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Hubs is thinking of starting an solo HVAC business in upstate NY. Advice?

MADISON, Wis. - Less than two weeks before the Senate holds its final floor day of the shortened late-winter session, the battle is heating up - among conservatives - over a bill aimed at holding government bureaucrats accountable. Whether the Regulations from the Executive in Need of Scrutiny (REINS) Act gets to the Senate floor remains uncertain at this point. On Thursday, State. Sen. Frank Lasee, R-De Pere, issued a statement calling for Senate leadership to bring the proposal he cosponsored up for a full vote on the Senate’s final session day, on March 15. The bill would require any...

I am looking to make a transition in my career this year, and I am starting the process of setting up my own consulting business in my industry. I've got a reputation and track record that my clients seem to value, and I'm looking to break free of the constraints of my corporate role. I will be working with a lawyer and a CPA once I get a little further down the road here (probably when I am ready to get an EIN#), but in the meantime I'd be interested in getting input from other Freepers who may have followed...

What can a case about ensuring healthy teeth for school kids tell us about the kind of president Ted Cruz might be? Quite a bit, as it turns out. Long before he was a U.S. senator or a presidential candidate, Cruz was a senior official at the Federal Trade Commission. His brief but eventful tenure provides interesting insights into how he might govern. One particular episode - which, as fate would have it, took place in South Carolina - is especially revealing. In 2003, as part of an initiative launched by a Cruz-led Task Force, the FTC filed suit against...

Here's the story. Not long after 9/11, the World Trade Center Business Recovery Grant program was established to help small businesses recover and rebuild. The program disbursed hundreds of millions of dollars through a New York state development corporation in the years following the attacks... ...the New York Daily News ran an investigative piece about how the program had awarded grants to companies and subsidiaries that hardly seemed like "small businesses." Among them were Dell, Morgan Stanley, and, yes, Donald Trump... ...as Trump said immediately following 9/11, none of his properties were directly damaged by the attack on the World...

I'm in need of mentoring and support from my fellow Freepers on succeeding in my small business. Please post here if interested.

Announces Small Business for Cruz Coalition Supporting Ted Cruz for President and His Economic PoliciesHOUSTON, TX - Today, Presidential candidate Ted Cruz announced the creation of the Small Business for Cruz Coalition. The coalition will be led by National Co-Chairs J. Keet Lewis, and Joe and Gladys Grimaud, who also expressed support for Cruz's newly announced tax reform plan, the Simple Flat Tax."Small businesses are the backbone of the American economy, but in the current environment they are going out of business in record numbers," Cruz said. "We need to empower small business owners and entrepreneurs. Through lower taxes, less...

From the inception of the Soviet Union, transformation was built, quite consciously, on eliminating those forces that could impede radical change. In many ways, the true enemy was not the large foreign capitalists (some of whom were welcomed from abroad to aid modernization) but the small firm, the independent property owner. “Small scale commercial production is, every moment of every day, giving birth spontaneously to capitalism and the bourgeoisie … Wherever there is business and freedom of trade, capitalism appears,” noted the state’s founder, Vladimir Lenin. He understood that while larger firms could be manipulated to serve the state, “capitalism...

The centers are seen to help micro-, small-, and medium-scale entrepreneurs with business registration, financing, and market promotion.MANILA, Philippines — The Philippines expects to complete construction of 100 Go Negosyo centers by the end of September – 3 months ahead of target – providing micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs) extra push to expand operations. "For Negosyo centers, we have 92 up already. We continue to monitor the progress of the centers. Anecdotally, we’ve seen that they’ve been able to help micro and small entrepreneurs," Senator Paolo Benigno Aquino IV told reporters on the sidelines of P&G Leadership College 2015...

IRS drops a bomb on small employers » Annual tax would be $36,500 per worker for noncompliance with Obamacare Employers with fewer than 50 employees were promised a break by not having to provide group health insurance under the Affordable Care Act. But now the IRS has served notice that under the rule that has been in effect since July 1 such employers are subject to $100 per worker per day excise tax if they help their employees with their health-care costs. That could amount to a staggering $36,500 per worker annual tax. “We were told over and over during...

Employers who reimburse their workers for health care costs will face massive tax penalties beginning Wednesday. Prior to the passage of the Affordable Care Act, with its mandate that all Americans purchase insurance and requirement for businesses to offer employees insurance plans, many small companies provided coverage by directly reimbursing medical costs or for the cost of private insurance plans. Businesses do it because that’s a less complicated process than dealing with an official health insurance plan, but continuing to do so after July 1 could cost them hundreds of dollars in fines each day. Business groups are calling attention...

