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Cliff deal includes at least $67.9B for special interests

Getty Images for NASCAR, file

The fiscal cliff compromise includes tax breaks worth $70 million over two years for the owners of race tracks like Charlotte Motor Speedway in Concord, N.C.

By M. Alex Johnson, NBC News

Taxpayers aren't the only ones who won't be flying off the fiscal cliff ??this year, at least. Add race cars, movies and asparagus to the list.

As part of their last-second deal to slam the brakes on an economy racing toward the so-called fiscal cliff, lawmakers gave the green light this week to extending dozens of business and industry tax breaks, like a cost-recovery program that will save the owners of "motorsports entertainment complexes" (that is, racetracks) about $70 million over the next two years.

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Much of the compromise agreement that President Barack Obama's autopen signed into law Thursday was targeted at individuals and families, notably preserving most of the tax cuts that passed under President George W. Bush, which were set to expire Monday. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida, chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee, told MSNBC that the deal was "a big gift-wrapped present of certainty to the middle class."

But the agreement also came loaded with extensions of separate existing tax breaks for businesses and industries, many of which had expired in the past year ? about $67.9 billion in all in 2013, as tabulated by Congress' Joint Committee on Taxation.

(The extensions will actually cost much more: Not only were they made retroactive to cover 2012, but some of the breaks and credits would be in effect for 10 years if left in place. Many cover only one or two years, however.)

Read the full 10-year analysis from the Joint Committee on Taxation (.pdf)

In addition to extending tax breaks for racing moguls, the legislation also extended:

??A tax credit for construction of renewable energy projects, like wind turbines and biomass, geothermal and hydropower generation, for one year. It's projected to cost about $116 million, the committee said.

That may seem like a drop in the bucket, but here's the kicker: While the extension to qualify for new projects covers only 2013, the actual tax credit itself is good for 10 years. That means new projects that break ground in 2013 will be able to claim the credit for the next decade, at an overall price tag the committee put at slightly less than $12.2 billion.

??An arcane provision of corporate tax law, called active financing income, that lets U.S. corporations defer taxes on some income they earn from their overseas subsidiaries. That provision will cost the U.S. Treasury more than $9 billion this year and $1.8 billion next year.

??Tax breaks for Hollywood producers who shoot their movies and TV shows in the U.S., at a cost of about $430 million through 2014.

? A program that sends most federal taxes collected on rum produced in Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands back to those territories to subsidize domestic production. Bar tab: $222 million over two years.

??A tax break worth about $15 million a year for asparagus growers hit hard by cheap asparagus imported from Peru.

??$4 million in tax breaks over the next two years for people who buy "2- or 3-wheeled plug-in electric vehicles" ? in other words, electric scooters, Segways and the like.

The purpose of the deal was to prevent a series of steep spending cuts and tax increases on the middle class from automatically taking effect in the new year. But "we're not making it (the tax system) better or fairer," Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., chairman of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee, said on the House floor Tuesday in explaining why he was voting against the measure.

Big policy losers in tax deal: deficit reduction and 'certainty'

"We're not getting rid of the NASCAR loophole. We're not getting rid of the electric motor scooter low-speed loophole. We're not getting rid of a whole lot of tax things that are here," Issa said.

Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla., tells Ed Schultz how the Democrats and the White House plan to move forward, with or without House Speaker John Boehner, pictured, as a larger fight over the deficit looms.

Neither new nor secret
Although many of the provisions are being characterized as new pork barrel programs that sneaked their way into the bill under cover of darkness, there's nothing new or secret about any of them.

Most of the tax breaks had been scheduled to expire on Dec. 31, 2011, and as long ago as February, lawmakers were seeking a way to revive them.

Industries in limbo as Congress mulls expired tax breaks

Eventually, they were packaged together as the Family and Business Tax Cut Certainty Act of 2012. It was so titled because "people need certainty to plan their finances, and businesses need certainty to hire, invest and grow," as Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., chairman of the Finance Committee, said when the committee passed the package in August.

Once it was out of committee, the measure went nowhere. That is, until this week, when ? with a lame-duck Congress just hours away from going home without having addressed the fiscal cliff ? it was substituted almost word for word into the deal brokered by Vice President Joe Biden and Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky.

