Free Republic

Bitcoin is coming soon to a town near you. Or, more likely, it's already there. The five-year-old digital currency is increasingly being adopted by brick-and mortar businesses, including dentists, pet boutiques -- even a small honey business in Utah. In 2012, about 1,000 businesses used BitPay, the largest processor of Bitcoin payments. Today, more than 26,000 businesses worldwide use BitPay, said Tony Gallippi, its cofounder and CEO. The majority of those firms are small businesses -- about half are in the U.S. and the rest are international. And while a majority are online sellers, Gallippi said 20% are merchants with...

“I sold my business because of Obamacare.”I opened my restaurant, Schu’s Grill & Bar, in 1990. There’s no question that the new health law has impacted not only my current business but future projects, too, to the point where I sold my restaurant in January and I’m in the final stages of moving on. I won’t be working in a brick-and-mortar business and putting people to work. I’ve chosen to go into consulting for myself and the ACA was one of the reasons, though not the only reason. During our busy season, we are well over the 50 full-time employee...

eleste Kelly, Grace Granatelli and Stacey Kollman discovered a profitable niche in the animal therapy market when they found they could turn their passions into successful small businesses. They spent hundred of hours learning animal massage techniques, earned private certification and began their respective animal therapy ventures. Today, they have successful businesses and loyal clients. However, according the Arizona State Veterinary Medical Examining Board, Celeste, Grace, and Stacey are criminals facing jail time. A recent Arizona regulation requires these hardworking entrepreneurs to give up their professions, or pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to become licensed veterinarians (an education that...

Tea party activists have been waging war for months against the Common Core academic standards. Now, in a coordinated show of muscle, Big Business is fighting back — and notching wins. The urgent effort stems from a sense among supporters that this is a make-or-break moment for the Common Core, which is under siege all over the country. A coalition including the Business Roundtable and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce will launch a national advertising blitz Sunday targeted at Republicans skeptical about the standards. Spots promoting the Common Core will air on Fox News and other conservative outlets.

<p>Consumer sentiment dipped modestly in early March, entirely due to reduced expectations for the future, a survey said on Friday.</p> <p>The preliminary Thomson Reuters/University of Michigan overall index of consumer sentiment fell to 79.9 in March, down from the 81.6 final reading in February. That was below analyst expectations for a reading of 82 and the lowest level for that index since November.</p>

According to a new Washington Post/ABC News poll, seven in ten voters believe that the Republican party is “out of touch with the concerns of most people in the United States today.” What follows is a plan for how the GOP can win back their trust — and a build a conservative majority in the process. But first, a little history.

Those who argue that higher education is a major league time suck just got more ammunition in a report from the U. S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). “The most new jobs projected for 2022 are expected to be in occupations requiring a high school diploma or equivalent,” BLS reports. “These occupations are projected to add 4.6 million new jobs. About a quarter of these new jobs will be in healthcare and social assistance. Another major area of projected growth for people with a high school diploma or equivalent is construction, which is expected to add almost 1 million jobs...

Unlike his various “fixes” for ObamaCare, there actually is some statutory basis for this move. In both cases, though, he’s following the same rule: Even if the policy isn’t good, the politics are, and that makes it worth doing.It’s a logical corollary to his push to raise the minimum wage. If, in the name of fairness and income equality, we can tell businesses how much to pay their lowest-ranking employees, we should also tell them how much to pay their middle managers, no? Under current federal regulations, workers who are deemed executive, administrative or professional employees can be denied overtime...

"The number of publicly traded U.S. stocks available to investors is plumbing new lows, even as their prices brave new highs." -- Barron's (February 24, 2014) The Wilshire 5000 Stock Index is supposed to be the ultimate measure of the U.S. stock market, but in reality there are now only 3,666 stocks in the index. Back in 1998, it contained 7,562 stocks. The employment participation rate isn't the only number in decline. There are a lot of reasons for this decline. The number was artificially high during the dot-com boom of the late 1990s. Since then, the dot-com boom collapsed...

What you have to keep in mind is that back in 2008 we had one of the greatest financial crises the United States ever faced. The system was on the brink of collapse at that point in time. What the Fed and the federal government did was spend every penny they could, anything they could create or anything they could guarantee. They did everything they could possibly do to keep the system from crashing. They guaranteed all bank accounts. So, they saved the system, but now what they did has not borne fruit. We have not seen an economic recovery....

