Redskinrook's Blog

Obama Business Conference Mostly for Musilm Businesses

redskinrook — Tue, 04 May 2010 21:23:14 +0000

On April 26^th through the 28^th the president of the United States held an entrepreneurship conference at the white house. This brought together about 250 successful business and social entrepreneurs from more than 50 countries, most with large Muslim populations, fulfilling a pledge he made in his Cairo speech to the Islamic world last June. It just seems to me as though there were a lot more Muslim based businesses there instead of American. The two-day summit brings together a diverse group of people aged 20 to 79, “everybody from … the Davos crowd to people that are not traditionally invited to things like this,” a senior administration official said. This sounds like something I would like to attend one day to learn more about what is being done for entrepreneurships and other forms of businesses. Officials believe that holding this conference that the president will help his plans of the Afghan war and Iraq among other things that our nation is trying to work out. I don’t think that we need to be talking to small business owners of other nations why couldn’t we have some of our best entrepreneurships to a conference?

*Makeup*

Obama Says The Economy has made a Turn Around

redskinrook — Tue, 04 May 2010 21:21:55 +0000

The past two years of recession have been “difficult,” but “the storm is receding,” President Obama said in a speech to business leaders Tuesday as reported by CNN. According to President Obama the economy has taken the biggest turnaround that has been seen in three decades. Yet in the same article, titled The Storm is Receding, Obama state’s More than 8 million people have lost jobs throughout the course of the downturn, Obama noted. He added that the economy was shedding 750,000 jobs each month during last year’s Business Council speech, but “today, America is adding jobs again.” It is a good sign that we are adding new jobs but how many jobs are being added every month? This is a question I keep asking myself and it seems harder to find than how many have been lost. Eight million people out of work is a lot of the nation and it is going to take years to be able to get those people back into good paying long term jobs. Another key point Obama talks about is the fact that by the year 2020 America will have the highest proportion of college graduates in the world. This means there are going to be a lot of younger adults coming into the work force that is just now turning around. We still need a lot of job creation and mainly job security for the jobs already established. The plans put into place by Obama seem to be working for the time being but only time will tell how effective they are.

*Makeup*

Cracking Down on Temp Workers

redskinrook — Tue, 04 May 2010 21:20:36 +0000

This week’s blog is a little off topic for my blog but I think it is interesting and helpful to business owners. According to Business Week the IRS, along with Obama, have put a plan into effect to crack down on companies that have long-term “temp” workers. A long term temp worker can work at a company full time or part time but many companies since the worker isn’t working there for long will not pay taxes on his/her payroll. Employers can save as much as 30% on wages by avoiding payroll taxes, unemployment insurance, worker’s compensation coverage, and benefits they provide regular employees. By doing this the companies are not helping the country out, nor our friends and family. They are also putting the temp. Worker at risk because if he or she were to get hurt on the job but had no worker’s compensation or other benefits they might be out of work for a while with no money. This is just a bad businesses practice to have and is unlawful. Programs and taxes are there for our benefit and to help us, as a nation, out in the long run. So we all need to pay our taxes and let some money come out of our checks to help people now and us when we need it down the road.

*MakeUp*

A Sign of a Positive Turn in the Economy

redskinrook — Tue, 04 May 2010 21:18:57 +0000

While looking up information about how the economy is doing and how businesses are. I ran across a very interesting article about how small businesses are now getting better on average around the nation. It is on BusinessWeek.com and is entitled “Hiring by Smallest Employers May Single Job Recovery”. According to the article while bigger business are still on a slow decline in jobs, Companies with less than 20 employees have been tentatively adding new jobs since June 2009, according to a new index by Intuit (INTU) released Mar. 1, based on data from 50,000 customers of the software maker’s online payroll service. That is a good sign that our economy is slowing starting to turn around. Yet this type of thing does not happen overnight it will take a few years to be able to see a good turn around. Brian Headd, an economist in the Small Business Administration’s Office of Advocacy, says it’s “definitely possible” that small businesses are now adding workers, even as net job losses in the economy as a whole persist. With the small business hiring more people should be able to gain jobs concerting small businesses make up 89% of all employer businesses and employ 18% of the private workforce. This has been one of the few article that I have read in a while where I actually feel like the economy is starting to turn around some. I know we have a long way to go but we have to start somewhere. We can’t only rely on small businesses to hire workers though we need to get the bigger businesses back on track also.

