Lately exploration of my talents have allowed me to push myself beyond my comfort zone or normal box.  I owe a lot to a friend for giving me this confidence.
Here is the drawing me coaxed me into finishing.  Thanks friend.

"Make me a coffee table!"  I said okay.
I started my search over a few weeks....keying in on finish.  I have had surgery and thud taking longer to make. Yet, I think this should provide the time I need to fit the job to my friend like a glove.
Here is the base painted a different color, Foss. 

It has a handle that opens with two shelves for storage.  I may put some other specific storage.    Next, I painted this and will glue it ontop of this base.

Take off the frame and ornate art stuff and you have a shelf shadowbox from the 70's.  I painted it Foss.  Embossed pictures of my friend from her family and a few from mine over years and during college will be put onto of the mirror part in hopefully a eye catching arrangement.  I plan to throw in some pharmacy memento's and SWOSU stuff....just enough.   
I asked opinions.  .....what should the top be solid wood, glass or give me a suggestion.  I believe I have my answer and pray I find the size and just right fit to make it pop.  That would make finishing this upcycling nice for me.
I am now looking for two pieces of wood/glass.  Wood all around with glass in the middle like cabinets and a knob on to where it opens in the middle of the coffee table.  I have been surfing the web for a couple of hours and found nothing but I have a few weeks to finish this.
Please provide feedback.  Websites with ideas and training and other hints.  Tell me things you like about my ideas and those you don't.  Any good business person knows sucess depends on satisfing your customers.  Money may not be any issue yet but making something for a person that likes it is a starting goal.  I am considering this is a side business...but long way off.

If you were the new President, would the following be an avenue you would explore?

Please respond first with YES or NO

and then offer an explanation if you so desire.

A Republican president, who is interested in demonstrating that the Republican Party is interested in the economic health of former USA businesses, should rescue those businesses from the other countries, by offering incentives that are too attractive for businesses to resist.  The cost of moving back to the USA should be tax deductable with all receipts and invoices presented.  The cost of purchasing property on a percentage of property required to place the buildings will tax deducted on a three year schedule.  Those businesses that do not relocate in inner city districts or who are not concerned with manufacturing will receive free property tax for ten years in addition to an income tax fee of only 50% of the going rate.  No matter what the company's function is, and no matter where it is located, the company will have those regulations that make it difficult to exist removed.  Desired results: Returning former USA businesses to the USA; skilled and non-skilled people who have been accessing government assistance would no longer require government assistance; skilled and non-skilled people who have been working inn positions whose compensations are less than what once the worker's standard may return to a higher plateau of salary.  There would be a creation of small stores surrounding the businesses with food and other needed items which would also help in the tax base and with unemployment reduction; and company-school relationships could be established to create scholarships to workshops, to work-related camps, and/or to college, and to sponsor field trips; and to cause a lowering of the inner city unemployment rate.

At the annual City University Journalism School dinner, on Monday, Dean Baquet, the managing editor of the New York Times, was seated with Arthur Sulzberger, Jr., the paper’s publisher. At the time, I did not give a moment’s thought to why Jill Abramson, the paper’s executive editor, was not at their table. Then, at 2:36 P.M. on Wednesday, an announcement from the Times hit my e-mail, saying that Baquet would replace Abramson, less than three years after she was appointed the first woman in the top job. Baquet will be the first African-American to lead the Times.

Fellow-journalists and others scrambled to find out what had happened. Sulzberger had fired Abramson, and he did not try to hide that. In a speech to the newsroom on Wednesday afternoon, he said, “I chose to appoint a new leader of our newsroom because I believe that new leadership will improve some aspects …” Abramson chose not to attend the announcement, and not to pretend that she had volunteered to step down.