Activists demand answers to lawmakers' falsification of documents for ObamaCare perks. Americans fed up with the unbridled arrogance of the nation’s “ruling class” are about to be further infuriated. As American Commitment president Phil Kerpen reveals, there’s yet another outrageous scandal occurring on Capitol Hill, where the House and Senate have falsely certified themselves as small businesses so they can fund themselves and their staffs with taxpayer-funded health insurance—sidestepping ObamaCare provisions in the process. “They conspired to break the law,” Kerpen told Front Page. In an interview with Newsmax TV, Kerpen reminded viewers that Americans had “demanded” Congress enter the...

A pizza shop owner in Seattle says the city's new minimum wage law is forcing her to close her doors. The new law says businesses have six years to phase into giving employees $15 an hour. Devin Jeran was happy to get a raise when Seattle's minimum wage went up to $11 an hour at the beginning of the month. “I definitely recognize that having more money is important, especially in a city as expensive as this one,” he said. He'll only enjoy that bigger paycheck for a few more months. In August, his boss is shutting down Z Pizza,...

Republicans in Congress and GOP presidential hopefuls are threatening tens of thousands of small business jobs by seeking to cut a little-known government agency that guarantees loans to help U.S. exporters, Hillary Rodham Clinton said Friday. Clinton said during a round-table discussion at Smuttynose Brewery that Congress should renew financing for the Export-Import Bank. She argued the GOP is risking up to 164,000 jobs supported by the bank. The Democratic front-runner said Republicans in the 2016 presidential campaign would rather threaten those jobs rather than “stand up to the tea party and talk radio.” …

In a pilot program designed to reduce GHG emissions and safety risks and provide better clean food preparation in mobile food vending, the Big Apple will be home to the next generation of eco-friendly food carts.Food carts, while being convenient for consumers and a good small business venture for foodies and entrepreneurs, are also a source of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and air pollution, as well as being potential public safety hazards from their onboard propane tanks. And in a metropolis like New York City, with some 8000 mobile food carts on the streets, the environmental and health effects of...

‘I’m hearing from a lot of customers, ‘I voted for that, and I didn’t realize it would affect you.’” So says Brian Hibbs, owner and operator of Comix Experience, an iconic comic-book and graphic-novel shop on San Francisco’s Divisadero Street, of the city’s new minimum-wage law. San Francisco’s Proposition J, which 77 percent of voters approved in November, will raise the minimum wage in the city to $15 by 2018. As of today, May 1, Hibbs is required by law to pay his employees at Comix Experience, and its sister store, Comix Experience Outpost on Ocean Avenue, $12.25 per hour....

So now Hillary Clinton, champion of the middle class, says she wants to "reshuffle" a deck stacked in favor of the rich and "topple" the wealthiest 1% — the latest grenade launch in her class-warfare campaign. 'There's something wrong," the former secretary of state declared last week in Iowa, "when CEOs make 300 times more than the American worker." This from a woman who makes more in an hour on the speaker circuit (her fee is about $200,000 per speech) than the average worker who waits on the tables at her fundraising galas makes in three years. A sweet deal...

First case I know of since the gay rights/religious liberty debate sharpened up over the last few years where a Christian business owner threatened to refuse all service to gay — or “openly gay,” i.e. affection-displaying — clients rather than service for gay weddings specifically. Although, strictly speaking, this isn’t a “religious liberty” case: There are no state or local laws where this guy lives that require him to serve gays. He can refuse for any reason he likes, religious or not. I wonder if it occurred to him when he was posting to Facebook that what he wrote,...

SIOUX CITY, Iowa - Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) reiterated his support for Indiana's controversial religious freedom law Wednesday, despite a fresh push by that state's governor to "fix" the measure. Speaking in a stuffy, cramped auditorium at Morningside College here, Cruz said that religious liberty is not a "fringe view." Cruz staked his claim to the right of Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, who signed the law but said he wanted to see "a fix" to the law that makes clear it does not give businesses license to deny services to customers on the basis of sexual orientation, and Arkansas Gov....

The president of the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce questioned in a meeting with reporters Thursday whether Sen. Ted Cruz’s snubbing of the group’s annual summit this week marked an attempt to avoid Latinos as he runs for president. “Ted Cruz chose not to come,” said a visibly displeased Javier Palomarez, president and CEO of the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce. “I hope it is not indicative that he’s backing away from the Hispanic community in order to get through the [GOP] primary.” Other presidential hopefuls such as Senators Rand Paul, R-Ky, and Marco Rubio, R-Fla., also did not speak at...