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BS: Small??!! Business???
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Subject: BS: Small??!! Business??? From: Jack the Sailor Date: 24 Sep 10 - 02:17 PM Looks like the Republicans need to find another lie. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Small??!! Business??? From: Jack the Sailor Date: 24 Sep 10 - 02:21 PM An eye opener from Olbermann. Looks like the Republicans need to find another lie. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Small??!! Business??? From: gnu Date: 24 Sep 10 - 02:51 PM Well, well, well. Imagine that. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Small??!! Business??? From: JohnInKansas Date: 24 Sep 10 - 03:16 PM Only an eye-opener to those whose eyes have been closed; but a good summary/collection of what Perhaps I've had a different perspective, though, since I drive past the Koch headquarters building almost every time I go for groceries. John |
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Subject: RE: BS: Small??!! Business??? From: Jack the Sailor Date: 24 Sep 10 - 03:19 PM You knew the GOP was calling them a small business? |
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Subject: RE: BS: Small??!! Business??? From: gnu Date: 24 Sep 10 - 04:01 PM JIK... "Only an eye-opener to those whose eyes have been closed..." What? I'll bet ya I know somethin you don't know. Unless you think you do, of course. Gee. Who pissed in your cornflakes? |
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Subject: RE: BS: Small??!! Business??? From: Bill D Date: 24 Sep 10 - 04:19 PM If you watched both Olbermann's show and Rachael Maddow immediately afterward, you might be confused about whether the new health care laws taking effect today are a royal rip-off, or a boon to mankind. I never saw such a different take on an issue from two shows that usually agree. I got to look further to see just what the ratio of benefits to loopholes seems to be. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Small??!! Business??? From: JohnInKansas Date: 24 Sep 10 - 04:38 PM JtS I knew the IRS was calling them (Koch) a small business, and that the entire net earnings are filed as personal income of the "owners" (after expenses, deductions, and "party favorite loopholes." Their political activism is "secretive" but emerges with some regularity. There are, according to fairly believable estimates, some few hundred "S Corporation" small businesses in my own town with net incomes in the million or multi-million dollar range who qualify, and file, as "small businesses." As pointed out in the video, identification comes primarily when there's a lawsuit or a bankruptcy; but considerable information is extant if you pay attention for a while. The "Small Business Council for Entrepreneurship" here sends me newsletters reporting grants, aids, tax credits and waivers, for "small businesses" with virtually NO DISBURSEMENTS smaller than $100,000 reported during the past year. This is aside from our City/County governments that at least monthly give one or another "tax exemption to stimulate small business" or create a "special tax district," each amounting to a few million dollars to be made up by the peasants, to the swarm of "small business entrepreneurs" who present "good business plans" and buy a commissioner a nice lunch. Of course our local Wichita State University claims to have created the first "Department of Entrepreneurship" in the US a few decades ago, whle enraptured with the early success of Pizza Hut, started by a couple of students there. (They spelled it "enterpernureship" - or something like that - in the TV ad that ran for about three years before someone (other than me?) noticed the misspelling, but produce a healthy number of graduates every year.) Most of the "grantees," however, appear to be from outside the immediate community. John |
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Subject: RE: BS: Small??!! Business??? From: Q (Frank Staplin) Date: 24 Sep 10 - 04:59 PM They are defining 'small business' on the basis of how a business is constructed and how taxes are determined; the term is meaningless to anyone who has ever been in business and is aware of how the tax system is a maze without rationale, without a dividing line between small and large. Sidebar- It is now pretty well agreed among Congressional observers that there will be no vote on tax cuts this session. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Small??!! Business??? From: dick greenhaus Date: 24 Sep 10 - 07:59 PM They could probably raise the ceiling to 2.5 million without a significant loss in revenue. Wonder what Bechtold is taxed on? |
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Subject: RE: BS: Small??!! Business??? From: Q (Frank Staplin) Date: 24 Sep 10 - 09:56 PM I presume you mean Bechtel. Dunno, have to ask Riley next time he invites me over ta home or to the registry home in the Cayman Islands. The newest project is solar energy in the Mohave Desert, partnered with BrightSource (Israel). |
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Subject: RE: BS: Small??!! Business??? From: dick greenhaus Date: 25 Sep 10 - 01:08 PM You could read about it in the Chicago Tribune, another small business. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Small??!! Business??? From: Q (Frank Staplin) Date: 25 Sep 10 - 01:30 PM Maybe Oprah Winfrey (another small business) would know. Not in the range of Bechtel, but she passed $3 billion in personal fortune this year. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Small??!! Business??? From: Q (Frank Staplin) Date: 25 Sep 10 - 01:59 PM BrightSource Energy is a company I would like to know more about. It is a private company like Bechtel, but plans to issue stock next year. Bechtel did much of the engineering, but perhaps has no financial interest in the company. Partners in the California projects are Chevron Oil and BP, which in addition to its petrolem interests, makes solar power equipment. BrightSource has an office in California, but is registered in Israel. The Department of Energy has just guaranteed loans of $1.3 billion to BrightSource for their Mohave projects. I know I am fossilized in some beliefs, but I wonder why projects of this kind are not completely U. S. in make-up. