Video: Visualizing Obama's Budget Cuts

An awesome but short video that puts the federal budget into perspective. If you can't see the above video, click here.

Google sued for offering free service

Talk about crazy lawsuits.

French company Bottin Cartographes filed a lawsuit this week against Google Maps for unfair competition.

Apparently, and I am not making this up, the company finds it unfair that Google France and its parent company, Google Inc., offer free Web mapping services. That is because the French company charges fees for providing multimedia mapping services.

Bottin Cartographes accuses Google of attempting to swallow the market by undercutting competitors.

"Google is ruining the market," said Jean-David Scemama, representing Bottin Cartographes. "Their strategy is to capture the market and squeeze out the competition by creating a monopoly for itself."

The company is suing for €500,000, which is about $706,000.

Hearings are set to begin on Oct. 16.

While I find the lawsuit ludicrous, as I think most Americans would, I fear that in France, the company might actually win this case.

Obama, GM and facism, oh my!

This cartoon is sooooo accurate. Can we really expect the U.S. government, with its $11.1 trillion in debt, to effectively run a business?

Give me a break!

Anyone who advocates government control over any segment of our economy simply does not understand what they are saying. You cannot possibly be informed and think it is a good idea for the government to run private companies.

Meanwhile, President Barack Obama is not driving the United States toward socialism. He is driving us toward facism. Here is a great article by David Henderson at the Library of Economics and Liberty on that subject: Obama Throws the F-Bomb.

New GM logo

Creator unknown

Hat tip to the Patriot Post

Looking for a school building? Try eBay

Looking for a school building in the Lima, Ohio area? Then time is running out.

An auction for the school at 1608 W. Spring St. ends at 11:19 p.m. Wednesday (click here). As of 11:19 p.m. Tuesday, the winning bid was only $20,100 for the 34,000-square-foot brick building.

According to the seller the school sits on 1.75 acres and the land alone has been appraised at $166,900 and the building at $902,200 for a total of $1.07 million.  The school hired an appraisal company in January that appraised it at $150,000.

The Lima City School District sold the former Roosevelt School in October for $30,000, so now is your chance to get a good deal.

Good luck!

How Detroit's Automakers Went from Kings of the Road to Roadkill

This is a great article in this month's Imprimis magazine. It is kind of long, but well worth the read. Reprinted by permission from Imprimis, a publication of Hillsdale College:

How Detroit's Automakers Went from Kings of the Road to Roadkill

JOSEPH B. WHITE is a senior editor in the Washington, D.C., bureau of The Wall Street Journal. A graduate of Harvard University, he has worked for the Journal since 1987, and for most of that time he covered the auto industry, serving as Detroit bureau chief from 1998-2007. He writes a weekly column on the car business and the regulatory and social issues that surround it for the Journal's online and print editions, and contributes new-car reviews to SmartMoney magazine. Mr. White is co-author (with Paul Ingrassia) of Comeback: The Fall and Rise of the American Automobile Industry, and won the Pulitzer Prize for reporting in 1993.

The following is adapted from a speech delivered at Hillsdale College on January 26, 2009, at a seminar on the topic, "Cars and Trucks, Markets and Governments," co-sponsored by the Center for Constructive Alternatives and the Ludwig von Mises Lecture Series.

I'D LIKE to start by congratulating all of you. You are all now in the auto business, the Sport of Kings-or in our case, presidents and members of Congress. Without your support-and I assume that most of you are fortunate enough to pay taxes-General Motors and Chrysler would very likely be getting measured by the undertakers of the bankruptcy courts. But make no mistake. What has happened to GM is essentially bankruptcy by other means, and that is an extraordinary event in the political and economic history of our country.

GM is an institution that survived in its early years the kind of management turbulence we've come to associate with particularly chaotic Internet startups. But with Alfred P. Sloan in charge, GM settled down to become the very model of the modern corporation. It navigated through the Great Depression, and negotiated the transition from producing tanks and other military materiel during World War II to peacetime production of cars and trucks. It was global before global was cool, as its current chairman used to say. By the mid-1950s the company was the symbol of American industrial power-the largest industrial corporation in the world. It owned more than half the U.S. market. It set the trends in styling and technology, and even when it did not it was such a fast and effective follower that it could fairly easily hold its competitors in their places. And it held the distinction as the world's largest automaker until just a year or so ago.

How does a juggernaut like this become the basket case that we see before us today? I will oversimplify matters and touch on five factors that contributed to the current crisis-a crisis that has been more than 30 years in the making.

Obama and other libs could learn from Milton Friedman

A 1979 Phil Donahue interview with Milton Friedman on greed and capitalism.

Obama's plan driving down consumer confidence

President Barack Obama pauses as he speaks during a visit to Ford's Theater to mark the Abraham Lincoln bicentennial on Wednesday, Feb. 11, 2009, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

So much for Americans trusting President Barack Obama's ignorant and ill-considered pork-laden, spend-now-and-tax-later stimulus plan:

The Rasmussen Consumer Index, which measures the economic confidence of consumers on a daily basis, fell to a new record low for the second straight day on Thursday. Just two days after Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner's presentation of the White House financial rescue plan, the Consumer Index fell to 56.2, surpassing the all-time low set the day before.

Read the full story here.

The problem, which Obama and the Democrats don't understand, is that the economy is all about confidence. No matter how much money the government spends, the economy will not pick up until consumers are confident. It will eventually happen because, especially in the economy, time really does heal all wounds.

Founders opposed government bailouts

"Beware the greedy hand of government, thrusting
itself into every corner and crevice of industry."

-- Thomas Paine
(1737-1809)

Bankruptcy has helped many companies, why not GM?

From Shane Harris in the Nov. 22, 2008, issue of National Journal (I'm a little behind in my reading!):

Plenty of large and well-known companies have successfully emerged from bankruptcy proceedings in recent years. They include AMF Bowling Worldwide, the largest owner and operator of bowling centers; banana exporter Chiquita brands International; Delta Airlines; and even WorldCom, which holds the record for the biggest Chapter 11 filing in U.S. history. And don't forget Dow Corning, which filed for bankruptcy in the wake of silicone breast implant lawsuits and ultimately came out a profitable concern.

So why not Chrysler and GM? Give me one good reason why these two companies (of the 15 auto companies in the United States) deserve special consideration. There is absolutely NO REASON these two companies should not be allowed to simply file Chapter 11 bankruptcy to save themselves. None. And if you say otherwise, you are either uninformed or an apologist for the unions incapable of thinking for yourself.

Period.