Eric Schmidt compliments bitcoin, saying it is "a great idea". He also reveals that Google was working on a currency of their own which they were going to call Google Bucks. Eric says Google stopped work on their own currency because of legal issues.

Old child support debts could cost thousands of poor men their only income next year because of a policy aimed at reducing the cost to the government of mailing paper checks to pay federal benefits.

Corrected data illustrates massive inflation, and possible true motivations of the founding fathers?

"I’d love to have a one-hour show with a format similar to Peter’s: I open the show by myself, commenting on whatever, maybe take a couple calls, then spend time with a guest, then back to me, then end of show. The show can then be downloaded later for people who weren’t listening live."

Read this article eating lunch the other day, and was curious to fellow FTL listener's opinions on public ISP's competing with private cable companies. Most of the time you get a local monopoloy from a cable company and that's your only real choice for broadband internet service, and I know my service SUCKS. I'm in favor of free-market solutions and competition, but it doesn't really exist for Cable and Broadband services. This LA city has a public ISP that supposedly operates reliable at advertised speeds, for MUCH less per subscriber.

Minnesota law requires funeral homes to have an embalming room at each location even though most do all embalming at one central location or even outsource that task to a third party, thus making the law a barrier to entry for competition and driving up the cost of funerals. A young funeral home director specializing in low cost funerals is now challenging that law.

Land banks are government entities that buy, sell and demolish real estate properties. Bernanke is encouraging the creation of Federal Land Bank, which could make the Federal Government the landlord of many renters.

According to the 18th annual Index of Economic Freedom, released Thursday morning by the Heritage Foundation and the Wall Street Journal, ... America has slid from No. 9 in 2011 to tenth place today. Indeed, this is the fourth consecutive year in which the U.S. fell a notch. Out of a perfect score of 100, America declined 1.5 points to 76.3. Denmark, No. 11, scored 76.2.

Graphic Charts of Crony Capitalism Being Alive and Well in Fascist America

Here are Venn diagrams of the big government/big business partnership that is ruining running the United States. They were created by Stephanie Herman. I will of course lead off with the granddaddy of all big government/big business partnerships, General Electric.

Remy sings about the departure of our old friend the incandescent light bulb and the free market