3 Main Differences Between Government and Business or Differences in Managing One VS. The Other

Recent events have illustrated three vital differences between government and private industry.

The first is that government does not face consequences the same way businesses do. The President just rolled out a budget with a deficit of $1.3 trillion dollars. The federal government has been running gigantic budget deficits for decades. The national debt has passed $14 trillion. Even if Enron had hired Bernie Madoff to replace Paul Krugman, it could not have endured such incredible fiscal irresponsibility for so long. Businesses faced with budget shortfalls make hard decisions in order to remain competitive. If management fails to do so, it faces bankruptcy, the wrath of shareholders, and the loss of vitally needed credit.

Government doesn’t make tough decisions like that. It simply raises taxes or runs up the deficit. It does not view itself as “competitive” – it would use its power to crush private-sector competitors who threatened its interests, as the medical insurance industry will discover to our collective sorrow, if anything resembling ObamaCare is passed into law. For the State, competition ceases when legislation is signed. No matter how badly the Barack Obama People’s Health Insurance Company performs, it will never go out of business… at least, not until the entire economic system has collapsed around it.

Individual politicians are likewise insulated from consequence. It’s extremely rare to see a powerful politician’s career end because of a single mistake. No matter how poorly Obama performs as the CEO of Government Motors, it will not be the sole, or even primary, reason he loses his job – and his job is almost absolutely secure for another three years, regardless of how unpopular he becomes.

Politicians even enjoy significant protection from outright criminal wrongdoing, which they occasionally sell to favored businessmen. No level of corruption seems capable of rousing Eric Holder’s Justice Department from its long afternoon nap. Some states don’t mind voting for politicians they can barely see through the ethical clouds swirling around them, as long as they bring home enough pork for key constituencies. The political class is simply immune to the aggressive law enforcement that purges the worst fraud from the private sector, when the hungry roots of politics are kept from digging too deeply into the soil of industry.

A second difference between the private sector and Big Government is the nature of accountability. When you hear someone pontificate about bringing more “accountability” to government, always remember this is a relative scale, which ends far below the point where it begins for private businesses. The government is the primary source of information about itself, and it feels entitled to suppress what it can’t be bothered to distort, such as the SEC documents covering the AIG bailout. Much of the news we receive about the government comes from leaks and background talks, given to a media deeply sympathetic to its goals. The federal government is also entrusted with the task of policing itself, a job it feels very relaxed about performing. The government could not begin to pass the kind of accounting audit it requires from businesses.

Even if the government was meticulous about reporting on its performance, and the media dutifully passed along this information without filters, how could ordinary citizens hope to analyze the performance of an incomprehensibly huge super-State? If your auto mechanic consistently overcharged you for shoddy work, you’d find a new mechanic. What would you do if your auto mechanic was also your doctor, grocer, chief of police, and principal of your children’s school? The idea that citizens influence government with their votes presumes a level of awareness and informed response that simply cannot exist, when the State becomes as bloated as ours. We seem to be on the edge of a political earthquake in 2010, but look at what it took to get us here. Voters won’t display the passion and organization necessary to “fire” an immense national government until it has failed comprehensively… and very expensively.

The other obvious difference between government and the private sector is the government’s monopoly on the use of force. The closest a private industry can come to compulsion are monopolistic practices, which government polices against, but is also willing to perpetrate itself. Every action taken by the government involves compulsion: the collection of taxes and the enforcement of regulations. Those little targeted tax cut ideas salted through President Obama’s first State of the Union address are another form of compulsion – you have to do what the government wants, in order to enjoy those tax-cut crumbs, and everyone who refuses to comply with the designs of the State will subsidize you.

Few people would be eager to do business with a company that somehow acquired the government’s combination of insulation from consequence, unaccountability, and compulsive force. Allowing the government to pretend it’s a giant corporation is a terrible mistake. Those who make that mistake tend to underestimate the difficulty of running a business, and the intense competitive pressure which leads to the innovations behind our material abundance. Ask a small business owner or corporate executive about the tough choices and risks he or she must undertake on a regular basis, then ask if they would subject themselves to such pressure if they didn’t have to. They would laugh and tell you how much they’d like their mistakes to be subsidized, their credit to be effectively unlimited, or their competition to be held off at gunpoint.

Posted via email from Global Politics

Scientific case for man-made global warming fears is dead

By:

 Marc Morano | 10/23/11 8:05 PM
OpEd Contributor

Many of the proponents of man-made global warming are now claiming that climate change is worse than they predicted. According to an Oct. 18, 2011, Daily Climate article, global warming activists claim that the "evidence builds that scientists underplay climate impacts," and "if anything, global climate disruption is likely to be significantly worse than has been suggested."

But a forthcoming Climate Depot A-Z Climate Reality Check report on the failure of the science behind man-made global warming theory will shatter any such illusions that the climate is "worse than we thought." Recent scientific data and developments reveal that Mother Nature is playing a cruel joke on the promoters of man-made climate fears.

The scientific reality is that on virtually every claim, the scientific case for man-made climate fears has collapsed. The only thing "worse than we thought" is the shoddy journalism of the mainstream media, which parrots global warming activists' baseless talking points.

Consider these facts:

The Antarctic sea ice extent has been at or near record extent in the past few summers; the Arctic has rebounded in recent years since the low point in 2007; polar bears are thriving; the sea level is not showing acceleration and is actually dropping; cholera and malaria are failing to follow global warming predictions; Mount Kilimanjaro-melt fears are being made a mockery by gains in snow cover; global temperatures have been holding steady for a decade or more as many scientists are predicting global cooling is ahead; deaths because of extreme weather are radically declining; global tropical cyclone activity is near historic lows; the frequency of major U.S. hurricanes has declined; the oceans are missing their predicted heat content; big tornadoes have dramatically declined since the 1970s; droughts are neither historically unusual nor caused by mankind; there is no evidence we are currently having unusual weather; scandals continue to rock the climate fear movement; the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has been exposed as being a hotbed of environmental activists; and scientists continue to dissent at a rapid pace.

