|
|
|
|
Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis |
Illinoisans Beware: "Progressives" Seek Massive Tax Hike Again; Fight the Hike! Posted: 18 Oct 2013 12:15 PM PDT Illinois "Progressives" (a single word to describe "economically illiterate public union sympathizers") want to pick your pocket once again. The Progressives want to hike the Illinois 2015 top tax rate from 3.75% to a whopping 9%. Moreover the income tax rate will go up on a sliding scale for everyone making over $18,000. Promises, Promises Recall that On the campaign trail in 2010, Gov. Pat Quinn told voters he'd veto any income tax hike that would raise Illinois' rate over 4 percent. That was one of the quickest disclosed tax lies in history. Here are a few snips from my January 13, 2011 post Business Owners Blast IL Tax Hikes;Quinn's Blatant Lies;Neighboring States Gleeful, Mayor Daley Whines;Escape to Wisconsin; Arrogance,Greed,Corruption Tax insanity in Illinois is now official. Governor Pat Quinn signed off on a 67% hike in personal income taxes and a 46% hike in corporate taxes the moment the bill hit his desk.Not Fixed That tax hike was supposed to permanently fix the Illinois budget. It did nothing of the kind. On June 11, 2011, I noted Illinois Insanity: State Spend $365K Taxpayer Dollars to Teach People How to Fish; Hands Out $4 Million in Free Tuition to AFSCME Public Union Workers On August 31, 2011, I noted Illinois Loses Most Jobs in Nation Following Tax Hikes. Also recall that Instead of acting to help cities, Governor Quinn strengthened prevailing wage laws several times (see my March 27, 2011 article Poisonous Illinois; Caterpillar CEO Threatens to Leave Illinois over Taxes; Illinois Attorney General Wins Dubious Honor "Prevailing Wage Award"). Illinois Overtakes California for Second Highest Unemployment Rate in Nation With the above backdrop, no one should have been surprised by my September 25, 2013 report Unhappy Anniversary: Illinois Overtakes California for Second Highest Unemployment Rate in Nation Temporary Hike? Quinn's tax hike was billed as temporary. Fortunately the legislature actually passed it that way. On January 04, 2013 the Chicago Tribune discussed the setup in Your Quinncome tax hits home Two years ago on their night of infamy, 1/11/11, General Assembly Democrats — and exclusively Democrats — voted to raise the Illinois personal income tax rate by 67 percent. Beware the "Progressives" In 2015, the personal income tax rate is supposed to drop to 3.75%. However, the Illinois Policy Institute reports State Rep. Naomi Jakobsson, D-Urbana, introduced legislation for a new progressive tax rate schedule that hit Illinois' middle and working classes hard. Under current Illinois law, the individual income tax rate will be 3.75 percent in 2015. Under Jakobsson's new plan, however, a higher 4 percent rate kicks in for people earning just $18,000. Here is Jakobsson's proposed scheme. If you think that is absolutely nuts, you are not the only one. The Illinois Policy Institute writes "Jakobsson's progressive tax rates attack the middle class as well. Her 5 percent tax rate applies to people earning just $36,000. When an Illinoisan earns more than $58,000, Jakobsson's tax rates jump to 6 percent, and again to 7 percent on income earned after $95,000 – nearly double the rate Illinoisans will pay in 2015. It's no surprise that Jakobsson's progressive tax hike proposal targets the middle class – it's how progressive income taxes work. That's where a lot of the money is." Fight the Hike! I made a donation to the Illinois Policy Institute, and if you live in Illinois, please consider doing so was well. Your gift to the "Flat is Fair" campaign will be matched for a one-two punch against the progressive tax hike. Donations through Sunday, October 20 will be matched. Please, Fight the Hike! Mike "Mish" Shedlock http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com Mike "Mish" Shedlock is a registered investment advisor representative for SitkaPacific Capital Management. Sitka Pacific is an asset management firm whose goal is strong performance and low volatility, regardless of market direction. Visit http://www.sitkapacific.com/account_management.html to learn more about wealth management and capital preservation strategies of Sitka Pacific. |
Posted: 18 Oct 2013 09:40 AM PDT The economic stupidities in France keep piling up. Reader "AC" who lives in France writes: Hi Mish,Rise of National Front If Paris rentals were in short supply before , they will be in even shorter supply now. And inane union agreements take away real jobs on top of it. These economic insanities are exactly the kind of thing that will fuel the rise of extreme right candidate Marine Le Pen (See Decisive Victory by Le Pen's Eurosceptic National Front Party in Local Election Stirs Fear in Mainstream French Parties). Please note that I am not a fan of Marine Le Pen's position on every issue even though I agree with her anti-Brussels stance. Pater Tenebrarum gets it correct in Europe's Tottering Banks Political RisksPoisoned Policies Those looking for poisoned economic policies should look no further than the policies of socialist president Francois Hollande. Here are seven prime examples.
