Free Republic

Rock star Bruce Dickinson has vowed to create 1,000 jobs at a “centre of excellence” for British aviation. The Iron Maiden frontman, a fully qualified pilot, yesterday bought 132,000sq ft of old RAF hangars in South Wales. He aims to use the site at St Athan, Vale of Glamorgan, to service Boeing 737s, train pilots on simulators and, one day, build airships. His firm, CARDIFF AVIATION, hopes to take on the first 50 to 60 staff this July. Hundreds more would follow as contracts come in.

In the 13 years since he suffered a string of political setbacks and quit the third most powerful job in Washington, Newt Gingrich has been busily laying the foundation for a comeback to an even grander perch. On any given day, the former Speaker of the House can be found on a chartered jet headed to Iowa to train future GOP candidates through his American Solutions group, or in Phoenix discussing ways to lower health-care costs with drug makers through his for-profit Center for Health Transformation. He might also be in Philadelphia, narrating a film produced by Gingrich Productions, or...

The woman accused of keeping four handicapped adults chained in a Philadelphia basement and stealing their Social Security checks may have done the same thing to victims in Florida, Virginia and Texas, Philadelphia police said today. *snip* (hate to butcher article but have to in this case..I apologize) She was charged with beating the man with a hammer, tying him up in a closet with only three meals over the course of two months, and beating him with broomsticks, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer. When he died, his body was stuffed into a plastic bag and dumped it in an...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQscE3Xed64

There’s no more poignant symbol of American childhood than the lemonade stand, evocative of long, lazy summer days and pie-in-the-sky entrepreneurial dreams. It inevitably was a subject for a Norman Rockwell print, with a brassy kid confidently hawking cups for 5 cents each. If Rockwell were to update the image today, he might have to include an officer of the law nosing around the stand to ensure its compliance with all relevant ordinances. In various localities around the country this summer, cops have raided and shut down lemonade stands. The incidents get — and deserve — national attention as telling...

WASHINGTON – A high-tech entrepreneur unveiled plans Tuesday to launch the world's most powerful rocket since man went to the moon. Space Exploration Technology has already sent the first private rocket and capsule into Earth's orbit as a commercial venture. It is now planning a rocket that could lift twice as much cargo into orbit as the soon-to-be-retired space shuttle. The first launch is slotted for 2013 from California with follow-up launches from Cape Canaveral in Florida. Space X's new rocket called Falcon Heavy is big enough to send cargo or even people out of Earth's orbit to the moon,...

Hello everyone - I'm starting my own business. I won't pimp it here as that would be in bad taste, among other things. What I am looking for are sources for cost-effective health insurance. I'm otherwise healthy, active, and don't anticipate any issues but one never knows. There are so many enterprising Freepers that it would be a waste not to tap this place as a reliable resource for something like this. Any helpful info would be greatly appreciated.

We will never ever develop a country of unleashed entrepreneurs until Americans are unleashed from employer sponsored health care. Not only that but our US industry will never again be competitive with international business until the direct costs of per employee health care are removed from the costs of doing business. How that happens is debatable, but the outcome either pro/con is not debatable. Some may not agree. Employees are tethered to employers and employers are tethered to employees. Health care encourages the best employees and those with an entrepreneurial bent to stay shackled to employers and it encourages US...

School bans on cell phones are dialing dollars for one savvy entrepreneur. Vernon Alcoser has cornered the mobile market at two Bronx schools, where students pay $1 a day to keep their cell phones in the trucks he parks nearby. "It's better than trying to sneak your phone in," said Tatyana James, a freshman at Herbert H. Lehman High School who pays Alcoser's company, Pure Loyalty Electronic Device Storage, to baby-sit her BlackBerry during class. As far as Alcoser knows, his phone storage trucks are the city's first. Parked across from Lehman on E. Tremont Ave. and DeWitt Clinton High...

This is why America is the greatest nation in the world. And why Obama will never be able to stop people from creating ideas and moving forward with them. From Weird Tech News Hub: 1. Million Dollar Homepage - 1000000 pixels, charge a dollar per pixel 2. PickyDomains - Hire another person to think of a cool domain name for you? 3. Doggles - Create goggles for dogs and sell them online? 4. LaserMonks - An eight-monk monastery in the hills of Monroe County, 90 miles northwest of Madison. Yeah, real monks refilling your toner cartridges. 5. AntennaBalls - You...

