The Federal Trade Commission today announced a law enforcement crackdown on scammers trying to take advantage of the economic downturn to bilk vulnerable consumers through a variety of schemes, such as promising non-existent jobs; promoting overhyped get-rich-quick plans, bogus government grants, and phony debt-reduction services; or putting unauthorized charges on consumers’ credit or debit cards.

The article lists eight (8) early enforcement actions against some high-profile players across a broad range of get-rich-quick niches. Included in the early enforcement actions was TV infomercial regular John Beck/Mentoring of America, which produces “John Beck’s Free & Clear Real Estate System,” “John Alexander’s Real Estate Riches in 14 Days,” and “Jeff Paul’s Shortcuts to Internet Millions.”

Also named was Google Money Tree, for allegedly misrepresenting that they were affiliated with Google and failing to disclose their continuity fee billing.

It’s highly likely that this is just the first of many actions across the get-rich-quick universe, designed to gain some early publicity by tackling a few big hitters. I would not be surprised to see this enforcement trickle down the food chain. Fraud is nothing new, but bad economic times tend to increase the potential market for schemes. Lousy, unethical practices make it harder for legitimate small businesses to use good internet marketing. So I say good riddance to bad practices and let’s see who the FTC focuses on next.

Here’s a video the FTC put together to warn consumers about get-rich-quick fraud:

Recent polls show that only 26% of Americans think the government’s plan to bail out GM is a good idea, and only 42% of GM car owners are even “somewhat likely” to buy GM again. Clearly, most of us don’t think we’re on the right track for fixing this mess. But there are things that can be done, and the industry can survive and progress without massive government meddling, spending, and regulation.

So here’s my 7-step plan for addressing the auto industry/environment/energy situation. Amazingly, there’s not one single step that requires new regulation or money for the auto industry.

1) Don’t try to “fix it now.” It can’t be fixed now, and everything done to make it better now just makes it worse. You can’t mandate this, that, or the other thing because no one knows at this stage what is going to work. And, as we may have finally learned with the bailouts, just throwing billions at something does not fix it.  The big pain associated with surging fuel prices is severely damaging, but it’s the only way we’re going to get people working hard on viable solutions to the energy/fuel problem. Trying to artificially raise fuel prices via taxes is unworkable, because it hurts people for no reason and no benefit when real prices are low, and it blows the lid off when real prices skyrocket (which they will again.)

2) Don’t try to fix it like Europe. This isn’t Europe. You can’t listen to people in countries the size of Connecticut telling you how things should be in the U.S. — where it takes four full days to get from one side to the other. The vast majority of Europeans are completely clueless about what needs to happen here, and so is anyone who proposes Euro-style taxes for us.

3) Create significant income tax incentives for individuals to purchase fuel efficient vehicles. By significant I mean $5,000 or more per year. DON’T tell them what kind of vehicle. DON’T tell them what technology. DON’T tell them what they can and can’t do. DON’T tell them anything, except it must have an EPA rating of more than XX mpg (or equivalent.) Give them the incentive every year they own the vehicle, not just for buying it. Make it a long-term benefit. Stop the incentive when they sell the car – it’s non-transferrable. Raise the MPG requirement every few years until we get it to 50-60 mpg. DO the same thing for businesses, but with lower standards for commercial vehicles that have to tow/haul stuff. Might have to have tiers for this, based on vehicle classification. DON’T give manufacturers a dime. DON’T make any law mandating they make vehicles with certain mileage. Just give people real incentive to buy such vehicles and I assure you the market will figure it out.

4) Create significant incentives for business to build out alternative fuel distribution infrastructure. DON’T tell them what kind of fuel. DON’T tell them what kind of distribution. DON’T pay them anything. DON’T give them any government money. But give them major tax breaks for money they spend to do this. Make all alternatives equal. Anything as long as it’s not gasoline. There is absolutely no sense in trying to ignore fossil fuels and focus on freaking solar cars or hydrogen or crap that’s 50-100 years in the future.

5) Stop assuming that everyone needs to drive a sardine-can econobox. It’s one thing to cram your family into a little econobox for a 30-minute jaunt to the train station or whatever. Entirely another to cram them in like sardines for a 6-hour trip to Grandma’s. You cannot start out with an assumption that consumers here can be coerced into acting like Europeans.

6) Do not try and tell people what to do. Do not start down the road of what is and is not a wasteful activity. What seems “unnecessary” to me may be extremely valuable to you. Whenever you setup judgments about what is and is not “right” to do in this situation you create the potential for enormous backlash and lots of energy wasted on not solving the problem. Just create incentives for what we want to achieve — high mileage vehicles and easy access to alternatives to gasoline. Leave everything else alone.

7) We should never have public-funded works projects, but since the Democrats can’t stop themselves (like drug addicts going to a crack house) at least put the work into alternative fuel distribution infrastructure. I don’t know how, but at least build pipelines or something. Lease them out until they are paid for then sell them.

We badly need a meaningful energy policy that addresses real world issues and not eco-freak bullshit. We need to address energy as a comprehensive whole, not just cars. For example: Hydrogen cars are dumb. I can’t believe this idea is even being discussed. There is no free hydrogen on earth, for pete’s sake, and hydrogen is just an energy carrier — it doesn’t create energy, it just carries it. You get free hydrogen by electrolysis — pumping electricity into water. You get exactly as much hydrogen out as you pump electricity in. You may as well be running your “clean” hydrogen car off a direct connection to coal-fired power plant. The overall efficiency of coal-to-steam-to-turbine-to-powerline-to-hydrogen generator-to-fueling station-to-car is about 20%. Pretty much the same (or worse) than gasoline. Same thing will all these electric cars. Geez.