Even President Obama has been criticized by former Vice President Gore for failing to do enough when it comes to climate change legislation. The now-defunct congressional climate bill failed because the Democrats realized it was political suicide. The new political expediency in Washington is global warming skepticism. The U.N. global warming treaty process lies in shambles.

The promoters of man-made climate fears are now reduced to claiming -- as University of California, Berkeley, professor Richard Muller did last week -- that any warming trend equals some sort of "proof" of man-made warming. Those of us who laugh at Gore's mythical "climate crisis" tip our hat to Obama for not pushing very hard for the Congressional Climate Bill and for being so tepid at U.N. climate conferences.

Of course, Obama is still threatening to unleash the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to regulate that harmless trace essential gas we exhale from our mouths -- CO2 -- but that effort will most likely wait until after the next presidential election.

As for Gore and the U.N.'s scientific claims, it has been quite a joy to watch the entire man-made global warming fear movement disintegrate before our eyes. A movement that had the divisive Gore as its face was bound to fail. A movement that utilized the scandal-ridden U.N. -- which is massively distrusted by the American people -- as the repository of science was doomed to fail. Gore is now reduced to pointing to every storm, flood, hurricane or tornado as proof of man-made global warming.

But a scientific moment of clarity is now prevailing: The U.N. and Congress do not have the power to legislate, tax or regulate the weather.

Professor emeritus of biogeography Philip Stott of the University of London explained the crux of the entire global warming debate when he rebutted the notion that CO2 is the main climate driver.

"As I have said, over and over again, the fundamental point has always been this: Climate change is governed by hundreds of factors, or variables, and the very idea that we can manage climate change predictably by understanding and manipulating at the margins one politically-selected factor (CO2), is as misguided as it gets," Stott wrote.

To put it bluntly, the great man-made global warming catastrophe that was predicted has been canceled! And that is a victory for science.

Marc Morano is publisher of Climate Depot and a former staff member of the U.S. Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.

Posted via email from Enviromenment

'Till Death Do US Part!!

Gordon and Norma Yeager were practically inseparable from the day they married in 1939 and that devotion lasted to their final hour in an Iowa hospital.

While Gordon was the life of the party, Norma provided the steady hand that kept their family of four together during the seventy-two years of their marriage. According to their son Dennis,

"They just loved being together. Everybody argues once in awhile, but they still, he said 'I have to stick around. I can't go until she does because I have to stay here for her and she would say the same thing,'"

Following a car accident, the couple was rushed to the hospital and put in the same intensive care unit where they lay holding hands until Gordon passed away at 3:38 pm. The family surrounding them was confused that he was still registering a heartbeat without breathing, until doctors explained the heartbeat was that of Norma, who died exactly an hour later and never let go until the end.

Posted via email from Kleerstreem's Posterous

My Best to the Awesome Glitter Rose

THIS COMMUNICATION IS ALL ABOUT GLITTER ROSE, HOST OF OUR OPEN MIC FOR 5 YEARS.

FRIDAY NIGHT 10/21- A SENDOFF PARTY FOR GLITTER ROSE AND SISTER MARY IS TAKING PLACE AT OUR CLUB.

IF THERE IS ANY JUSTICE IN THE MUSIC BUSINESS, GLITTER WILL
FIND HER NICHE AND BECAME A BIG HIT.

IN ALL MY YEARS OF BEING IN THE MUSIC BUSINESS (35 IN MARCH)
I  HAVE NEVER MET ANYONE WORK SO HARD AND ABOVE BOARD,  CONSISTENTLY
PURSUING THE PATHS THAT ARE NEEDED FOR RECOGNITION AND SUCCESS.

THERE IS NO DOUBT THAT SHE HAS THE TALENT, LOOKS AND STAGE PRESENCE THAT IT TAKES TO MAKE IT TO THE TIPPING POINT. SHE IS ONLY 26 AND BONNIE RAITT DIDN'T FIND SUCCESS UNTIL HER 30'S AND WILLIE NELSON WAS 38 BEFORE HE
BECAME THE HIT "OUTLAW". ONCE SHE FINDS HER NICHE, YOU WILL BE SAYING, "I REMEMBER WHEN..."  BUT YOU HAVE TO SEE HER FIRST...

SO COME SEE HER ON FRIDAY NIGHT AND HELP SEND HER OFF WITH A BIG
"WE ARE GOING TO MISS YOU!" HUG.

SHE WILL BE BACK IN APRIL FOR A CD RELEASE, AND BY THEN,
WHO KNOWS, MAYBE OPENING FOR A LADY GAGA TOUR.

THANKS,

PD

Posted via email from Music Business Information

Perry to unveil flat tax plan!!!

By: Alexander Burns

Rick Perry will outline a plan next week to replace the U.S. tax code with a federal “flat tax,” he told an audience in Las Vegas Wednesday.

Perry’s plan, he told the Western Republican Leadership Conference, “starts with scrapping the three million words of the current tax code, starting over with something simpler: a flat tax.”

“I want to make the tax code so simple that even Timothy Geithner can file his taxes on time,” Perry said, in a reference to the Treasury secretary’s personal tax slip-ups.

The Texas governor is scheduled to give an October 25 speech on jobs and taxes, the second of several policy addresses he’s delivering this month.

Perry hasn’t spelled out the details of his “flat tax” plan yet, but he began to draw a contrast in Tuesday night’s debate between his approach to the issue and Herman Cain’s catchy – and increasingly scrutinized – “9-9-9” plan.

Voters, Perry said, are “not interested in 9-9-9. What they're interested in is flatter and fairer.”

The idea of replacing the current, progressive tax system with a flat tax isn’t a new one: Steve Forbes made it a centerpiece of his presidential campaigns. But no candidate as high-profile as Perry has yet made it a major part of the 2012 race.

