Free Republic

Licensing Madness My show tonight tonight asks, why do so many occupations need a license? Requiring permission from the state to do everything from flower arranging to practicing law paralyzes competition and protects entrenched special interests.Our most outrageous example of licensing madness is the plight of David Price, a man who learned the hard way that no good deed goes unpunished, especially when messing with lawyers. Price made the mistake of helping Eldon Ray, a fellow Kansan who was fined for practicing architecture without a license. Price didn’t represent Ray in court; he just helped Ray by writing a letter...

We hear people speak of “business” and “capitalism” as being somehow evil, including comments about capitalists victimizing employees and customers in pursuit of the goal of “maximizing profits”. In conversations with supposedly educated people who lean to the left, the concept is an accepted axiom, that maximizing profits – at the expense of everything good in the world – is the one and only purpose of business. It is the socialist rallying cry these days.

March 4, 2010 Everyone hates each other — it’s Hollywood Kathryn Bigelow, director of The Hurt Locker, during filming. A producer has been banned from the Oscars Chris Ayres, Los Angeles It is a night of glittering statues, pristine red carpets and gracious speeches. But behind the air-kisses, smiles and displays of magnanimity at the annual Oscars ceremony, dirty, though often expensive, battles go on, with competitors more than willing to knife each other if it means taking home a trophy. After all, winning means more business at the box office and higher fees in the future. Not to mention...

President Obama's new "health reform" plan boasts that it "sets up a new com petitive health-insurance market giving tens of millions of Americans the exact same insurance choices that members of Congress will have." It does no such thing. Yet one of the "small ideas" that Republicans will offer at today's "summit" really would vastly expand Americans' choice -- and let about 11 million people go on the insurance rolls at no cost to the taxpayers. First, the Obama idea: It's actually puny compared to the federal employees' plan, because the "exchange" that would offer the new policies would plainly...

Some changes to the contract pricing structure of the KC-X program will be announced later today by the Defense Dept., according to slides of a tanker presentation obtained by Aviation Week. Both Boeing and Northrop Grumman/EADS North America, the two would-be competitors, complained that the fixed-price demand by the Pentagon for the production lots placed too much risk in the contractor’s lap. Based on the draft request for proposals (RFP) from September 2009, the first five lots would have been locked in at a fixed price. Now, however, the pricing structure allows for fixed price for only Lots 1-2....

If you would like a graphic (literal and figurative) demonstration of our nation's greatest failing, sit in front of your television set and watch NBC cover an international sports event, the Winter Olympics, as if only Americans were participating. Every time the Today show's Meredith Vieira stumbles over the name of the Russian figure skater Yevgeny Plushenko (it's pronounced exactly as it's spelled, Meredith, with the accent on the second syllables) and giggles to show that it's OK to be ignorant, I think about all of the announcers from Canada and Europe who pronounce everyone's name correctly. Their employers care...

http://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/2010/February/10-at-182.html NOTE: The following text SNIPPET is a quote: FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Tuesday, February 23, 2010 Department of Justice and USDA Workshops to Explore Competition and Regulatory Issues in the Agriculture Industry to Begin March 12 in Iowa Initial Workshop to Be Held in Ankeny, Iowa, at Des Moines Area Community College, FFA Enrichment Center WASHINGTON — The Department of Justice and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced today the agenda and panelists for the first joint public workshop, which will be held on March 12, 2010, in Ankeny, Iowa, to explore competition and regulatory issues in the agriculture...

...To see how much these items cost, shoppers must add the merchandise to their shopping carts — in effect, taking it up to the virtual register for a price check... In many cases that freedom stems from a 2007 Supreme Court ruling in the case of Leegin Creative Leather Products v. PSKS. The ruling gave manufacturers considerably more leeway to dictate retail prices, once considered a violation of antitrust law, and it set a high legal hurdle for retailers to prove that this is bad for consumers. ...retailers say manufacturers have become increasingly aggressive with one tool in particular: forbidding...

Australia is in the midst of a battle over standardized tests and school rankings that is similar to B.C.'s, but with a few important differences. The Australian government is about to launch a website called My School, which will give the public access to student results, school-by-school, in reading, writing, spelling, grammar, punctuation and numeracy. The website will also provide additional information about the 10,000 schools in its data base - such as size, number of indigenous students, number of teachers - and will include a statement about each school written by school staff. Federal Education Minister Julia Gillard is...