In 75 years, when you can run your Hydro-car off a super-efficient wind or solar farm, things will be different. But not today.

Even though we should not mirror the Euros, there are a *few* lessons we can learn from them.

We have lousy infrastructure for alternative fuel distribution. In Europe, 50% of the consumer autos are diesel. Modern diesels are as clean (in some cases cleaner) than gasoline engines, produce more power, and get better mileage. A gallon of diesel contains 15% more energy than a gallon of gas, and cost less to refine. Diesels also run on more bio-alternatives than gasoline engines.

But diesels don’t sell in the US because you can’t get diesel on every corner, and the lack of distribution makes it more expensive than gas, even though it’s a lot cheaper to make. Also US manufacturers have, for the most part, built very poor quality diesels and consumers have reacted accordingly. Euros still don’t sell their modern diesels here because the market doesn’t support it.

Same situation with Compressed Natural Gas. CNG is not very efficient in terms of equivalent miles per gallon — it doesn’t carry much energy. But it’s very cheap, abundant, and clean. Again, there is no infrastructure. The market has delivered very poor alternatives for consumer use of CNG.

If we had decent infrastructure you can build efficient vehicles that combine these technologies. Just like the big three are building E85 hybrids (which has caused increasing food prices because farmers now grow crap corn for ethanol instead of food corn for food) you can have clean diesels with CNG or water/methanol that increase mpg of diesel by 5% to 20%. Imagine a “gas-guzzler” truck getting 20-30 mpg on a combination of diesel and CNG, with a lower carbon footprint than the Chevy Impala. Now that’s a viable alternative for the next 10-20 years.

And maybe there are other combinations that work better. But all this stuff has to be convenient and affordable. Give Average Joe a reason and the option to buy something different that is actually a functional equivalent to what he has now. He’s not going from his 4×4 SUV to some sardine can. But he will go from his 9mpg gas burner to a slightly smaller, comparable, version getting 20mpg-30mpg off a mix of alt fuels. As long as he doesn’t have to turn his life upside-down to get the fuels or pay three prices for the vehicle.

Of course, peak oil fanatics will cry about this, claiming “That won’t help! It just delays the inevitable!” Of course it helps. And of course it delays the inevitable. Until we have a realistic way of getting from the current point A to the end game Point G by folding space-time or somesuch we have to make some incremental steps. Better to have a plan that might actually work than one that is built on “hope”. Hope is not a strategy.

I’ll be checking this out. Health care in the US clearly needs an overhaul, and Euro-style social medicine is equally clearly not a useful answer. Government never, ever, runs anything like health care (or education, welfare, or anything else) effectively, instead creating an ever-growing bureaucracy that produces less and less for more and more dollars. Hopefully Perrin and Rooney and provided a roadmap to a system that gets people the health care they need with the proper incentives to keep costs under control.

I spent two hours with the new accountant today. We made some real progress and I feel good about how the project is going. But it’s not over. We (the accountant, my office assistant, and me) will spend another 3-4 hours together on Thursday making sure that all the stuff we’ve done in between is right and proper. Then my assistant will go about getting the rest of the data entered.

So what’s the queasy feeling? Taxes. I get it every year at this time – when I’m forced face-to-face with the unbelievable burdens our beloved government places on the self-employed. Every person in America ought to run their own business and have to pay their own taxes for a couple of years. It ought to be mandatory – like serving in the army or something.

There’s no way in hell our tax system would be as abusive toward small business owners if everyone had to do it instead of having their employer pay taxes for them. It makes me ill to see the morons on TV commercials grinning stupidly when they say, “I’m getting money back!” as if the freakin’ government has given them some sort of bonus.

But it’s not just the Federal income tax. It’s the state income tax, the Federal unemployment tax, the state unemployment tax, the MediCare tax, the Social Security tax, the self-employment tax. Not only do I have to pay these, but my company has to match many of them. Yes, correct. I’m the only employee but I have to pay them twice. But that’s just the personal tax. Don’t forget the corporate tax, because my little one-man operation is an S-Corp.

And what does my money go for? Well, according to the Congressional Budget Office (pdf) 53% – that’s five-three – of the 2007 Federal Budget went to welfare and other entitlement programs (foodstamps, MedicAid, etc), 20% went to the Department of Defense, 18% goes to everything else – like education, roads, the FAA, etc. What’s worse, the Federal government employs 2.5 million people, most of whom are worse than useless as they do stuff that is completely unproductive and just gets in the way of the very few people left who actually do useful things. The Federal payroll is about $13 billion (billion, with a B) per month.

Being forced to face this every year turns me into a real grouch from about February thru April. And makes me completely intolerant toward my idiot acquaintances who think taxation is some sort of tool for punishing the rich. Being a Presidential election year doesn’t help, with candidates spouting the stupidest economic fantasies one can imagine and throngs of near-retards buying into it.

The only reason these dimwits can think this way is because the government has cleverly isolated them from paying their own taxes by making the employers do it. Oh, and they are all functionally illiterate in basic economics.

So I am not happy. I am a grouch. And unless you want to really ruin a conversation don’t mention politics or taxes to me until sometime around July. And if you work in some government-funded job, don’t speak to me at all unless it’s to say “Thank You.”