It makes up Titles III and IV of the final bill, with many of the alterations reading like this:

Paragraph (1) of section 7652(f) is amended by striking "January 1, 2012" and inserting "January 1, 2014".

(If you want to see what changed, here's the Family and Business Tax Cut Certainty Act of 2012 (.pdf) and here are the changes made to it in the final bill (.pdf).)

Former Sens. Alan Simpson, R-Wyo., left, and Erskine Bowles, D-N.C., co-chairman of President Barack Obama's 2010 deficit commission, said Congress missed a 'magic moment' to reform the tax code.

By taking the clock down to 00:00 and backing itself into a corner, Congress "missed this magic moment to do something big to reduce the deficit, reform our tax code and fix our entitlement programs," said former Sens. Erskine Bowles, D-N.C., and Alan Simpson, R-Wyo., the co-chairmen of Obama's 2010 commission responsible for finding a way out of the country's economic morass.

"We have all known for over a year that this fiscal cliff was coming," they said in a joint statement Tuesday, adding: "Yet even after taking the country to the brink of economic disaster, Washington still could not forge a common sense bipartisan consensus on a plan that stabilizes the debt."

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., was less diplomatic.

"It's so incredibly disappointing that members of Congress saw fit to add hundreds of millions of dollars in special-interest handouts to the recently passed 'fiscal cliff' bill, which had the simple purpose of avoiding massive tax rate increases on average Americans," McCain said Thursday.

"It's hard to think of anything that could feed the cynicism of the American people more than larding up must-pass emergency legislation with giveaways to special interests and campaign contributors," he said. "And this growing cynicism ? largely justified in my view ? will make it harder for us to deliver the tough medicine needed to address our crushing national debt."

Unloved for so long, Congress not fazed by public's disapproval

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Source: http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/01/04/16334798-fiscal-cliff-deal-includes-at-least-679-billion-for-special-interests?lite

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In 2012 I learned 5 Major Things About Running A Business ...

2012, was a tough year for me. For many years I have been trying to build a company out of the house, but have failed. I hired many people, but never managed them.

In the beginning of the year I was doing very well from web properties, mailing, and doing pay-per-click for affiliate offers. Then things changed. Affiliate networks dropped like flies, and ppc networks became very strict. My affiliate revenue crashed.

I was not sure what to do. I knew the affiliate game that I had been playing and profiting from for many years was coming to an end.

From the way I looked at it I had 2 choices:

A)Build a real company.

B)Buy out my lease, other contracts, and go back to working out of my house writing my blog. Essentially retiring.

The big turning point for me was when I was talking to one of my best friends in the industry (who also owns a affiliate network). He was telling me about how he had bought a new SEO Company and it was really rough at the start investing in that and not the affiliate industry, but it was one of the best things he ever did.

A couple months before I had this conversation we signed a deal with blu electronic cigarettes to take over their ?customer acquisition and growth? through email. They had been collecting email addresses for a long time, but never sent out any emails other than sale alerts.

Within a couple months we started to account for a very significant portion of their sales that were coming in from emails I had constructed for them. ?The most interesting thing we found was that not only were new customers purchasing their product, but existing customers were purchasing their product through our emails.

Even blu came to us and said what an amazing impact it had on their company and that we should think about just doing this service for companies. However, I never really thought about it.

And that was it ? Par Program was born.

It met my basic screening test:

Was this a badly needed service? ? Yes, anyone who sells a product or service drastically can benefit from the PAR Program.
Is this a service that I would use every day ? ? YES! Forget about what I bring to the table for a minute? The features and level of service of a true enterprise level automated mail marketing service was badly needed.

So, again that?s it. That is what I am doing, and I am going to do this right.

But, it?s obviously not that easy. In order to do this right I needed to get away from the fly by night stuff, which has always brought in an awesome injection of capital when needed. Plus, I had a LOT of overhead still, and to do this right I needed to commit to investing a lot of money carried over from last years profits.

It was very painful to see your monthly financial reports in the red? sometimes tens of thousands of dollars? month after month. Being told we will now profitable? then surprise we lost money again. Sometimes I just felt so demoralized like there was no hope, and I should just quit and take up plan b. I don?t like that feeling.