As with any such upheaval, there’s a history behind it. Several weeks ago, I’m told, Abramson discovered that her pay and her pension benefits as both executive editor and, before that, as managing editor were considerably less than the pay and pension benefits of Bill Keller, the male editor whom she replaced in both jobs. “She confronted the top brass,” one close associate said, and this may have fed into the management’s narrative that she was “pushy,” a characterization that, for many, has an inescapably gendered aspect. Sulzberger is known to believe that the Times, as a financially beleaguered newspaper, needed to retreat on some of its generous pay and pension benefits; Abramson, who spent much of her career at the Wall Street Journal, had been at the Times for far fewer years than Keller, which accounted for some of the pension disparity. Eileen Murphy, a spokeswoman for the Times, said that Jill Abramson’s total compensation as executive editor “was directly comparable to Bill Keller’s”—though it was not actually the same. I was also told by another friend of Abramson’s that the pay gap with Keller was only closed after she complained. But, to women at an institution that was once sued by its female employees for discriminatory practices, the question brings up ugly memories. Whether Abramson was right or wrong, both sides were left unhappy. A third associate told me, “She found out that a former deputy managing editor”—a man—“made more money than she did” while she was managing editor. “She had a lawyer make polite inquiries about the pay and pension disparities, which set them off.”

Sulzberger’s frustration with Abramson was growing. She had already clashed with the company’s C.E.O., Mark Thompson, over native advertising and the perceived intrusion of the business side into the newsroom. Publicly, Thompson and Abramson denied that there was any tension between them, as Sulzberger today declared that there was no church-state—that is, business-editorial—conflict at the Times. A politician who made such implausible claims might merit a front-page story in the Times. The two men and Abramson clearly did not get along.

A third issue surfaced, too: Abramson was pushing to hire a deputy managing editor to oversee the digital side of the Times. She believed that she had the support of Sulzberger and Thompson to recruit this deputy, and her supporters say that the plan was for the person in this position to report to Baquet. Baquet is a popular and respected figure in the newsroom, and he had appeared, for the most part, to get along with Abramson. (I was told, however, that, at a recent dinner with Sulzberger, Baquet said he found her hard to work with.) He is also someone whom Sulzberger passed over when he chose Abramson. But Baquet apparently felt that he hadn’t been consulted, and, according to two sources, expressed his concerns to Sulzberger. He had also reportedly been approached by Bloomberg about a job there. (Baquet has not yet responded to a request for comment; neither has Abramson.)

In a reflection of the fractious relationship that Baquet and others had with Abramson, the Times reported that Baquet, speaking to the newsroom after his appointment, “praised Ms. Abramson for teaching him ‘the value of great ambition’ and then added that John Carroll, whom he worked for at The Los Angeles Times, ‘told me that great editors can also be humane editors.’”

These issues seemed to congeal for Sulzberger and Thompson. The reason Sulzberger originally hesitated to appoint Abramson as executive editor was a worry about her sometimes brusque manner. As I wrote in my Profile of Abramson, others in the newsroom, including some women, had the same concern. But, although there are always complaints about the Times’ supposed “liberal” bias, or its preoccupation with certain stories, Abramson got high marks for the investigative stories that she championed. At a time when Bloomberg News pulled the plug on an investigation of corruption and the princelings in China, Abramson pushed the Times to do more, even after her reporters came under pressure in China. Even though she thought she was politely asking about the pay discrepancy and about the role of the business side, and that she had a green light from management to hire a deputy to Baquet, the decision to terminate her was made. Sulzberger met with her last Friday, and reportedly told her that it was time to make “a change.”

Read at: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/currency/2014/05/why-jill-abramson-was-fired.html

Hello,

I am writing to as many tea party leaders, activists and conservative leaders as I can find.  We need to find out why big business is fighting for amnesty and immigration reform.

As conservatives, we are working toward deregulation and free enterprise, and the businesses that will benefit the most from our efforts are opposing us.  It is illogical.  We need to engage big business directly to find out what is going on and to let them know what we are doing and can do to help them and to let them know what we need from them.

1. What makes foreigners, and illegal aliens more attractive than Americans as employees? 
   1. It is government control of our education that has reduced the competence of American citizens and college grads.
   2. Once “illegals” are legalized, they will be subject to the same requirements that make Americans expensive, minimum wage, able to sue for discrimination, etc.
   3. The illegal alien community is only about 12 million people.
   4. Agriculture workers comprise less than 10% of the workforce and that is the hew and cry:  http://www.bls.gov/emp/ep_table_201.htm

1. Why does big business support big government when it cripples free enterprise, which the US Chamber of Commerce says it supports?
   1. How much and what types of corporate welfare do they receive?
   2. Is the elimination of competition by government overregulation more valuable to big business that free enterprise?

1. Why aren’t deregulation and elimination of the EPA their highest priorities.  They should be full on-board with the tea parties.
2. Is big government, the Republican Party, promising big business something in exchange for their assistance in defeating the Tea Parties and conservatism?