There’s a common question brought up in the entrepreneurial community that goes something like this: “Should I go to college?” or “Should I drop out of college?” It’s even the subject of a good analysis by Vivek Wadhwa over at Techcrunch. . I’ve seen the question pop up often enough, it’s certainly an important one, and a question that I have a lot of personal experience with (I went to college, started a company, “stopped/dropped out”, and eventually went back to finish my undergraduate degree). By no means am I 100% right on this subject, but hopefully this serves as...

If we truly want to create jobs, it is not enough to simply berate business to create them. We must address the dynamics that keep businesses from offering jobs and that keep people from accepting jobs. We can use policy to create jobs - we just have to care enough about the jobless to make creating jobs a political priority.

“Republics they say are ungrateful. . . . The people that create or build to make victory possible . . . are war profiteers to be subjected to suspicion, to be investigated, to be harassed.” Thus spoke Andrew Higgins, the inventor of the Higgins boats that were so essential to the U. S. D-Day landings in WWII. Eisenhower called Higgins “the man who won the war for us.” But when the war was won, Higgins was socked with an IRS investigation and then was largely forgotten. I grew up in Nebraska, where Higgins was born and raised, but I never...

At one point toward the end of his article, Professor Blinder downplays conservative concerns over the disincentive to work that unemployment insurance creates: “As the unemployment rate rises, the disincentives that worry conservatives become less important because there are fewer jobs to find…” In this line, we see a true conflict of visions about the way the world works. Professor Blinder sees some fixed number of jobs out there and too many people fighting for them. He thinks that businesses don’t hire more because there is not enough demand for their products. Yet this is an impoverished view of the...

After getting frustrated out of the lemons his problems gave him, David Miller made his own corporate lemonade. Due to the frustration of always having to call technical support to solve his own frequent hardware problems, he started taking the initiative to educate himself.

Business brilliance in a down economy can manifest itself in some unexpected ways! NOTE: The author of this comic requests that you visit his web site and please refrain from copying the cartoon within this thread. Thank you very much!

Obama administration encourages the very culture it deplores Major policy changes can have long-term cultural implications. Major changes can impact behavior almost immediately, but the real cultural implications are a result of the often subtle changes in individual attitudes. With the Obama administration, I believe we will see such cultural changes. I am an entrepreneur. I started with a little 100-seat restaurant almost 32 years ago. My wife and I, along with many good people, built our company the old-fashioned American way. We worked night and day,

February is an important month in the history of American commerce. In this month is the birthday of one of the country's earliest business innovators and large-scale entrepreneurs. During a time period of America's existence as an English colony and then a young nation -- when, to put it mildly, communication and transportation faced challenges -- this businessman's enterprise processed 1.5 million fish per year sent throughout the 13 American colonies and the British West Indies. The mill he...

KIEV, Ukraine—Want to ensure a bigger draw for your lackluster candidate? In Ukraine, just contact Vladimir Boyko and he'll rent you a crowd. Mr. Boyko says his company, Easy Work, has assembled a database of several thousand students and can mobilize them on a day's notice to turn up at demonstrations anywhere in Kiev, stand for hours at a time, and cheer or jeer on cue. "We'll do business with any political party. Ideology doesn't matter to us," says the 21-year-old Web-design major at Kiev Polytechnic Institute. "It matters even less to most students," he adds, grinning. "They have become...

Mr. President, did I really hear you say that businesses aren't hiring because they can't get bank loans? Are you kidding me? Please indulge me for a moment, and we can get to the actual reasons...

Michelle Berry runs a day-care business out of her home in Flint, MI. She thought that she owned her own business, but Berry's been told she is now a government employee and union member. It's not voluntary. Suddenly, Berry and 40,000 other Michigan private day-care providers have learned that union dues are being taken out of the child-care subsidies the state sends them. The "union" is a creation of AFSCME, the government workers union, and the United Auto Workers. This racket means big money to AFSCME, which runs the union, writes the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, a free-market think...

“Save your receipts” may be the rule in the workplace for getting reimbursed for expenses, but those slips of paper are just so much trash to a college student. That’s what Drexel University student Bradley Ericson pondered as he observed transactions at the checkout counter at campus dining halls. Students have a meal plan and tap it electronically by using their student identification card. But the cashier still hands over a printed piece of thermal paper. Soon after, that receipt winds up on the floor or counter. A freshman at Drexel’s LeBow College of Business in the fall of 2008,...