Fortunately, we were on the right path though and midway through the year we were back in the green monthly and attacking our debt aggressively.

As of December, the PAR Program is now over $50,000 a month in gross revenue. Our overhead is 1/4th (literally) of what it was a year ago.

So, now we are on the right track and it has been an educational experience to say the least.

Here is what I have learned from switching to running a real company:

Talk to smart people with real experience : I was in the Entrepreneurs Organization, and a huge thing they do is allow you to present problems to other business owners. Just to be in the organization you have to be the majority owner, and do over a million a year in revenue. In my group there was a medical delivery company CEO, a printing company CEO, a heavy construction company CEO, a local sandwich franchise owner, and a janitorial service company CEO. I met with these guys all the time, and even though their businesses have nothing to do with the internet, just the learning the basic business structure for me has been priceless. I have routine calls with people that own internet companies and some of them I have weekly calls scheduled. I also pay a couple grand a month to a guy I highly respect to have a one hour conversation with him and my team. He holds my team accountable and even myself. It?s kind of like a business coach, only more like a 1 hour a week CEO. However, the thing is he is a guy that has been a CEO at various internet companies and currently is running his own search marketing agency. So more then just holding me responsible he has my respect when he tells me I am doing it wrong.

Do not underestimate what you bring to a company:?I have been making money selling millions of dollars of my own products/services AND selling other people?s products and services as an affiliate. Now consider this, a company gives 30% or more to a affiliate network to make sales, then the network gives half to an affiliate (formally me). But, now through the PAR Program I am doing this directly for the company and not only is everything 100% off of their plate it?s also much cleaner, insightful, and it delivers a much larger ROI then what they were doing through affiliate networks. Well there is a lot more? copywriting, graphics, marketing insight? I mean I bring 10 years of?invaluable? experience doing this.

ROI on everything: I am not sure why this always escaped me, I am dead serious on this. I never thought of things this way, but one day I came to a revelation that everything I spend money on I need to get a positive return. This actually seems comical given the fact I have been calculating ROI promoting affiliate offers like crazy that I never actually looked at more obvious things.

One of the big things, actually THE biggest was employees. If I am spending 10k a month on an employee what am I getting back? But, this is as much about me as it is any of my employees. Lets say I am worth $500/hr to the company when focused on what I am best at. So, if I can hire 2 full time people to take care of misc things at $15 an hour that not only take up time, but distract me from what I do best then you would have to be an idiot not to do it. Again as crazy as this sounds I would say at least half of my time was being taken up with jobs that I now have interns doing.

Roles and responsibilities: Make a list for each of your employees on what their role and responsibilities should be. Ask them to do the same including exactly what they do day to day. Make them responsible for the job they are doing and the tasks they are responsible for. Do not, under any circumstances, do something that is their task. The problem with knowing how to do everything is that you know how to do everything, and if you?re like me and have no?patience?it?s very very hard to wait for someone to fix an issue that you know you can easily do. But, here is the problem if you fix the issue. It now becomes ?your responsibility. The person who was previously responsible for fixing that issue no longer has ownership of it. You do. When a client goes around their client manager cause its 9pm on a Sunday night, and they know you will be available cause you have no life you need to tell them to go through their client manager. Otherwise guess what? You are now their client manager. When they ask their client manager if I did what I said I would do at 9pm on Sunday she/he will be like um what is this? And like I said you are now their client manager. My point is this ? I am a badass at sales, marketing, and copywriting. Those are my roles and responsibilities. When I do another employee?s job it?s a bad use of my time, costs me money, and undermines my employees.

Getting frustrated:

Getting things done: Read the book. It has changed my life.

Regular short meetings: Another thing that made a huge impact. It?s important to meet everyday for a few minutes. Everyone tells me where they are at on the projects they are working on. If time lines have changed, over/under budget, ?and if they need any help. I try to limit each person to 5 interrupted minutes. Someone will take detailed notes especially if someone needs help.

Now don?t get me wrong? Sometimes I can?t help but promote the occasional affiliate offer or try some new angle on something. But it?s more like a hobby to me.