We need to engage the US Chamber of Commerce, our local Chambers of Commerce and Big Business.  Message me if you would like an Excel spreadsheet of the CEO’s of the Fortune 500 as of June of 2013.  While some of these people may have changed position most of them will still be accurate.

I recommend a two-pronged approach:

1. Tea Party and Conservative leaders need to reach out to these businesses to engage them and work with them to find solutions to the problems.
2. Phone calls, letters and emails directly to big businesses opposing amnesty and immigration reform from as many citizens as possible.  We need to flood their phone lines with opposition to this legislation.

If we can find out what businesses met with John Boehner in Tuesday’s close door meeting, we need to contact them asap.

http://dailycaller.com/2014/02/24/boehner-obama-to-hold-closed-door-meeting-tuesday/

Following are more links on big business and amnesty/immigration reform:

http://news.investors.com/ibd-editorials/011614-686714-big-business-wants-amnesty-even-if-you-dont.htm

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2014/02/26/Chamber-of-Commerce-Big-Business-Groups-to-Boehner-Failure-to-Act-on-Amnesty-Not-an-Option

http://archive.redstate.com/stories/featured_stories/white_house_confirms_big_business_is_behind_amnesty_bill

GOV’S PHONY ILLEGAL ALIEN COSTS!

Hope is in your hands!    Flood the country with your truth, writings, and wisdom however great or trivial you may think they are.   You’re free to use anything I write or say to do it, just challenge it & make sure it’s right.    There is very little truth in anything federal government does or reports!    One day illegal aliens cost $116 billion & the next it’s $402 billion.  Isn’t 11million aliens replacing citizens at government’s $42,500 wage $468 billion down the toilet... FOR THAT SINGLE ITEM?   Doesn’t 23 million citizens losing their average $43,500 wage sound like $1 trillion of inexcusable misery caused by demonic tyrants hell bent on destroying America?   Don’t let them hide!   It’s treason!   Officials aiding and abetting the enemy need never sleep, not knowing they will be publicly held accountable to the full extent of Constitution and law, especially those sworn to public office!

Here’s another ugly side of alien invaders and slave traders bankrupting legitimate taxpaying US businesses!    They put perhaps 23 million citizens in the street with no job, while simultaneously undermining wages to the point where working citizens are supporting almost 50 million “food stamp” citizens and aliens who can’t afford food & shelter!   All walks of life are in this snake pit, especially democrats!

Criminal slave labor destroys competition, society, and government revenue!

A $20/hr wage costs employers about $26.67/hr. (+1/3 fica/med-wk/comp-uc/comp-ins-hol-vac-etc)
Worker net of tax takes home about $16 cash! (80% inc. tax-fica-etc.)
By paying $16 cash, no tax etc, you can save $10.67 or underbid legitimate contractors up to 40%!
A worker harboring criminal "alien straw boss contractor", can pay $8 & save $18.67 or underbid 70%!

Criminal activity never benefits anyone except criminals who take all but enough to corrupt!    This crime is as mindboggling and complex as each unique activity of 11 to 30 million criminal aliens, every day!   It’s also as simple to prosecute as dropping the numbers into any given case at any given time!

The illustration defines the parameters and scope of 11 to 30 million illegal alien workers where wages, taxes, requirements, are reasonable average estimates!   A 2000hr/yr (52wks=2080) says $10/hr is $20,000 each & $19/hr is $38,000/yr/ea!    Thus the lowest value of 11million workers is $220 billion/yr & the highest of 30 million is $722 billion.  Criminals gain $220 to $722 billion for their criminal activity!

It is a criminal enterprise that destroys independent taxpaying competitive businesses, which will trigger profoundly more wealth destruction, chaos, and moral breakdown of our society!    That process is above and beyond enabling the $1 to $3 trillion yearly mass looting of citizen wealth by alien invaders and stealth within government noted elsewhere!

The scope is trillions, not pennies, thousands, or even millions!   It’s survival of the Constitution and freedom or tyranny!    The legislative choice must be fight for freedom NOW or face treason for literally trillions of reasons.   The executive-legislative-judicial officers can correct this TOMORROW!   Let the first domino fall and the rest will follow!

