Star Talk Weblog

Taxing small businesses out of existence

Democrats want to impose "surtax" to finance health care - WSJ.com.

Every detail isn't known, but late last week Ways and Means Chairman Charlie Rangel disclosed that his draft bill would impose a "surtax" on individuals with adjusted gross income of more than $280,000 a year. This would hit job creators especially hard because more than six of every 10 who earn that much are small business owners, operators or investors, according to a 2007 Treasury study. That study also found that almost half of the income taxed at this highest rate is small business income from the more than 500,000 sole proprietorships and subchapter S corporations whose owners pay the individual rate. In addition, many more smaller business owners with lower profits would be hit by the Rangel plan's payroll tax surcharge. That surcharge would apply to all firms with 25 or more workers that don't offer health insurance to their employees, and it would amount to an astonishing eight percentage point fee above the current 15% payroll levy.

Comment -- Many politicians refuse to believe that higher taxes have any impact on behavior (except when it comes to raising taxes on cigarettes to discourage smoking.) Raising taxes on small employers will be a disaster for our economy because small businesses are responsible for almost all net job growth, and higher taxes will leave less money leftover to hire workers. Does anyone think new jobs are going to come from GM, Ford or Chrysler? Oh wait...I guess we're going to get jobs at all those windmill factories coming to Michigan.

My quotes in Ann Arbor Area Business Monthly News Magazine for Businesses in Washtenaw County - Social Media for Business

Ann Arbor Area Business Monthly News Magazine for Businesses in Washtenaw County - Social Media for Business.

Comment -- Thought you might all be interested in my quotes in this article. Sample:

Small businesses should pay attention to social media in order to connect with customers.

Many small business customers are using social media now.

Small Business Association of Michigan Vice President of Communications Michael Rogers says, "Because of very rapid changes in technology and the rapid advance of all the available broadband Internet connections, your customers are expecting to be able to access you through social networking tools."

New Battle Creek casino is huge

Tribe takes big gamble on new casino | detnews.com | The Detroit News.

Scheduled to open early next month, FireKeepers Casino is a $300 million gamble for a small tribe during a big recession that has brought larger, more experienced gaming operations to their knees. "We're just happy we're opening," said Laura Spurr, chairwoman of the 1,000-member tribe, which spent 10 years battling legal blockades to open FireKeepers. "We think we're at the right place at the right time with the right people." The casino is one of the most ambitious tribal casino projects embarked upon in Michigan. While other facilities such as Soaring Eagle near Mount Pleasant opened to great success, Detroit's three non-tribal casinos -- MGM Grand Detroit, MotorCity Casino and Greektown Casino-Hotel -- have struggled in the past year as consumers pull back on discretionary spending.

Comment -- This article says that FireKeepers will have a slightly larger gaming floor than MGM Grand in Detroit. So, I think that makes FireKeepers the largest casino in Michigan when it opens.

I was glad to read in the article that FireKeepers turned down the wattage on their sign along the highway. At night it was literally blinding to motorists.

Numbers like crazy

On Wednesday, July 8, 2009 at 12:34 and 56 seconds, we will celebrate 12:34:56 7-8-9.

That's pretty neat!

Also, at 10:11:12 a.m. on 07/08/09 (Wednesday) we will launch the new SBAM Web site. Be sure and check it out at www.sbam.org.

Sweet Sault

New lock holds key to shipping | detnews.com | The Detroit News.

When ceremonial shovels bust into the sod on a sliver of land in the St. Mary's River in Sault Ste. Marie on Tuesday, the future of Great Lakes shipping and commerce stands to get a major boost. A massive project to build a Soo Lock finally will be launched after more than two decades on the drawing boards. Ground will be broken for two $1.9 million "coffer dams." The dams will hold back the river so construction crews can start work on a big lock to complement the aging Poe -- the only one of three working locks at the Soo that can accommodate the 40 largest freighters on the Great Lakes that ship millions of tons of iron ore, Taconite and western coal to industries that turn the raw materials into steel and electricity.

Comment -- Who knew that the locks are still so important to the steel industry? Iron ore and coal ride in those big freighters.

I've haven't been up to the locks for many years. Might make an interesting little trip this summer.

Football and the life behind it

IGN: Friday Night Lights: Season 3 Review.

And as always, the core of the show remained Eric and Tami (Connie Britton), who continue to be one of the best portrayals of a married couple ever seen on TV. Tami's new job as Dillon's principal caused plenty of conflict for her and Eric, and watching how they dealt with these issues made for some great scenes and plenty of now-requisite fantastic acting from Chandler and Britton.

