By: Lloyd Chapman – Small business advocate | The Huffington Post Today, under various federal laws, the term “small business” can define a range of companies, from businesses with less than 50 employees, to publicly traded corporations as large as Lockheed Martin — the federal government’s largest prime contractor. This question of how big a “small business” is, is of critical importance to our national economy. For example, when the House approved the Republican-sponsored “Small Business Tax Cut Act (H.R.9)” last week, legislators neglected to mention that under the bill many hedge funds, investment firms, C-corporations and pass-throughs worth billions  [ Read More ]

Thanks to billionaire’s legal battle, we now know a lot more about how the super-rich work With his long limbs and delicate gait, Lord Mandelson could no doubt manage a quite convincing turn in Thunderbirds. He’d find Jeff Tracy most convivial: a billionaire astronaut with his own Pacific island, and now, it seems, he even has his own camera-shy friend to pull the strings. According to the High Court, Nathaniel Rothschild, scion of the banking dynasty and friend of seemingly everyone in the spheres of finance, business and politics, is indeed “puppet master” to the Baron of Hartlepool and Foy.  [ Read More ]

Source: www.beaconequity.com Trends Research Institute founder Gerald Celente predicts that a war with Iran is scheduled to cover up the next leg down to the financial collapse of the U.S. and political upheaval a collapse engenders. “I’ve been in this business now since 1980, and I’m always marveled at the schemes undreamed of that they come up with,” Celente told GoldSeek Radio host Chris Waltzek. “So, when things should collapse, they often don’t, because they come up with another scheme. So, here’s the scheme undreamed of that I believe is going to be America’s worst nightmare, and that’s war with  [ Read More ]

PROTECT IP / SOPA Breaks The Internet from Fight for the Future on Vimeo. Tell Congress not to censor the internet NOW! – fightforthefuture.org/pipa PROTECT-IP is a bill that has been introduced in the Senate and the House and is moving quickly through Congress. It gives the government and corporations the ability to censor the net, in the name of protecting “creativity”. The law would let the government or corporations censor entire sites– they just have to convince a judge that the site is “dedicated to copyright infringement.” The government has already wrongly shut down sites without any recourse to  [ Read More ]

By John Schoonejongen – APP.com Whenever I hear Gov. Chris Christie talk about that Jersey attitude, I think back to the 1980s when my family and I moved back to the Garden State after 10 years in New York. As we were getting settled in our new home in Bridgeton, a knock came on the back door. A strongly built, older man with thin gray hair and a big smile stood there with a shopping bag filled with lima beans he had just picked from his garden nearby. “Welcome,” he told us. “I thought you might like these.” My mother  [ Read More ]

It isn’t rocket science. Unused sick days by New Jersey’s public employees should have no cash value when those workers retire. As Gov. Chris Christie has often noted, “Sick days are for when you’re sick. And taxpayers and mayors working on tight budgets should not have to pay the cost for accumulated sick time.” The long-term goal of any reform in this regard has to be the elimination of this “phantom” perk, not some Byzantine work-around. The latest wrong-headed approach to this issue comes from Assemblywoman Pamela Lampitt, D-Camden, who introduced legislation last week that would attach an actuarial value  [ Read More ]