
Brad Pitt’s Foundation Unveils Floating Home That Rises Up (and Away) in Floods | Sustainability | Fast Company

It’s inevitable that a Katrina-style hurricane will strike again. But maybe this time we should be prepared to go with the flow–literally. Brad Pitt’s Make it Right Foundation unveiled today the Float House, a home that can break away from its moorings in the event of a flood and rise up to 12 feet on guideposts.
And you thought Brad was just an irresistible hunk.
Governor Schwarzenegger Signs Legislation Increasing Opportunities for Small Businesses
This article announces changes to how small business and Disabled Veterans Businesses are treated as it relates to state contracts. Also has a lot of nifty research information hidden amongst AHARNALD’s self congratulation. – Ed.
Bill Increases Small Business and Disabled Veteran Business Eligibility for State Contracts and Recovery Act Projects
Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger today signed AB 31 by Senator (former Assemblymember) Curren Price (D-Inglewood), expanding small business and disabled veteran business enterprise participation in state contracts and American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (Recovery Act) projects. Small businesses and disabled veteran business enterprises make up 98 percent of all California enterprises, employ over half of our workforce and are projected to create 99 percent of the state’s future jobs. A recent study commissioned by the Procurement Division of the Department of General Services found that these firms produce about 50 percent more overall California economic impact for each dollar spent than large enterprises. Continue reading “Governor Schwarzenegger Signs Legislation Increasing Opportunities for Small Businesses”
Cartels Face an Economic Battle | washingtonpost.com
If anyone needs an argument about why marijuana should be legalized, this would be it.
The shifting economics of the marijuana trade have broad implications for Mexico’s war against the drug cartels, suggesting that market forces, as much as law enforcement, can extract a heavy price from criminal organizations that have used the spectacular profits generated by pot sales to fuel the violence and corruption that plague the Mexican state.
Anyone who says they believe in ‘free markets’ should be for the immediate repeal of the marijuana ban. The free market will eliminate the drug underworld because ultimately, it’s less competitive. Billions can be used in more productive ways. We will have a new green industry for America (and these are jobs Americans would do). And finally Hershey, Coke and Taco Bell would see huge increases in revenue. Win-Win-Win-Win.
Ending the War on Drugs itself would reduce state and federal expenses government expenses by $50 billion dollars a year, almost enough to bail out a bank. We have spent over a trillion dollars, if you count back to 1971, when this all began. With that money, we created an organized crime machine more diverse and powerful than the Mafia, which was also created by a prohibition.
The War on Drugs should really be called the ’50 Years War On Drugs’ or ‘The Industry Against Drugs We Can’t Make Money On’. Or maybe it’s really the War on Drugs because everybody involved in it are taking drugs; Oxycontin, Viccodin, Viagra, Ambien….zzzzzzz….
William F. Buckley, a thought leader in the U.S. conservative movement believed all drugs should be legal on both libertarian and fiscal grounds. Come on all you free marketeers and fiscal conservatives. We’re wasting time and money when we should just be wasted.
WTF, Google? | TechWatch | Fast Company

Processing billions of queries a day almost guarantees that Google will get some mutations now and then. Today, TechRadar discussed some of the quiddities of Google’s Suggest function, but the “WTF, Google?” meme goes much deeper. Here are some specimens.
Editor’s Note: I’m a sucker for a Chuck Norris gag.
The End – How Wall Street Did Itself In | Portfolio.com

I just reread this piece and decided to share it. If you were wondering how we got where we are today, this article combined with Matt Taibbi’s “Great Bubble Machine” (next article) will provide you with every thing you need to know.
To this day, the willingness of a Wall Street investment bank to pay me hundreds of thousands of dollars to dispense investment advice to grownups remains a mystery to me. I was 24 years old, with no experience of, or particular interest in, guessing which stocks and bonds would rise and which would fall. The essential function of Wall Street is to allocate capital—to decide who should get it and who should not. Believe me when I tell you that I hadn’t the first clue.
PASS THIS ARTICLE ON.
The Great American Bubble Machine | Rolling Stone

Another post on our blog, ‘The End’ by Michael Lewis, is prologue for this piece. It’s instructive and frightening. Especially when you take in to account the number of individuals setting American financial policy that have come from Goldman Sachs.
The Great American Bubble Machine
From tech stocks to high gas prices, Goldman Sachs has engineered every major market manipulation since the Great Depression – and they’re about to do it again
PASS THIS ARTICLE ON.
Gov. Schwarzenegger Announces Award of $27 Million to Fuel Nation’s Largest State-Sponsored Clean Energy Jobs Training Program
Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger today announced the 34 recipients of $27 million in grants jump-starting the California Clean Energy Workforce Training Program (CEWTP), the largest state-sponsored green jobs training program in the nation announced by the Governor on August 31, 2009. Under the this first phase of the program, anticipated to train 5,600 participants, workers will be prepared for hands-on jobs, such as installing solar panels and maintaining electric vehicles to computer programming and researching fuel cell technologies, to help develop the state’s low-carbon, clean energy economy of tomorrow.
“California’s goals in renewable energy development, climate change reduction, clean transportation and green building are driving green job growth – and these funds are pivotal to building a workforce to meet that demand,” said Governor Schwarzenegger. “This program represents the kind of innovative thinking needed to steer our economy toward a greener future while targeting the unemployed, underemployed and new workforce members at a time when we must do everything possible to help Californians return to work.”
Las Vegas Paper Sues Small Bloggers – Dispatches Withdraws Post, States Policy
The article that used to appear at this URL, ‘The People Living in Drains Below Las Vegas’, has been withdrawn because it was published by the Las Vegas Sun, the sister paper of the Las Vegas Review-Journal. The Journal has engaged the services of a firm named RightHaven, who is using the copyright law to sue little blog sites like this one for posting full text reprints of their articles, even though the paper is fully credited for it.
Their theory is they are losing money through lost clicks. Anyone with a website can tell you clicks do not a conversion make. So the truth is these are extortion shake downs of people who are, in reality, promoting the sources of the articles.
We have always only posted excerpts of articles with links to their original sources. But the Journal is suing people for doing that. On that basis, we will not link to, or run any content from the Las Vegas Sun or the Las Vegas Review-Journal. Any links or posts linked to or referencing articles published by these two papers will be deleted as soon as they are discovered.
NOTE TO LAWYERS:
This site is a small community created for our friends and clients to share business news along with the cool things we bump into on the internet. We always include a link to the original source. If we cannot include a link, we do not post it, period. We always credit the source. We are not thieves.
We also promote posted articles using both Twitter and Facebook, expanding the marketing footprint of the originating source. We think this is a nice thing to do and we do not charge for it. If, however, a source does not wish to avail themselves of our kindness, please inform us and we will remove the article, just like we did here.
Otherwise, file suit. You won’t win and you know it.
Bloggers Must Disclose Payment for Reviews or Pay Big | Associated Press
The Federal Trade Commission on Monday took steps to make product information and online reviews more accurate for consumers, regulating blogging for the first time and mandating that testimonials reflect typical results.
The FTC will require that writers on the Web clearly disclose any freebies or payments they get from companies for reviewing their products. The commission also said advertisers featuring testimonials that claim dramatic results cannot hide behind disclaimers that the results aren’t typical.
Continue reading “Bloggers Must Disclose Payment for Reviews or Pay Big | Associated Press”