Here’s a blessedly short video introducing the cost of regulation – and its equivalence to taxation. Another reason why this video is so blessed? No Dan Mitchell!
Articles by Jim Harper 
Jim is the Director of Information Policy Studies at The Cato Institute, the Editor of Web-based privacy think-tank Privacilla.org, and the Webmaster of WashingtonWatch.com. Prior to becoming a policy analyst, Jim served as counsel to committees in both the House and Senate.
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I’ve run across the most curious thing today.
Searches on Google that should turn up the Cato@Liberty blog (at http://www.cato-at-liberty.org) do not return any result with that URL in it.
Berin took great care the other day to report on the temporary demotion of some Progress & Freedom Foundation content by the Google search engine. I want to do a similar, careful job with this because it’s a sensitive area.
Could I ask you, our visitors, to check what you get from Google? Visit Cato@Liberty and then craft the Google search that you think is most likely to return that Web site. (I’ve tried searching “site:cato-at-liberty.org the” for example, which would return instances of the word “the” on the cato-at-liberty.org domain, and gotten no results.)
Next, if you have any technical knowledge, please opine on what might be causing this to occur. Cato@Liberty is a fairly high-traffic site with a large following. Its disappearance from Google search results is unusual. Any ideas on how to get it restored would be welcome.
Update: It’s a problem with robots.txt on the site.
The WashingtonWatch.com blog has a breakout of all 36 bills in the “Coburn Omnibus.”
#36: a greenhouse in Suitland, Maryland!
This YouTube video nearly brought me to tears. At minute 8:31, Dan Mitchell utters the words, “What matters is freedom” . . . .
Why the tears, though? Because I’d been watching and listening to Dan Mitchell for over eight minutes! You’d cry too.
Might learn something, though. It’s about Social Security taxes or something. And nobody has objected to me putting these videos up. Hey, it’s a new, exciting, “online” way of talking about public policy.
Here’s a good article by Declan McCullagh on New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo’s outrageous vendetta against Usenet. The article is good not only because yours truly is quoted.
I’ve been looking, and haven’t found a single advocate from the left or critic of Comcast’s network management practices that has said a word of support for Comcast on this subject. This is where Internet freedom is really in peril – and nothing?
I wrote here sometime back about e-gold, a very interesting value-transfer business suffering through some difficult legal troubles. They have now pled guilty to criminal charges.
A blog post by e-gold’s Douglas Jackson calls it a “new beginning.” The company will pay some fines, get square with U.S. regulatory law, and go on providing its services.
Payments is an interesting business. Once value is de-linked from a physical asset, representations of it can be transferred electronically, by “wire” or over the Internet. As is already happening with intellectual property, people will eventually create value transfer systems that operate outside the control of any government.
Whether the Secret Service and the Justice Department like it or not, e-gold is the next step in the beginning of the end of government-controlled currency. I don’t expect governments to lose control of payments quickly or to give it up easily, but they will.
I have a couple of TV appearances today, which might interest or revolt you. I did a taping at CNN today for a story on Lou Dobbs program about the E-Verify system. His show has a strong editorial slant and a bit of a reputation for cutting and pasting guests to make them look ridiculous. Perhaps what I said will come out as illustrated to the right.
And tonight I’ll be on a Fox 5 News segment in the Washington, D.C. area on Web sites that carry crime statistics and data – and sometimes criminals’ personal information. Criminal Searches is an example.
Just wanted to highlight some of the fun I’m having at the new WashingtonWatch.com blog.
The second post in the insanely popular “and a pony” series is up.
On whether to subsidize commercial fishing, we capture the essence of the seagoing entrepreneur: “This government isn’t doing squat.”
And just when we’re getting a handle on what’s happening, Will the Budget and Spending Process Collapse?
Click over, vent your spleen in the comments, subscribe to the feed, whatever.
Now back to the show . . .
My favorite anti-Google gadfly Scott Cleland has a post up entitled “Debunking the Google-Yahoo Antitrust Myths” in which he purports to debunk some erroneous thinking about the Google-Yahoo! deal.
Where Scott often furnishes the world with interesting ideas in an over-the-top way, here I think he’s gotten it wrong.
He walks through a series of purported “myths” about the antitrust implications of Google-Yahoo!, which got a hearing in the Senate this week. I want to walk through just a couple of them because I think he’s framing the relevant market wrongly.
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