White House urging allies not to drive traffic to HealthCare.gov | Fox News.

This one really strikes a nerve for me.  One of my biggest “pet peeves” (more like majorly infuriating preoccupations) is how government agencies (and government-protected monopolies, such as public utilities) actively encourage their supposed “customers” to use less of their services.  You literally never see this in the private sector.  Can you imagine Wal-Mart asking people not to show up on Black Friday, because the store cannot handle the capacity of potential shoppers?  Can you imagine Sony leaning on the press, asking them to encourage people not to purchase a Playstation 4, because they cannot meet demand?  Can you imagine the CEO of Amazon delivering a press release suggesting customers attempt to shop at 2 AM, in order to avoid any potential outages?  None of those things would ever happen, but they are regular and common occurrences when the government is involved and competition is forbidden.

Catastrophic Plans | Laissez-Faire Bookstore.

Speaking of Obamacare, this is an excellent editorial by Jeffrey Tucker discussing how the system is inherently flawed, never could possibly have worked, and is doomed for failure.  It’s an excellent basic summary of all the economic fallacies in play here, but ends with an optimistic point that the completely obvious failure of government might lead to individuals opting out of the system entirely, and coming to the realization that free markets handle everything better than government coercion possibly can.

Working on the Holidays.

Bob Murphy has some excellent insight regarding the “controversy” over some big box stores being open on Thanksgiving.  I provide a brief little anecdote from my personal life in the comments.  The short version is:  As a single guy who isn’t particularly emotionally invested in holidays, I wish I had a job that was important enough that I had to work holidays!  This is a fake controversy spun up by the usual leftist agitators who look for any excuse to attack and demean successful businesses.

Chevron’s landmark lawsuit exposes ‘greenmail’ | New York Post.

I’ll be very interested to see where this goes.  We’ve reached the point where agitating and attempting to extort major corporations has become a huge business in and of itself.  We’ve seen how agitators extorted banks to provide sub-prime lending to unqualified candidates while shouting “RACISM!” which helped fuel the collapse of the housing market.  Now, we’re seeing how the environmentalist crusaders may be simply making things up out of whole cloth, and wrapping it in a clever presentation that the ignorant masses are all too happy to believe.  If true, these allegations are pretty sickening, and I would hope that the environmentalist left would denounce anyone on their own side caught engaging in such blatant fraud, but don’t hold your breath on that.