Our government, unions, and chambers of commerce sponsor SLAVE LABOR and chaos!

RAM THIS DOWN THE AMNESTY TREASONIST'S THROATS!

By Gregg Houlden

We have a huge problem with youth unemployment and as I leave the UK today after a long 2 months. I wanted to share this great idea we should borrow from the Brits. It's not ground shaking innovation its eminently sensible pragmatic politics. Not every young person is cut out for college. Yet we shouldn't at that point write them off for a life of minimum wage mediocrity.

Vocational training is in many ways far better and produces the skilled workers industry scream out for. Some organizations do already provide apprenticeships yet I think we as a party should support national programs the support and promote companies to introduce apprenticeships. In the UK they have a well thought out program that partners community colleges, the government and employers to deliver well rounded programs that take youngsters aged 16 to 19 from high school (youngsters leave school at 16 in the UK btw).

The programs mix classroom further education with on the job training. The government supports the employers by providing partial funding towards the youngsters wages, money they would normally pay anyway via welfare. For business its a win win concept.  A new report from the Center for Economics and Business Research (CEBR) has found the average apprenticeship completer increases business productivity by £214 per week leading to increased profits, lower prices, better products and higher wages.

This figure rockets to £414 for engineering apprentices and £401 a week for construction and planning trainees.

And the number of annual apprenticeship completions is forecast to rise across all sectors of the economy over the coming decade, growing from an annual 260,000 in 2012/13 to 480,000 by 2021/22 - meaning the total amount contributed to the economy by 2022 will be £4.2 billion.

Charles Davis, head of macroeconomics at the CEBR said ahead of the report: "Raising the skills of the UK's workforce translates into improved UK competitiveness in a challenging post-financial crisis environment. This is a vital part of re-balancing the UK economy and raising the chances of sustained export-led growth."

Despite the evidence, many small employers were struggling to get the message, according to David Way, chief executive of the National Apprenticeship Service.

The Service is working with Barclays (a Major British Bank) and charities Tomorrow's People and The Prince's Trust (A very good idea set up by Prince Charles) , as well as Route 2 training, to introduce the Bridges To Work scheme, designed to help 10,000 young people into work in the coming years. 

Through Bridges Into Work, businesses across England will be able to receive additional free support to take on an apprentice, whilst local Barclays Business Managers will help match up suitable apprentices and businesses in their area.

Way said: "I regularly speak to employers who tell me about the benefits that Apprenticeships bring to their business. Apprentices not only increase productivity but also bring creativity and dynamism into the workplace; the very best examples of which are being showcased in this year’s National Apprenticeship Week.

"We need to get this evidence across, particularly to small employers. The Bridges Into Work Programme will help us to do this, by being able to reach many more small businesses who would benefit from taking on an apprentice."

I also see a similar opportunity to offer welfare recipients still of working age this style of back to work scheme. What do you think?

Why is it unethical to comply with the law? That is precisely what anyone who claims a company or the “rich” is immoral if it legally minimizes its tax is saying. This also rings true for the 24% who pay 87% of our Federal Taxes , as universally they are net investors in the economy.

First of all, what place does morality have in this? There are some universally agreed moral principles – do not kill is pretty widely accepted – but does this really fall into the same category? Is it right, for example, to have a friend round to dinner rather than send some money to feed the hungry? Some will say one thing, some another. Universal moral principles are of the greatest importance, but are not a guide to every detail of life.

And in practical terms, companies actually do not bear the burden of a tax. Companies are not individuals. They are organizations designed to produce and supply things. They employ people, machinery, intellectual property, capital, raw materials, and so on, and combine them to produce things for people. Companies are intermediaries.

If a company has to pay as tax some of the money it makes from selling its output, that leaves it with less to distribute. So it pays less to shareholders, employs fewer workers, and buys less in the way of raw materials. And of course it makes and sells fewer goods. In other words, some of the profits may be handed over by the company, but the burden is borne by the company's shareholders, employees, suppliers, and customers.