My next update on the economically insane policies of France will have this post as the eighth example. Mike "Mish" Shedlock http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com Mike "Mish" Shedlock is a registered investment advisor representative for SitkaPacific Capital Management. Sitka Pacific is an asset management firm whose goal is strong performance and low volatility, regardless of market direction. Visit http://www.sitkapacific.com/account_management.html to learn more about wealth management and capital preservation strategies of Sitka Pacific. |
BART Holds San Francisco Hostage; Best Way to Deal With Public Unions Posted: 18 Oct 2013 12:00 AM PDT The average BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) worker makes over $76,000 per year, plus huge benefits. Janitors make as much as $82,752. But the unions want more. And they are willing to bankrupt the region to get more. In my opinion, San Francisco is already bankrupt due to pension obligations that cannot possibly be met (but the city may not realize that yet). Oakland is without a doubt bankrupt due to public union pension obligations. Oakland city officials likely realize that (but they just do not want to admit the obvious). In due time, both Bay Area cities will follow Vallejo, Stockton, and San Bernardino into bankruptcy. In the meantime, unions are hell bent on driving cities right over the bankruptcy cliff. With that backdrop, please consider San Francisco Bay Area transit unions threaten midnight strike. San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit workers are threatening a midnight strike because contract talks have reached an impasse.BART Workers Plan to Strike Friday SF Gate reports BART Workers Plan to Strike Friday Roxanne Sanchez, president of Service Employees International Union 1021, said Thursday afternoon that they met BART on its health care and pension requests, but the two sides still could not come to an agreement on pay and work conditions.BART's Offer Overly Generous Mercury News reports BART workers' paychecks already outpace their peers' BART workers easily earned the most money on average last year among the 25 largest government agencies in the Bay Area, the newspaper's review of public employee payroll data shows. What's more, BART employees also topped the list of the highest-paid transit operators in California.Blackmail "(BART unions) have a degree of leverage from a strike perspective that many other industries don't, and this is a classic example of them capitalizing on it," said Christopher Thornberg, founding partner of Beacon Economics, a Los Angeles-based economics consulting firm. "If you ask me, it's a tiny bit short of blackmail: 'Give me the money or the commute's going to get it.' "No Shortage of Workers The BART gravy train has no shortage of applicants. Mercury news reports "Since 2007, BART has received nearly 65,000 job applications for about 1,800 line-level union openings." Public Employee Salary Database Mercury news has an interesting interactive map of Public Employee Salaries in the Bay Area that inquiring minds may wish to take a peek at. Message From FDR Inquiring minds are reading snips from a Letter from FDR Regarding Collective Bargaining of Public Unions written August 16, 1937. All Government employees should realize that the process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted into the public service. It has its distinct and insurmountable limitations when applied to public personnel management.For more on public union slavery, coercion, bribery, and scapegoating please see ...
Best Way to Deal With Public Unions The best way to deal with public unions is to not deal with them at all. Ronald Reagan had the right idea when he fired all of the PATCO workers. Scott Walker had the right idea in Wisconsin when he ended collective bargaining of some public unions. Unfortunately, Walker failed to include police and firefighters. Actual Wisconsin results prove Union-Busting is a "Godsend"; Elimination of Collective Bargaining is the Single Best Thing one Can do for School Kids It's time to implement national right-to-work laws and put an end to public union collective bargaining nationally. Mike "Mish" Shedlock http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com Mike "Mish" Shedlock is a registered investment advisor representative for SitkaPacific Capital Management. Sitka Pacific is an asset management firm whose goal is strong performance and low volatility, regardless of market direction. Visit http://www.sitkapacific.com/account_management.html to learn more about wealth management and capital preservation strategies of Sitka Pacific. |
You are subscribed to email updates from Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
Google Inc., 20 West Kinzie, Chicago IL USA 60610 |
| |||
|
How Google is Changing Long-Tail Search with Efforts Like Hummingbird - Whiteboard Friday |
How Google is Changing Long-Tail Search with Efforts Like Hummingbird - Whiteboard Friday Posted: 17 Oct 2013 04:11 PM PDT Posted by randfish The Hummingbird update was different from the major algorithm updates like Penguin and Panda, revising core aspects of how Google understands what it finds on the pages it crawls. In today's Whiteboard Friday, Rand explains what effect that has on long-tail searches, and how those continue to evolve.
