Monsters Kiss And Make Up
October 30, 2009Monster Energy claims to be “the meanest energy supplement on the planet.” The company that makes it may be meaner. Publicly traded Hansen Beverage Co., which sold $1 billion worth of Monster Energy drinks in 2008, decided last month to pick on Rock Art Brewery, a Vermont microbrewery that is owned by husband and wife Matt and Renee Nadeau and employs a staff of seven. Rock Art produces a beer …
Barring The Doors To Minorities
October 29, 2009Regis Murayi, 21, spent weeks organizing his college’s senior class trip to Chicago. As class treasurer, he talked to representatives of the Original Mother’s bar to negotiate a $25 per person all-you-can-drink package for the group. But, when the big night came, Murayi was not allowed into the bar. Of the approximately 200 students from Washington University in St. Louis who went on the trip, six were refused entry to …
Soupy And Me
October 28, 2009My little brother started kindergarten in the fall of 1965, which allowed my mother to go back to work full-time. Our family needed the money. I was 8 years old and in third grade, and it was my job after school to walk my brother back to our Bronx apartment and look after him until our parents got home. I had plenty of help. My mother’s friends in neighboring apartments …
The Best Tax Law Money Can Buy
October 27, 2009When I was studying taxes in business school, I occasionally came across a law that just didn’t make sense to me. Sometimes, my professor could explain its intent and rationale. Other times, he just smiled and said, “Someone paid good money for that one.” Now House Democrats are working to reverse one of those bought-and-paid-for laws. There are two ways to make money. You can invest your time, in the …
Life Insurers Pump It Up
October 26, 2009After the financial scandals of the past decade and the institutional meltdowns of the past year, you might think regulators would have gotten awfully fussy about companies that try to make themselves look stronger than they really are. Think again. In the world of life insurance, regulators across the country are allowing companies to issue debt — sometimes significant amounts of debt — without reporting this debt on their balance …
When The Backup Needs A Backup
October 23, 2009Many owners of Sidekick phones recently found that their personal information, including contact numbers, pictures, notes and to-do lists, had vanished. When the phones were introduced, they were marketed as being safer than competing products because data was stored at a central server facility rather than solely on the individual phones. That meant Sidekick users whose phones were lost, stolen, or thrown into fires by former lovers could simply have …
Citi’s Phibro Giveaway: Politics Trumps Business Sense
October 22, 2009In these tough economic times, companies often face difficult decisions. But Citigroup’s recent decision to sell its Phibro LLC energy-trading business to Occidental Petroleum Corp. had nothing to do with economics. Phibro was one of the few Citigroup divisions to continue to turn a profit last year when the company as a whole suffered a record $27.7 billion net loss. Occidental will pay only $250 million for the unit, which …
Federal ‘Shield Law’ Threatens Press Freedom
October 21, 2009The walls around ancient Troy were impregnable, but things did not work out too well for the Trojans. American journalists would do well to remember that. The First Amendment is the nearly impregnable wall that guards our most basic freedoms: to speak, to write, and to worship as we wish, or not at all. The Amendment is expressed as an absolute, because it demands that “Congress shall make no law” …
Sick Leave Mandate Is A Workplace Headache
October 20, 2009“I totaled my wife’s jeep in a collision with a cow,” one employee reported to his boss. He was sorry to say that, as a result, he would be unable to attend work that day. A 2004 survey by CareerBuilder.com asked employers for the most unusual excuses they had heard. In addition to the cow story, employers mentioned hearing “My cat unplugged my alarm clock” and “A hitman was looking …
Manufacturing The American Future
October 19, 2009Imagine you are visiting a futuristic, high-tech manufacturing plant. What country are you in? Chances are the answer won’t be the United States. As manufacturing soars toward the future with innovations that would have once seemed to be the province of science fiction, America is being left behind. When high-tech companies making products like LED lights and solar panel cells decide where to place new factories, they are increasingly looking …
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