Big Business Should Loan to Small Business
Los Angeles Times business page columnist, Michael Hiltzik, and I often disagree.
I’ll never understand why the Times insists on business columnists who spend a great deal of time criticizing the business community, as they have over recent years. In my view, working toward a more business friendly state would lead California out of its perennial doldrums. Saying that, however, I think Hiltzik’s latest column hits on a subject that can help the state and country recover.
Hiltzik criticizes corporations from sitting on piles of cash. He reports that "operating earnings of companies in the Standard & Poor’s 500 index jumped 38.4% in the second quarter compared with a year earlier, according to Thomson Reuters, and companies are sitting on an estimated $1.8 trillion in cash …"
Providing Women With a Role and Voice In Public Policy
As campaign season gets into high gear there is a lot of emphasis on women – a woman on the top of the GOP ticket, two women in a VERY competitive race for the United States Senate and a number of women running in down ticket races.
2010 has the potential to be a big year for women in California politics. That is why the California Women’s State Appointments Project (CWSAP) is so important. Women should have a role and a voice in public policy.
Women are a powerhouse in California, but not just in politics. According the National Association of Women Business Owners (NAWBO) – California website, there are 1,351,087 women in California who own businesses and who employ nearly 1.9 million people and generate $318.2 billion in sales. Women bring unique experiences and perspective to gubernatorial administrations, state departments and to boards and commissions that do the state’s work, but we need more women, more women with business background and experience to apply.
Prop 23 Reverses Clean Energy Policy While Debilitating California’s Biotech Industry
California
is a leader in environmental practices and most importantly, innovative
thinking. When our state — in bipartisan fashion — put into place the
nation’s most aggressive policies to spur the development of clean
energy and reduce air pollution as a means of preserving our resources
and increasing our ability to create alternative fuels to apply to our
work four years ago, it was a giant step in economic development.
In part because of these policies, our state is home to the largest
collection of life science companies in the United States with over
1,377 companies and over 100,000 employees. More than 6,000 new jobs
were created in our sector in just in the past 12 months, many of them
in the development of alternative bio-fuels that are the direct result
of California’s leadership.
Yet this bright spot in California’s economy is being threatened. Texas
oil companies are heavily financing Proposition 23, which would
essentially reverse our new clean energy policy while debilitating
California’s biotech industry. To justify their positions, these big
oil companies are polluting the air with rhetoric.
The Ghost of Enron
Ken Lay, the former CEO of Enron, loved the idea of a cap-and-trade program for carbon dioxide. Ken Lay, a Greenie? Of course. He was chasing green his whole life. Cap-and-trade, according to the felonious Mr. Lay, would "do more to promote Enron’s business than almost any other regulatory initiative."
Enron brass may have been criminals, but they were smart. Enron made their money trading stuff, and the mother-of-all markets is for carbon dioxide. Yup, the very stuff that we all exhale with every breath and that is generated by cars, air conditioners, stoves, washing machines, livestock . . . just about every human endeavor that involves energy.
But there is a big problem trying to trade in a commodity for which there is no natural market. You see, the law now is that Americans do not need a permit to breath. But if crafty market manipulators were somehow able to get government to create such a market, and if those same crafty capitalists could control that market, they would become very, very wealthy.
Scribd.: the New Self-Publishing Highrise
You send a manuscript to New York agent. The agent sends it to an editor who buys it for a lot of money. Soon your book is on the New York Times bestseller list.
A dream? Well, as Bloody Mary sings in South Pacific, "You gotta have a dream/If you don’t have a dream/How you gonna make a dream come true?"
Time for some different, but no less marvelous dreams.
In a recent post I warned that self-publishing on Kindle was not a ticket on the bullet train to success. But everyone from the editor-in-chief at Random House down knows that the publishing landscape is changing rapidly, and that the power is shifting to the people.