I also planned for a slow January this month so, I am releasing the book (hopefully on the 7th or 8th FINALLY). I am doing Affiliate Summit, will be home for a day (1 day) and then going to Hawaii with my wife for 10 days. So, between January 12th and 31st I will be home 5 total days.

I have had an agency approach me about shooting an infomercial, which I am still not sure about? but basically I don?t have to do anything but film. I also have a smaller product that will be coming out this month.

But, for the most part 99% of my day is focused on the PAR Program.

I went through some hard times, recovered, and refocused in 2012. I look forward to a much more organized, focused, and profitable 2013.

Cheers!

About the author...

Jeremy Schoemaker ? who has written 2594 posts on ShoeMoney.com.

Hi I am Jeremy Schoemaker and ShoeMoney.com is my blog. 99% of the post here are done by me but you will see others occasionally make guest posts. This blog is fun to write but for my day job I run several online companies.

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1. Knowing When to STFU
2. Are You Scared Shitless?
3. Behind The Scenes at Getads

Source: http://www.shoemoney.com/2013/01/02/in-2012-i-learned-5-major-things-about-running-a-business

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A roundup of the best photos of the day

The fiscal austerity crisis has been temporarily averted, but given the apparent animosity between the current leaders of Congress its a miracle that any deal was made at all. Politico has a rather lengthy breakdown of the last week or so of negotiations that led to last night's budget bill and it leads off with an?anecdote?illustrating the current state of American politics. As they arrived for a much-hyped meeting with the President last Friday afternoon, Speaker of the House John Boehner spotted House Majority Leader Harry?Reid approaching just steps from the Oval Office. ...

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/photos/photos-of-the-day-1340925511-slideshow/

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Inflationary Illusions in Real Estate

By Douglas French | 01/02/13

Real estate, and the careers that depend upon it, is a boom-bust business in the age of inflation. The illusion of wealth is everywhere..until it is snatched away.

That?s why it?s a great time for David Mamet?s Pulitzer Prize winning ?Glengarry Glen Ross? to make its third appearance on the Broadway stage. It?s a show about Chicago real estate salesmen selling Florida properties through deception and intimidation.

The show appears just as Iowa dirt ascends to new heights, hope springs eternal that home prices have stopped falling, and Bernanke?s tonic is finally putting some sizzle in the home market.

I?m a huge fan of the movie, as those who attended last year?s Vancouver Symposium may have detected. When asked during the Whiskey Bar panel what movie depicted the U.S. economy, I offered up ?Glenngary Glen Ross.?

I was sky high with anticipation taking my seat on 4th row. I was not disappointed. Broadway is indeed magic, especially when you can see the shine on the actor?s shoes and spit flies as they say their lines.

Reviewers are carping that the production is nothing but a vehicle for Al Pacino, who plays deluded has-been Shelly Levine. Maybe, but Bobby Cannavale steals the show as Ricky Roma, the role Al Pacino earned an Oscar nomination for in the 1992 movie version.

Cannavale brings more swagger to the Roma role than even Pacino did. He combs his slick Guido-style hairdo using his sun glasses as a vanity mirror. He looks to have stolen his suit, suspenders, white-collared shirts, and argyle socks from Gordon Gecko?s closet.

The audience was on the edge of their seats ready to react to any utterance or facial expression Pacino would produce. Still, his portrayal of ?The Machine? did not have the Willie Loman desperation that Jack Lemmon brought to the role on the big screen.

John C. McGinley on the other hand makes for an even angrier Dave Moss than the Ed Harris movie version. If there?s a plot to Glenngary, Moss is its protagonist. It is his desperate plan to do something, rather than just being stuck with the deadbeat sales leads, that puts the Premier Properties office in turmoil and sets up the climax.

Real estate investment is an opportunity. We paraphrase that great investment mind Ricky Roma, the alpha male salesman at the top of his game. Investments can teach a man about himself, as Roma waxes philosophical to the lonely James Lingk. It?s the power of suggestion plying the vulnerable.

In real life today, there is no shortage of vulnerable, especially not in Sioux County, Iowa.

