That is, if you a tourist coming from another country. If you want to create jobs through something like, say, the Keystone XL pipeline, well, sucks to be you. If you are part of the oil industry, Obama’s EPA will try and stop you. If you are a small business, Obama’s extreme regulations will cause
**Written by Doug Powers Harry Reid claims that “millionaire job creators” are like unicorns, the Tooth Fairy or factual statements from Debbie Wasserman Schultz: they don’t exist. Here’s what Reid said : Reid: “The Republicans say the richest of the rich in our country, even those who make millions every year, shouldn’t contribute more to get our economy back on track. They call our plan, time after time, a tax on job creators, and I say so-called “job creators.” Because I say that, Mr. President, every shred of evidence contradicts this red herring. For example, there have been many outlets, but I’ll concentrate on one. National Public Radio went looking for one of these fictitious millionaire job creators. A reporter reached out to the business groups and a tax lobby in the Republican Congress hoping to interview one of these millionaires. Days ticked by with no luck. Many of our job creators are like unicorns, they’re impossible to find and don’t exist. That’s because only a tiny fraction of people making more than a million dollars, probably less than one percent, are actually small business owners and only a tiny fraction of that tiny fraction is a traditional job creator.” Yeah, come on, everybody knows that the people with the least amount of money are the ones who are the most likely to hire. It’s Harrynomics 101 folks. Keep in mind though that this is from a leader in a party that claims millionaires don’t create jobs, but unemployment checks do. Besides, Harry Reid saying that job creators are tough to find is like a bull in a china shop complaining that there isn’t an unbroken tea service anywhere in sight. If millionaires don’t create jobs, nearly half of Congress (Reid included) owes America an apology and even a resignation for pretending to be able to do just that. Click the pic to roll tape: **Written by Doug Powers Twitter @ThePowersThatBe
See the original post:
Harry Reid: Millionaire Job Creators are Like Unicorns
**Written by Doug Powers Former MF Global head Jon Corzine is expected to testify at a House hearing next month, and he may now have to add a Senate hearing to the schedule : Sen. Debbie Stabenow, D-Lansing, head of the Senate Agriculture committee, has called on John Corzine, former CEO of MF Global Holdings Ltd. and former governor of New Jersey, to testify before the panel on Dec. 13. “The farmers, small business owners and others who trusted this firm are now facing tremendous hardship and may ultimately never recover all of their money,” said Stabenow, whose committee has jurisdiction on oversight investigations over the sort of commodity trading in which MF Global was engaged. “A discovery of this magnitude demonstrates yet again the need for strong oversight and protections for consumers to prevent this sort of abuse from occurring.” Corzine and MF Global are being investigated for possibly burning through $1.2 billion of other people’s money — or as Stabenow calls them, “bush leaguers.” And of course the week might conclude with a visit to the White House to be asked to offer more sage economic advice: **Written by Doug Powers Twitter @ThePowersThatBe
Here is the original post:
Debbie Stabenow Calls on Jon Corzine to Testify About MF Global
Guest post from Wayne Allyn Root, former libertarian vice presidential nominee Any small businessman with street smarts and common sense can tell you why America is broke, and why there are no new jobs. He’ll tell you that unlike government that spends money it doesn’t have, a small business can only spend what it has. He’ll tell you small business hires only those it needs and pays them only what they are worth, while government hires far more employees than it needs and pays them far more than they are worth. And, get ready for the grand finale- no small business would ever pay workers for 30 years of not working . This is why the U.S. economy is in crisis. This is why Apple Computer has more money in the bank than the United States government. This is why there are no jobs. This is why we are suffering the Obama Great Depression. It’s simple. When you own a small business you pay your employees only what they are worth, you pay them only if they show up for work, and you don’t pay a pension and free healthcare for life. Pensions, free healthcare, and “fair wages” are wonderful ideas in the fantasy world of naïve liberal do-gooders who have never run a business, made a payroll, or paid anyone else’s health insurance. In the real world it just doesn’t work. Forget “fair wage.” Salaries, pensions and benefits paid by government are an “Insane Wage.” They are unsustainable. And they are destroying our economy. Firemen in Las Vegas average just under $200,000 per year. Lifeguards in Southern California make $100,000. Port Authority policemen in New York, employees of the BART train system in San Francisco, and the average federal employee earns about $100,000. Many California education administrators are earning $200,000 salaries. Then, to make it much worse, taxpayers owe these amounts for life, as pensions, for not working. It’s obscene and suicidal. Think about it- there are 21 million U.S. government employees. Just like Greece, which is hopelessly bankrupt and threatening to bring down the entire European Union, our own U.S. government employees want to retire at age 45 and start collecting $100,000+ a year for not working… for life . They also expect free healthcare… for life . All of this for secure jobs with easy