Chris Matthews (See Video) : “You know, I was trying to think about who he was tonight, and it’s interesting: He is post-racial by all appearances… You know, I forgot he was black tonight for an hour”

[h/t Newsbusters and Tabitha Hale]

Today, we’re excited to announce the new White House App available for Apple iPhone and iPod Touch. The White House App delivers dynamic content from WhiteHouse.gov to the palm of your hand.

Image of White House iPhone App showing list of photos and video playerOne feature that stands out is live video streaming. Now anyone with this app can watch the President’s public events at the White House, frequent web chats with Administration officials, and other events like key speeches and press briefings in real time.

In fact, the President’s State of the Union speech next week is a great example. In addition to the millions of Americans watching through TV and websites like WhiteHouse.gov/live, iPhone users on the go will be able to tune in through their phones.

The White House App also lets users stay up to date with the White House Blog and the latest from the Briefing Room. Browse behind-the-scenes photos and watch on-demand videos. The app provides instant access to full videos from recent speeches, press briefings, and special events.

What you won’t see are the back room deals between Democrats, Big Labor and Obama’s cronies. What you won’t see is true transparency. He’s big on talking about transparency but when it comes to actually doing something about it he just votes present.

By the way how much taxpayer money and IT resources where wasted on this obvious propaganda? If Bush did this the liberals around the US would be coming unglued.

[h/t MichelleMalkin.com]

“When it comes to innovation there’s a lot the government can do, and there’s a lot they should not do,” said consumer industry head Gary Shapiro.

“The government doesn’t spur innovation or entrepreneurship. The government often gets in the way,” said Mr Shapiro, president of the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) which stages CES.

“The government is often a barrier,” said Mr Shapiro. “High taxes and regulatory bureaucracy are barriers.”

Mr Shapiro is right. The government influence and interference in business with unnecessary regulation only stifles innovation. Just think of where we would be if there wasn’t so much interference by the government. On top of that the current administration seeks to punish those who succeed with higher taxes everywhere. After all more taxes is the only way the president can pay for all of his social spending programs. Sadly I doubt this will mean anything but the tech industry needs to wake up and realize that Mr. Obama is not a friend of business nor technology. He is a friend of those who will help him push his socialist agenda.

[h/t Gizmodo]

I’m not really sure the Federal agencies are able to move at this speed and provide data that is properly scrubbed of sensitive data. My fear is a data set will be chosen and there will be information in that data set unknown to the people planning its release that will compromise privacy. Government agencies are not used to moving at this pace and can make mistakes. These mistake even happen in private technology companies that should know better. A great example would be the debacle with AOL in 2006 where they released search data was supposedly anonymized but because of some search behavior of users researchers where able to determine the person performing the searches. There is text included in the memo to preclude the release of sensitive data as required by law or regulation currently. My central point here I feel the release could happen accidentally and that would be unfortunate if it caused any kind of damage to person, property, reputation or investigations.

My hope is this will be properly executed by the government agencies and that it will not adversely impact their core missions. I also hope whatever system they implement will be an evergreen system where this data will be updated on a regular basis. It seems like it would be a waste to do this one time and then lack any ongoing updates to the data sets.

CA zip code 95814 added 75,000 jobs. Population: 16,600. That’s 5 jobs per person! http://bit.ly/14Uijc

As I read into the issue more I found that much of the jobs “saved or created” went to government agencies as this BigGovernment.com blog post shows:

But the most relevant information on Recovery.gov is that most of the jobs created or saved are in the public sector. For instance, according to Vice President Biden, out of the 640,329 jobs, 325,000 went to education and 80,000 to construction jobs. The difference we will soon find out is going to other government jobs.

You need more evidence? 13,080 grants went to the private sector, and 116,625 went to [federal] agencies.

Even when the money went to private ventures was completely wasted:

First, $159 billion has been spent so far. That’s $248,273 per job.

However, when you look at some specific contracts that were awarded you find that some jobs were created or saved at an insane cost to taxpayers. For instance, $1,359,633,501 were awarded to CH2M WG IDAHO LLC, in WA to create 2,183 jobs. That’s $622,827 per job. That’s not as bad though as the $258,646,800 awarded to the Brookhaven Science Associates, LLC in NY, to create 25 jobs. That’s over $10.3 million per job.

The whole stimulus is a joke and it always has been. Many conservatives complained about this boondoggle far before it was a law. When will the liberals learn you can’t buy your way out of a bad economy. You can in fact deregulate and lower taxes to improve and encourage the economy. Instead they have focused on ways to spend and regulate more.

Below is an excellent video from Reason.com about the a private analysis of stimulus spending by Recovery.org.

So Gizmodo has a picture about the “Worst Case Scenario” if we don’t have net neutrality. The picture shows a tiered pricing plan we are all familiar with from cable and satellite companies. Here’s the issue and this is the argument made by pro-net neutrality advocates that tiering would occur on the web site level. So for example AT&T would offer faster access to some sites versus others in exchange for a premium being paid. This could happen however I think it’s much more likely the companies will do what they are trying to do now which is slow down or limit those who use “excessive” network resources. The old pricing model these companies are using of “unlimited” use for a fixed price is no longer profitable. Instead they are trying to make the model work by ditching or limiting users that skew costs such as those that use large amounts of network resources. In my opinion we are more likely to see models that would vary based on caps or bandwidth limits. Neither are very desirable.

The issue I find frustrating is everyone thinks we can fix this by creating new regulations. The reality is increased regulation will not increase competition and it will not lower costs. What I do think it will do is lower quality of service and increase prices. What we need is more competition and to remove the regulatory support the government gives to these companies. These companies thrive in regulatory climates. They feign resistance to it but know they gain power every time the government reinforces their positions and drives up the cost of market entry. Thus reducing competition further.

One last rant. Not all packets are created equal. A voip packet needs a higher quality of service than say a bit-torrent packet. After all if my bit-torrent download takes a few minutes longer to download that’s fine but if I have a slow or small bandwidth connection for my voip call I will have a crappy or unusable phone call. The reality is we need to allow these companies to treat protocols differently and applications differently. If they kill competing services to favor their own that’s wrong and we have anti-competitive laws to address this. If the laws we have don’t apply make new ones. But, don’t say all packets are to be created equally.