On October 25th in Iowa, no spell was needed to entice buyers of fertile Iowa farmland. No condos or McMansions will sit on this land, only corn or soybeans. Auctioneers took turns taking bids as prices climbed for 80 acres in this heart of corn country. When bidding hit $20,000 per acre, reported an observer, ?you could hear a gasp in the room.? Applause broke out when bidding stopped at $21,900.

It?s been awful dry in the midwest, but the land market continues on fire, with prices up over 31 percent in the past five years, according Bloomberg Businessweek. Yep, it?s a no-brainer; income from crops ?and the long-term appreciation of the property,? professor Michael Duffy opines.

In a similar way, the Toronto condo market has defied reason and gravity for years, enticing investment from around the world. One reason is that people like Herbert Crockett believe in the old saw, passed on to him by his father: Invest in things you can touch. So Mr. Crockett took the plunge on a Trump Tower Hotel condo for C$904,000.

The ?Trump? salesforce told Crockett he would rack up between a 5 and 27 percent annual return from his investment in the big-name project. That sure beats the 2.25% regulated rate banks are paying in Crockett?s home in France. ?We bought into the Trump name and what we were being told was a hot real estate market in Toronto for this kind of project,? Crockett told Bloomberg in an interview. ?It turns out that the hotel had nothing to do with him and that it isn?t a good investment after all.?

The Toronto market, with more condos under construction than any other city in the world, is now beginning to soften and Mr. Crockett and others that bought are only renting their units a quarter of the time projected. Instead of receiving a monthly check from his investment, the retired HR director is now losing C$7,000 a month according to his lawsuit.

Although the Donald was featured prominently in Trump Tower sales literature, he and his staff were not involved in the development other than selling his famous name to the project and attending the grand opening. An attorney for Trump said, he ?was not involved in the sales process and Talon, the developer, made no representations to buyers regarding return on investment.?

But while the Trump legal staff paints the picture that he didn?t have anything to do with Toronto?s tallest building, evidently EVP and daughter Ivanka didn?t get the memo. ?We look forward to continuing to achieve great success at Trump International Hotel & Tower Toronto,? she told Bloomberg in an email. ?Our team is dedicated to providing world-class service and amenities only found in a Trump Hotel Collection property.?

Great success? Well, yeah. ?The hotel is an unbelievable success,? Trump attorney Alan Garten says. Hey, occupancy might not be great. Investors might be losing money. But, the Canadian Automobile Association has awarded the hotel restaurant?s a four diamond rating and TripAdvisor.com rates the Trump Hotel tops in Toronto.

Mr. Crockett has hired lawyers to fix his mistake. In his court filing, Crockett contends he is ?the victim of an investment scheme and conspiracy based upon reckless and negligent misrepresentations.?

With the Toronto boom turning into a bust, the advice of Mr. Crockett?s late father is not so sage. It turns out he?s an investing neophyte. ?These are not sophisticated investors,? said Javad Heydary, who heads the law firm that is suing the developer and Trump for Crockett and 20 other investors. But the developer?s head man says this is all just a case of ?buyer?s remorse? and the plaintiffs just want to get out of their deals.

What were dreams and opportunities in a boom, become in the bust the fraudulent schemes of court filings. The charming and helpful salesmen are suddenly liars and crooks. ?There?s the illusion of movement in the Toronto housing sector with sales and buyers,? Crockett told Bloomberg, ?But now it seems more like a Ponzi scheme.?

Central bankers can print money and for a while, in some markets of some things, create the illusion of wealth and prosperity. There will always be salesmen around to facilitate the transaction ? Glengarry style. But neither the Fed nor the salesmen can stop the busts, the ruined lives, and hard feelings. The money printing and money manipulations ? all taking place on a epic scale ? only creates more.

Sincerely,
Doug French

Original article posted on Laissez-Faire Today?

Douglas French

Douglas French is a Senior Editor for Agora Financial. He received his master's degree under the direction of Murray N. Rothbard at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, after many years in the business of banking. He is the author of two books, Early Speculative Bubbles & Increases in the Money Supply, the first major empirical study of the relationship between early bubbles and the money supply, and Walk Away, a monograph assessing the philosophy and morality of strategic default. He is founder and editor of LibertyWatch magazine.

