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POPSObama Bankrupting U.S. Faster Than He Estimated: Gee, What A Surprise
Letting people keep more of their money -- to pursue entrepreneurship, invention, innovation and investment -- is the only antidote to a diseased economy. Cutting taxes, a mechanism that has proven so effective, so often, I can't believe anyone would even try to dispute them... cutting taxes lifts all boats. Tax cuts are the opposite of a "stimulus" package. They are a rallying cry for economic expansion. Tax cuts, however, are anathema to Democrat Statists who seek control of your private property. They who seek to control the size of your cars, how much energy you can consume, how much water your toilets can flush, what kind of light bulbs you can buy... anything and everything related to your privacy. Interestingly, it never ends with Democrats. They always want more control of you and your private property. Now it's your physical well-being -- socialized medicine and control of your body. And, after that, they'll want more.
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POPSDocstoc: Clipmarks for Documents! I thought my title was better than their own description, "Youtube for documents". Their's is hype, mine is more accurate. This suggests also that Clipmarks programming could be applied to various fields in like manner, for various applications. I would like to see Clipmarks expand their capabilities like this so we could post or embed actual legal (legislative) briefs that could be scrolled right from a blog, making reading and reporting online a great deal easier, and pdf in particular easier to reference in a blog post. (A Firefox addon for pdf files to view as html also exists). (Just let me share if this idea becomes profitable!)
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POPSThe Real Culture War Is Over Capitalism 
, small business owners who don't want corporate welfare and bankers who kept their heads during the frenzy and don't need bailouts. They were the people who were doing the important things right -- and who are nowwatching elected politicians reward those who did the important things wrong. Voices in the media, academia, and the government will dismiss this ethical populism as a fringe movement -- maybe even dangerous extremism. In truth, free markets, limited government, and entrepreneurship are still a majoritarian taste. In March 2009, the Pew Research Center asked people if we are better off "in a free market economy even though there may be severe ups and downs from time to time." Fully 70% agreed, versus 20% who disagreed. The government has been abetting this trend for years by exempting an increasing number of Americans from federal taxation. My colleague Adam Lerrick showed in these pages last year that the percentage of American adults who have no federal income-tax liabi
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POPSOpen-Source Hardware - The Bug Users of the Bug can put modules together as they see fit and then write or download code to make them operate as required. They are then free to share designs and programs with other users. ... Eric von Hippel, head of the innovation and entrepreneurship group at MIT's Sloan School of Management, says that Bug Labs is part of a general economic trend toward letting users do things for themselves. Von Hippel expects that early adopters will come up with useful innovations, encouraged by the Bug's relatively cheap modular components and the community spirit that Bug Labs is trying to foster. "Ordinary users can benefit from the hacking efforts of the leading edge," he adds.
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POPS Americans Believe Entrepreneurs Will Revive Economy Because they understand the role of entrepreneurs as a creator of jobs, Americans are looking to business leaders instead of government, by a two-to-one margin, to lead the way out of the economic mess. A majority of people (56 percent) trust small business owners to guide the economy, compared with only 14 percent who trust members of Congress. While, more than 60 percent of people surveyed support the federal government increasing its regulation of the market, more than a third think Congress is in danger of creating too much regulation as it reacts to this crisis. "History has repeatedly demonstrated that new companies and entrepreneurship are the way to bolster a flagging economy. The American people understand this," Schramm said.
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POPSSlow Cities Spreading Fast No matter our individual takes on the major issues facing us today whether they be local, national, international, the truth is we sure could use a dose of stepping back, re imagining our place and how we can modify the way we approche these issues.
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POPSA Ripe Time For Florida's Marco Rubio "Rubio intends to prove that "in the most important swing state, you can run successfully as a principled conservative." When Florida politics come up I always encourage my friends to get out and support this man. He's the one!!!! Crist is a political climber of the worst kind. I believe, at heart, he is a Democrat (when once that was not a bad thing in Florida) but chose to run as a Republican because of a Jeb Bush strong Republican state. As one pundit pointed out, Crist never runs for re-election...he's climbing the ladder. Floridian conservatives need to take back the GOP flag...even if the Party Leadership is trying to play the political odds game.
