Politics, Government & Public Policy: June 2007 Archives
The ongoing cat-fight between Google and Microsoft is a perfect illustration of what happens when an economy becomes over-regulated: participants stop competing in the marketplace and start competing in the courtroom.
Google on Monday called on a judge to extend part of the US government’s four-year anti-trust oversight of Microsoft, intensifying a lobbying battle that has seen the arch-rivals turn to anti-trust enforcement machinery to try to limit each other’s power.The intervention came in an unusual legal manoeuvre, as Google went over the heads of the Department of Justice and US state regulators to appeal directly to a Federal judge to impose greater restrictions on the software giant.
However, Microsoft’s legal camp claimed that the approach was part of an untested procedure that falls outside the bounds of US oversight of its operations.
Google’s intervention follows Microsoft’s appeal to anti-trust regulators to block its rival’s planned purchase of advertising technology company DoubleClick, a deal which is before the Federal Trade Commission.
Blah blah blah. The real problem underlying this case is that Google and Microsoft are fighting their battle with lawyers instead of products and services. Consumers should pick winners, not judges or juries, but the companies in this case have a strong incentive to litigate their differences because it's cheaper than actually competing. Unfortunately, the outcome of a legal battle won't always benefit consumers the way marketplace competition will.
Henry Lamb has nailed Hillary for describing the government leftists really want.
In a recent speech, Hillary Clinton described the Bush administration as a "government of the few, by the few and for the few." She's wrong; the Bush government is bigger than the Clinton government. Nevertheless, the government she described might be the government Thomas Paine had in mind when he observed: "That government is best which governs least."Hillary doesn't agree with Paine's observation. She says she prefers a "we're all in it together" society where "government can once again work for all Americans," with "opportunity for all and special privilege for none."
This could be scary. If, in the world Hillary prefers, one person achieves greater success than another from an equal opportunity, does the result constitute a special privilege that should be denied to the more successful? ...
Hillary's rhetoric and voting record reveal a philosophy that penalizes success by taxing the rich and rewards failure by expanding the work government does for other Americans. Hillary's description of the government she prefers is one that takes "from each according to his ability," and redistributes "to each according to his need." In fact, she told a San Francisco audience: "We're going to take things away from you on behalf of the common good." ...
Hillary's vision is not of a free market, nor of a free people; it is a vision of government control, enforced "fairness" and limited opportunity. ...
Under the leadership of Democrats and Republicans who share Hillary's philosophy, government is constructing an all-encompassing web of rules and regulations. This web is formulated not by elected representatives of the people, but by appointed professionals who work throughout government agencies. Self-appointed, so-called professionals who represent special interest groups, often funded by government grants, lend their expertise to the hard sell of the philosophy that government-enforced fairness makes a better society than does individual freedom.
Americans should reject this vision of all-encompassing government, and with our votes we should cast all its proponents out of the public sphere.
(HT: SW.)
Personally I'm in favor of Larry Flynt's smut bounties, but I hope he exposes any Democrats he catches as quickly as any Republicans.
"Have you had a sexual encounter with a current member of the United States Congress or a high-ranking government official?" read a full-page advertisement taken out by Larry Flynt's pornographic magazine in Sunday's Washington Post.It offered $1 million for documented evidence of illicit intimate relations with a congressman, senator or other prominent officeholder. A toll-free number and e-mail address were provided.
Flynt did this in before in the 1999 aftermath of the Monica Lewinsky investigation but focused his energies on Republicans. Even still, any politician (of any party) who isn't capable of maintaining his family and his dignity has no business leading our country.
(Perhaps the best bit from that 1999 link is:
The trajectory is becoming a familiar one: Stories of dubious provenance, ignored by the traditional press, find a home in the fringe media or supermarket tabloids; the reports make the rounds on the Internet, where they transmogrify and take on a new life; soon, they bubble up to the surface on talk radio, cable talk shows and late-night monologues; finally they appear in more traditional conservative publications. The story achieves a level of acceptance at every stage.But this time, the so-called mainstream media have resisted, at least so far.
Is Drudge fading out? Have the news media developed a backbone?
I'm sure J.D. Lasica has enjoyed the past eight years!)
I think that conservatives might be less hostile to gays if the issue really were simply about what people do in the privacy of their bedroom. However, gay activists aren't content with privacy and frequently try to use the courts to force their bedroom onto the rest of us.
A lawsuit filed by a Northern California lesbian against dating service eHarmony represents the types of excesses of the gay movement which do so much damage to their efforts to achieve public acceptance.According to the Reuters article linked above, eHarmony "has long rankled the gay community with its failure to offer a 'men seeking men' or 'women seeking women' option."
So a gay activist is suing a private company for choosing not to offer a certain service. I suppose I should sue Jack-in-the-Box for not serving Big Macs! Maybe it's time for conservatives to put the shoe on the other foot....
Could you imagine the outcry from gays if someone tried to force a gay website to provide dating services for heterosexuals? Or a religious group that promotes heterosexual marriage demanding a float in a gay pride parade?
The lawsuit is a ludicrous charade that highlights the why gays haven't attained the "acceptance" they claim to want; despite their claims, gays don't simply want tolerance (to which they are entitled), they crave affirmation. Get over it.