WASHINGTON, Jan 27 (Reuters) - The United States has set preliminary anti-dumping duties ranging from 90 to nearly 175 percent on about $30 million worth of electric blankets from China, the U.S. Commerce Department said on Wednesday. The ruling is a victory for Jarden Consumer Solutions, a Florida-based subsidiary of consumer products company Jarden Corp (JAH.N). It filed a petition earlier this year asking for protection against its Chinese competitors. The relatively small case is of one several ongoing U.S. investigations into charges that Chinese companies are selling their goods in the United States at unfairly low prices and benefit...

As airlines struggle, Amtrak is trying and take a bit of their market share. Business travelers who routinely fly the shuttle -- mildly affordable, and as comfortable as can be expected -- have enjoyed wi-fi access on some airlines, but not all. Amtrak sees an opening here: It's announced plans to offer wi-fi access on Acela trains between Boston, New York, and Washington, starting in March. Amtrak's Wi-Fi will be free at first, but the carrier may impose a fee in the future. While one reason for introducing the wi-fi perk is to compete with the likes of Delta and...

NO SPACE FOR COMPLETE EXPLANATION, CAN ONLY POST EXCERPTS. READ ENTIRE ARTICLE BY CLICKING ABOVE LINK : Potentially fatal flaws come in many forms. But three crop up the most when you talk to experts: excessive debt, superior competitors and the inability to keep up with technological change. 1. Palm With the Treo, Palm (PALM, news, msgs) was an early pioneer of the move to smart phones. So it doesn't seem right that stronger competitors such as Apple (AAPL, news, msgs) and Research In Motion (RIMM, news, msgs) are now going to crush it. But that seems to be Palm's...

The $116 billion business of selling cell phone calls in the U.S. faces a long, ugly decline. That petrifies just about everyone in the industry except Roger Linquist.With his gray hair and grandfatherly demeanor, Roger Linquist hardly seems like the kind of guy to kneecap a $116 billion industry. Yet the 71- year-old chief executive of MetroPCS cheerfully and brazenly promises to do just that. He aims to bring down the lucrative business of selling cellular phone calls, a business that for four decades has grown bigger and richer with every passing year. MetroPCS, which Linquist founded 15 years ago,...

The lies exposed.

Many Democrats in the House and Senate have shown concern over the public distaste for a “public option” in health care, with most eyeing their upcoming campaigns in 2010 and the questions that will come their way regarding their support for the government takeover. To the rescue has come the Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, who apparently believes that a change in the terminology will change public opinion. According to a Breitbart story published October 26, Pelosi met with a focus group of senior citizens and used the term “competitive option” instead of “public option.” It appears as though...

Study Backs Open Access to Broadband Networks Stephen Lawson, IDG News ServiceWednesday, October 14, 2009 5:50 PM PDT Almost all of the most successful countries in broadband deployment have opened up the networks of their main carriers to competing service providers, according to a draft report put out for comment on Wednesday by the U.S. Federal Communications Commission.The report (PDF) by Harvard University's Berkman Center for Internet and Society analyzes findings from a range of market-oriented democracies in an effort to understand what approaches have worked best in making sure citizens have adequate high-speed Internet access. The FCC is seeking...

“Bishop to d3. . . . Black bishop takes White knight . . . Ooh . . .” The commentator draws in his breath: “Black’s probably going to regret that move.” Black probably does for, moments later, White’s fist swings into his nose, covering Black in blood. Black, keen to avenge both knight and nose, starts pummelling White about the ears. A klaxon blares. The crowd roars: “Do it for the bishop!” Chess matches are not usually so lively. Or bloody. Yet this was the scene on Saturday at the Boston Dome, in Tufnell Park, northwest London, where players contested...

If the public option will create competition and lower medical costs, then why does the US Postal Service raise its rates every year? The USPS is the public option. Right? Why does it lose money and FedEx and UPS make money?

This summer's health care debate has centered around the creation of a government-run insurance program to compete with those offered by private insurers. President Barack Obama says "public option" isn't intended to end private health insurance, repeatedly telling us that if we like our private plans, we'll be able to keep them. A government plan, he and congressional Democrats insist, will simply provide needed competition for private insurers. And this will be a good thing, of course, because competition leads to better service, lower costs, and more consumer choice. Now a cynic might question the sincerity of the president's newfound...

There’s a debate about whether a government-mandated health care system would be cheaper for America.‭ ‬I thought this was obvious.‭ It’s understandably becoming hard to get to the bottom of this issue because of the words the administration uses‬.‭ ‬The administration calls it‭ “‬universal health care,‭” ‬veiling what it actually is,‭ ‬a government monopolized health care system.‭ ‬When you’re determining whether or not government ought to take over an industry,‭ ‬think of it this way:‭ ‬Which one is cheaper and provides more value‭? ‬A‭ ‬competitive free market or a monopoly‭? Everything the government has taken over has turned out wrecked,‭...