Note too, that much tax is paid in consequence of the activities of companies; income tax, capital gains tax and, in many countries, sales tax etc. That is one of the reasons governments try to produce tax regimes designed to attract businesses. Those who complain about tax avoidance by companies should see that the more tax a company avoids, the more tax its owners and employees will pay. Criticizing corporations for avoiding tax is actually criticizing them for doing what governments want. Governments all round the world compete to provide favorable tax regimes for business. They accept the phenomenon of legitimate tax avoidance, taking advantage of the tendency in, for example, efforts to incentivize pension saving, or industrial development in particular regions. Obama and his socialist czars are making the US very unattractive. Only this week my Firm and I had serious offers from Singapore and Australia to set up  primary offices and transfer our capital.  This is fair play really they see Obama making life uncomfortable for the investment community and they see an opportunity to boost their own economy by Billions of Dollars.

Governments also engage in tax competition to attract firms. They do that to bring jobs, investment, and innovation to their countries, with all the benefits that can spill over from those to the rest of the economy. Companies follow such tax incentives because if they can conduct their business with decisions unaffected by tax paid by the business, then they can operate as efficiently as they can and let the taxes on the outcome be paid by the individuals who actually benefit from that outcome – the shareholders, employees, and suppliers.

When companies do what is legal to minimize the taxes they pay, they are actually doing what governments want them to – they are responding to incentives. If governments complain about this, it may be because the structure of the business is not what they thought or because they have made taxes so complicated that there are numerous ways to avoid them. Governments may want money in difficult times, but companies can use it too, to create jobs.

Obama "If you want different results, you have to have a different set of rules."

In thinking about these rules, politicians, and others concerned about the taxes companies pay, should remember the advice of two politicians of earlier generations. When he was UK Chancellor of the Exchequer, under the tremendous Lady Thatcher, Nigel Lawson said that taxes should be "low, simple, and compulsory". Tax competition helps keep taxes low. If politicians want taxes to yield what they expect – want them to be compulsory – they should keep them simple, not make them so complex that the result is a surprise. And on morality they might be better to "leave morality to the church and people’s belief in god".

The current White House occupant, in a calculated, targeted attack against Republican rival Mitt Romney, attempted to dismiss a key Romney rationale for his presidential candidacy by saying: "When you're president, as opposed to the head of a private equity firm, then your job is not simply to maximize profits. Your job is to figure out how everybody in the country has a fair shot."

It is quite obvious that occupy Oval Office is shockingly unfamiliar with the concept that jobs are downstream from profits, not the other way around. With the exception of the original staff, which is hired to launch a company via startup capital (notice that here too, private capital comes before hiring), businesses only become financially capable of hiring more workers after they have made profits. Being profitable gives them the capital needed to pay for expansion, which then creates the need to hire additional employees. This is especially true of small businesses, most of which are decidedly not over funded with start-up capital.

According to "progressives", the rich are somehow preventing the middle class from having a fair shot because the rich are depriving the middle class by not paying "their fair share" of taxes. The "progressive" concept of the middle class having a fair shot is stealing money from those who have earned it through initiative, hard work, risk and sacrifice within the free market capitalist system through "progressive" taxation and use that money, acquired through legal extortion, to hire unionized government sector workers. Workers who will not only be paid more than their counterparts who are doing the same job in the private sector, but who will enjoy Cadillac healthcare and pension benefits provided to them by a taxpayer funded job from which, thanks to union demands, being fired will be a virtual impossibility.

Still wonder why "progressives" love government sector unions?

Such an arrangement is perfectly suited to "progressives", who are huge proponents of centrally planned big government. Workers dependent upon government for their livelihood are reliably more likely to re-elect big government candidates. They are also far more likely to pay little concern to how much the rich are taxed, since the taxes of unionized government workers won’t be affected.  That is, if they’re even required to pay taxes. Their big government big brothers take care of them.

Winston Smith, where are you?

Of course, the "they don’t pay their fair share" rhetoric is a complete sham, a straw-man argument. Truth be known, the "they don't pay their fair share" rhetoric is a bold faced lie. The top 10% earners in America pay 70% of the income taxes while 47% of Americans pay no income tax. They pay zero.

How much of a tax on the rich would be enough to satisfy "progressives"? How much of someone else's money does the Oval Office need to take for the middle class to have "a fair shot"? The 100% rate Barrack Obama Sr. sought to impose on Kenya’s rich after he seized power?

Can you say redistributive dreams from my Marxist father?

This clearly demonstrates how clueless Barrack Hussein Obama is about the way America was designed by its Founding Fathers. Having a fair shot in America has never been about big government stealing from the rich to finance hiring unionized government sector workers.

