Government and Economy Small Business on the Stimulus Package What do the microbusinesses of America really think about President Obama's stimulus package? BusinessKnowHow.com Grassley Speaks-up for Small Business at Geithner Hearings Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA) defended the needs of small business during Treasury Secretary Geithner's testimony before the Senate Finance Committee. “I don’t understand why you would charge small business operators more t... [Read Full Article]

Likened to a Trojan Horse, salting is when a union organizer responds to a Help Wanted ad from a non-union shop. The term comes from the practice of putting gold or silver in played-out mines in order to sell them to some unsuspecting victim. Here, it refers to someone whose real job is not what the company in question hired him to do, but rather to organize the other workers into a union. Aside from the obvious that unionization will drive up the costs of your labor force, salting can also lead to discrimination lawsuits, legal troubles over employee discipline, and other managerial headaches that are best avoided. Reducing Your Salt Intake Protecting your company from this practice involves three basic steps: Weed out the salters during the hiring process, apply employee discipline fairly and across the board, and ensure terminations are fully legal. Every... [Read Full Article]

Government and Economy How the President Should Help Entrepreneurs Entrepreneurs and experts offer their suggestions, which ranged from making health care more affordable and streamlining paperwork to out-of-the-box ideas like giving banks access to the Federal Reserve's discount window based on their increase in lending to small businesses. Kiplinger: Unemployment May Hit 9% Mounting job losses and the troubled auto industry are putting more pressure on Congress to stimulate the economy, but will it work? Kiplinger predicts that 2009 could see 3 million jobs lost and an unemployment rate as high as 9%. [Read Full Article]