Staples Inc , the largest U.S. office supplies retailer, forecast a fall in current-quarter sales as it loses customers to mass market chains and e-retailers, and the company said it would close up to 225 stores in North America by 2015. Staples' shares fell 9 percent before the bell, after the company also posted lower-than-expected fourth-quarter results and forecast current-quarter profit below analysts' estimates. The company operates 1,515 stores in the United States and 331 stores in Canada.

The Obama administration has a new solution to force compliance with the Affordable Care Act (ACA): simply ban businesses from reducing staff in response to the law’s burdensome employer mandate. The administration previously postponed the law’s requirement that all businesses with 50 or more employees provide health insurance until 2015, a year later than required by the ACA. In what is being referred to as “transition relief,” the administration’s latest delay of the employer mandate through 2015 exempts mid-size businesses with 50-99 employees from the requirement, and lowers the requirement for businesses of 100 or more employees from 95 percent...

For a free society to function, a wide range of speech and behavior has to be tolerated, but that doesn't mean everyone has to approve of it. So, for example, although I don't drink, I have many friends who do. While I think Justin Bieber's music is appalling, I don't think it should be illegal. While I would like to see abortion banned except in the case of rape, incest and danger to the life of the mother, I have friends who've admitted to me that they've had abortions. Unfortunately, when it comes to gay marriage, we have people who...

As Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer prepared to make a career-defining decision — whether to veto a bill that would free business owners to discriminate on the basis of their religious preferences — a letter arrived at her office early this week with a stern warning from some of the biggest names in the local business community. Signed by the heads of four Arizona business consortiums, with board members including officers of Bank of America, Intel and the Arizona Cardinals football franchise, the letter urged Brewer to strike down the measure known as S.B. 1062. The letter raised the prospect that...

In December of 1865, the several American states ratified the 13th amendment, constitutionally ending involuntary servitude in the United States. In the 21st century, Americans are coming full circle. In a number of states, a black man can again be forced by the government to work involuntarily for a white man. Not since the nation eliminated Jim Crow laws during the civil rights era have we seen such a bizarre conundrum. But if the black man is a Christian and the white man is gay, a court can forcibly order the black man to serve the white man or...

Arizona governor's veto aimed at own party's right Feb 27, 2014 By BOB CHRISTIE PHOENIX (AP) - Republican Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer slapped down the right wing of her own party, vetoing a bill pushed by social conservatives that would have allowed people with sincerely held religious beliefs to refuse to serve gays.

Earlier today U.S. Representative Dave Camp, Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, released a bill designed to fundamentally reform both the federal corporate and individual income tax (press conference video here and executive summary here). America is far overdue for such reform. As Camp points out in the Wall Street Journal: “According to Nina Olsen, the National Taxpayer Advocate at the IRS, Americans overall spend over six billion hours and $168 billion every year to file their returns. This is stark testimony to the complexity of the tax code. Meanwhile, owners of small businesses face tax rates as...

This evening, Google Executive Chairman and former Chief Executive Officer Eric Schmidt and Google Ideas Founder and Director Jared Cohen will be guests on the Glenn Beck program, discussing the soon-to-be-released paperback version of “The New Digital Age: Reshaping the Future of People, Nations and Business.” In their book, Schmidt and Cohen grapple with the interaction between technology and privacy/security, war/intervention, diplomacy, revolution and terrorism, as well as providing some predictions for how technology will improve our lives and new disruptions that we can expect in the future. Read on for an excerpt from the book, due out on March...

PHOENIX — The Arizona Legislature gave final approval Thursday to legislation that allows business owners asserting their religious beliefs to refuse service to gays and others, drawing backlash from Democrats who called the proposal "state-sanctioned discrimination" and an embarrassment.

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo is airing TV ads around the country that offer tax-free status for 10 years to new business start-ups entering his state. The ads' claims are deceptive because they come with a lot of government strings attached. You only get a tax cut if you put your business where the state tells you to put it, plus meet other state requirements. Critics say Cuomo's sweeping claims are not what they're cracked up to be. Once again, not unlike President Obama's tax credit proposals, the Democrats think they can dictate the rules that produce successful businesses and...