Having a fair shot has always been about a constitutionally limited government not interfering with the private sector free market’s ability to afford equal opportunity to everyone, regardless of their starting point in life. In America, government’s job is not to "take care of us". In America, a centrally planned big government can never replace the initiative, creativity, hard work, sacrifice, risk, and reward of free, private Citizens working to provide for their own needs through the pursuit of happiness within the private sector.

If it ever does, America will have ceased to exist.

Instead of digging the United States into an ever-deepening hole by reducing available free market capital through higher tax rates, how about creating some certainty for investors by making permanent changes to America’s needlessly complicated tax code? How about creating a simplified tax code that provides incentives for investment? How about creating a tax code that’s doesn’t punish small businesses by forcing them  each year to divert limited precious capital to pay the cost of hiring accountants and attorneys to decipher an ever "evolving", increasingly complicated tax code? How about creating an economic environment where the rich, middle class and poor alike all feel it’s worth the risk to invest in a start-up business? Thanks to existing, unnecessarily high "progressive" tax rates and expanding, restrictive, needlessly expensive regulatory oppression, starting up a new business today is practically impossible.

Better still, how about "progressives" going back to school to learn what America is really all about? In the meantime, they should leave running America to Americans.

Obama has had four years.  He got his fair shot, and he blew it.

After 100 years of progressively expanding government intrusion into the God given Rights and Liberties of free people, it is now time to forever close the book on the failed "progressive" experiment.

http://mjfellright.wordpress.com/2012/08/28/close-the-book-forever-on-the-failed-progressive-experiment/

Dear Follow American,

Please allow me to introduce myself. I am Chief of Surgery at one of the largest hospitals in Las Vegas and lucky enough to be considered a small business owner. I am by no means independently wealthy, nor have any desire to pad a Swiss bank account on the back of anyone, even "the middle-class".

What I am is "the American Dream!" I came from a middle-class family. My father was an electrician and part owner of a motorcycle store. He worked nights and I rarely saw him come home before 8:00 pm. My mother worked as a nurse and even worked weekends. I went to public school. And yes President Obama, the government may have helped me get to the mountain, but what you forgot is, I Climbed it! I took out loans, and my grandparents sacrificed a portion of their limited savings to help me get through college. Following college I attended medical school, residency, and fellowship. And now, nine years later, I am Chief of Surgery.

Taking care of humans is what I have dedicated my life to. For me, there is nothing more rewarding than watching a person walk without pain and suffering. My dream did not involve becoming rich at the expense of hurting others financially. The American dream is about "making it!" It doesn't matter if you make it as a plumber, a pipe fitter, a gardener, or a rocket scientist.

I was taught greatness comes from elevating others around you. As a physician I feel it is my responsibility to pass my knowledge to young medical students in hopes that they will become even better than myself. When President Obama looks through my television and states that I, a small business owner, wants to fill a Swiss bank account instead of helping my community I realize how out to touch and misguided he it. Why would I want my community to have such a high unemployment rate? Why would I want people in my community to suffer? These are my neighbors, my friends, and my children's teachers.

I want to help and I have a solid plan but I need your help. I call it the "Nevins Small Business Pledge." I pledge if Mitt Romney gets elected, the day he gets sworn in, I will immediately hire a new employee. I am convinced that "trickle-down" economics works. Although I am a small business with a small office staff that is directly part of my overhead, I will be able to and WILL hire a new employee due to the tax savings I will receive.

With your help we can make this concept go viral. I predict within the next 60 days we can obtain a commitment for 100,000 plus new jobs the day Romney gets elected! This would first prove small business owners are not the evil, self-indulgent, aristocrats that the liberal world portrays us. Secondly, this would create a guaranteed number of new jobs. Third, this would prove, in a tangible way to undecided independents that trickle-down economics and private sector ingenuity is what makes America thrive and prosper.

I am presently building the web site www.nevinssmallbusinesspledge.com where people can pledge to create a new job the day Romney takes office. The website is up and can be seen but won't be fully running until Monday or Tuesday. The website not only shows the jobs that will be available but also the estimated annual economic effect, as well as over President Romney's four years.

In conclusion, as a real small business owner, not the factious demagogue that Obama has created, want my community to thrive and will use my tax breaks to help when Romney gets elected. I ask that all small business owners join me on this crusade and take the Nevins Small Business Pledge!