      Actions Print this articleDownload a PDF of this articleRead a different volume The Entrepreneurial Vocation by Rev. Robert A. Sirico As a group, entrepreneurs are frequently depicted as greedy, immoral, and cutthroat. This prejudice can be found equally among business and religious leaders, not to mention among cultural elites and individual people. But such criticisms, though justified far too often, fail to acknowledge the implicit spiritual dimension of enterprise, seen particularly in terms of the entrepreneur’s creative ability to imagine new possibilities, to maintain a proper concept of stewardship, and to cultivate the earth to harness its potential....

Note: The following text is a quote: THE BRIEFING ROOM THE WHITE HOUSE Office of the Press Secretary ___________________________________________________________________________ For Immediate Release October 23, 2009 White House Announces Global Technology and Innovation Fund During his speech in Cairo on June 4, the President announced that the United States would "launch a new fund to support technological development in Muslim-majority countries." As the latest step in delivering on this commitment, the Overseas Private Investment Corporation announced this week a call for proposals for a Global Technology and Innovation Fund. This fund will help catalyze and facilitate private sector investments that promote...

As we marvel (or worry) about the Dow reaching 10,000, let's look again at how closely the crash and recovery are tracking the 1970s. From January 1973 to December 1974--23 months--stocks fell 48%. Over 17 months (October 2007 to March 2009) stocks dropped 54%--a little faster and more dramatically, but comparable. In 1975 stocks rose 38%, in 1976 another 24%. The bounce from this year's Mar. 9 low is nearly 60%. Again, faster, bolder but roughly the same, so far. The 1975--76 rally didn't last. What torpedoed stocks from 1977 to 1982? It was the 1976 election, which elevated an...

A self-described “desperate blonde” was arrested after she attempted to trade sex for World Series tickets, police said. Susan Finkelstein, a 43-year-old Philadelphia woman, took out an ad on the website Craigslist declaring her wish for seats at the "Fall Classic." “Desperate Blonde Needs WS Tix,” the title of the ad read, according to police. Police who viewed the ad apparently believed Finkelstein went into foul territory when she described what she’d be willing to do for the tickets. “Diehard Phillies fan – gorgeous tall buxom blonde – in desperate need of two World Series tickets,” the ad went on....

William Kamkwamba dreamed of powering his village with the only resource that was freely available to him. His native Malawi had gone through one of its worst droughts seven years ago, killing thousands. His family and others were surviving on one meal a day. The red soil in his Masitala hometown was parched, leaving his father, a farmer, without any income. But amid all the shortages, one thing was still abundant. Wind. "I wanted to do something to help and change things," he said. "Then I said to myself, 'If they can make electricity out of wind, I can try,...

Newt Gingrich's conservative group gave - and then rescinded - a business award to a popular topless club in Texas, the proprietor said Thursday. Dawn Rizos said she was looking forward to receiving the promised "Entrepreneur of the Year" award at a Washington, D.C., banquet from American Solutions for Winning the Future, which the former U.S. House speaker chairs. After all, Rizos is the owner of The Lodge, which was named the Best Overall Club in America last year by ED Publications, which sponsors the gentlemen's club industry's annual convention and trade show. But before she had a chance to...

WATCH THIS ONE! Should be at link later.

Let's have some fun here shall we? We all know that our lovely Congress and Obambi told us Porkulus would create millions and millions of jobs. Since I've been out of work since December I decided to have some fun. I called my Democratic Congresscritter's office today and asked them to identify provisions in the Porkulus bill (I used the bill's real title.) that would benefit me as an out of work sales professional. I specifically wanted any provisions that would help me start a new business. See, I have this idea and I believe with a mere $25,000 I...

ABOUT THE SHOW: The artist that electrified audiences in A&E's hit series Inked is in a new tattoo series that takes us beyond the shop. Tattoo Highway follows artist Thomas Pendelton as he travels the country in a mobile tattoo parlor of his own design, a converted 1970s Silver Eagle Tour Bus. On the outside, it's a moving metal canvas of Thomas' art; on the inside, it's a fully functional tattoo parlor. Whether he's tattooing a Crown Dancer for an Apache Elder in New Mexico or a bat-winged heart on a mortician's chest in Sacramento, Thomas is on the road...