hours, weekends off, lots of sick and vacation time, automatic pay increases, all with no financial risk or investment required, and no measurement of performance. No small businessperson could even imagine paying $50,000 per year for 10 employees, while also paying $50,000 per year for 20 retired employees at the same time. They couldn’t survive. And, if the government required every business do it, no consumer could afford the cost of a restaurant meal, dry cleaning, gas, or a slice of pizza. GM and Chrysler went bankrupt because of this exact model. It’s no problem for the first 20 years. Then your employees start to retire and the bill comes due. Now you have to pay for both the new employee’s salary, and the old employee’s pension, plus free healthcare. This is what is at the root of the bankruptcy and insolvency of the PIIGS- Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece, Spain…and soon the rest of Europe. This pension nightmare is on the verge of toppling governments across the globe, just as it eventually toppled GM and Chrysler. It’s time public employees pay for their own retirement- just like everyone in the private sector. I have no pension. I have no free healthcare for life. My responsibility is to save enough from my income to fund my own retirement. Public employees should also be responsible for their own retirements. It’s as simple as changing from a defined benefit plan to a defined contribution plan- just like corporate America. What keeps this government employee union racket afloat? Of course it’s the taxes paid by small business owners and private sector taxpayers who have no pensions of their own. They work for us, yet they receive benefits we can only dream of. They retire on $100,000 per year pensions, while we slave away until the day we die, to pay all the taxes required to cover their obscene pensions. That brings us to the question on everyone’s minds- “Why are there are no new jobs?” While Obama believes that government spending and government jobs are the answer, in reality, every new government job is a burden on taxpayers. A government job isn’t an addition to the economy…it’s a subtraction. It’s a new expense. When Obama creates new government jobs, he’s just created a massive new obligation for taxpayers. Not just an expense for this year, but an expense for 50 or more years (until the day each government employee dies). In some cases, it’s even worse. When a government employee dies, their bloated pension is paid to the surviving spouse until they die. So Obama isn’t helping us by creating government jobs. He’s killing us. For every new government job he’s putting taxpayers on the hook for $100,000 a year for the next 20 to 30 years, plus $100,000 a year for 30 or more years after they retire, plus free healthcare for life. Every new government employee is a negative drain upon the American economy. For every government job created, the taxes necessary to pay for it kill multiple private sector jobs. Why is America broke? It’s the bloated number of government employees. It’s their obscene wages (salaries 40% to 70% above the private sector) and their insane pensions that are destroying the U.S. economy and creating a lifetime of unsustainable debt for future generations. That’s why the private sector is on life support. That’s why there are no jobs. And that’s why there aren’t going to be any, anytime soon. Wayne Allyn Root is a former Libertarian vice presidential nominee. He now serves as Chairman of the Libertarian National Congressional Committee. He is the best-selling author of “The Conscience of a Libertarian: Empowering the Citizen Revolution with God, Guns, Gold & Tax Cuts.” His web site: www.ROOTforAmerica.com
Read the original:
A small businessman answers ‘Why is America broke?’
GOP lawmaker demands Interior Department proof of Calif. small business’s harm to the ecosystem.
Continue reading here:
Issa Probes Park Service Science Used to Shut Down Oyster Farm
Media outlets have been buzzing about the launch of GBTV this week and the consensus is in: Glenn Beck is back, and he’s big. Below, The Blaze has pulled a sample of what they’re saying: Business Insider : When someone says ‘future of media’ is the first person who jumps to mind Glenn Beck? No? Maybe he should be. Beck launched his new subscription only GBTV show on Monday night. Ahead of the launch the Wall Street Journal reported that 230,000 people had already subscribed for the show at $9.95/month, which among other things put Beck’s company on track to pull in $20 million this year (that’s $17 million more than Beck’s contract at Fox News). It also meant that Beck had attracted more subscribers to his Internet network than Oprah had attracted viewers to her television network in June (156,000). Not a bad way to start. Perhaps not surprisingly for a man who held a rally on the National Mall in August, Beck is aiming big. “We view GBTV as Netflix in a way, as HBO in way,” said Beck. “People know when you go to HBO it’s good quality. My audience is loyal because they don’t necessarily know what I’m going to do, but they know it will be worth their time, I try not to waste their time, and it will be good quality.” TV Newser : The show itself looked nearly identical to Beck’s FNC program, though there were some technical hiccups along the way, including a TelePrompTer issue at the end of comedian Brian Sack’s segment. Nonetheless, the show did not feel like a program on the internet. That was an intentional decision, Beck says: “My first goal was to put on a show and have people say, ‘oh, that is not a webcast,’” he says. “[Fox News and CNN have] the resources of Murdoch and Turner, we can get into the ballpark of that on day one. Let us just stabilize this system, as you saw in the end