View articles by Douglas French

Source: http://dailyreckoning.com/inflationary-illusions-in-real-estate/

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Three Questions to Ask When Planning Team-Building Activities ...

Do a search on Google for team-building activities for businesses and you?ll find more than a few articles that provide you with a variety of options. You?ll come across everything from reminders of elementary school or junior high (egg drops, puzzles, etc.) to some more eyebrow-raising pastimes (sumo wrestling, flash mobbing). If planned and executed properly, any activity that you choose can serve to engender trust and respect among your employees as well as inspire greater confidence in your company. If planned or executed improperly, however, it can turn your office into a scene from The Office: you?ll see rolled eyes, barely suppressed groans and mental notes to quit this job at the soonest opportunity. Before you throw any kind of team-building exercise, you should ask yourself these questions:

?Will my team actually want to do this??

It won?t matter which activity you choose?if you have to force your team to do it, it?s the wrong one. Even if no one protests, don?t assume that employees will share your enthusiasm for a particular activity: they may just go along with something because they want to keep the boss happy. This may not incite outright rebellion, but it could breed resentment, which could lead to a long-term reduction in morale and productivity.
The easiest way to work around this potential pitfall is simply to ask your employees what they?d like to do. If you get their input ahead of time, you?ll stand a much better chance of engaging them right off the bat. It?ll also help you gauge where your team stands in terms of enthusiasm and interests.

?Can everyone in the team participate??

If a majority of your team agrees on a particular activity, you?ll be off to a good start. However, you should make sure that each member of your team can perform whatever you decide upon. If some people feel left out or inadequate, that will work against the unity and enthusiasm that you?re trying to inspire.

?How will this activity benefit my business??

Remember not to lose sight of the ultimate end of any team-building exercise: to help increase productivity for your business. Getting your team excited won?t do much good if they don?t channel that energy back into the job. Think about how an activity will pay off down the road. Keep that in the back of your mind while you?re planning it out.

Source: http://www.business2community.com/leadership/three-questions-to-ask-when-planning-team-building-activities-0366314

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Congress tightens belt, trims spy budget for 2013

WASHINGTON (AP) ? Congress has drastically trimmed the budget for U.S. spies and satellites for 2013, though not quite as deeply as the White House wanted.

In one of the last votes of the year, House lawmakers voted Monday 373-29 in favor of a Senate-passed bill to slightly boost the president's $72 billion budget request for intelligence agencies including the CIA, adding extra cash for the counterterrorism fight against al-Qaida, and the counterintelligence fight against foreign governments trying to spy on the U.S.

That's down sharply from roughly $80 billion in 2012, which marked the peak of intelligence spending since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

"The bill holds personnel levels, one of the biggest cost drivers, generally at last year's levels," said House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers, R-Mich. "Even so, the bill adds a limited number of new personnel positions for select, high-priority positions, such as FBI surveillance officers to keep watch on terrorists."

The House Intelligence Committee's ranking member, Rep. Dutch Ruppersberger, D-Md., said the bill "invests in personnel and programs that are working and cuts things that aren't."

The bill was stripped of several measures meant to block the leaking of classified information, including a provision that would have limited which government officials could brief journalists on intelligence. The measures had been drafted after lawmakers objected to a series of news stories that anonymously quoted senior administration sources describing sensitive intelligence programs, such as the process by which targets are chosen for lethal drone strikes overseas.

The chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., says the measures were taken out to get the bill passed but that the issue remains a problem.

"Unfortunately, I am certain that damaging leaks of classified information will continue, and so the committee will need to continue to look for acceptable ways to address this problem," Feinstein said Friday after the Senate version of the bill passed.

The legislation, if signed into law by President Barack Obama, will require the White House to inform Congress when it decides to share classified information with reporters, giving lawmakers a heads-up before they read about it in the media.

___

Dozier can be followed on Twitter at https://twitter.com/KimberlyDozier

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/f70471f764144b2fab526d39972d37b3/Article_2013-01-01-US-Intelligence-Budget/id-2cb03a892642466cbe3ae49f09689c14

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