For reference, here's a still of this week's whiteboard!
Video Transcription
Video transcription by Speechpad.com Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read! |
You are subscribed to email updates from Moz Blog To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
Google Inc., 20 West Kinzie, Chicago IL USA 60610 |
Why Rebrand? Why Now? |
Posted: 17 Oct 2013 06:55 AM PDT You may have noticed that we have recently rebranded from SEOptimise to White.net. If you haven’t, then you may be a little confused as to why the SEOptimise website is now branded White! Well now you know! Since the rebrand on the 1st October 2013, there have been a lot of people asking why we've rebranded. So I wanted to take the opportunity to explain it all in a post. I’d be happy to answer any further questions that you feel haven’t been answered in the comments below. So, why the rebrand?SEOptimise was, and still is, a great name! It has done the business very well up to this point, and has built up an incredible authority within the industry. This has never been in doubt! The issue with the name, and I am sure the majority of you will agree, is that it lends itself mainly to SEO. Although SEO was, and continues to be, a large part of the business, we offer many other services, including PPC, Analytics and Branded Content, that some potential customers were unaware of due to the previous brand name. As such, it had to change. Moving away from the name SEOptimise wasn’t a decision that we took lightly and it was debated over for several months. Before it was decided to change, we asked a large number of stakeholders a range of questions to ensure that the new brand would be aligned to our existing customers, potential customers and readers of our blog. Some of those questions included: Although I can’t let you know the exact answers to these questions, they confirmed our initial thoughts, and made the decision to rebrand slightly easier. How we did come up with the new brand?We worked with a branding company, Accrue Faulton, to develop the new brand. We decided to do this as we thought it was too important to get wrong, so specialists were needed! The exercise started with a review of the market, looking at each competitor brand and how their brand image fitted into a relatively simple table based on our industry. We then did a similar exercise using some more advanced branding tools. After this had been completed, we started reviewing where we fitted into the market and the messaging we should be using moving forward. We had a couple of names that we had been thinking of using, so the exercise started with these. After the initial exercise outlined above, it was clear that none of the names were suitable. There was a bit of panic as we realised we were going to need to find a new name, and quickly! Accrue helped us through this by developing a strategy for the new name based on some of their previous work. Unfortunately, none of the names that this exercise produced were suitable, but the exercise did show "white" as the colour in multiple names presented White stuck and we went about purchasing a domain. The branding agency then went about creating the image and, as you can see, have done an amazing job of creating a really strong brand. The brand messaging was then developed, and we're really pleased with where we've ended up. Why rebrand now?Firstly, it has nothing to do with the changes in the industry. As indicated above, this is something that the business had been thinking about for a while. We have been through a lengthy process to get to this stage, and it was something that needed to be done for the good of the company. In reality, we have been thinking about change for at least the last 12 months, with things really starting to become more of a reality in the past 6 months. We had wanted to launch the new brand earlier than the 1st October, but things just didn’t fall into place. We had to be sure that we had everything ready to launch, and that takes a lot of organising. Personally, I don’t feel there is ever a perfect time to rebrand, and there will always be some ups and downs. But we felt that it was right to do it now. So what’s next?Well, it’s business as usual. There will be constant changes to the website and it WILL evolve over time, as any website should. The new brand has been well received based on feedback we’ve had at the recent Ecommerce Exhibition, peer reviews and emails from you all. We are continuing to expand the technical team (we are hiring!), and we hope that within a short period of time we will start to expand our service offering beyond what currently exists. It is an exciting time to be a part of this new brand, and we believe that it will quickly progress within the digital space. Hopefully that answers, in short, some of the questions you have on why SEOptimise has rebranded to White.net. What do you think of the rebrand? Do you prefer SEOptimise or White.net? We’d be interested to hear all of your thoughts in the comments below. The post Why Rebrand? Why Now? appeared first on White Noise. |
You are subscribed to email updates from White Noise To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
Google Inc., 20 West Kinzie, Chicago IL USA 60610 |
Facebook Twitter | More Ways to Engage