Perry didn’t mention any of his Republican opponents by name in his speech to the Western GOP group Wednesday, but he continued to cast himself as the consistent conservative in the race, in an implicit contrast with Mitt Romney.

“I am not the candidate of the establishment. You won’t hear a lot of shape-shifting nuance from me,” he said, promising “unbridled truth” instead.

Posted via email from Global Politics

Why Did Jesus Feel That God Had Abandoned Him?

By Billy Graham,

Q: What did Jesus mean when He said somewhere that God had abandoned Him? This has always puzzled me, because if Jesus was actually the Son of God, then how could God abandon Him? -- Mrs. J.K. 

A: You're referring to some of Jesus' last recorded words, spoken while He was dying on the cross. The Bible says that He "cried out in a loud voice... 'My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?'" (Mark 15:34). 

What did He mean by this? Was He suddenly filled with doubt, wondering if He had misunderstood the mission God had given Him? Or was He filled with despair, concluding He was a failure and all His work was in vain? After all (some have said), the crowds had turned against Him, and seemingly His ministry had come to an abrupt end. 

But in reality His words point to something far different. They point to the fact that when Jesus died on the cross, all our sins -- without exception -- were transferred to Him. He was without sin, for He was God in human flesh. But as He died all our sins were placed on Him, and He became the final and complete sacrifice for our sins. And in that moment He was banished from the presence of God, for sin cannot exist in God's presence. His cry speaks of this truth; He endured the separation from God that you and I deserve. 

This is a profound truth -- and yet it also should bring us great comfort. Because Christ died for us, we need not fear death or Hell or judgment! The Bible says, "For Christ died for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God" (1 Peter 3:18). Are you trusting Him alone for your salvation? 

Posted via email from Religion

Axelrod On Mitty-Boy!

Obama campaign advisor David Axelrod slammed Mitt Romney for changing positions on major issues throughout his political career, questioning the "core principles" of the presumptive front-runner for the GOP presidential nomination. 

"I think there's this question about what his core principles are," Axelrod said, citing changes in Romney's positions from earlier in his political career when he was running for U.S. Senate and Massachusetts governor. "Then he was a pro choice, pro gay rights, pro environmental candidate for office. Then he decided to run for president. Did a 180 on all of that." 

"So time and time and time again he shifts—and you get the feeling that there is no principle too large for him to throw over in pursuit of political office," Axelrod added. 

Axelrod has recently turned a laser-like focus to Romney, holding a conference call last Wednesday to critique Romney's record and his remarks at last Tuesday's GOP debate. 

"If I were Governor Romney I'd be worried about all these changes in position,” Axelrod told This Week anchor Christiane Amanpour in regards to the kind of message that sends to voters.

While Romney has solidified his front-runner status through strong fundraising and debate performances, Axelrod said he is not certain if he will be the eventual Republican nominee, noting how fluid the race has been in recent months. 

Posted via email from Global Politics

Facebook Raises More Red Flags

Black Budget and Manhattan II Project (Conclusion)

Conclusion

The method used in guiding the analysis in this report is to simply follow the money trail created by the CIA’s black budget that enables a number of important insights to be drawn by the institutions playing key roles in generating, protecting and distributing black budget funds. Critical in this analysis has been the experience of individuals and companies such as Catherine Fitts and Hamilton Securities that experienced what evidence indicates was a CIA orchestrated covert campaign to discredit the financial tracking reforms that threatened to make more transparent the financial flows of HUD and other government agencies. The systematic accounting problems experienced by HUD and other agencies points to the existence of an unofficial black budget of up one trillion dollars annually. The size of the black budget and the CIA activities used to generate funds for it, point to a vast secret network of projects that is funded outside of the normal Congressional appropriation process.  Consequently, what follows is a discussion of some of the primary conclusions that can be drawn and arguments made concerning the CIA’s ‘unofficial’ black budget and the Manhattan II project it has been argued to fund.

 

It is worth repeating that the CIA is legally authorized by Congress to transfer, “without regard to any provisions of law”, funds from other government agencies for the generation of a black budget. There is strong evidence that the CIA uses this power to disregard law to complement whatever funds it can generate through Congressional appropriations, with funds gained through the drugs trade and organized crime that is laundered through different government agencies. The total annual sum of the black budget is best estimated in the form of accounting anomalies in the main departmental recipient of all black budget funds, the DoD, and is in the vicinity of 1.1 trillion dollars that funds a network of classified intelligence activities and covert operations that collectively form a second Manhattan Project.

 

The oversight of Manhattan project occurs outside of the conventional oversight system that can be easily compromised by partisan politics. The oversight system that has evolved has been very successful in dividing different functions for Manhattan II in ways that balance institutional rivalries between national security organizations without compromising secrecy. Thus the CIA generates the black budget that in turns transfers these funds to projects that are institutionally located in the military intelligence and special operations units of the DoD. The various military intelligence agencies in turn hire private contractors and/or provide the necessary military resources for these covert programs to be conducted in national laboratories, military bases, private corporations or other classified locations. The program managers of each of the classified projects associated with Manhattan II answer directly to an ‘executive committee’ that is outside of the regular oversight process in DoD, CIA, Congress and the Executive Office. The Joint Chiefs of Staff have control of the testing and applications of Manhattan II products that are conducted in collaboration with the intelligence community. The respective intelligence, defense and appropriations committees in the US Congress provide legitimacy for Manhattan II and the black budget that funds it by not revoking the budgetary powers allocated to the CIA through the 1949 CIA Act. Finally, the Executive Office through the National Security Council issues the necessary executive orders/NSC directives to coordinate the functions and activities in all the branches of government in order to secretly run Manhattan II. Thus each branch of the national security system plays an important role in Manhattan II, without being fully in control of it, thereby insuring a division of powers according to different functions required for Manhattan II. Effective oversight of Manhattan II, however, comes from an ‘executive committee’ that is immune to the partisan political process and whose oversight power and control of resources makes it virtually a ‘shadow government’.

