Following up on California’s status as an economic disaster-hole, it begs the question of “why do state budgets matter?” Frankly, the long and short of it is if your state is broke, then by law they’re required to not be broke. The result is higher taxes and cuts. Because most governments are incapable of thinking rationally, they usually start cutting education, police, healthcare, etc. You know, the things people use and actually hired the government to deal with.
When they raise taxes, that lowers demand for services as people have less money, businesses have less funds for payroll and supplies and they cut wages and staff and, voila, you have a deeper recession. Not to mention that states cut contracts with outside vendors, thereby deepening matters more.
Again, I’m going to re-iterate that this governing things isn’t necessarily hard. Mitch Daniels saved money by buying floor mats for heaven’s sake:
[Daniels ended] bottled water for employees of the Bureau of Motor Vehicles (annual savings, $35,000). Ending notification of drivers that their licenses are expiring; letting them be responsible for noticing (saving $200,000). Buying rather than renting floor mats for BMV offices (saving $267,000 this year). Initiating the sale of 2,096 surplus state vehicles (so far, $1.95 million in revenue from 1,514 sales). Changing the state lottery’s newsletter from semimonthly and in color to a monthly and black-and-white (annual savings, $21,670).
Note, this was in 2005 after 1 year in office. I’d also mention that I’d go as far as to eliminate newsletters, period. Who reads newsletters!? Get a website!
And, the BMV now reminds people about expiration notices electronically, for practically nothing, via email for Hoosiers enrolled in MyBMV.
States have money to burn and money that can be saved and refunded to taxpayers. They just need to step up and deal with it. Don’t tell me the Feds don’t have a few newsletters that can be chucked.
I’m in this weird spot in my life where I’m a young, urban feller but I’m also operating a business. On one hand, tax cuts (my 40% tax rate is a little sickening) sound really, really nice. And, on the other hand, not being a racist homophobe seems like a good plan for future success, too.
So, when Evan Bayh decided to step down, I thought it was a good thing – time to get some young new guy in there. Then, I saw a picture of Dan Coats in the Star who they’re calling the new front-runner for his seat. Then I realized he was old and that pissed me off.
I’ve never known a world without a Bayh, Bush, Clinton or Kennedy in power at the national level. Now, without a Bayh, Bush or Kennedy in place after this term cycle and a Clinton in no real legislative authority, I thought we were moving on. And then, our state graciously donates an old guy who used to be in the Senate two decades ago as the “front runner” to fill the seat of a guy I never really liked anyway.
Damnit. This is not hard. Part of me wants to barge into the state HQ of both parties and yell, “WHAT THE HELL!? IS THAT THE BEST YOU CAN DO!?”
Therefore, it’s time for a new rule: people that want to run for positions of power and authority over my country and state have to at least know Word and Excel.
Who knew companies like Apple fixed something in a couple years that the federal government has been attempting to fix for 20. And all it took was cheaper devices! Shocking!
My conservative friends can insert their own “leave it to the private sector” phrase here. My liberal friends can insert their own “but this doesn’t address X” story here, too.
Vaughn, who is African-American and lives on the Near Westside, is just as much of an Internet user as the suburbanites who own multiple computers and pay $50 a month for home broadband service.
What it means to be an Internet user, at least according to researchers, is changing rapidly as gadget makers continue to flood the market with Web-capable mobile devices such as smartphones, netbooks and tablets such as the Apple iPad.
And when those mobile devices are taken into account, national statistics show that African-Americans access the Internet almost as much as whites do — narrowing, at least from a technology standpoint, a digital divide that for years fell along racial lines.
Today, the division of who has ready access to broadband is more about socioeconomic status than race.
“Since the first survey in 2000, race and ethnicity have become increasingly less important predictors of Internet use,” said Lee Rainie, director of the Pew Internet & American Life Project, which studies how the Web affects society. “In 2000, race alone was a predictor.”
African-Americans are now the nation’s most active users of the mobile Web, according to recent studies by Pew.
Indianapolis appears to be getting serious about a more regional mass-transit system. The system would include more bus service, light rail, passenger trains and other improvements to regional highways like I-465, I-69 and I-65.
The Star has an interesting poll up asking whether or not folks support the sales tax increases necessary to pay for the $10 billion plan. The top bar represents people living in Hamilton and Johnson Counties. The bottom bar represents people that do not:
I’ll say it again: Central Indiana needs to develop regional taxation. Having nine counties, eight of which would barely exist if not for Marion County, with separate tax systems much lower than Marion County is silly. Flatten the tax rate region-wide and you’ll stop urban sprawl, white flight and a bunch of other problems that plague urban areas. We already have our “hamburger tax” in the region to support Lucas Oil Stadium and the Indiana Convention Center. I propose that the State just setup a regional tax system for the nine-county metro area and bring back some fairness to the tax structure.
The transit authority has a proposal video that looks pretty slick. I just don’t want to pay for it. I am, however, very happy to know that this is a public-private proposal. Indy does well with these projects, such as Circle Centre and the Convention Center.