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Small??!! Business??? From: gnu Date: 25 Sep 10 - 02:11 PM In some part, foreign investment in a project on US soil partly secured by US government loans allows for the US government to apply economic pressure in the country investing in the project, thus indirectly allowing US influence on political policies in that country. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Small??!! Business??? From: olddude Date: 25 Sep 10 - 02:21 PM There is a program that is called SBIR ... small business Innovation something or other. It was designed to help small business that have a creative idea and want to pursue it. I have applied many times and have been turned down many times only to see my ideas get marketed by big business. I know of no small business that ever gets one of these grants. Their definition of small business is 500 employees or less. That isn't exactly small in my books. Yet I see year after year the same companies get funded over and over again. I had an idea once for a software system for the hearing impaired. One of the reviewers used the term brilliant ... yet I was turned down ... 2 years later I saw my idea peddled by a huge corporation all over ... ya that is how it works .. sadly .. By the way, has no one figured out that trickle down didn't work in the early 1900's and doesn't work today either. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Small??!! Business??? From: Q (Frank Staplin) Date: 25 Sep 10 - 02:48 PM Unless one has the resources to have a patent firm check for previous patents and get your brainchild patented, and presented to potential manufacturers or investors, one has little chance of moving forward with his creation. I worked with a research group for a major company, every little idea we had was checked for patentability. Not easy for an individual unless he HAS a private business on which to base his creations. Gnu, recently there was some hollering in the media about the government giving money to Petrobras. Under Bush, a loan was given through the Brazilian government, the purpose being to encourage purchases of American equipment for their enterprises, and as you say, influence policies. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Small??!! Business??? From: gnu Date: 25 Sep 10 - 05:34 PM Dan... you got an idea... you take it forward. Patent laws have been well discussed in other threads. Good stuff. Worth a search. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Small??!! Business??? From: Q (Frank Staplin) Date: 25 Sep 10 - 06:20 PM Patents have never been discussed here because music and music recording is under copyright law, not patents and trademarks. U. S. Patents and Trademarks here: Patent Office A complicated procedure in that a search for previous patents is required. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Small??!! Business??? From: Q (Frank Staplin) Date: 25 Sep 10 - 06:31 PM Google has put on line the full U. S. corpus of patents. Google Patent Search- http://www.google.com/googlepatents/about.html They also give search tips. Nothing I would ever want to do. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Small??!! Business??? From: The Fooles Troupe Date: 25 Sep 10 - 11:33 PM "I had an idea once for a software system for the hearing impaired. One of the reviewers used the term brilliant ... yet I was turned down ... 2 years later I saw my idea peddled by a huge corporation all over" From my understanding of patents - proof of prior disclosure or publication of the idea invalidates the ability to make the patent stick .... os if it can be proved that the person who filed the patent 'took' someone else's idea, that it mate - no patent able to be granted ... :-) |
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Subject: RE: BS: Small??!! Business??? From: Q (Frank Staplin) Date: 26 Sep 10 - 01:27 PM Hearing impaired software goes back a ways. See Section 508 in Patent and Trademarks Document, a large field. I have no intention of searching such a large field, but cursorily I found material back to 1994. A search is necessary at the beginning of the patent process; it is not an easy process- that is why firms with research divisions have a patent attorney on contract. Moreover, it must be shown that the proposed process differs substantially from patents on file. Not pertinent to the thread, but the Institute of Biomedical Engineering, Taiwan, is a leader in the field of computer software for the hearing impaired. (I have only one working ear, hence I did some reading on the subject a while back. The solution for me was simple since all I needed was a hearing aid that delivered both channels of stereo to one ear). |
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Subject: RE: BS: Small??!! Business??? From: dick greenhaus Date: 26 Sep 10 - 06:29 PM I guess some people feel that giving tax breaks to billionaires is worth boosting the deficit for. Who was it that said," I'm too poor to be a Republican and too smart to be a Democrat"? |
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Subject: RE: BS: Small??!! Business??? From: Naemanson Date: 27 Sep 10 - 05:53 PM Six years ago I retired from my job as a civil servant for the federal government. My job? Contract specialist buying stuff! Procurement is done in accordance with the Federal Acquisition Regulations (FAR). It is further interpreted for the Defense Department by the DFARS (Defense Federal Acquisition Regulation Supplement). Each branch has its own supplement and further documents providing guidance and interpretation for buying stuff. The underlying philosophy of the federal acquisition process is that the government buys from small businesses almost exclusively. We buyers went through life blithely assuming we were supporting American small businesses and at the level I was working it was true. Most of our contracts went to literal small businesses. At the higher levels though the definition of "small" got a little fuzzier. My last job was to help manage the Base Operating Support Contract her at the Navy Base on Guam. This was a $350M contract run by a (wait for it) small business. I never understood that... until now. |