It needs to be emphasized that the ‘unofficial’ black budget and Manhattan Project have legally evolved in ways to respond to a national security contingency that is yet to be revealed to the American public. The classified adversary that this elaborate secret system has been developed to respond to is arguably a potential threat that warrants an extraordinary network of covert programs that dwarf the original Manhattan Project and annually consume as much as 1.1 trillion dollars in a non-transparent manner. More disturbingly, the importance of Manhattan II is such that the CIA has evidently used organized criminal networks and the drug trade as sources to partially fund Manhattan II.

 

It is unclear when the full scope and impact of Manhattan II will be disclosed to the American public. However, the consequences in terms of increased loss of trust in federal government agencies, loss of morale among senior agency officials instructed to cover up black budget transactions, non-transparency in the flow of government appropriations, targeting of policy makers and business leaders who discover the fraudulent accounting and money laundering that occurs with the black budget, all warrant a serious examination of the need for maintaining the secrecy of Manhattan II and the black budget that funds it. Finally, the classified adversary against whom Manhattan II is directed requires immediate declassification due to the inherent dangers of dealing with what appears to be an undisclosed security threat in a non-transparent and unaccountable manner, and totally outside of the moral/legal restrictions that emerge from vigorous public debate in democratic societies.

Consequently, effective oversight of Manhattan II, comes from an ‘executive committee’ especially established in a way that would make it immune to the partisan political process thus ensuring strict secrecy can be preserved, and politically motivated leaks prevented. The power and resources delegated to this ‘executive oversight committee’ for Manhattan II by the Executive Office, and its role in ensuring that ‘black budget’ funds are correctly used and kept secret from the general public, justifies a description of it as a ‘shadow government’.

 

Governor Rick Perry is For/Against Many Things!

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: KSE Alford <kleerstreem@gmail.com>
Date: Thu, Oct 13, 2011 at 1:14 PM
Subject: Governor Rick Perry is For/Against Many Things!
To: post@rperrypresident.posterous.com

Thanks to Michelet Turkovich Carsrud and Kathy Gilone Douglas for providing this information!

LISTEN UP FOLKS!! It's one thing to be a Republican, it's a whole-nother thing to be Conservative. I know conservative Republican's & Democrats both but all those for LESS GOVERNMENT IN YOUR LIFE- this is YOUR MAN TOO!! Don't turn your nose up at a man with EXPERIENCE vs one w/ NONE when it comes to running a 'small country' which is what Texas IS! NOBODY has the experience to fill the seat of Presidency like Rick Perry...thats just the FACTS! Don't look for perfection- look for consistency in ACTION, look at the COMPANY a man keeps, look at his VALUES, look to see where he has meant ''I'M SORRY" & acknowledged his wrong...THAT IS a GOOD man who IS accountable for his actions. - REMEMBER: Believe NONE of what you HEAR & only HALF of what you SEE (not read!)... And MOST IMPORTANT- PRAY for DISCERNMENT that your MIND be lead by your HEART & that you SPEAK OUT the TRUTHS you feel led to SHARE so that you become an EXAMPLE to the YOUNG PEOPLE who are not experienced enough to understand...

Rick Perry is:

Opposed to Abortion
Opposed to Gun Control
Opposed to a Large Federal Government
Opposed to Excessive Taxation
Opposed to Excessive Government Regulation
Opposed to Excessive Government Spending
Opposed to Government Controls on Drilling 
Opposed to Federal Control of Schools
Opposed to Open Borders
Opposed to Amnesty for Illegals
Opposed to Progressive Socialistic Programs which take away Civil Liberties
Opposed to Obamacare

"My friend Rick Perry knows that it is the American people who make this country great and not Washington. With appropriate respect for both our rich history and the practical needs of today, Rick sees a bright future for America, based on freedom and limited government." (Bobby Jindal, Governor of Louisiana )

"Rick Perry has hit the proverbial nail on the head in FED UP!, making a powerful case for a return to limited government and the restoration of the proper balance of power between Washington and the states. As Governor of Texas, he has seen firsthand the greatness of America and the prosperity we can enjoy when we empower people and get government out of the way. He explains in detail the historical, constitutional, and practical reasons why a government closest to the people protects liberty, and lays out the path to right the ship - citizen involvement and engagement to hold politicians accountable. No citizen should skip this book - your future depends on getting this right." (Rush Limbaugh )

"In FED UP!, Governor Perry explains that we can and will save America by taking necessary steps to restore the proper balance of power between federal and state government. He understands what seemingly few other prominent politicians do-that America's greatness stems from the people and our collective respect for the Constitution, not from the 'geniuses' in Washington." (Mark Levin )

"FED UP! lays out the truth of how far our Washington politicians have driven this nation off track. It's refreshing to read that at least one of our leaders understood what my dad always knew. The Government works for the people and not the other way around." (Michael Reagan ) 

Read the book FED UP! It outlines how Rick Perry would lead our country.

Posted via email from Global Politics

The Enhanced Precision Political Quiz...in 2D

Take the Nolan Chart Based Political Quiz Liberty or tyranny? Where do you stand? Take the quiz and find out. This quiz resembles the World's Smallest, but has a much higher degree of precision. And I have a nice selection of readings for you at the end.
Political Quiz Statistics See how other people scored.

