The One Percent - Documentary by Jamie Johnson

(From Wikipedia) - The One Percent is a 2006 documentary about the growing wealth gap between America's wealthy elite and the citizenry on the whole. It was created by Jamie Johnson, an heir to the Johnson & Johnson fortune, and produced by Jamie Johnson and Nick Kurzon. The film's title refers to the top one percent of Americans in terms of wealth, who controlled 38% of the nation's wealth in 2001.^[1]

The film premiered on April 29, 2006, at the Tribeca Film Festival. It was reported to have been purchased by HBO and a revised version of the film, substantially re-edited and incorporating footage shot since the 2006 festival screening, premiered on Thursday, February 21, 2008 at 6:30pm ET/PT on HBO's Cinemax.

It was stated in the Page Six column of the New York Post that Warren Buffett had written a letter to Nicole Buffett, daughter of his son Peter's ex-wife from another marriage. In response to her participation in the film, distancing himself from her, he wrote "I have not emotionally or legally adopted you as a grandchild, nor have the rest of my family adopted you as a niece or a cousin."^[2]

The One Percent

Economic Stories of Relevance in Today's World -- April 3, 2011

2/3rds of US Corporations Pay Zero Federal Taxes: US Uncut Movement Builds to Make Them Pay Up - The Nation - Alison Kilkenny - March 31, 2011 - “I’m tired of people calling for shared sacrifice and it’s all coming from the workers and nothing’s coming from the top,” says protester Dave Sonenberg. “I’m sick of companies like Bank of America not paying their taxes.”....

Real estate crash catches up to cities as property taxes slide - Bloomberg - By William Selway and Henry Goldman - March 29, 2011 - Local officials are now facing the consequences. Property- tax revenue dropped in the last three months of 2010 at the fastest pace since home prices slipped from their peak more than four years ago, the Census Bureau said yesterday. The decline may continue as values fall further, adding strains to cash- strapped localities that already fired workers, halted projects and cut spending because of the recession that began in 2007.

Foreign Banks Tapped Fed’s Secret Lifeline Most at Crisis Peak - Bloomberg - April 1, 2011 - “What in the world are we doing thinking we can pass out tens of billions of dollars to banks that are overseas?” said Paul, who has advocated abolishing the Fed. “We have problems here at home with people not being able to pay their mortgages, and they’re losing their homes.” ...

Fed's Rules Let Brokers Turn Junk Into Cash at Height of Financial Crisis - Bloomberg - By Matthew Leising - Mar 31, 2011 - At the height of the financial crisis, the Federal Reserve allowed the world’s largest banks to turn more than $118 billion in junk bonds, defaulted debt, securities of unknown ratings and stocks into cash.... Collateral of those asset types made up 72 percent of the total $164.3 billion in market-rate securities pledged to the Fed on Sept. 29, 2008, two weeks after the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., according to documents released yesterday. The collateral backed $155.7 billion in loans on the largest day of borrowing from the Primary Dealer Credit Facility, which was created in March 2008 to provide loans to brokers as Bear Stearns Cos. collapsed....

Gross Echoes Buffett Saying Treasuries Have ‘Little Value’ on Debt, Dollar - Bloomberg - By Wes Goodman - Mar 30, 2011 - By Wes Goodman - Mar 30, 2011 - The U.S. has unrecorded debt of $75 trillion, or close to 500 percent of gross domestic product, counting what it owes on its bonds plus obligations for Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, Gross wrote in his monthly investment outlook. The U.S. will experience inflation, currency devaluation and low-to- negative interest rates after accounting for consumer-price gains if it doesn’t reform its entitlement programs, he said... Pimco “has been selling Treasuries because they have little value within the context of a $75 trillion total debt burden,” ... President Barack Obama’s government has increased the U.S. publicly traded debt to a record $9.05 trillion, leading Gross to compare the nation to Greece, which had its credit ratings cut two steps by Standard & Poor’s on March 29... “We are out-Greeking the Greeks,” he wrote.

Underemployment Rises to 20.3% in March - Gallup - April 1, 2011 - Jenny Marlar - Despite the Obama administration's March 16 announcement that unemployment would remain high or increase in coming months, the underemployed in March became neither more nor less hopeful about finding work soon. Six in 10 underemployed Americans are not hopeful they will find work or move from part-time to full-time work in the next four weeks. That translates to 12% of the workforce that is both underemployed and not hopeful they will find their desired amount of work. The lack of change suggests that underemployed Americans anticipated long-term difficulties in finding work well before the administration's formal announcement was made...

Keiser Report: Food Stamp Army

Proposed N.C. Bill would stop excess fees by Merchants for using Credit or Debit cards

Here is a proposed Bill to regulate surcharges and fees by convenience stores and other merchants in North Carolina. NC House Representative Hugh Blackwell (R-Burke-Valdese) has created this Bill, which has not yet been introduced. Hopefully consumers will embrace this as a means of paying exactly what they should and not paying additional fees and charges to use a debit or credit card in North Carolina. Please help me get the word out to the public so they will ask their local congressman or senator to support this legislation.