*Makeup*

3 ways to get a Small Business Loan, but not that easy

redskinrook — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 00:23:48 +0000

While looking on my favorite website, foxnews.com, in the small business section. I ran across an article titled “3 Ways to get a Small Business Loan”. It had a lot of very interesting things in it. I had no idea that overall lending to small businesses had gone down by 7.9% in 2009 alone. It also doesn’t look to be picking up anytime soon. The three ways to go about getting loans in of course the bank, the internet and SBA loans. The best way to get a loan is still by going to a bank. The only thing is that not many banks are giving out loans right now. The banks can’t afford to give the loans away. Many small businesses, even the ones who are making a good profit in this economy, have to call usually four banks before they can find one to loan to them. President Obama is planning on fixing all of these problems but who knows what his plans consist of. I am hoping this problem is going to be getting fixed soon. How can any business grow and prosper if they can’t get money to invest and expand the business?

Could be A chance We Wont have Jobs.

redskinrook — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 01:56:48 +0000

I want to take this post to talk about something that I read this week that affects me on a personal level. As reported on Fox News in the article Japan Steel firms agree to Double Iron Ore Prices. In the article they report that Japan plans on raising the already high iron ore prices, at $77 per ton to $110 per ton. This is going to affect my future business that my father is running now. It is going to make it a lot of builders go out of business. No one wants to build a building that cost double just for one material. I just hope my father can keep his office’s doors open for business. How can we turn our economy around when we can’t even afford to build?

I am now starting to worry for me and my fellow classmates if we can get jobs when our time in school is up. It seems to me as though the prices of things are going up and so are taxes. While at the same time the job market is not growing at all. I ask all of you what can we do as citizens to help our nation out? I hope we can get all of our problems turned around within the next few years. I feel like we haven’t done anything to help the American people out we have just helped the government out.

Stimulus Bill = Goverment Jobs

redskinrook — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 16:35:00 +0000

Is the government stimulus bill working? Many of officials see the bill as not creating anything for the American people. The bill is said to have created many government jobs and help to keep those jobs in good working order/ where are the jobs for the rest of the country? A good article that goes into the job loss and how we are recovering is by fox news titled “McConnell: Tiger Woods, John Edwards Had Better Years than Stimulus”. The article refers to the fact that even Tiger and John had a bad year in the media, that the stimulus bill had an even worse year. How can we put our trust into a bill that has raised the unemployment rate only .5% in a year? The bill was supposed to make new jobs for everyone in the country, yet when and where have you seen the money being used? I feel like the bill was a great idea but it is not working out to make new and long lasting jobs for the common, everyday American worker. I also know, however, that they are some people who think that the bill has helped a whole lot and that we are almost out of this rescission. Well I’m sorry to tell you all but we will still be feeling these effects for a while to come. Any country that enters a war is going to see economic hardships, and the people who blame this all on bush have to think back because at the time every American wanted to go and fight overseas. We wanted the war ALL of us wanted the war. It is time we stop blaming our officials and look at ourselves as part of the problem too. Now all we need is a good plan that works to get us out of these times. America needs job creation.

Article at http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/02/21/mcconnell-tiger-woods-john-edwards-better-years-stimulus/?test=latestnews.

Snow Shortage in Vancouver

redskinrook — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 16:56:32 +0000

In just a few short weeks the winter Olympics in Vancouver will begin. The only problem right now is that Canada is having one of the warmest winters in history. This means there is a snow shortage for the winter games. This is the first time that I can remember that the winter games has had a snow shortage. Not all of the mountains where the events are being held are in need of snow but most are. The Canadian government is now shipping and trucking in snow to be put on the mountains. The main summit that needs the snow is the one on which the snowboarding events are being held. They are saying that the events will go as planned so there is nothing to worry about. Here is a good video talking more about the trucking in of snow http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/35225283#35198500. The main thing that crosses my mind when I hear about this shortage, is this global warming? Or is Canada just having a heat wave? One of the main reasons I ask myself this question is that here in east Tennessee we have seen more snow in one weekend than I saw most of my life growing up in the same city. Yet it sounds like Vancouver is going to go off without a hitch and will give us all a lot of great athletes to watch. Good luck to everyone who is representing their countries and GO USA!!