Hi Friends and Family, As many of you know, in addition to starting Trend Funnel... I have been working on starting a non-profit organization called the Serventrepreneur Foundation (Serving Entrepreneurs and Developing Servant Entrepreneurs). This fall we were finally approved for a 501c3 public charity status (meaning any donations made to our organization are tax-deductible). Until just recently I had made a cheep looking (because it was free) GoDaddy make-shift website to get the organization legally established and approved by the IRS... and to help recruit people for our first mission trip that recently sent 15 women to Mexico to...

I haven't spent this much time thinking about economics since college, when it was my second major. I have dedicated the last 15 years primarily to my first major, computer science, and my first love, entrepreneurship. But that has changed in the last six months, although my primary concern still remains entrepreneurship. I was invited by Tim Kane and Bob Litan of the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, the world's largest foundation dedicated exclusively to the cause of promoting and fostering entrepreneurship, to a small conference of economics bloggers held in Kansas City recently. About 30 of us spent a stimulating...

On February 16, the United States will celebrate the birth of one of its greatest—and least acknowledged—entrepreneurs: George Washington. Washington's political and military exploits are of course well-known: He was a member of colonial Virginia's House of Burgesses and a delegate to the Continental Congress; he led the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War and won a hard-fought victory for independence; and he served as the first president of these United States. Yet his business ventures are impressive in their own right. During America's time as an English colony, Washington ran a fishing operation that processed 1.5 million fish per...

A man who police say pretends to be a Downtown parking attendant as he dupes visitors out of their money has been charged with criminal impersonation. Officers responded to a complaint Sunday just before 8 p.m. that Anthony Merriweather, 50, had stationed himself at a parking lot at Peabody Place and Rufus Thomas and was charging people $5 to park. When police arrived, Merriweather began walking away, but a victim came forward and told them he’d been conned out of $5 by the parking-lot poser. Merriweather has been run off numerous times, and also arrested, according to a police affidavit,...

Imagine you are a young Bill Gates. You’re smart. You’re ambitious. You’re thinking about starting a business to put your talents to their best use for you and for society. Then you turn on the television and see President Obama say that “now is not the time” for entrepreneurs to make profits and get bonuses. You hear Vice President Joe Biden say of corporate CEOs: “I’d like to throw these guys in the brig.”

I had a chat with a friend last week. It was quick because he told me he was on the way to meet some potential partners for a new business. He’s got big ideas about mobile phone technology. “Starting a business in this economy?” I asked, somewhat surprised, even though we’re doing the same thing. He said, “Great ideas don’t read the papers.” Wow. That blew me away. I don’t believe in big media. I really don’t believe in big corporations. The layers of yes-men and yes-women form a barrier to innovation. There’s only one thing worse than big corporations...

It’s bad news when politicians replace markets American Account Irwin Stelzer Now we know what it must have been like for the manager of a Soviet steel mill called before Joe Stalin to explain why he had not met his production quota. We know that not because we have gained access to still-secret Russian archives, but because we watched top automaker executives abase themselves before Congress in an attempt to get $34 billion (£23.2 billion) in emergency loans, in addition to the $25 billion already promised to subsidise the development of greener vehicles. First comes praise for the leader. The...

STILLWATER, OKLA. (Fortune Small Business) -- The drilling rig rose incongruously over the peaceful college town of Stillwater, Okla. It roared and screeched with activity. Roughnecks, slathered head to toe in mud, scrambled and cursed a blue streak as they threw chain and tripped out two-ton stands of pipe. D.G., a.k.a. "Stretch," a good-natured chain hand, weighed in with a salvo of riotously profane slander, largely addressed to his fellow oil drillers. It could have pinned back the ears of the most depraved drill sergeant on earth. It could have peeled paint. "There, write that in your magazine!" he yelled...

I have been named by BusinessWeek Magazine as a finalist for one of "America's Best Young Entrepreneurs" in their 2008 edition. I need everyone to vote for me, Carlos Leon, by visiting which will directly connect you to the businessweek Section http://www.carlosleon.net I am a Cuban immigrant, proud American and did this with no handouts or affirmitive action!. Voting ends this Friday! -Thanks for the support!. CML Studios Carlos Leon, 25 www.cmlstudios.net North Hollywood, Calif. Carlos Leon is a media mogul in the making. With $25,000 in savings, and no outside financing, he managed to expand the multimedia business he...

