Category Archives: Editorial
More Companies Terminate Affililates, More Jobs Lost
The new job killiing California law that claims that affiliates (independent businesses that advertise products on a pay for performance basis) create sales tax nexus for out of state retailers and therefore subjects them to collecting sales tax, continues to claim victims.
While the focus has been on Amazon, more companies are terminating their relationships with 25,000 small businesses here in California. The law is intentionally vague and given that there are networks and sub-networks of affiliates it is very difficult for a company to see if their relationships with advertising networks or affiliates causes the nexus to kick in.
To avoid the risk, out of state retailers are choosing to do the simplest thing and that is to fire their California small business affiliates. That means less revenue for small businesses, more people getting fired and less income tax collected by the State. And, no extra sales tax to compensate. Way to go Sacramento.
Click below to see the most recent termination letter I have seen:
USA Network Uses Fake Blind Guy to Celebrate Americans With Disabilties Act
I’m not sure anyone else noticed, but I was stunned by a PSA run tonight by USA Network in association with its new show Covert Affairs.
In the PSA, USA Network has one of its main characters talking about the 20th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act and it’s impact. (the full press release is below.)
This would be great given the impact the ADA has had leveling the playing ground except they use a guy who can see to play a blind person.
Efficient Communities and the Case for Transparency
“Why Are 25 Hedge Fund Managers Worth 658,000 teachers?” is Umair Haque, Director of Harvard’s Havas Media Lab, starting question as he puts forward the Efficient Community Hypothesis and contrasts it with the Efficient Market Hypothesis.
Lots of big words. It kind of makes your head hurt just to read those words, but these concepts are some of the most important underpinnings of economic understanding about how prices get set.
I think Haque is directionally correct, but fails to focus on why an “efficient communty” failed us too.
Editorial: Make Health Insurance Tax Deductable for Everyone
Today, only big companies get a tax deduction for health insurance.
Get laid off, no tax deduction for you. You pay taxes on your health insurance bill.
Work for yourself. You pay taxes on your health insurance bill.
To me, this is one of the biggest problems with our health care system.
It makes people captive to working for big companies and captive to the health care plans the company decides on.
It means the unemployed and the entrepreneurs pay much more for health insurance.
The current system is bad policy, bad for business, bad for personal choice and totally BS.
The American Medical Association is asking people to tell their representatives to change this bad policy.
I’ve read their proposal and it seems good.
Tell the bozos in Washington to fix it. I did and I hope you will too.
Here’s a short cut http://ta.gg/2v9
Alex
If you want health care fixed, pass it on.
Turning Layoffs into Link Bait
Jason Calacanis, CEO and founder of Mahalo, has managed to turn layoffs into link bait for himself and Mahalo. Mahalo is a self described next generation search engine (more realistically an about.com business model with freelance/contract editors and writers).
Some months ago Mr. Calacanis decided to stop blogging and communicate with his readers through an email newsletter. The newsletter has grown to many thousands of followers.He has written about the impact of the financial crisis on startups and done a good job telling it like it is.His most recent email went into deep detail about the cuts he has made at his own company, the logic behind it and how he dealt with the situation.
Realizing Podcasting’s Potential – The Market Beyond the Pod
Podcasting 1.0 has been the age of iTunes and iPods. The original software clients that were built in late 2004 and early 2005 were designed to automatically download media files and put them into your iTunes music folder. By labeling the files as podcasts, they automatically went into a folder on iTunes for podcasts and from there the files were automatically synchronized with your iPod.
The problem is that the installed base of between 100 and 200 million iPod devices is actually quite limited, particularly when you take into account the number of iPods people own and how many actually get used.
To realize the true potential of podcasting, we need to go beyond the iPod and expand the market for subscribable media to billions devices worldwide with potential audience sizes as big or bigger then television.
