Tuesday, April 23, 2013

My Favorite Entrepreneur Story in a Long Time

Screen Shot 2013-04-21 at 8.07.30 AMThe tech industry has a certain narrative on how startups are created. Given the immense wealth generated in a short period of time, entrepreneurial lessons are often lost in the measure of dollars and growth. My take away from Mark Zuckerberg & Steve Jobs are their maniacal passion for building a great product. Startup founders are always looking to apply lessons. If you look closely in the real world around you much can be learned. Even from a Vietnam refugee selling, well, hot sauce

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/hW5B_8TWWHs/

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Senate votes to move forward on bill taxing Internet sales

By Kim Dixon and Nanette Byrnes

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A measure to empower U.S. states to require out-of-state retailers to collect online sales tax cleared a legislative hurdle in the Senate on Monday, after earlier winning official backing from President Barack Obama.

Seventy-four senators voted to limit debate and move forward with a final vote on the proposed legislation in the Democratic-controlled Senate, likely on Wednesday.

"You have businesses all around America on Main Streets and shopping malls collecting sales tax on the things that they sell, competing with Internet retailers who do not," said Democratic co-sponsor Senator Richard Durbin.

Supporters of the measure include brick-and-mortar retailers such as Wal-Mart Stores Inc and Best Buy Co Inc and cash-strapped state governments, along with Amazon.com Inc, which hopes to simplify its U.S. state retail tax situation. Opponents include many online merchants, including eBay Inc and Overstock.com Inc.

Prospects for the bipartisan measure are murkier in the Republican-controlled House of Representatives, where some Republicans view it as a tax increase.

Lobbyists on both sides are working to make their case in Congress. Several new wrinkles emerged on Monday, a key one being that the Obama administration for the first time officially backed the measure.

White House spokesman Jay Carney said the bill "will level the playing field for local small business retailers who are undercut every day by out-of-state on-line companies."

Amazon, with its extensive network of distribution centers, already collects tax in nine states, and has agreements with seven more states to start charging in the next year. Amazon has been actively supporting the bill on Capitol Hill.

The bipartisan National Governors Association supports the tax, and in a letter to lawmakers on Monday said the disparate treatment of online and Main Street businesses is "shuttering stores and undermining state budgets."

For its part, eBay's chief executive launched a major lobbying blitz this week, pleading with its millions of users to oppose the effort.

WALL STREET WEIGHS IN

In a twist to the lobbying on the issue that has gone on for years, the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association came out in opposition to the bill.

Representing big investment banks like Goldman Sachs Group, but also online companies like E*TRADE Financial Corp, SIFMA said the bill could lead to a state-level financial transaction tax and "unexpected" consumer costs.

Eleven EU countries are embracing a federal-level financial transaction tax on trading in stocks, bonds and derivatives. The Obama administration opposes such a tax for the United States.

The idea of imposing a financial transaction tax at the state level in the United States seemed unlikely to Verenda Smith, deputy director of the Federation of Tax Administrators.

She said she was not aware of any states that impose such a tax. "It's hard for a state to even broaden their sales tax to include hairdressers," Smith said. "I don't want to think how hard it would be to broaden to financial transactions."

Under current law, states can only mandate that online merchants with physical stores or affiliates within state borders collect sales tax. Consumers are supposed to pay the tax on their own, but few even know about this.

As a result, online-only retailers often have a pricing edge over bricks-and-mortar retailers in many markets.

Critics say it will create more complications, especially for small businesses, which may have to comply with conflicting state laws and new software.

"The bill has never been about helping Main Street but about helping Big Box stores," said Steve Delbianco, an official with a coalition of e-commerce companies called Netchoice.

The legislation would extend the authority of U.S. states to online sales outside their physical borders, though it would not require them to do so. It would exempt merchants with online annual out-of-state sales of $1 million or less.

"The reason the (banks) are nervous about it is they have managed to successfully argue against their services being taxed because it is so mobile," said Kim Ruben, an economist and director of state issues at the Tax Policy Center, a centrist think tank in Washington.

(Additional reporting by Lisa Lambert and Mark Felsenthal; Editing by Kevin Drawbaugh, Sofina Mirza-Reid, David Gregorio and Eric Walsh)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/internet-sales-tax-faces-senate-vote-obama-backs-183957410--sector.html

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Monday, April 22, 2013

Street Art the Focus of New Documentary | Stuff.co.nz

It is easy to think of street art as something that sprawls naturally through a city. Like ivy, one rarely gets to witness the aerosol cans being sprayed by artists in hoods and overalls and filter masks scaling buildings in all weather with ropes, stepladders, scissor lifts and buckets and cans of colours.

In October 2011, film-maker Karl Sheridan and artist Cinzah Merkens began exploring the people behind New Zealand's urban murals and graffiti art, conducting 22 interviews with 26 artists over 12 months, including on artists Jon Drypnz, Mica Still and BMD in Wellington.

