You know the ones I’m talking about, I’m sure. They’ve been occurring since 2007 and go something like this: “This is the second notice that the factory warranty on your vehicle is about to expire.” Hang up and the machine calls you again later. Transfer to a “warranty specialist” and ask to be taken off the call list and you’re either hung up on or, in my case, given an 800 number to call that turns out to be a phone sex line.

In complaints filed in United States District Court in Chicago, the agency accuses telemarketer Voice Touch and warranty outfit Transcontinental Warranty of deceptive sales practices and violating telemarketing rules with their relentless prerecorded sales pitches for extended vehicle warranties. Among the companies’ numerous violations: dialing every number in a given area code, including those listed in the National Do Not Call Registry; robocalling 911 emergency centers; regularly spoofing call recipients by transmitting phony Caller ID information so that call they can’t identify the originating number; and pressuring consumers into purchasing bogus extended service contracts for their cars.

“This is one of the most aggressive telemarketing schemes the FTC has ever encountered,” chairman Jon Leibowitz said in a statement. “I’m not sure which is worse, the abusive telemarketing tactics of these companies or the way they try to deceive people once they get them on the phone.”

Right on. One question though: If this is the most aggressive telemarketing scheme the FTC has ever encountered, why did it take the agency two years and 30,000 complaints to finally jump into action?

Anyway…

The FTC has asked for temporary restraining orders to halt the illegal robocalls, an asset freeze on both defendants and a permanent injunction that would force them to disgorge their ill-gotten gains.

UPDATE: A federal judge has issued temporary restraining orders against the companies halting their “robo-dialer harassment.” He has also frozen their assets until a May 29 hearing on the FTC’s request for a preliminary injunction.

Velcroed together, stacked in racks, and lined up in back-to-back rows, the servers require a half-watt in cooling for every watt they use in processing, and Google leads the field in squeezing more servers into less space. Based on projected industry standard of 500 watts per square foot in 2011, the Dalles plant can be expected to demand about 103 megawatts of electricity–enough to power 82,000 homes, or a city the size of Tacoma, Washington.”

– Keyword: Evil, Harper’s Magazine, March 2008

You can make money without doing evil. You can also make it without using so much fossil fuel. That’s the word from Google, which today unveiled a $4.4 trillion plan it says will reduce the nation’s dependence on coal and oil.

Google’s “Clean Energy 2030” plan as its described by Jeffery Greenblatt, Google.org’s climate and energy-technology manager, proposes to wean the U.S. off of coal and oil for electricity generation by 2030 by relying on power from wind, nuclear and geothermal sources instead. It also calls for raising the standard car fuel efficiency from 31 mpg to 45 mpg and increasing usage of plug-in hybrids and pure electric cars.

It’s an ambitious plan, to say the least. Expensive too–a jaw-dropping $4.4 trillion dollars. But Google (GOOG) believes it could generate net savings of $1 trillion over its 22-year span. It might even save our children’s grandchildren from a world in which they rove post-apocalyptic desert wastelands scavenging for food and gasoline, terrorized by marauding biker gangs. And who could place a monetary value on that, eh?

“We see a huge opportunity for the nation to confront our energy challenges,” Greenblatt explained. “In the process we will stimulate investment, create jobs, empower consumers and, by the way, help address climate change.”

And lest we think Google is hiding its own self interest (Read: Lower data center electric bills) behind a $4.4 trillion dollar mask of altruism, consider this remark from Google CEO Eric Schmidt, who spoke at an event in San Francisco Wednesday evening: “We’re going to likely consume more energy,” he said. “We’d like the prices to go down … We save a lot of money when prices go down. It’s good for shareholders, good for earnings.”

And in the end, what’s wrong with approaching clean energy from a capitalist position? We certainly approach dirty energy in that way.