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"Monkey Bite" Bill Would Mean No Interstate Trade Of Primate Pets
Tweet Share on Facebook February 27, 2009 Comment (16)If you've seen The Daily Show recently, you know about the latest moral panic: pet chimps run amok! And like with so many moral panics in the past, Congress is using it to punish businesspeople. Check out the Daily Show video here.
The House of Representatives has used the media frenzy around the Connecticut woman who was gruesomely injured by a pet chimpanzee to pass the Captive Primate Safety Act. The bill, if passed by the Senate, would ban the interstate trade of "non-human" primates, with a few exceptions, such as if you're a licensed veterinarian or working for a nonprofit purpose.
The sale of monkeys as pets is by no means a big industry. The Humane Society of the United States estimates that 15,000 "chimps and smaller monkeys" are kept as pets in the U.S, and 22 states either prohibit or tightly regulate the monkey trade within their borders. But even if it's not a large business, why should a few attention-grabbing headlines lead to its prohibition?
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Topless Cafe In Maine: Insert Lame Joke About Cup Size Here
Tweet Share on Facebook February 26, 2009 Comment (20)This has to be the weirdest idea for a small business I've heard in a long time:
Inside, two men sipped coffee at their booth; the rest of the tables were empty. There are 15 tables, with room enough for 58 people.
On Tuesday, inside were three topless women, one topless man and owner Donald Crabtree in a dress shirt and tie. Blue Oyster Cult's "Don't Fear the Reaper" was playing.
Brothers Dick and Rene Brochu of Augusta, ages 60 and 59, said they decided to stop by the Grand View Topless Coffee Shop after hearing about it from friends. Both men are retired.
But really, with how coffee-crazy Americans have become over the past decade or so, wasn't it a matter of time before someone married our love for caffeine with our love for prurient exhibitionism?
Probably the most surprising thing about this is that the topless coffee shop opened up in a small New England town of 4,000 people, and not a large urban area. I grew up in Tampa, Florida, infamously known as the strip club capital of the country, and the Grand View would certainly fit in there.
So watch out Tampa--you've got an upstart rival in the form of Vassalboro, Maine.
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Obama's State Of The Union Vs. Bobby Jindal's Response: Two Views On The Role Of Government For The Entrepreneur
Tweet Share on Facebook February 25, 2009 Comment (5)Let's compare the ideas expressed by President Obama and Governor Jindal in their respective speeches last night. Specifically, I'm going to look at what they think are the proper duties of government toward the entrepreneurial sector of the economy.
Obama (emphasis mine):
I reject the view that says our problems will simply take care of themselves; that says government has no role in laying the foundation for our common prosperity.
For history tells a different story. History reminds us that at every moment of economic upheaval and transformation, this nation has responded with bold action and big ideas. In the midst of civil war, we laid railroad tracks from one coast to another that spurred commerce and industry. From the turmoil of the Industrial Revolution came a system of public high schools that prepared our citizens for a new age. In the wake of war and depression, the GI Bill sent a generation to college and created the largest middle-class in history. And a twilight struggle for freedom led to a nation of highways, an American on the moon, and an explosion of technology that still shapes our world.
In each case, government didn’t supplant private enterprise; it catalyzed private enterprise. It created the conditions for thousands of entrepreneurs and new businesses to adapt and to thrive.
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Is Internet Porn Destroying America?
Tweet Share on Facebook February 24, 2009 Comment (32)The Washington Times editorializes about the "virulent cancer" that is destroying our economy. Toxic bank assets? Nope--Internet porn. (HT: The Agitator)
The Times supports Senator Chuck Grassley in calling for a "national conversation" about employees watching porn on their computers at work. Of course, we know what these "conversations" turn into when kicked off by politicians--witness the circus of Congressional hearings around the issue of Major League Baseball and steroids.
I've blogged about attempts to regulate the Internet before, because I think that keeping this "last frontier" safe from regulation is very importnat for the interests of the entrepreneurial community. So what about this claim that workplace internet porn is draining productivity and wasting wages?
Let's look at the only evidence the Times uses to back up this claim:
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What You Should Know About Gary Locke, Obama's Potential Commerce Secretary
Tweet Share on Facebook February 24, 2009 Comment (11)The Washington Post is reporting that Gary Locke, governor of the state of Washington from 1997 to 2005, will soon be announced as President Obama's third (and final?) pick to head the Department of Commerce.