WASHINGTON, May 24, 2008 – An entrepreneur who has moved around with her Marine Corps husband and now calls Camp Lejeune, N.C., home is using her small-business success to help other military spouses get started with businesses of their own. “Being a military spouse breeds an excellent opportunity for reach and really working with a community that shares the same love and support that you have as a business owner,” Roxanne Reed -- founder of the All Fired Up Candle Company, Jane Wayne Gear and Marketing to Military Group – said in an “ASY Live” interview on BlogTalkRadio. “I...

NOVY URENGOI, Russia: As Viktor Seliverstov works in his makeshift studio in this hardscrabble Siberian town he is enveloped in a cloud of ivory dust. His electric carving tool whirrs over the milky surface of teeth and tusks, as he whittles them into key fobs, knife handles and scrimshaw figurines. But these are not whale bones or walrus tusks he is working on. The ivory in this part of the world comes from the remains of extinct woolly mammoths, as they emerge from the tundra where they have been frozen for thousands of years. It is a traditional Russian business...

Small businesses are the backbone of America’s economy. This is especially true in South Florida, which according to last year’s bizjournals.com study is one of the top five small business markets in the nation. So it seems natural that one of the most innovative organizations dedicated to the needs of small business owners throughout North America would originate in South Florida. What is anything but natural is the scope and depth that this organization, the Association of Entrepreneurs, seeks to provide. Marc Gilenson, founding President of the Association, is the author of “The Entrepreneurial Way, Strategies and Tactics for Entrepreneurs.”...

Ashley Qualls doesn't sound like a typical high school student. Maybe that's because the 17-year-old is the CEO of a million-dollar business. Ashley is the head of whateverlife.com, a website she started when she was just 14 — with eight dollars borrowed from her mother. Now, just three years later, the website grosses more than $1 million a year, providing Ashley and her working class family a sense of security they had never really known. It all started with capitalism 101, the law of supply and demand. Ashley became interested in graphic design just as the online social networking craze...

VALDOSTA, Ga., Jan. 30 /PRNewswire/ -- Little Caesar Enterprises, Inc. today celebrates the grand opening of the fifth store to open under the Little Caesars Veterans Program as U.S. military veteran and Little Caesars franchisee Patricia Evans opens her doors for business at 1650 F Baytree Road in Valdosta, Georgia. "The Little Caesars Veterans Program has provided me the opportunity to transition to a new career as my family and I begin the next chapter in our lives," said Evans. "I am proud to be the first woman to open a store under this program, and I'm excited to be...

Abstract: The founders of the United States considered intellectual property worthy of a special place in the Constitution - “To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.” In today's knowledge-based economy, capturing value from intellectual capital and knowledge-based assets has gained even more importance. Global competition is no longer for the control of raw materials, but for this productive knowledge. This paper is the third in a series of studies focusing on immigrants' contributions to the competitiveness of the U.S. economy....

An RCMP sniper fires at Darren Shulte's non-ceramic bullet-proof vest to see if it can withstand the shots. Darren Shulte of St. Albert, Alta., created the plate five years ago for a junior high school science fair. Defence Minister Peter MacKay speaks with Shulte while looking over his plate on Saturday, Nov. 24, 2007. CTV.ca News Staff   Updated: Sun. Dec. 2 2007 7:28 AM ET RCMP snipers took aim at Darren Shulte's Grade 9 science project this week, firing at his non-ceramic bullet-proof plate to see if it could save lives. Shulte, of St. Albert, Alta., created the plate...

The birth of modern aviation probably lies in Charles Lindbergh's 1927 flight across the Atlantic, which won him a $25,000 prize and a ticker-tape parade down New York's Fifth Avenue. By showing the world to be just a little smaller than before, Lindbergh fathered the 20th century's transportation revolution. The airship named after German entrepreneur Ferdinand von Zeppelin took its maiden flight the next year, and by the early 1930s both Boeing and Douglas were selling passenger planes to fledgling airlines including TWA, United and American. Not long afterward, the famous Douglas DC-3 made transcontinental flights practical. Compare the rapid...

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates -- Arab countries are nearing the point where they will join the ranks of the world's most competitive economies, but entrepreneurs still need access to venture capital funds to bankroll their ideas, Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt said Monday. "The next story in the development of the Arab world will be the unleashing of the power of the Arab entrepreneur," Schmidt told a gathering of hundreds of political and business leaders from the Middle East and elsewhere. "Huge new non-oil businesses can be created here that are global and export-oriented." Schmidt, speaking at the opening session...