Comment -- Jennifer and I last night finished watching Season 3 of Friday Night Lights. I think this is one of the best TV shows ever made, despite a somewhat sub-par season 2 (cut short by the writer's strike.) I was really excited to read that NBC has renewed the show for two more seasons.

As noted above, the show does an exceptional job portraying the relationship between the coach and his wife.

I grumble to Jennifer that some of the young actors/actresses on the show seem far too mature (and handsome/beautiful) to realistically be high school students in small town Texas. But a few of the characters are spot-on: you see them and say, "yeah, that's just what a real high school kid would say."

Highly, highly recommended.

Don't take a pass on passwords

How to Securely Manage All Your Passwords - Gadgetwise Blog - NYTimes.com.

In a perfect world, we would store complex passwords for all the Web sites we use in our brains. Of course, many of us imperfect humans can’t manage this. I certainly can’t, which is why I’ve been in the market for a good way to store a growing list of increasingly elaborate passwords. In my quest, I consulted a few security experts and took a look at some of the helpful suggestions from readers who commented on my earlier post on creating strong passwords. My research has turned up myriad options on a three-level continuum of sophistication:

Comment -- I use very strong passwords for important stuff like bank accounts, online bill paying and my work computer. But for trivial things, like access to newspaper website, I use trivial passwords.

I get a kick out of movies/TV depictions of good guys hacking into the computers of bad guys by guessing a 5 digit password -- usually just in the nick of time!

I've read that the most common password that people use is the word "password."

Gov. Sanford and his sons

Live-Blogging S.C. Gov. Sanford’s News Conference - Washington Wire - WSJ.

“I have been unfaithful to my wife, I have developed a relationship with what started as a dear, dear friend from Argentina… it began very innocently as I suspect these things do… just a casual email back and forth…” the governor says. He says this year it developed “into something more.” “All I can say is that I apologize,” he adds, before asking for a zone of privacy “if not for me, then for her [Jenny Sanford] and the boys.”

Comment -- This story broke yesterday in the Wall Street Journal. South Carolina officials said that Gov. Sanford had been missing for five days. It got to the point that the legislature was looking into putting the Lt. Governor in charge.

Sanford's staff claimed he was hiking the Appalachian Trail and his wife said he was away writing. But, turns out he was in Argentina with his mistress.

This has to be true because, I swear, it is too crazy to make up and expect anyone to believe it.

A new way to listen for ET?

Centauri Dreams — The News Forum of the Tau Zero Foundation.

Somehow I never thought of the IceCube neutrino telescope as a SETI instrument. Deployed in a series of 1,450 to 2,450 meters-deep holes in Antarctica and taking up over a cubic kilometer of ice, IceCube is fine-tuned to detect neutrinos. That makes it a useful tool for studying violent events like galactic collisions and the formation of quasars, providing insights into the early universe. But SETI? Perhaps, says Zurab Silagadze (Novosibirsk State University), who notes that most SETI work in the past has focused on centimeter wavelength electromagnetic signals. Says Silagadze: Here we question this old wisdom and argue that the muon collider, certainly in reach of modern day technology… provides a far more unique marker of civilizations like our own [type I in Kardashev’s classification… Muon colliders are accompanied by a very intense and collimated high-energy neutrino beam which can be readily detected even at astronomical distances.

Comment -- This article is a little technical, but the essence is that we should start listening for neutrino beams from extra-terrestrial civilizations. The article suggests that other civilizations use neutrino communication beams as a way to prevent uncivilized planets (Earth?) from listening in until they are a bit more mature.

If ET is talking on a neutrino beam that we can't yet detect, that would go a long way toward solving the Fermi Paradox: space is really, really big and really, really old. There should be lots of little green critters out there. But where is everybody?

Me in the media

From The State News' article on Mateen Cleaves' proposed restaurant in East Lansing --

But Michael Rogers, vice president of communications with the Small Business Association of Michigan, said a liquor license would help expand the appeal of Cleaves’ restaurant to different and more diverse clientele. “(It) will give him more options for profit because you can attract diners over the age of 21 and a lot of people at mid-range types of restaurants who want a glass of wine or beer with their meal,” Rogers said.

And, here you can see a Ch10 News video report about Thursday's SBAM annual meeting. I might be in the cover shots, but I didn't spot me.