The resulting documentary, Dregs, premiered in Wellington in November last year. It is the first time a feature-length documentary had been made about Kiwi street art.

"It hadn't been done before," says Sheridan, who also runs a shared studio and gallery called Monster Valley in Auckland. "Dregs was about uncovering a scene that hadn't been researched much by an outsider, and I thought it was important to give some insight to people who didn't really know the street art scene."

Sheridan hopes that through the doco, viewers might gain a greater understanding of the street art community "and possibly not be as prejudice towards aerosol art".

To fund Dregs, Sheridan and Merkens ran a campaign through crowd-funding website PledgeMe, exceeding their target of just under $5500. "We were always going to do it as a self-funded film . . . it was always a project that we were going to do on our own terms," says Sheridan.

Crowd funding allowed the co-directors to complete a three-week road trip through the length of the country. "After the road trip people started to see that we were serious about the project and we got a bit more [corporate] sponsorship from there."

During the trip, Sheridan says the pair filmed and spent time with as many artists as they could, "meeting their friends and families as well as going and staying in their homes, seeing work places and hanging out around painting spots". Several of the artists interviewed also reflect the street artist penchant for using a pseudonym including Flox, Cracked Ink, Ghostie, and Merkens himself, who for street art goes under the name of Seekayem.

In Dregs, the audio from the resulting interviews runs over Sheridan's footage of these artists at work in studios and out on walls in public spaces. There are slick shots of artists working with scalpels and spray cans from studios and scaffolding to a soundtrack of Kiwi music. Through the documentary, each artist tells their story, including how they got into street art.

Many have the same starting point, doodling in exercise books while at school. There is no shortage of fast cars, "babes", ninjas and aliens drawn in the margins. The artists also reveal how they make their living, many of whom are professional illustrators, students and teachers. One artist talks about how being able to paint legally, in daylight, with "gorgeous paint" while on a community service sentence was a "game changer" for him.

Each interview also includes artists' perspectives on the New Zealand street art scene in relation to the rest of the world. Many have visited the hotspots: Berlin, Melbourne, New York and Mexico, and speak of the pros and cons of our isolation. One artist comments that having smaller and spread-out groups of street artists results in a scene that is perhaps less cohesive, but with a distinct artistic style. Another wants to see business owners more open to murals on their buildings.

Though he sees advantages and disadvantages to isolation, Sheridan shares the belief with his interviewees that "our work here stands up to anywhere else in the world".

THE DETAILS

Dregs on DVD is available from dregs.co.nz

- ? Fairfax NZ News

Comments

Source: http://www.stuff.co.nz/entertainment/arts/8580233/Art-examined-at-street-level

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Thursday, April 4, 2013

Fort Knox shooting injures at least one

A shooting on the U.S. Army base in Fort Knox, Kentucky, left one person injured on Wednesday. An FBI spokesperson said she did not believe a suspect had been apprehended. ?

By Staff,?Reuters / April 3, 2013

New Army recruits train on the bayonet course at Fort Knox in 2004. A shooting was reported on the U.S. Army base on Wednesday, injuring at least one person.

Newscom/File

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At least one person was wounded in a shooting on Wednesday at the U.S.?Army?base at Fort Knox,?Kentucky?in an incident that prompted a security lockdown at the post, according news reports.

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A switchboard operator at the base confirmed to Reuters that a lockdown was in effect, but gave no details. A base spokesman said he could not immediately confirm there had been a shooting.

NBC News, citing unnamed military officials, reported on its website that a wounded civilian was flown to a hospital. There was no immediate word on that person's condition.

But Fox News Channel, citing an unnamed base spokesman, said it was not immediately known if there were any casualties.

Mary Trotman, an FBI spokeswoman in?Louisville, said two agents were sent to Fort Knox?to assist with the investigation. She said the shooter or shooters had not been apprehended to her knowledge, but had no further details on the incident.

Police in surrounding jurisdictions have been asked by Fort Knox?officials to be on the lookout for a tall black man driving a medium-sized, four-door brown car with tinted windows who may have driven off the base, said?Bryce Shumate, spokesman for the police department in nearby Radcliff.

Shumate said he had no other information related to the incident.

Fort Knox, near?Louisville, is home to more than 40,000 U.S. military personnel, family members and civilian employees.

In February, local media reported that a soldier and his wife died of gunshot wounds at their home on the base in what the?Army?said appeared to be the result of a domestic dispute.

The latest incident came less than two weeks after a U.S. Marine shot two colleagues to death at the Marine Corps base in?Quantico,?Virginia, before killing himself.

(Reporting by Bob Driehaus in Cincinnati and Dan Whitcomb in Los Angeles; Writing by Cynthia Johnston; Editing by Will Dunham)

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/csm/~3/YyguuFzJ2C0/Fort-Knox-shooting-injures-at-least-one

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