Result Screens Have you taken this quiz in the past but forgotten the recommended links and books? You can reach your result page without retaking the quiz by clicking the appropriate link below. You can also see the recommendations given to people who scored differently from you. Moderate Smaller Government Centrist Liberal-Leaning Centrist Conservative-Leaning Centrist Bigger Government Centrist Social Liberal Economic Liberal Radical Liberal Economic Conservative Social Conservative Radical Conservative Left-Leaning Freedom Lover Right-Leaning Freedom Lover Libertarian Authoritarian Totalitarian

Politics Outside of the Box Here you will find which political party best matches your views. But if you don't like any of them, I also have a guide on how to start a political party in the U.S. Third party politics is hard, because we have primitive plurality voting instead of Score voting. However, have have found two loopholes in our current voting system. Or maybe you'd like to reform one of the existing political parties to take into account your concerns. Maybe you like your government small, but you think the rich are too powerful. Or maybe you'd like the government to treat most people like adults but you would like some welfare that takes care of the poor. Or maybe you'd like to get rid of the giant welfare state bureaucracy but still have the government give everyone a generous stipend of free money as a first order wealth transfer and leave the rest to charity. Does this make you a conservative or a liberal? Maybe you'd like to stop global warming but don't want to be micro-managed by eco bureaucrats. Well a carbon tax might just be your thing. Use it to replace the personal income tax and you get to be green and Republican at the same time. (So which party should you join??) Religion is a major source of contention and opportunities for politicians to grandstand and divert attention from other issues. To what degree should we enforce morality? And whose? Is the United states a Christian Nation? If so, shouldn't we embrace the libertarian parts of the Biblical Law such as legal prostition or legal drugs? And how about that Biblical welfare system? Which political party is advocating that?

Posted via email from Global Politics

Transcript of my reminiscence of working for Steve Jobs....by Guy Kawasaki

Someone transcribed my impromptu reminiscence of Steve Jobs from the Social Media Examiner webinar. This is the text. Hat tip to Morgan Ramsey for doing this. You can also hear the audio version here.

I don't know if everybody has heard, but about 10 minutes ago, Apple announced that Steve Jobs died today. And so, I have to tell you, I don't think it's appropriate nor probably the best thing to do for any of us to necessarily be focusing on Facebook marketing right now.

And so, I am going to talk about Steve Jobs and Apple, and what Steve has meant to me, what Steve has meant to the industry, and personal computing, and just Internet and everything, if you don't mind, rather than talking about Facebook marketing. I hope that is okay with all of you.

This announcement literally happened as we were prepping and getting all our things together for the conference that we are now attending. It could not have happened with less notice to us. So, I hope it's okay with you that I'm going to switch topics completely.

And my phone, my cell phone and my other phone, is just ringing off the hook with people trying to get quotes from me. But I'm going to do this webinar instead.

Here's the story. I joined Apple in 1983. My past at Apple was that I interviewed for a job with Apple the first time in order to work in what was called the Apple University Consortium. And the Apple University Consortium was Steve Jobs' vision that the place to seed Macintoshes would be universities.

At the time, K-12 was pretty much dominated by the Apple II, so he saw that the next level of computing would be, of course, colleges. So he created a program, it was headed by a guy named Dan'l Lewin, whose charter was to convince universities to use Macintoshes. And it started with places like Carnegie Mellon and Stanford.

The first job I interviewed was to work in that group. I don't know, it just wasn't a good fit for me. So about six months went by and then the second job I interviewed for at Apple was to be software evangelist. And a software evangelist job was to meet with soft and hard companies and convince them to do Macintosh products.

That's the job that I took. The second job that I tried for at Apple. And if you really want to know the inside story, the reason why I got that job is because my college classmate Mike Boich was working in the Mac division. And so he hired me because we knew each other, we were friends. So one could say it was purely nepotism.

Let's talk about the Macintosh division. The Macintosh division, I think, was probably the greatest collection of egomaniacs in the history of California, and that is saying a lot, believe me. So the closest thing I can say to describing what it was like to work there…

You know how after the Superbowl, there's a TV camera on the winning quarterback and the TV camera says, "Where are you going to go now?" to the quarterback, and the quarterback says, "I'm going to Disneyland." Well, working in the Macintosh division in the mid 80s was like working at Disneyland, or more accurately, being paid to go to Disneyland.

Basically, the division was on a mission, a mission from Steve, as opposed to God. And this mission from Steve was that we wanted to prevent worldwide domination of information and freedom from IBM. So we looked at IBM as the enemy.

This was the whole point of the 1984 commercial. That if IBM ruled the world, it would be boring, totalitarian, George Orwellian--just an ugly society of mediocrity and conformity and thought control. And Apple was going to send the proverbial act into the image of big brother. It was religious fervor in the sense that we were fighting a mighty opposite. Which was IBM, the totalitarian mainframe company.

And so we were I'd say about 50 people. We had a building on Mariani Drive. There's a story about how someone put a pirate flag above the building, that's true. Steve Capps, the person who wrote the Finder, got a pirate flag and put it up there because we were going to be pirates. Knock the establishment. This was Steve's division.

What we did is we worked very, very hard because we truly thought we were on a mission to improve people's creativity and productivity and prevent totalitarianism, primarily of IBM. The group was a very interesting collection of people. There were people like me who had MBAs, and I was hired despite having an MBA.

There were people like Burrell Smith, who Steve found working in an Apple II repair department. Andy Hertzfeld, who wrote much of the Macintosh ROMs and was an old -- or, not old, no one was old at the time -- but an experienced Apple II programmer. It was a collection of just great software and hardware engineers.

There were artists like Susan Kerr, who created much of the early graphics and icons of Macintosh. Joanna Hoffmann was the first person who did the marketing function for the division. Mike Boich, as I said who I worked for, he and I went to Stanford together. He went to HP, the calculator division of HP in Corvalis. He was recruited out of there.

The person who recruited him was a guy named Mike Murray. Mike Murray was the director of marketing of the Macintosh division. Subsequently, he went to work for Microsoft and he became Microsoft's VP of HR. So, it was a merry band of pirates. Steve himself had only attended one semester of Reed, a college in Oregon, so here we were, on paper not so qualified.

We had a few PhDs. One person was Bruce Horn, he was a PhD student from I believe Carnegie Mellon. He was the coauthor of the Finder with Steve Capps. And so, it was a great place to work because, man, we were going to change frickin' history. And I can't tell you how euphoric it was to work there. Because it was such bright people and we had such a mission to change the world. So that was the Macintosh division. I guess one of the high points of that division… [interrupted by vibrating phone]

Anyway this was the division. Some aspects of the division that you might interesting. Steve bought the division a Bösendorfer Grand Piano. And some of the people played Bösendorfer Grand Piano. There was a BMW motorcycle for the division. We also had a travel policy that any flight over two hours qualified for first class. I tended to interpret that rule as the two hours begins at the moment you leave your apartment. So I lived in Los Altos. Los Altos to SFO can be 45 minutes or so, so I basically flew first class everywhere. It was a great time.