with Brian, we are pushing the envelope and doing things we shouldn’t be doing right now. We have a lot to work out.” “We are trying to deliver television over the internet, not internet television,” [Mercury Radio Arts President Chris] Balfe added. GBTV is ultimately a perpetual work-in-progress, with Beck and Balfe looking to add interactive elements as time goes on. As Beck told us in his studio, while it is his baby, his hope is that GBTV can move beyond him. “I think both of our aspirations right now are that GBTV becomes like ESPN where no one remembers what the letters mean,” Balfe says. Huffington Post : “We’re pushing the envelope and doing things that we shouldn’t be doing right now,” Beck said. “We have a lot to work out. Give us six months and we’ll change the way it’s consumed.” Beck vowed he would shake things up once viewers are comfortable watching his show on a laptop or iPad. He doesn’t want the program to be a passive experience. If viewers are unsure about a topic Beck is discussing on the show — for instance, QE3, a potential third round of quantitative easing by the Federal Reserve — they might be able to click words on the on-screen chalkboard to open up windows offering additional information. Viewers could also then find past Beck monologues on QE3, ranging from the most basic explanation to more advanced discussion allowing them to “go past the show.” Beck also plans to start using Skype during the show to increase viewer interaction. “We just want people to be comfortable and say, ‘I know what this is,’” Beck said, referring to the network’s early focus. “Then we’ll introduce piece by piece the different things that say, ‘Oh wait, this is something entirely different. This is not television.’” Mediaite : Last night, Beck opened his show by discussing the verdict in the trial of a man accused of killing an entire Israeli family and then segued into 110 minutes of warning his audience that the world was going to collapse and capitalists would be scapegoated. Not exactly the perfect material for a comedian to follow. Having interned on a televised comedy talk show before, I know just how much thought is put into audience warm up and, despite Sack having a couple of very devoted fans in the Beck’s small studio audience, I wondered if this was really the best way to preview the show. Of course, this crystallizes what makes the whole endeavor so fascinating. Right now, in most people’s eyes, GBTV is still, literally, “Glenn Beck Television.” And, while they clearly have a number of plans for the network’s centerpiece show (Beck spent a lot of time talking up a number of upcoming technological innovations dealing with host/audience interactivity), perhaps the biggest thing to watch for is whether or not they can successfully launch these disparate shows. Going by Balfe’s ESPN comparison, it’s interesting that the best possible thing right now for Beck would be for him to fade into the background. And HuffPost’s Gene Marks , a business management columnist who describes himself as “not a fan…[but] not a detractor either” said the launch made Beck “the ultimate small business guy:” Beck, like many entrepreneurs, has a thick skin. He takes his lumps. He has his opinions. And some of them are … well … kind of out there. But he never seems to really lose his cool. This is also a trait of successful business people. Men and women startup their companies because they’re convinced that their ideas are good. These same people get turned down, and in often cases mocked, by potential investors who disagree with the potential of their ideas. We’ve all heard the stories of the entrepreneur who’s been turned down 87 times before finally getting that financing and then building a billion-dollar company. It’s all about having that thick skin, taking criticism professionally, never losing your cool, moving forward with your passion and not letting the haters get you down. Agree or disagree with Beck, this is exactly what he does. Any small business owner can appreciate that. Not bad. It seems the phrase the network has been using — “The network of tomorrow, a day early” — is spot on.
Read this article:
Beck is Back: What The Media is Saying About GBTV
Gibson Guitar CEO Henry Juszkiewicz discusses the federal raids on his factories. (AP Photo)
Continued here:
Gibson Guitar CEO to Attend Obama‘s Jobs Speech as Marsha Blackburn’s Guest
See IBD , ” Union Thugs? No Kidding .” An Ohio contractor was wounded by gunfire Wednesday by a shadowy man vandalizing his SUV with union threats. Where’s Washington’s outrage at such lawlessness? Had King Electrical Services owner John King been shot by, say, a Tea Partyer, there’d be no end to the public pontificating from Washington’s politicians and media commentators about their rhetoric or protests inciting violence. It’s quite a different story for the Lambertville, Mich., contractor who woke up in the dead of night a week ago found a silhouetted figure on his driveway spraying “SCAB” on the side of his vehicle. The figure fired a gun at him before fleeing. King runs a small business employing 40 people at high wages with good benefits. His success at a time when unionized contractors are failing made him the target of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW), which has unsuccessfully sought to unionize his workers. Now it’s come down to guns, and Washington’s chattering classes are strangely silent. RTWT. To say these developments are troubling is putting it mildly. And from John Hinderaker, ” DOES ANYONE CARE ABOUT ACTUAL POLITICAL VIOLENCE? ” Well, yeah. They care enough to cheer it on and deny that progressive ideology is the cancer of American politics. ASFLs. And video at Breitbart TV: ” OHIO BUSINESS OWNER SHOT FOR BEING NON-UNION .”