Al Gore’s Climate Protection Action fund has two new TV spots that are going to be airing shortly for TV viewers in Indiana and Maine. Here is Indiana’s ad:
Frankly, I don’t believe climate legislation in any form is going to boost Indiana’s economy or anyone else’s for that matter. It’s just good stuff that probably needs to be done anyway, but for anyone to claim it’ll give us an extra 10,000 jobs or otherwise boost our economy just doesn’t seem plausible. At least in Indiana, where a good number of folks work for otherwise “dirty” industries that would be negatively impacted. It’s more or less just going to shift jobs from one part of the state to the other.
I didn’t know this sort of thing actually happened. I thought it was a threat from business to labor that never really happened. Or, at the very least, businesses just hired less and no one ever got fired as a result:
The study of part-time workers monitored by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics from 1999 to 2009 found that raising the minimum wage to $7.25 during the recession caused some businesses to scale back on filling vacant positions or eliminate jobs altogether, said Michael Hicks, director of Ball State’s Center for Business and Economic Research.
Increasing the minimum wage was meant to raise the living standards of millions of Americans holding unskilled, entry-level positions.But it may have led to the elimination of 550,000 jobs — opening the possibility that such wage levels should be revised, a new study from Ball State University shows.
The businessman in me tells me it makes sense, though.
In a sign that Amazon wants to upgrade its Kindle e-reader to compete head-on with the Apple iPad, Amazon has acquired Touchco, a New York-based start-up specializing in touch-screen technology, a person briefed on the deal said Wednesday.
Amazon will merge Touchco’s technology and staff into its Kindle hardware division, Lab126, which is based in Cupertino, Calif., this person said.
I’ve learned a lot lately since becoming a full-time web shop owner with Justify Studios. But, I did some homework before I came to the conclusion of quitting my old job with the Court.
One of the things I did manage to forsee is that working a solid 8 hour day is stupid. I’ve always thought the idea of working a set timeframe for some days and not others was stupid anyway. Work doesn’t always happen at 2:12 PM. I’ll work when work needs to be done for as long as I can do so in a healthy way. The result is that my clients get a better product and I get to live my life.
For anyone thinking about doing your own business, don’t assume you can work 8 billable hours a day. Instead, do this:
Figure out how much money you need to make in a given month to cover all the necessary bills. Then add 40% to cover the extra taxes. Lastly, figure out how many hours you need to bill for to make up that amount. For me at my rate, it comes out to 32 billable hours a month, or about an hour a day. Now you have a goal.
Steve Jobs announced Apple’s latest creation today, called the iPad.
I wasn’t thrilled watching the keynote until I saw the price of $499. That’s very un-Apple and I’m glad they’ve finally started to understand how most Americans shop. I’m really tired of seeing crappy software and hardware from PC makers and being asked, “Which netbook do you recommend?” by friends because my answer is always, unequivocally, “None of them.”
However, the iPad isn’t for anyone like you or me. It’s meant for your non-techy sister or your partially inept uncle. The thing doesn’t fill a void in a tech person’s life. Already having an iMac, MacBook Air and an iPhone, this thing fits in my life like a bastard child.
I keep waffling on whether I’d buy it. Earlier I was no, then yes, now I’m back at “no”. I think Apple is looking to build something for mom and dad and something for cheap people to buy into to get them more interested in the iPhone and other Apple products. It’s a halo-device if nothing else.
The killer here is that it can’t multitask, aside from, I guess, the iPod software. But, if I’m doing a Keynote or working in Pages, which are without a doubt neat, I’m going to need to do some research online. And if that thing is as fast as everyone is saying it is, then I don’t get why they don’t enable multitasking.
I have a feeling that Apple is up to something. If they’ve got that fast new processor in the iPad, it’s only a few months away from getting crammed into an iPod and iPhone, then you’d better lookout. Part of me wonders if, maybe, JUST MAYBE, they want to save some sizzle for a pending iPhone 4.0 and if they spill too much on the iPad, it’ll give the competition (i.e., Google, Sony, RIM, etc.) time to prepare.
My prediction and advice: hold off on buying this thing until June/July when they announce the new iPhone as they always do. There, they’ll have new software, new hardware, and I bet new software for the iPad. The guy from Brushes mentioned the iPad uses iPhone OS 3.2. Clearly, there’s room to upgrade this summer to iPhone OS 4.0.
Thank you for coming. And thank you to President Obama for asking me to deliver this year’s speech. We’re going to make some history today.
You know, it was just a year ago that we announced our economic plan for 2009. We said we were going to turn around the recession. We said we’d create jobs. And we said we’d do it in 12 months. What happened? We did it in three. It was the most successful period in the history of the United States. And 2010 is only going to be better. How awesome is that?
So today, we’re introducing a new plan. It’s called Stimulus 2GS, and it’s sleeker than any economic recovery package ever created. It’s got bridges, it’s got schools, it’s got broadband Internet. All that, and it’s super easy to use—you can control it from iTunes. Pretty cool, huh?
(APPLAUSE.)
Now let’s take a look at national security. When we got in here last year, torture was basically OK. We were water-boarding people and doing all sorts of terrible things. If you’re the president of the United States, how do you solve this? Hmm. Oh wait, we have solved this. We banned torture. Boom. Now that’s what I call an amazing breakthrough.
Justify Studios is igniting the personal and business website industry in the midwest with a complete media experience under one roof. Managed by Justin Harter, Justify provides website design, development, print, consulting, video and media production for all budgets and industries.
