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Arsenic-Friendly Microbe Now Seems Unlikely
The Associated Press (as carried by the Washington Post) reports that the controversial report of arsenic-based life-forms in a California lake (much hyped by NASA) look suddenly less controversial, but in a way that will disappoint those who hoped that such an unexpected thing had actually been found on earth. Instead, the journal Science "released two papers that rip apart the original research. They 'clearly show' that the bacteria can't use arsenic as the researchers claimed, said an accompanying statement from the journal." USA Today's version of the story points out that the claim, and subsequent considered rejection of that claim as unsupportable, "looks like a case study in how science corrects its mistakes."
Space Elevators and Arsenic friendly bacteria... These are the examples provided by those who advocate wealth confiscation as superior appropriations of the earth's limited resources than would otherwise be made by the proposed victim of asset forfeiture... Bill Gates, you know? The philanthropist and founder of the Bill & Melinda Gates foundation, a charity which has squandered the money in question on such petty causes as CURING MALARIA!
If you were looking you could not find a better example of why social engineered redistribution of wealth is less beneficial to society than leaving it the hands of the people who accumulated it in the first place.
Just in case anyone thought the above morons were on to something, the nationalization of private property would cause an instant market panic which would destabilize the economy and translate in to a DECREASE in government revenues.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laffer_curve
Curing malaria is compounding the "limited resources" problem. Applying your reasoning suggests we should confiscate more, not less.