Across the street was the Lisa division. The Lisa division was creating basically a very large Macintosh. But it was $7,000. Big footprint. Arguably, the Lisa taught us many lessons that we applied to the Macintosh and made Macintosh successful. A social media analogy would be that Google Buzz is to Google Plus was Lisa is to Macintosh. So that was the Macintosh division. Macintosh was announced on January 24, 1984, in De Anza College where Steve unveiled it. At the time, he was not wearing a black mock turtleneck. His thing was a double-breasted suit with a bowtie. So he introduced it, and that was one of the most enchanting moments of my life: to watch Macintosh be introduced by Steve Jobs.

The first time I saw a Macintosh was in the back of that building, the Macintosh division building. At the time, I was in the jewelry business and my friend Mike Boich showed me a Macintosh, and I was an Apple II user and that was a religious experience also because back then with an Apple II you were fortunate if you had a 24x80 terminal screen, you moved the cursor around with cursor keys. Graphics was using Xs and Os to draw things. The first time you saw a Mac, right, was multiple fonts, and multiple sizes, and multiple styles—integration of text and graphics. And the first time you saw Mac Paint with graphics, paint cans, brushes—it was a magical experience.

Now, what happened after that was that we had a very successful launch. The goal was to sell a quarter million Macintoshes in the first hundred days and we achieved that goal. Back then, the whole thing with Macintoshes and developers were we told them three stories: it was a very rich technical environment, this great programming environment, very rich ROM set; we told them that it was a good financial bet because we were going to bring people to personal computing who had never used a personal computer before; and finally, it was a good hedge because at the time the IBM personal computer division was starting to publish software, so we were explaining to people that if IBM started publishing software in your segment under their own label, you would be dead. So that was our evangelism pitch.

And I think mostly what appealed to developers was the richness of the Macintosh programming environment. Back then, the decision was being made by engineers and nerds, not MBAs and marketing people. So that's what really sucked people in. It was very, very interesting albeit challenging programming environment.

SNow we're in mid-1984, things are going pretty good. We're selling a lot of Macs, had that post-launch glow. Sort of hit the wall because businesses were not embracing Macintoshes. It didn't have some crucial pieces of software thanks to me. It was slow in a lot of operations. It took us a good two years to significantly revise that product. I think mostly because we were still tired from shipping it at all.

And after that, there was what I called the Wonder Years. I wonder when there will be software, I wonder when we'll turn the corner. As businesses were rejecting it, we went through this period of euphoria, then we went through this period of down in the dumps. This is one of those major times when according to all the experts Apple was supposed to die. We brought in some adult supervision, i.e., John Sculley. A lot of interesting things happened. It culminated with some layoffs, culminated with a board decision picking between John Sculley and Steve Jobs.

So Steve Jobs was out. He went out and started NeXT: the big black cube computer built on UNIX. And things did not exactly pick up. A few years went by, they made Mike Spindler CEO, and then they made Gil Amelio CEO. Gil Amelio decided to buy NeXT, I think, for $400 million dollars. Steve came back to Apple first as an advisor, temporary, to help Gil and stuff. And then, eventually, Gil started imploding and Steve came back, introduced the iMac.

And from there, the rest is kind of history, right? So, the iMac, if you remember, it was that teardrop shape-looking computer that came in colors like blueberry and cherry and, I don't know, tangerine and stuff. That sort of, the industrial design of that computer, I think, was really sort of what rekindled people's enthusiasm for Macintosh. And fast forward a few years and we have things like the iPod and iPhone and iPad. Macintosh flipped to less than 5% market share; it subsequently has returned. I don't ever know if it will be more than 10%, but it's definitely on the upswing.

I can tell you with total certainty that Steve Jobs was a great, if not the greatest, influence in my life. From him I learned, one is an appreciation of design, an appreciation of elegance and simplicity. I learned how far you can push people, that you can get the best work out of people by pushing them with great challenges. Steve wasn't exactly a warm and fuzzy guy, but he got the best results out of people. He could drive you crazy because the trash can icon didn't look right or a certain shade of black wasn't black enough. He was heavily influenced by Paul Rand, the logo designer.

I consider it an honor to have worked for him in the Macintosh division. And only 100 or so people can say that, so what a time! What a time! And if you look back, no matter how you feel about Apple, you have to say it was among the starters of the personal computer industry. It definitely made the graphical user interface go mainstream. If you look at it, Steve Jobs created the, in a sense, the Apple I standard, the Apple II standard, the Macintosh standard, then he created his smartphone standard iPhone, iPod standard, iPad standard. Lots of companies and people are fortunate to create one revolution, but Steve Jobs arguably created four or five.

I truly do believe that if you look at all the CEOs over the history of business, I don't think there's a CEO who has done more for his employees, his shareholders, and his customers. The world is a lot worse off without Steve Jobs. May he rest in peace. But wow what a job he did for everybody, personally for me, and many, many people who worked for the Macintosh division. And I think in many ways, for many of the people who use Apple products that these Apple products made them more creative, more productive and brought joy and enchantment to their lives.

3 Major Reasons To Drive Fans To Your Website Instead Of Facebook & Social Media and more...

By Dave Cool, the Blogger In Residence at musician website and marketing platform Bandzoogle.

Do I really need a website for my music? With Facebook, Twitter, and all the musician-specific social networks out there, you might think that your own .COM is obsolete. But there are 3 very important reasons to drive fans to your website instead:

1) You own the address -

First and foremost, you own your .COM address. As long as you maintain it, it will always point to your website. This is powerful -- you are guaranteed to own that little slice of the Internet. Even if you switch companies that host your website, your .COM can be transferred, so your fans will always be able to find you.