A BILL TO BE ENTITLED:

AN ACT TO PROHIBIT THE CHARGING OF A SURCHARGE ON PERSONS WHO ELECT TO USE A CREDIT CARD, OR DEBIT CARD IN LIEU OF PAYMENT BY CASH, CHECK, OR SIMILAR MEANS.

The General Assembly of North Carolina enacts:

SECTION 1. Article 1 of Chapter 75 of the General Statutes is amended by addinga new section to read:

" 75-43. Surcharge for payment by credit card prohibited.

(a) Prohibition. - A person who sells or leases goods or services in this State shall not impose a surcharge on a person who elects to use a credit card, charge card, or debit card in lieu of payment by cash, check, or similar means. As used in this section, the term 'surcharge' means any additional amount imposed at the time of the sales or lease transaction that increases the charge to the buyer or lessee for the privilege of using credit, charge card, or debit card.

(b) Exception. - A person may offer discounts for the purpose of inducing payment by cash, check or other means not involving the use of a credit card, charge card, or debit card, provided that the discount is offered to all prospective buyers.

(c) Violation an Unfair Trade Practice. - A violation of this section shall be an unfair and deceptive trade practice under G.S. 75-1.1."

SECTION 2. G.S. 159-32.1 reads as rewritten:

" 159-32.1. Electronic payment.

Notwithstanding G.S. 75-43, a unit of local government, public hospital, or public authority may in lieu of payment by cash or check, accept payment by electronic payment as defined in G.S. 147-86.20 for any tax, assessment, rate, fee, charge, rent, interest, penalty, or other receivable owed to it. A unit of local government, public hospital, or public authority may pay any negotiated discount, processing fee, transaction fee, or other charge imposed by a credit card, charge card, or debit card company, or by a third-party merchant bank, as a condition of contracting for the unit's or the authority's acceptance of electronic payment. A unit of local government, public hospital, or public authority may impose the fee or charge as a surcharge on the amount paid by the person using electronic payment."

SECTION 3. This act becomes effective October 1, 2011.

Kansas City, Kansas getting the Google Gigabit

E-mail from Ben Willis of the Woogle Initiative, which was the consultant team that worked together to put together the Request For Information, in Hickory and Lenoir's effort to "Woo Google" to bring Gigabit High Speed Broadband to the area:

Kim Hudson just passed this info on to me. It looks like Google is
getting ready to do a press conference about the Gigabit project in
Kansas City. They may offer it to other cities but I thought the info
was worth passing along to the group. Regardless, we still have a ton
of useful information that both cities can use to encourage the
development of a similar type of infrastructure. I hope we all
continue to move forward and work to initiate such a project.

http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/223735/google_gigabit_network_going_to_kansas_city.html

Thanks guys,

Ben Willis

The Link above is from PC World magazine and an article entitled - Google Gigabit Network Going to Kansas City - By Nancy Gohring, IDG News - March 30, 2011

Kansas City is the lucky winner of a 1Gbit-per-second broadband network that Google plans to build.

The search giant, which last year said it would choose a city in which to build such an ultra-high-speed network, hopes to start offering the service in 2012.

Google chose Kansas City for a number of reasons, it said. "In selecting a city, our goal was to find a location where we could build efficiently, make an impact on the community and develop relationships with local government and community organizations. We've found this in Kansas City," Milo Medin, vice president, Access Services for Google, wrote in a blog post on Wednesday.

The plan must still be approved by the city's Board of Commissioners, he said.

Google has said the network would serve 50,000 to 500,000 people with connectivity offered at what it called a competitive price. It initially planned to make a choice by the end of last year and said it might choose a number of locations.

Almost 1,100 cities responded to Google. The interest was so great that one city, Topeka, Kansas, changed its name to Google for one month.

Google has said that its goal in building the network is to experiment with next generation applications, new deployment techniques and open access.

The search giant has a press conference scheduled in Kansas City shortly.

Nancy Gohring covers mobile phones and cloud computing for The IDG News Service. Follow Nancy on Twitter at @idgnancy. Nancy's e-mail address is Nancy_Gohring@idg.com

Here are other News sources in regards to Google's initiative:

New York Times - Google Picks Kansas City, Kan., for Its Fast Network - March 30, 2011 - KANSAS CITY, Kan. (AP) — After seeing Facebook pleas and flash mobs, and even cities temporarily renaming themselves “Google,” the search engine giant said on Wednesday that it had chosen Kansas City, Kan., as the first place that will get its ultra-fast broadband network...

