Government and Economy Is Obama Anti-Business? The weekly assault on business by President Obama is becoming a fixture of this administration, or is it, as some Democrats say, merely an assault on business-as-usual? Yahoo.com/USNews & World Climate Bill: It's On Its Way There is a compromise in the works on carbon caps and while it may not garner Republican votes, it could bring skeptical Midwestern and Southern Democrats on board. BusinessWeek.com [Read Full Article]

  Government and Economy Small Business and the Obama Tax Hikes Are higher taxes going to harm small businesses or not? That is the question posed by this article and the answer they come up with, not surprisingly, is “No.” WashingtonPost.com Healthcare Tops the Spring Recess Homework for House Democrats House Democratic leaders have asked their members to use the spring recess to reach out to voters and sell White House and congressional plans to overhaul the nation's healthcare system. CQPolitics.com Management and Financial Issues [Read Full Article]

  Government and Economy Survey: Entrepreneurs Prefer Tax Cuts to TARP According to a survey released by online payroll company SurePayroll, Many small business owners believe that tax cuts would be better than spending more money on the Treasury's Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP). Obama Preparing to Sign Stimulus Bill While not ruling out a second economic stimulus plan, President Obama flew to Denver to sign into law his $787 billion economic stimulus plan, which he promises will spur consumer spending and create millions of jobs. Management and Financial Issues [Read Full Article]

Have you noticed the upsurge in the number of companies outsourcing work to independent contractors? We’re not talking about a gradual upsurge, either. The growth is robust and shows no sign of slowing down. The rise in independent contractors is a trend that really got traction with the so-called “Jobless” economic recovery of recent years. The late 1980’s and 1990’s were a time when “downsizing” swept the economy and many good people found themselves out of work through no fault of their own. Their company simply decided to “go in another direction” or “trim the fat” or even get “lean and mean.” It is no surprise that many of these folks—quite a few of them, no doubt, still upset about being referred to as “the fat”—reinvented themselves and popped up a few years later as independent contractors. The idea is pretty simple. Like temp workers, you hire an independent contractor to perform a giv... [Read Full Article]