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POPSFreePress : Verge of turning over our public Internet airwaves to the same giant phone and cable co
FreePress.net sent out this alert yesterday Imagine having a fast connection to an open Internet wherever you go, without needing a telephone wire or cable modem. The FCC could make this happen. Instead they’re on the verge of turning over our public Internet airwaves to the same giant phone and cable companies that control high-speed access for more than 96 percent of American users. Don’t let the FCC give away our wireless Internet to these price-gouging giants. We need to use these public airwaves to connect more Americans to an open, neutral and affordable Internet. And this is what I appended at the beginning of the comment field: The idea of using the existing TV spectrum for widely available broadband is tremendously exciting. As a business owner, I could see that this might spark a wave of creative entrepreneurship like the original dotcom boom a decade ago, and create useful technologies we can only dream of currently. Open access is the way to d
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POPSJezebel refutes Slate's idiotic essay criticizing Etsy Much too long to clip, but well worth reading. More: But what I feel is most problematic is the idea inherent in the work that women should, in some sense, face the reality that their dreams of successful entrepreneurship will never be realized. In truth, most small businesses fail. Many people — men and women — engage in the marketplace with a unique product, idea or service and fail to amass enough profit to stay afloat. The difference between men and women is that men are more often encouraged to do so then women, and encouraged to try again. Mosle's piece attempts to convince women not to take a relatively risk-free wade into the entrepreneurial waters of the American marketplace because they'll "fail," as though economic failure is something with which women cannot or should not be expected to cope.
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POPSIn France, a Government-Led Revolution in Entrepreneurship But there are some caveats to the scheme's success. First, it's primarily aimed at individuals who already have jobs or unemployed or retired people who yearn to try their hand at a service they think might find a market. Because of that, new companies created by auto-entrepreneurs start out as single-person operations and usually as part-time or moonlighting ventures. If business starts booming, neophyte owners seeking to expand by taking on employees have to register under the normal labor regime, which means assuming the taxes and salary-linked social charges that prove so dissuasive to many would-be entrepreneurs in the first place.
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POPSPresident Obama's Ramadan Message (Ramadan Kareem) This month is also a time of renewal and this marks the first Ramadan since the President outlined his vision for a new beginning between America and the Muslim world. As a part of that new beginning, the President emphasizes that our relationship with Muslim communities cannot be based on political and security concerns alone. True partnerships also require cooperation in all areas particularly those that can make a positive difference in peoples daily lives, including education, science and technology, health, and entrepreneurship - fields in which Muslim communities have helped play a pioneering role throughout history. As this dialogue continues and leads to concrete actions, the President extends his greetings on behalf of the American people. Ramadan Kareem.
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POPSAdding Up Obama + Pelosi + Reid + Frank Self-serving rubbish. McCain is who he always was. Generally speaking, he sees government as a Rooseveltian counterweight (Teddy with a touch of Franklin) to the various malefactors of wealth and power. He wants government to tackle large looming liabilities such as Social Security and Medicare. He wants to free up health insurance by beginning to sever its debilitating connection to employment — a ruinous accident of history (arising from World War II wage and price controls) that increases the terror of job loss, inhibits labor mobility and saddles American industry with costs that are driving it (see: Detroit) into insolvency. And he supports lower corporate and marginal tax rates to encourage entrepreneurship and job creation. An eclectic, moderate, generally centrist agenda in a guy almost congenitally given to bipartisanship.
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POPSThe Fed Must Strengthen The Dollar
Since 1948, inflation has averaged 3.7% per year, unemployment 5.6%, and real GDP growth 3.4%. But the 10 lowest inflation years (between 1949-62, and 1986) averaged 0.5% inflation and 5.2% unemployment, along with 3.5% GDP growth. And the 10 high inflation years (between 1973-81, 1969, and 1990) averaged 9.1% in consumer price increases, along with 6.2% unemployment and 2.6% in growth. In other words,low inflation was often associated with lower unemployment and stronger GDP growth than high-inflation years. More strikingly, the years following the 10 lowest inflation years were even better in terms of performance (averaging 5.1% unemployment and 4.4% growth), and the years following the high inflation years were even worse (7% unemployment and 1.4% GDP growth). This record shows the importance of sound money, fostering an environment allowing the key growth drivers of entrepreneurship and capital investment to flourish under stable long-run expectations.
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POPSNOW WE MUST WIN AND PROUDLY SO There is this moment in our hands and Americans can and will be proud again to be a just people. DON'T BE SILENT BUT BE PROUD TO BE LIBERAL AND AMERICAN. Social liberalism, also called new liberalism (as it was originally termed), high liberalism radical liberalism, modern liberalism, or in North America and the United Kingdom simply liberalism, is a branch of liberalism which emphasizes individual rights and equal opportunity for all citizens. For social liberals, the lack of education, health, or employment, is seen as an equally large threat to individual freedom as state compulsion and coercion. Additionally, like other liberals, social liberals support (with qualifications) free markets, private entrepreneurship, and a limited state.
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POPS7 Financial Tips from the Great Depression Anyone hear of the WWII Victory Garden? Now seems like a great time to start onw. Plan low-tech outings with family and friends. Mass transit really does work, if not a little inconvenient. How big of a house and car do you really need? Our grandparents/great-grandparents survived the depression by cutting back on a lot of things, and it can very humbling to do so, and can we. Take this time to learn what you really NEED in your life. Simple is quite often more satisfying, it is just a matter of attitude.
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POPSThe Energy Bill Ayn Rand is absolutely amazing for foretelling this type of governmental intervention.