Read the original post:
The Left’s Escalating Union Violence
Bank of America, in an attempt to assist the fledgling European IPO market, aims at increasing European disclosure and transparency practices. “There has been a lot of disappointment … We are suggesting that all of us involved in IPOs have to do their part to contribute to improving the process,” Craig Coben, the bank’s head of equity capital markets for Europe, Middle East and Africa, told Reuters . Like America, the European market for IPOs has not been very good. For example, more than 20 European IPOs have tanked in 2011 alone. “Distrust has seeped into the process . . . we need to move beyond finger-pointing and find ways to make the process better.” Among some of the immediate changes the bank suggests are, ”Earlier and more regular meetings between institutional investors and company management” as well as, ”Full disclosure of fees paid to underwriters and advisers, and greater transparency on how performance fees are calculated.” In a letter to investment banks , the U.S.-based fund manager BlackRock illustrated the strained relationship between banks, advisers, investors and issuers. “We should be comfortable with disclosing who is getting paid what and disclosure of fees will restore some trust. People want to know what fees are being paid to banks and advisors and on what basis those fees are being paid,” said Coben. Other proposals made by Bank of America include, ”Allowing independent analysts, from banks not involved in an IPO, access to information on the company to provide a greater balance of research for investors.” They also said that, ”Large book running syndicates must be be better managed to make sure the leading banks on a deal take greater ownership and responsibility for its success.” “Where independent advisers are involved, there should be greater clarity on their role.” “These advisers need to ensure that they give no cause to be perceived by the market as, and do not inadvertently act as, a force for conflict in a sensitive process,” the document states. Coben said investors had so far responded positively to the suggestions. The question that needs to be asked is this: Has the American IPO market been similarly assisted by Bank of America? As mentioned in another article on The Blaze , the startup business is a necessary element for ensuring the long-lived prosperity of America. But the U.S. IPO market has been in decline for years. This means that although a company may or not be able to start, it will have a very difficult time expanding. With the recession, the Passage of The Sarbanes-Oxely Act of 2002 (which places stringent regulations on new and mature public businesses), the credit crisis, and low consumer confidence, the American IPO has been put on life support. The answer to the above question is “yes.” In a recent Wall Street Journal article, Bank of America has decided to hire “nearly 100 small business bankers in Texas — including Austin, Dallas, Fort Worth, Houston and San Antonio — by the end of first quarter 2012.” Their sole purpose will be to focus on the financial health of small businesses. This raises an even bigger question: Should the U.S. IPO market seek assistance from sources like Bank of America or the government? Or should entrepreneurs rely on the bootstrap mentality?
Visit link:
Bank of America to Assist European IPO Market
Rush Limbaugh blasted General Electric Chairman and CEO Jeffrey Immelt, Tuesday for accusing business owners of lacking “leadership” and “complaining about the government.” He even compared Immelt, along with President Obama, to “radical Islamic imams” who want small businesses to “sacrifice themselves” in order to appease During a small business summit at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Immelt, who also chairs President Obama’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness, said businesses need to “get some action underway.” “The people who are part of the business sector, the people in this room, have got to stop complaining about government and get some action underway,” he told the group. “There’s no excuse today for lack of leadership. The truth is we all need to be part of the solution.” Limbaugh, who sees the GE exec as “ the guy who paid no taxes ” on $5 Billion in earnings, thinks Immelt is “absurd” and condescending for delivering such comments. “Let Obama give every company in America the same tax break he gave to GE and see how many people they [businesses] hire” Limbaugh responded. He then went on to say “Obama and Immelt are like a couple radical Islamic imams telling businesses to sacrifice themselves for the cause.” “Go blow yourself up and destroy your business” mocked Limbaugh. Limbaugh asserts that if businesses could expand their operations by hiring new people, they would, and believes it’s “easy” for Immelt to sit and tell businesses to “stop complaining” because, to Limbaugh, Immelt has “nothing to complain about.” The conservative radio host concluded his segment by saying business owners will not “kill” their own businesses just to make Immelt “look like he knows what he’s doing.” Interestingly enough, Limbaugh also pointed out a glaring contradiction in Immelt’s speech when he cited CNN Money’s “Global 500” rankings. According to the rankings, GE has consistently downsized its staff each year since 2009, dropping an approximate 36 thousand employees in just two short years. Below is a clip of Limbaugh’s segment:
Read more from the original source:
Limbaugh: Obama and GE CEO Immelt Are Like ‘Radical Islamic Imams’