Los Angeles Times - Google picks Kansas City, Kan., to debut its super fast Internet service - Nathan Olivarez-Giles - March 30, 2011 - Google Inc. picked Kansas City, Kan., for its super high-speed Internet service, which when deployed promises to be 100 times faster than what is available for many users today... More than 1,100 cities entered Google's contest, which the company launched with much fanfare early last year. Google said it would build and pay for a fiber-optic network capable of 1 gigabit speeds in the winning community. Most U.S. homes paying for high-speed Internet connections receivedata at less than 10 megabits a second.


National Business Review - Google to build experimental ultra-fast broadband network in Kansas - Alex Walls - March 31, 2011 - Google has announced that it will build its trial ultra-fast broadband network in Kansas City, Kansas, an experiment the company said followed on from urging the Federal Communication Commission to look at new and creative ways of providing universal, ultra high-speed Internet access through its National Broadband Plan... (Hint: watch the video to hear the Google CFO describe low speed access as "sucky")...


Wired News - Google Chooses Kansas City, Kansas, as Broadband Mecca - By Ryan Singel - March 30, 2011 - There’s no place like home — especially if you live Kansas City, Kansas, where houses will soon be connected to the net via fiber optic cables that Google promises will deliver 1 gigabit per second internet connections — roughly a hundred times faster than a typical 10 Mbps cable connection... With that fast a connection, it becomes possible to download a full-length feature film from iTunes in seconds... More than 1,100 cities and town across the country applied to be the testbed, highlighting the dismal state of broadband connections around the country. The Tuesday announcement came after more than a year of deliberations and a change of leadership in the project.

Google News feed about the Google Gigabit

Google's Official Press Release

The Hound wants to say that it was always a longshot that we would land this deal. On the positive side it was great to see the communities of Lenoir and Hickory work together in a positive unified effort to land something that would have moved the community forward in a wonderful way and in a manner that most of our citizens cannot presently comprehend. I think there was a lot of hard work put forward by the people associated with this effort. The only criticism I had involving the effort was the backwoods hillbillyish colloquialism "Google Holler." Such a term is not endearing and does not and never would have, in my estimation, looked good to people associated with High Tech Industry. People in decision making positions need to understand that cutesy never works in high stakes, dead serious business, especially when it isn't very cute.

I hope that the efforts, energies, and synergies put behind this project can be put to use towards other efforts in the future and hopefully through perseverance those efforts will be fruitful. Thank You everyone for trying.

Innovation, Information, and Technology - Moving the Greater Hickory Metro Forward

The following is a video presentation of The "Innovation 2010" conference that was held on November 10, 2010. It is hoped that this conference will be the first of many annual innovation events over the years to come. It is believed that the introduction of these new ideas to our local culture will help lay a foundation for the development of entrepreneurial opportunities in the future.

In the upcoming year, the Catawba County Chamber of Commerce will introduce an entrepreneurial competition called "The Edison Project," in which the winner will receive a cash prize along with pro bono assistance with business guidance, legal, and financial administrative needs to help move their efforts forward. This will not only help the contest winner. It will also help those who participate in the contest by helping them promote their personal ideas and objectives. This can help those people gain attention and help network with experienced individuals who can assist them in turning these innovative processes into fruitful endeavors.

The idea of this Innovation conference was first discussed in meetings of the Future Economy Council of Catawba County and was a thought that I broached here on the Hickory Hound back in September 2009 - (HoundVision: A frank discussion about Jobs, Ingenuity, and Blight).

With the help and guidance of leaders such as Dr. Jane Everson of the Appalachian State University - Greater Hickory Partnership, Dr. Sid Connor of the North Carolina Center for Engineering Technology, and Bill Parrish of The Small Business and Technology Development Center, we were able to see an idea of the Future Economy Council Think Tank brought to fruition in a manner that exceeded our expectations. It is an honor and a privilege to be associated with these people, who are working hard to truly make a difference in our community.

The Keynote Speaker for this event was Dr. Andrew Hargadon; who is a Professor of Management, Director of the Technology Management Programs, and a Faculty Director at the University of California at Davis Center for Entrepreneurship. I wrote about his presentation at this conference in an article entitled - Innovation 2010 - Andrew Hargadon - Creating a Network of Innovation.

If you want to get excited about something positive and tangible happening in our area, then please watch this video:



And I would like to give a kudos to the Hickory Daily Record for their article about the work and adaptation of technological capacities by our Catawba County Government. I will link to the article detailing how the Chief Information Officer of Catawba County Terry Bledsoe is utilizing Social media and other Internet Assets to help residence and others associated with Catawba County stay in tune with the happenings of our local county government: Technology rapidly changing the way citizens access public information

Terry Bledsoe is the Chairman of the Future Economy Council of Catawba County and his blog is linked at the bottom right corner of this page. Catawba County Technology Department