I appreciate your time. I am glad that I was at least given the opportunity to express myself. If you can help me in anyway please contact me @702-429-0691 or russellnevinsmd@cox.net

Sincerely,

Russell Nevins, M.D.
Chief of Surgery
Spring Valley Medical Center
Las Vegas, NV

Most congressional observers believe Congress will address the issue of empowering states to collect sales tax on the purchases of goods bought on the Internet.  The issue is not typical of other tax issues as it finds conservatives like Steve King (R-Iowa), Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell and others supporting the states ability to collect their sales taxes for online purchases.  A strong argument can be made that they have embraced the conservative position.

Make no mistake about it; there is deep division about this issue.  Mom-and-pop small businesses hate the disparity that was created when the Supreme Court ruled that businesses needed a "nexus" within a state for sales taxes to be collected.  That ruling allowed companies like Amazon to avoid sales taxes while small business are forced to collect them.  They argue that the decision, especially in a poor economy, creates economic incentives that hurt their bottom line.  Why should consumers shop in more expensive local stores when shopping online creates built-in no sales tax savings?

Others argue that allowing states to collect sales taxes for Internet purchases is tantamount to a tax increase.  As opponents have noted, America's budget problems are not revenue problems but spending problems.  Government's bring in enough revenue but can't get their spending in control. 

There is tacit acknowledgement of this argument as many supporters of the "Marketplace Equity Act" are governors who are struggling to balance their state budgets.  Billions of dollars in sales are made every year online that have escaped the reaches of the state tax collectors. 

But there is a bigger issue at stake -- federalism.

Allowing online merchants to charge, collect and remit sales taxes based on their physical location would level the playing field with Main Street small businesses and, perhaps most importantly, restore federalism to the issue.  The government should treat merchants equally.  It should not be making it harder for small businesses to compete.  In addition, the federal government should not bar states from enforcing their laws as long as they don't interfere with interstate commerce.

In some ways this is a complicated issue.  But in others it's clear that fairness and federalism should play a role in the final deliberations.   

The American labor market showed few signs of new life in the latest jobs report.   First time filings for unemployment benefits rose again last week to a one-month high.  Claims rose for a second week, by 4,000 for the period ended Aug. 18.  After economists had predicted 365,000 new claims, the number climbed to 372,000.

The administration continues to cite the European debt crisis and economic slowdowns in Asia as deterrents to investment.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-08-23/jobless-claims-in-u-s-climb-for-second-week-to-one-month-high.html

It is far easier to blame the global economy than to admit that this administration’s energy policies are killing jobs in America.  That this administration poked their thumbs into the eyes of millions of unemployed Americans when they laughed about “shovel-ready” projects not being as “shovel-ready” as advertised.  It is not the least bit funny to Americans when they discover that this administration does not know what they are doing, especially after they spent trillions of taxpayer dollars on plans that did not work and redistributed hundreds of billions of the taxpayer’s wealth to rich “progressive” bundlers for the administration’s campaign machine.

Across the country, Americans have had enough of this administration’s policies, starting with those that kill jobs; like the healthcare reform law that levies huge tax hikes on all Americans and imposes additional burdens on businesses.  Americans are done with the policies that are killing America’s energy industry, like stifling EPA regulations that make it impossible to build new petroleum refineries or use coal powered energy.  Americans can no longer tolerate a lack of policy; a lack that precludes any hope for recovery in the housing market.  Many small businesses will find it difficult if not impossible to exist, much less expand and hire while banking regulations imposed during this administration make it virtually impossible for banks to loan them money.

Why does America continue to spend hundreds of billions of dollars a year on foreign energy rather than developing the abundant energy in its own country? Why not keep those hundreds of billions of dollars at home in its own sluggish, cash strapped economy?

At a time when tens of millions of Americans are struggling to find work and its economy is starving for liquid capital, why does this administration refuse to take advantage of America’s wealth of natural resources? Why does this administration continue to prevent drilling for oil and natural gas or mining for coal? Why not put Americans back to work building refineries and power plants? Why not have Americans delivering gas, coal and natural gas to American consumers?

How many peripheral jobs will be created by that process?

For every new oil well, power plant, refinery or mine there will be new roads built, followed by restaurants, stores, housing, schools and places of worship. All generated by the only force capable of powering America’s economic recovery: the private sector.

