securitized. In short, the market for subprime loans would have dried up.
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POPSGov't. Largely Responsible For Hi Insrnce.Costs
This has several negative effects. One is that it decreases both competition and supply, both of which raise prices for consumers. This also means that states have the power to grant licenses to insurance companies, meaning that any new insurance company from its beginnings has to meet state-mandated standards. This is a huge barrier to entry, keeping newcomers out of what would otherwise be a highly competitive market and once again increasing prices for consumers. In a free market, profits are a signal telling more entrepreneurs to enter a market. More and more firms will enter the market until the profits have dropped low enough to discourage market entry. ............ Obama has said that under his current proposal, he would eliminate these state barriers.......... This completely ignores the fact that, under the necessary and proper clause, the government is only allowed to regulate those industries that it must to carry out its stated function.
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POPSNow the Bible is Too Liberal for Conservatives 4. Utilize Powerful Conservative Terms: using powerful new conservative terms as they develop; defective translations use the word "comrade" three times as often as "volunteer"; similarly, updating words which have a change in meaning, such as "word", "peace", and "miracle". 6. Accept the Logic of Hell: applying logic with its full force and effect, as in not denying or downplaying the very real existence of Hell or the Devil. 7. Express Free Market Parables; explaining the numerous economic parables with their full free-market meaning Among the words to be eliminated: "government." A conservative columnist at Beliefnet described the effort as "just crazy ... like what you'd get if you crossed the Jesus Seminar with the College Republican chapter at a rural institution of Bible learnin'.
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POPS It's the Spending, Stupid By John Stossel But the income tax is big and visible, so it's a problem that a growing number of people don't pay, but get benefits from those who do. Frederic Bastiat, the great 19th-century French economist, defined the state as "that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else." I don't know if he envisioned one half of the population living off the other half. It's important not to confuse the interests of the taxpayers with the interests of the politicians and other tax consumers. Yet that is done all the time. When the government bought toxic assets (of zero market value) from the banks, it said taxpayers would profit when the economy recovered and the assets once again commanded a positive price in the market. Even if we make the dubious assumption that the government is savvy enough to buy low and sell high, it's not the taxpayers who would benefit from any profits. The politicians will spend every penny, rather than cutting taxes.
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POPSCooking for one - new cookbooks published I made the "steamed egg in a bed of greens" last night using chard from the farmers' market. Quite tasty, although it would have been better with a piece of toast on the side for textural contrast.
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POPS"Chrysler is Going Out of Business. The Company Just Hasn’t Made It Official." Taxpayers are likely to lose most of the $81 billion that Congress and the administration sunk into the two companies, according to the Congressional Oversight Panel. Chrysler is expected to lose all $14.3 billion of the taxpayers' money. The daily management of Chrysler is controlled by Fiat which owns 20% of the U.S. company with options which could take that amount to 35%. Fiat has not put any money into Chrysler, so if the American firm becomes a significant operational or management burden there are very few reason for the Italian company, which has sales troubles of its own in Europe, to stay long term. Fiat lost $254 million in the second quarter, so its board may eventually believe that Chrysler is a distraction and one without a future. What Chrysler needs most from Fiat is money. If Fiat's own bleed continues, there will remain only one choice for management. In the mean time, the traditional competitors like Toyota, Honda and Nissan aren't Chrysler's . . .
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POPSSocialized Farming In rural America, the LDP is a topic at backyard barbecues and local diners along with the high school football team and the weather. Despite its name, it is neither a loan nor, in many cases, payment for a deficiency. It is just cash paid to farmers when market prices dip below the government-set minimum, or floor, if only for a single day. ad_icon The LDP has become so ingrained in farmland finances that farmers sometimes wish for market prices to drop so they can capture a larger subsidy. "Most smart farmers are cashing in on it," said Bruce A. Babcock, director of the Center for Agricultural and Rural Development at Iowa State University. "It shows me that farmers are being overcompensated."
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POPSHow to Choose a Non-Surgical Scar Treatment Product Have you ever done an internet search for products that help reduce scarring? If you have, you are painfully aware of the fact that there are an abundance of creams, gels, lotions and sheets on the market. One could literally spend days going through all the websites promoting products that claim to reduce scars, some of them making outrageous claims about their benefits.
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POPSInsurers Fight Public Health Plan
The worst-case scenario from the insurance industry's standpoint? The government mandates individual coverage, but also creates a public plan offering consumers a better deal, and drawing them away from the private companies. When nine of 10 Republicans on the Senate Finance Committee sent a letter to President Obama on June 8 opposing the public-option plan, they argued that such a move could destroy private insurers. "Washington-run programs undermine market-based competition through their ability to impose price controls and shift costs to other purchasers," they wrote. "Forcing free market plans to compete with these government-run programs would create an unlevel playing field and inevitably doom true competition." The nine signers have received $2.6 million from HMOs/health services and health and accident insurers to their candidate committees and leadership PACs since 1989. Of them, Sen. John Ensign (R-Nev.) ranks 11th among all current members of Congress to get $$.
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POPSCountdown: Senators Opposed to "Socialized" Health Insurance Voted for "Socialized" Property Insuran But each of them voted just last year in support of government-run insurance, that insurance however protects property. It is the National Flood Insurance Program created in 1968, because the free market decided it could not make money on that unpredictable risk called flooding. Government-run flood insurance is sold through private insurance companies but it is backed by the government and the government assumes all risk. Unlike the public option which relies on customer premiums, government flood insurance gets a subsidy—also known as a handout—from the government and it is mandatory for some people. So given all the shouting over a public option, who could vote for mandatory taxpayer subsidized, anti- free market socialized flood insurance run by government bureaucrats? Every single politician I just named and most of Congress. Charles Boustany of Louisiana, along with 44 other Republicans, including going bipartisan on September 27th, 2007 to vote yea on the Flood Insurance Refo
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POPSAmerican Casino: A Documentary About the Home-Mortgage Crisis more @ clip source the Cockburns meet one guy in "American Casino" who understands the whole mess better than most, a California real estate investor named Jeff Greene who smelled the end of the housing bubble around 2006 and bet $1 billion against the mid-decade exuberance of Wall Street. Sitting in his walled and gated beach compound in Malibu, Greene calmly tells the camera that the opportunity for his successful hedge bet (which has yielded $500 million so far) involved massive pain for millions of homeowners.
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POPSHow to Leverage Web 2.0 & Social Media Sites to Market Your Brand & Control Your Message Either the term Web 2.0 makes your blood boil, or you've taken to throwing it around like a free Google frisbee. If you're in the camp whose collective feeling is one of seething hatred, you may soon find yourself in the position of the people who didn't like mobile telephones being referred to as "cells." It appears that Web 2.0 - the concept and its controversial name - aren't going away.
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