Cost-of-Living can sink Employment

State legislators tend to think employers are privileged to be able to do business in their state. But the fact is that the decision of location is like any other for a company - cost vs benefit. And recently the CEO of Aetna (based in the state of Connecticut) had some hard words for CT Governor Dannel Malloy.

In short, the Hartford-based health insurer could add workers anywhere around the globe as it grows its health-technology business. Forty percent of Aetna employees today work from home full-time.

"We've done the analysis, and, quite frankly, Connecticut falls very, very low on the list as an environment to locate employees . . . in large part because of the tax structure, the cost of living, which is now approaching, all in, the cost of locating an employee in New York City," he said.

As states consider how to resolve their budget deficits, they need to keep in mind that it is not a problem solved in isolation. Businesses can and will relocate. And it is the best solutions that will keep and gain business tax revenue.

ASCAP tries to Squeeze Apple & iTunes

The music makers are in a quandary. By failing to embrace digital downloads early on, they failed to create a revenue stream on their own terms via the internet and are now dependent on Apple. When they want to increase their revenue stream, they can only do so with the help of a company that only sells music in order to sell iPods and iPhones. They have been trying to get Apple to raise rates and increase royalties, and have failed. So now they are taking their fight to Congress to charge even for previews.

Songwriters, composers, and music publishers are making preparations to one day collect performance fees from Apple and other e-tailers for not just traditional music downloads but for downloads of films and TV shows as well. Those downloads contain music after all.
These groups even want compensation for iTunes' 30-second song samples.
At a time when many iTunes shoppers are still fuming over Apple's first-ever increase in song prices, the demands by the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP), Broadcast Music Inc. (BMI), and other performing-rights groups, would likely lead to more price hikes at iTunes. For many, this would also undoubtedly confirm their perception that those overseeing the music industry are greedy.

While I appreciate the pressures the Great Recession is having on the music industry, they need to be more careful or they may unwittingly drive customers back to BitTorrents. Creative workers need to be paid, but they also need to be wise.

9 DIfficult Truths about Weight Loss

It is no secret that I am trying to lose weight with a combination of better diet and more exercise (mostly in the form of biking). But any dieter will tell you that losing weight is never PURELY about eating less and exercising more. This article does a good job of summarizing some difficult truths about weight-loss, and some facts that may help you keep of the weight you have lost.

How should churches handle sex offenders?

Every good church preaches that God welcomes anyone and that we are all sinners and that only Christ can truly heal and regenerate a repentant sinner. All good churches want to be houses of worship for all people who are seeking Christ, and want to have their doors open as much as possible. But, what do you do, when opening your doors to everyone, means opening yourselves up to proven dangerous men, especially those convicted of molesting children? It is something that had not occurred to me before, and apparently I am not alone.

It's the same question facing a group of Protestants in Carlsbad, Calif., right now, members of the Pilgrim United Church of Christ who learned in late January that 53-year-old Mark Pliska, a convicted sex offender, wanted to worship with them. The normally progressive, welcoming congregation balked at the notion, and the resulting firestorm forced pastor Madison Shockley to tearfully ask Pliska not to come to services until the church could sort things out. (Shockley says he will announce the church's decision in mid-May.) "Nothing in my almost 30 years of ministry has prepared me to turn somebody away," Shockley told the local paper. But Shockely's biggest surprise wasn't that a sex offender wanted to worship, but that so many members of his congregation had been sexually abused as children; he estimated one in four of female congregants and one in 10 men. Having an offender in the pews with them on Sunday - even one who had served his time, registered with the authorities and voluntarily identified himself to the pastor - was too big a hurdle for these former victims, Christians or not.

The simple answer is obvious: the church should let in even convicted murders and sex offenders, as God is the god of all people. But we are told to be "innocent as doves, but wily as snakes" in scripture, and thus need to find ways of allowing them in without exposing the church to danger. How do we do that? I am not sure. I am interested to hear the opinions of other Mod-Bloggers on this, especially those who have served as pastors.

Iraqis miss all targets for progress

I still support the Iraq War. There. I have said it. And I mean it. It was a good thing to remove the madman Sadaam Hussein from power - stopping the filling of mass graves - and the only way it was going to happen was by application of military force. But it is becoming harder and harder to support the peace, as every report shows an Iraqi government unwilling or unable to make progress.

A progress report on Iraq will conclude that the U.S.-backed government in Baghdad has not met any of its targets for political, economic and other reform, speeding up the Bush administration's reckoning on what to do next, a U.S. official said Monday.
One likely result of the report will be a vastly accelerated debate among President Bush's top aides on withdrawing troops and scaling back the U.S. presence in Iraq.
The "pivot point" for addressing the matter will no longer be Sept. 15, as initially envisioned, when a full report on Bush's so-called "surge" plan is due, but instead will come this week when the interim mid-July assessment is released, the official said.
"The facts are not in question," the official told The Associated Press, speaking on condition of anonymity because the draft is still under discussion. "The real question is how the White House proceeds with a post-surge strategy in light of the report."

I have beeen thinking for some time about the best way to address this situation, since we all knew that at the very least not EVERY target would be met. Where do we go from here? After all, Sadaam Hussein slaughtered all of the best and brightest, so it is not a great shock that those who remain lack experience. But at the same time, there comes a time when you stop making excuses and start forcing accountabiliity. One wonders how different a presidential race it will be if the troops are out of Iraq by Election Day 2008.