This is not the case with your social networking profile. They can get bought out, lose out to competition, or simply become un-cool. Thousands of bands relied on their MySpace page as their home base, then switched over to Facebook (after printing their Myspace URL on their merch... ouch!).

This isn't limited to MySpace. Those of you who've been online since 2000 will remember sites like Garageband and MP3.com. Who knows what will happen in 5 years? Will Facebook still be around? Twitter? Google+? It might be an entirely new social networking site that will be "THE" place to have a profile. Your best bet is to make sure that you always have a place where fans can go to find out about your career.

One last point about social networks: if you're really unlucky, you may wake up to find your social network page repossessed. There have been many examples of MySpace doing this. Time will tell if this also happens at Facebook or Twitter. And although his page was not repossessed, one Montreal artist had his Facebook page (with 80,000 fans) hijacked by someone, who then spammed his fans. It can take a while for Facebook to sort out situations like that, and it's a great example of how you can lose control of your social networking page.

2) You Own the Experience -

With your website you also own the experience. You can control what your fans see, when they see it, and the messaging that you send to them. This means:

• No Distractions - Unlike with social networking sites, on your website there are no ads to distract your fans, and there also aren't dozens of other links vying for their attention. You're able to really focus on your music and your brand. And since you have your fan's full attention, you can then direct them to your call to action to deepen their connection.
• No Design Limits - With your own website, you don't have any design limits or restrictions. If you want to add a blog, or put a hi-res press kit for download, or even a special "fan-only" page, you can. Your website gives you the opportunity to make a deeper connection with your fans, without the limits of the one-size-fits-all social networks.
• A Better Buying Experience - If you sell music or merch, your own website is even more critical. Social networking sales tools force fans to interact within a tiny widget, or redirect them to another website altogether to complete the transaction. Having your own store on your own site allows you to give your fans a seamless buying experience, and full control over what that experience is.

3) You Own your Data -

On your .COM site, you can get far more detail on your fans than what you can get on a social networking site. Stuff like:

• How many people previewed my track last week?
• Which ones downloaded it?
• Did they skip ahead to a specific track?
• Where do those fans live?
• What site brought them here?

More than stats, you also own your fan list. You probably noticed that you can't move your old MySpace fans to Facebook. That's because you don't own that fan list, MySpace does. Same thing could happen whenever the next hot social network appears. There is no easy "export from Facebook" option!

Remember, your list of fan emails is gold. It allows you to always maintain contact with your fans, regardless which social networks they might be on.

---

Social Networks Are Still Important

This is not to say that you shouldn't be present on social networks -- they clearly have a place to interact with and find new fans. But what's even more important is to have a home base to bring your fans back to that you own, where they can always find you regardless which social networks are popular at the time.

In an upcoming post I'll talk about the "hub and spokes" method of driving fans from your social networks ("spokes") back to your website ("hub"), and list some of the best ways you can do that.

Posted via email from Music Business Information

Online Tools Help Bands Do Business

By BEN SISARIO

When the Pixies, the reunited stars of 1980s alt-rock, decided recently to play a special show in Los Angeles, they wanted to make sure their biggest local followers were invited first.

So last Thursday morning, the band sent e-mail messages to 8,031 fans with Southern California ZIP codes, announcing the show and alerting them that “tickets are on sale RIGHT NOW.”

All 1,200 tickets for the show, at the Music Box on Nov. 19, were sold in about an hour, said Richard Jones, the band’s manager.

The rush was a testimony to the loyalty of Pixies fans. But to manage the whole process online — including reaching out to a small subset of its mailing list and selling the tickets itself — the group turned to Topspin Media, one of a handful of technology companies that are transforming the way musicians do business by letting them market directly to their audiences.

The “direct to fan” connection has existed in various forms since the earliest days of the Web. But musicians and managers say that only in recent years, with the rise of companies like Topspin and its competitors — among them Bandcamp, FanBridge and ReverbNation — have the tools become sophisticated enough to run all aspects of a band’s online business. Among the services are selling tracks, running fan clubs and calculating royalty payments.

Ian Rogers, Topspin’s chief executive, says the ability of artists to efficiently market themselves online represents the next major phase of the digital music revolution, after programs like Pro Tools made it possible to record an album on a laptop and iTunes made download sales viable.

“The fundamental premise of the company is, if the production and distribution of music have already been disrupted by the Internet, how is technology going to serve marketing and retail?” said Mr. Rogers, who rides a skateboard and has a tattoo of the logo for NeXT Computer, the company Steven P. Jobs founded after being fired from Apple in the 1980s.

Topspin, which was founded in 2007 and operated by invitation until it opened to wide membership in March, offers bands customizable Web widgets to sell recordings, tickets and merchandise, as well as a detailed back-end accounting system. In July it also began working with the Sundance Institute to distribute independent films. Topspin charges 15 percent of sales plus an annual fee, and has signed up 15,000 acts, fewer than most of its competitors.

But Topspin, whose office in Santa Monica, Calif., is crammed with client memorabilia — a heavy Paul McCartney box set over here, a rack of custom-painted skateboards over there — is said to offer the most technologically advanced direct-to-fan system. And it has developed a specialty of bundling physical goods with downloads.

The company encourages bands to give songs away, wagering that curious fans will come back to buy more lucrative products like T-shirts or deluxe editions that can be combined at various price levels.

The company’s sales data seem to support that philosophy. Even with plenty of $2 videos and $10 posters for sale, the average transaction on Topspin brings in $26; when tickets are involved, the average is $88.

The filmmaker Kevin Smith (“Clerks,” “Red State”), who has an extensive merchandising business, says he believes the service gives artists more control than was ever possible before.

“Topspin helps you understand things that 20 years ago you would have had to rely on people in a large building wearing suits to do for you,” Mr. Smith said. “They don’t run your business for you. They just give you the technology so you can run it yourself.”