My Favorite Website…Foxnews.com compaired to CNN.com

redskinrook — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 19:30:36 +0000

There are many things that can attract people to homepages on a website. When you’re looking at a website you don’t think about it but the first page you see on the site is like the cover of a book. The creator must grab your attention and hold it so that you will look deeper into their website. For instance look at two of the biggest general news websites in the nation foxnews.com and cnn.com. Both websites have completely different views on just about every piece of news and information. Yet one can easily find some similarities in their websites, but both have their noticeable differences also.

Foxnews.com is my personal favorite news website. It is so easy to navigate from one page to another and of course they cover every type of news there is. On the top of the page it has all of their news covering categories separated into links. When you first get on the site there is usually only one big picture that you see. It also has all the biggest news stories in big bold blue letters and the smaller or older stories in a smaller blue bold text. They also keep up the stock market ticker to tell you which stocks are going up and down. The main thing I like about this website is that with the articles they put small pictures to catch your attention and make you want to read on. They also keep their advertisements off to the side and don’t have them popping up on your screen or right in the middle of the page where it’s the only thing you can see. Another big thing that stood out about fox news is the color they chose was calming and not to over powering they went with the white back ground and blue text. They also have the patriotic red white and blue flag in the top left corner with their emblem.

Cnn.com approached their website with a little different view on things. Just like with foxnews.com CNN has a bar full of links to different subsets of news from sports to travel. Just like fox CNN also went with a blue text color. They however chose the color red for the top of their page. One of the biggest downfalls to this website is how busy it is. There is so much to read and most of the text is so small it is hard to read sometimes. One thing that sets the CNN.com site apart from the fox news site is that CNN post a lot of videos. They have a whole four inch by four inch box of just videos. Some people might like to look at all of the videos and some of them are probably interesting. However the combination of all the videos, three side by side big pictures of current news events and the cluster of small font word this website becomes too cluttered. When a site try’s to put too much information onto one page it can make people not want to read on.

When it comes to writing and journalism the writer has to get his or her audience’s attention. The same is true for a website and website creators. It seems as though blue text is one of the easiest ways to get people to read the text, and big bold letters that pop off the page are always helpful in getting attention of anyone. Foxnews.com got my attention faster than any other site. It was easy to follow and didn’t seem to busy. It had pictures but they weren’t so overpowering that you forgot there was a story to go along with them. I will return to fox news for all of my general news because their site keeps my attention and follows the same views that I have on many things and it is also not a boring website. On the other hand, CNN.com had many of the same things on the site as fox news did and probably cover many of the same stories. Yet the way they had theirs laid out did not appeal to me. It was way too cluttered and messy; it also had a lot of videos. Which videos might be liked by many people but when I think of a news website I want to read some news stories. I can watch a report from a reporter anytime. CNN also used a smaller font which I think makes the site look like a lot of useless information that no one wants to read. All news websites are going to give the American people the news and stories they crave it is just a matter of finding one that appeals to you as an individual.

View on the State of the Union

redskinrook — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 23:44:52 +0000

On Wednesday night the world turned in to hear president Obama’s first State of the Union address. The speech as everyone we have heard from Mr. Obama was well thought out and said, yet a lot of people including myself didn’t agree with everything he was saying. The one thing everyone in America could agree on in the speech was the switch from health care reform to job creation. The number one thing that will pick the economy back up is job creation and helping the jobs that are still around to remain and grow. I also must say I liked the thought of helping education and public schools. Having seen how poorly funded public schools can be first hand this proposal hit home. Even though the president had some great points and seems to be going in the right direction in this new decade, he is still doing a lot many people do not like. The health care reform he has been pushing down ever American throat is nowhere near ready to be put into effect. He should have been able to pick up on this since that bill can’t even get passed. Also one of the main things I couldn’t help but noticing while watching the address was the reactions of the parties. The whole time the president was talking the camera kept scanning the crowd in which you could see senators and others whispering to each other. The whole time all you could ask yourself was what are they thinking and saying to each other. I found a lot of their view points at www.cnn.com/2010/POLITICS/01/27/SOTU.reax/index.html. Another good site to look at for some views on the speech is www.foxnews.com/ opinion/2010/01/27/kevin-mccullough-obama-state-union-supreme-court-justice-terror/. I hope our economy will turn around like the president is saying it will we all need it to. GOD BLESS AMERICA.