The key to economic recovery in America is a shift in policy.  The only way for that shift to happen is to alter the governing philosophy.  For that alteration to take place, America must elect a new sheriff and new deputies.

http://mjfellright.wordpress.com/2012/08/23/america-needs-a-new-sheriff/

The institutionalized “progressive” left is at it again.  Consider this headline published by Yahoo News on behalf of Susan Davis, USA Today and ABC OTUS News:

“Congress could be least productive since 1947”

Three of the first four paragraphs of this “headline news” story focus on attacking the Republican majority in the House of Representatives for the recent lack of legislative success.  This is obviously typical of the “progressive” Party Pravda, which never misses an opportunity to parrot messages being dictated by the George Soros funded Media Matters via Valerie Jarrett and the White House.

Statistics are being manipulated and misrepresented by partisan hacks posing as journalists: “Just 61 bills have become law to date in 2012 out of 3,914 bills that have been introduced by lawmakers, or less than 2 percent of all proposed laws,” or “In 2011, after Republicans took control of the U.S. House, Congress passed just 90 bills into law.

http://news.yahoo.com/congress-could-least-productive-since-1947-011137011.html?_esi=0&

It might be statistically true that “Congress is on pace to make history with the least productive legislative year in the post-World War II era,” but to so strongly insinuate that this is the fault of the House Republican majority, as Davis, USA Today, ABC News and Yahoo News do is a lie.  Utter fabrication…pure unadulterated fiction.

Where the article fails completely (that is if you are seeking factual information rather than “progressive” propaganda) is in the “reporting” of why those numbers are so abysmal.

The United States Senate, under the extreme, partisan, rigidly ideological, failed “leadership” of “progressive” Democrat Harry Reid, has blocked, obstructed, ignored or refused to allow a majority of House passed bills to even come to a vote in the U.S. Senate.

How is any bill passed by the House ever to become law if it is completely blocked from discussion or vote in the Senate?

The reason so many people believe the House is to blame for this situation is the lies spread by institutionalized “progressive” shills like Yahoo News, Susan Davis, USA Today, ABC OTUS News and their ilk.

Should the 112^th Congress come to be “defined by partisan divisions and legislative failures”, the blame will rest squarely at the slumping, rounded shoulders of Reid and his “progressive” co-conspirator currently occupying the Oval Office.  The “progressive” Democratic Senate majority has not even passed a budget in three years.  They even voted down the one that came from the Oval Office 97-0.

This is a clear dereliction of duty by the “progressive” Democratic Party.  Thanks to the utter failure of their “progressive” policies, the one and only card left for them to play is using Saul Alinsky style smear tactics against the right attempting to blame the right for problems caused by the left.  This has been the modus operandi of “progressives” since they seized control of the Democratic Party.

The most egregious of lies propagated by the institutionalized “progressive” left is the one put forth by Nancy Pelosi during the TARP debate.  On September 28, 2008 Pelosi placed the blame for the economic collapse entirely on George W. Bush and failed Republican economic policies.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NnyyAKn-I9o

The 2008 financial collapse was a direct result of failed “progressive” social engineering in the U.S. housing market.  For decades the U.S. has had nothing remotely resembling a free market in residential real estate.  Instead, “progressive” big government created monstrosities Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac controlled over half of all U.S. mortgages.  For twenty years, Conservatives warned about the systemic risk Fannie and Freddie posed to the financial system but they were constantly thwarted by the left.  To this very day, the institutionalized “progressive” left denies the essential part Fannie and Freddie played in creating the housing bubble and causing the financial crisis.

Even at the height of the housing bubble, as the extent of the damage was being revealed, Barney Frank and Chris Dodd were still seeking to increase Fannie and Freddie’s role in a market already fettered by “progressive” big government interference.   On behalf of a well-heeled constituency in her congressional district, the liar Nancy Pelosi continued insisting Fannie and Freddie keep the housing bubble going, pushing for their insurance limits to be increased from $417,000 to $700,000 per loan.

Whether in the area of journalism or politics, once the facts are in members of the institutionalized “progressive” left prove themselves to be nothing more than bold faced, willfully deceitful psychopaths unfit to serve in the public arena.

http://mjfellright.wordpress.com/2012/08/15/the-least-productive-congresswhy/