Locke would be a much more conventional choice for Obama than Gregg. The Democratic Party did much to promote him to the national stage. Most significantly, in 2003, Locke delivered the Democratic response to President Bush's State of the Union address--albeit a response that Matt Yglesias describes as "crappy." Still, in that speech Locke criticized Republican "upside-down" economic policies and called for $100 billion in investments and middle-class tax relief. He is almost certainly to be very supportive of Obama's economic policies, unlike Gregg.
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Slumdog Millionaire--An Almost Perfect Oscar Sweep
Tweet Share on Facebook February 23, 2009 CommentThis post is somewhat neither-here-nor-there, but this is what I was thinking last night:
How bad you feel if you are the sound editor for Slumdog Millionaire? Sound editing was the only category in which Slumdog was nominated for an Oscar but did not win, losing to The Dark Knight.
Anybody an expert on motion picture sound? Why was Slumdog's sound mixing Oscar-worthy, but not its sound editing?
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Inspiration Cafe Outshines Academy Award Winners
Tweet Share on Facebook February 23, 2009 Comment (7)The 81st Academy Awards, to me at least, seemed even longer and more boring than those ceremonies usually are. So much that I found some of the commercials more interesting than the show itself. That was certainly the case for me and many other viewers with the spot about the Inspiration Cafe, the Chicago restaurant for the homeless, founded and run by former Chicago police officer Lisa Nigro.
While the Inspiration Cafe is run by a nonprofit, not a business, the story of how it got started is similar to how many small businesses got off the ground. Nigro had to slowly expand her work, and rely on the generosity of those in the community to get started:
When Lisa Nigro founded Inspiration Cafe in 1989, she borrowed her nephew’s red wagon and filled it with coffee and sandwiches. A former police officer, Lisa pulled that wagon around the Uptown neighborhood of Chicago offering a little dignity and respect to the homeless men and women she encountered. Over time, Lisa and other early supporters grew the Cafe beyond that red wagon, first turning a van into a kitchen on wheels and then converting a bus into a travelling cafe.
Lisa’s idea, to cook and serve good food with a dash of hope, captured the attention of the Uptown neighborhood and the Chicago media. She soon received a phone call from an Uptown building owner, offering her a six-month lease on a Wilson Avenue storefront for one dollar.
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A Stimulus For The Drug War
Tweet Share on Facebook February 20, 2009 Comment (5)Here's an additional item I was not able to fit into my examination of stimulus pork (truth be told, there were a LOT of items I could not fit in there.)
The discretionary spending in the stimulus package is essentially one big grab-bag for whatever is politically popular, regardless of its connection to the economy. There is no better example of that than the various spending provisions to ramp up the war on drugs.
(Note: see my previous post on how the drug war affects entrepreneurship here.)
The final version of the stimulus plan includes $125 million for "rural communities" to combat drug crimes. More significantly, it gives $2 billion to the Byrne Formula Grant Program, a little-known funding project in the Bureau of Justice Assistance. The Byrne program basically gives states and local governments money for more personnel, equipment, and training to enforce drug laws. The BJA describes it as a step to "improve the functioning of the criminal justice system," but critics of the drug war call it a "massive federal slush fund for local law enforcement.
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On That Rick Santelli 'Rant Of The Year': What's The Multiplier For Government Spending?
Tweet Share on Facebook February 20, 2009 Comment (51)Rick Santelli's CNBC rant is getting a lot of attention for its passionate delivery. But is there any substance to it that would actually change anybody's mind?
Take his sarcastic comments about the stimulus package.
He said:
They are pretty much of the notion you can't buy your way into prosperity. If the multiplier that all of these Washington economists are selling us is over 1, then we never have to worry about the economy again! The government should spend a trillion dollars an hour, that way we'll get 1.5 back!
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Adam Carolla Show Cancelled; Is Radio A Doomed Business?
Tweet Share on Facebook February 19, 2009 Comment (39)Here's another nail in the coffin of terrestrial talk radio. It was announced late yesterday that Adam Carolla, who replaced Howard Stern on the west coast, has been fired. His home station in Los Angeles is switching formats away from talk.
The slow death of radio mainstays--Carolla has been on the air since the mid-90s, starting as host of the syndicated show Loveline--has led to cries from some that a whole type of business is dying while no one tries to save it. See my previous post here.
Carolla has won fans since his days on Loveline for his anti-radio radio personality: he doesn't have the mellifluous or bassy voices of most broadcasters, and his specialty is long, unscripted, often off-the-cuff rants.
Some might point to Carolla's demise as further evidence that it is impossible for independent voices to thrive on radio. That might be true of terrestrial radio. But, as I blogged about last month, this is a sign of progress, not regress, for broadcasting entrepreneurs.