Mr. Rogers, 39, who got his start running the Beastie Boys’ fan site in college and was later recruited by the band to work on its nascent Web operation (the group is now one of Topspin’s biggest clients), calls the strategy of combining digital and physical goods “rebundling.”

It is a remedy, he says, to one of the music industry’s most persistent problems: the “unbundling” and subsequent devaluation of the album as a result of consumers’ ability to download a single track rather than the more profitable full CD.

“What the Internet has really allowed is not a move from physical to digital, but consumer choice,” Mr. Rogers said.

For thousands of artists, ranging from acts on major labels to those that handle their business by themselves, direct-to-fan marketing has become essential. Last year, for example, the singer Amanda Palmer employed Bandcamp to release an entire album of Radiohead cover songs featuring the ukulele, letting fans set the price (the minimum was 84 cents, to cover royalties). She made $15,000 in three minutes.

The Pixies had a peculiar situation. The band was famous but without a record label, and since it largely missed the rise of the Internet — it broke up in 1993 and reunited in 2004 — it had no official Web site. After giving away four songs, the group compiled 266,000 e-mail addresses, Mr. Jones said. It used that data for two shows in London last year in which it sold tickets through Topspin and then scanned them at the door using the company’s iPhone app.

“It feels like a totally new way of doing things,” Mr. Jones said.

But there are also some growing concerns in the industry about the reliance on direct-to-fan systems, and about the financial viability of those companies.

Topspin is not yet profitable, Mr. Rogers said, though “we wrote checks for many millions of dollars to artists last year.” And the strongest criticism of Topspin among artists is one that Mr. Rogers readily acknowledges: compared with its competitors, Topspin is complex and can be difficult to learn. He says he is working to address that criticism.

Midem, the organization behind the music industry’s biggest trade fair, two weeks ago began serializing a study called “The Real Cost of Direct to Fan,” which lays out situations in which artists are better off selling items on the road or through traditional retailers.

“It needs to be done carefully,” said David Riley of Good Lizard Media, a digital music consulting firm that produced the report. “There needs to be a proper cost-benefit analysis of what an artist wants to achieve. But if done well and shrewdly, there is no downside.”

Posted via email from Music Business Information

Why Believe in Life After Death if You're Not Religious?

---by Billy Graham

Q: Why do you think most people still believe in some kind of life after death, even if they aren't particularly religious or don't think very much about it? -- Mrs. E.A. 

A: You are right; even people who aren't religious often assume there must be something beyond the grave, even if they don't think about it very much or know exactly what it is. 

Why is this? The reason is because God has put within each of us an inner sense that this life is not all, but that we were meant for eternity. We may suppress it or deny it, or even fight against it (as atheists often do) -- but the inner feeling is still there. The writer of the Old Testament book of Ecclesiastes put it this way: "He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the hearts of men" (Ecclesiastes 3:11). Even the beauty of the created world, he suggested, points us to a far greater beauty -- the beauty of heaven. 

Why do we have this inner conviction that death is not the end? The reason is because we know we aren't simply physical beings; we also have a soul or spirit, and we bear within us the likeness of our Creator. That likeness has been marred and distorted by sin -- but it's still there. And just as God is eternal, so we sense that we too must be eternal. God, the Bible says, is "the high and lofty One ... who lives forever" (Isaiah 57:15). 

But we don't need to depend on a vague feeling that heaven might exist. We can know for sure that it does -- because Jesus Christ died and rose again for us. Put your life into His hands, and then thank Him that you will be with Him forever. 

Posted via email from Religion

Homemade Coffee Creamer

I prefer to strain each of the creamers through a fine mesh sieve to prevent any spices floating in my coffee. If this doesn’t matter to you, then simply skip this step.

Each recipe makes 2 cups

Cinnamon Strudel Creamer

1 cup whole milk
1 cup heavy cream
4 tablespoons maple syrup
1 1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 teaspoon almond extract

Whisk together milk, cream, maple syrup and cinnamon in a medium saucepan over medium heat. When the mixture begins to steam, remove from the heat. Stir in extracts. Strain through a fine mesh sieve, pour into a glass bottle and store in the refrigerator.

Chocolate Almond

1 cup whole milk
1 cup heavy cream
2 tablespoons 

cacao powder

4 tablespoons maple syrup
1 teaspoon almond extract

Whisk together milk, cream, cacao powder, and maple syrup in a medium saucepan over medium heat. When mixture begins to steam, remove from the heat and stir in almond extract. Pour in a glass container and store in the refrigerator.

Pumpkin Spice

1 cup whole milk
1 cup heavy cream
3 tablespoons pureed pumpkin
1 teaspoon pumpkin spice
4 tablespoons maple syrup
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Whisk together milk, cream, pumpkin, pumpkin spice, and maple syrup in a medium saucepan over medium heat. When mixture begins to steam, remove from the heat and stir in the vanilla extract. Strain through a fine mesh sieve, pour into a glass bottle and store in the refrigerator.

French Vanilla

1 cup whole milk
1 cup heavy cream
4 tablespoons maple syrup
1 

vanilla bean

Whisk together milk, cream and maple syrup in a medium saucepan over medium heat. Cut vanilla bean in half, and scrape out seeds. Add seeds and vanilla bean to milk mixture. Turn off heat, cover the pot and steep for 30 minutes. After mixture has steeped, strain through a fine mesh sieve, pour into a glass bottle and store in the refrigerator. (If you don’t have a vanilla bean on hand, simply replace it with 1 tablespoon of vanilla extract)

Peppermint Mocha

1 cup whole milk
1 cup heavy cream
4 tablespoons maple syrup
3 tablespoons cacao
1 teaspoon peppermint extract

Whisk together milk, cream, maple syrup, and cacao in a medium saucepan over medium heat. When mixture begins to steam, remove from the heat and stir in the peppermint extract. Strain through a fine mesh sieve, pour into a glass bottle and store in the refrigerator.

Posted via email from WellCare