The new owners of Long John Silver’s, LJS Partners, and A & W Restaurants, A Great American Brand, in a press release by Gov. Steve Beshear, announced that their respective headquarters shall be in Kentucky.  Said restaurants shall employ 60 and 30 people, respectively, the Courier-Journal.com reported.  The Kentucky Economic Development Finance Authority gave the two companies tax incentives to guarantee this move.

State tax incentives approved this week will guarantee that the headquarters of Long John Silver’s and A&W Restaurants will remain in Kentucky as Yum! Brands spins the chains off to new owners.

About 1,300 Long John Silver’s seafood restaurants will be sold in the next few weeks to LJS Partners, a company to be headquartered in Louisville that will employ 60 people, Gov. Steve Beshear announced Thursday.

A&W, the root beer and burger chain, is being acquired by a new startup called A Great American Brand that will employ roughly 30 people in the Lexington area, according to a press release.

The Kentucky Economic Development Finance Authority granted preliminary approval to both companies for tax incentives worth up to $1.5 million for LJS Partners and $600,000 for A Great American Brand if they fulfill their promises to keep the headquarters of the fast food chains in the commonwealth. The incentives are through the Kentucky Business Investment Program.

“Together, our efforts will allow both corporate headquarters to grow faster and larger, as well as expand the international reach of their brands,” Beshear said in the press release.

“We are excited to announce we are staying in Louisville,” the CEO of LJS Partners, Mike Kern, said in the release.

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AllBusiness.com reports that Nando’s, a South African chicken chain with a number of franchises in Zimbabwe, has pulled out its ads because of threats of violence against its customers and employees.  Militant youth groups in Zimbabwe sympathetic to dictator Robert Mugabe, says the company’s ad featuring a lonely Mugabe attacks the dignity of their leader.

When it comes to advertising, fast-food franchises like to push the envelope. But a South African chicken chain called Nando’s may have gone too far – to the point where its employees and customers are now getting death threats.

The ad in question features a lookalike of Zimbabwe president Robert Mugabe. Mugabe, for those not versed in international thuggery, is a murderous dictator along the lines of Saddam Hussein, Muammar Gaddafi, Mao Zedong, and Idi Amin.

And that’s where the fun begins. The only difference between Mugabe and these dictators is that he’s still alive, and they are not. So, of course, Nando’s got the brilliant idea to create a TV commercial called “Last Dictator Standing” in which a lonely Mugabe longs for the companionship of his fellow despots. The tagline: “No one should ever have to eat alone.”

Pretty funny stuff, really. But not everyone is laughing, especially not a militant youth group in Zimbabwe that supports Mugabe and sees the ad as an egregious attack on his dignity. Taking a page out of their leader’s playbook, the group has apparently threatened violence against local Nando executives and customers.

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Franchise.org reports that the current rate of veteran unemployment is at 12% and will drop with the signing of the Vow to Hire Heroes Act of 2011 by President Obama on November 21 at the White House.  The new law encourages businesses to hire veterans by granting tax credits to these employers.  The IFA thanked the President, First Lady and Congress for giving veterans the chance to be prime movers of the American economy.

Franchise business leaders and IFA President & CEO joined President Obama, First Lady Michelle Obama, Vice President Joe Biden and Dr. Jill Biden at a White House bill signing ceremony today for the VOW to Hire Heroes Act of 2011, as the President recognized the industry’s commitment to hire as team members and recruit as franchise business owners 75,000 veterans and their spouses and 5,000 wounded warriors by 2014.

“We are honored to join President Obama and to thank him and First Lady Michelle Obama for their leadership to help our nation’s veterans access opportunities in the civilian economy that they so clearly deserve,” said IFA President & CEO Steve Caldeira. “We need to ensure that America’s sons and daughters, who have served the nation so bravely, now can transition to stable civilian lives in which they can and should become leaders in our nation’s economy.”

There are over 66,000 veteran-owned franchise small businesses employing over 815,000 team members, according to U.S. Census data. The IFA’s Operation Enduring Opportunity campaign seeks to grow those numbers.

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Several groups that include the banking sector and business organizations have written to Congress to ask for more funding for the Small Business Administration, reports Portfolio.com.  But it seems Congress will retain the current figure of $1.4 billion compared to $2.6 billion during the same period a year earlier.  The former are hoping that the lawmakers at least restore the available loans to the amount of the previous year.

More than 20 business groups urged Congress today to increase funding for the Small Business Administration and restore incentives that led to a record level of SBA lending last year.

The SBA approved a record $19.6 billion in government-backed loans through its flagship 7(a) program in fiscal 2011, which ended September 30. That was up from $12.5 billion the year before. Much of this lending occurred in the first quarter of fiscal 2011, when the Small Business Jobs Act provided additional funds that enabled the agency to increase its guarantee on 7(a) loans to 90 percent and waive fees on these loans. These breaks made the loans less risky to lenders and more affordable to borrowers.

Those breaks are gone—and they’re missed. So far this fiscal year, the SBA has approved $1.4 billion in 7(a) loans, compared with $2.6 billion during the same period a year earlier. This year’s total also is below the pace set two years ago, when these loan breaks were funded by the economic stimulus bill.

Twenty-one business groups, ranging from the American Apparel & Footwear Association to the Travel Goods Association, sent a letter to Congress today urging it to restore these SBA loan breaks.

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Great news for businesses and veterans!  President Obama signed into law a bill passed by Congress last month granting tax credits to businesses if they hire veterans.  This incentive ranges from $2,400 to as high as $9,600.  This law augments the earlier efforts of the President and First Lady who got pledges from businesses, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the International Franchise Association to hire 100,000 veterans or their spouses by 2014.  Businessweek.com highlighted the major provisions of the new law.

President Barack Obama signed into law a measure that provides tax credits to companies that hire unemployed veterans and repeals a requirement that federal, state and local governments begin withholding 3 percent of payments to contractors in 2013.

Obama, at a ceremony for the signing, said about 1 million veterans will be entering the civilian workforce over the next five years as the war in Iraq winds down. He said businesses recognize that the work experience they gain while in the service are valuable to private enterprise.

Companies can claim a credit against taxes owed of as much as $5,600 for hiring veterans, and as much as $9,600 for hiring veterans with service-connected disabilities, if the veteran has been looking for work for six months or longer.

The new law also provides as much as $2,400 for hiring a veteran who has been looking for work for one to six months.

The tax credits are part of a measure that also repeals a requirement that federal, state and local governments begin withholding 3 percent of payments to contractors in 2013. The Senate and House passed the legislation on Nov. 10 and Nov. 17 respectively.

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The Daily Times editorial praises senators for finally crossing party lines to approve a bill that will grant tax incentives to businesses that will hire veterans.  To recall, Republicans had been blocking President Obama’s American Jobs Act because of politics.  For its part, the IFA has promised to hire 80,000 veterans and military spouses by 2014, US First Lady Michelle Obama announced.  President Obama has been undeterred and continues to look for ways for returning soldiers to find jobs.

Just in time for Veterans Day, some Democrats and Republicans on Capitol Hill were finally able to agree on legislation that is designed to help put veterans back to work.

Finally, last Thursday, Republicans in the Senate put aside politics and joined Democrats in approving a bill that provides tax incentives to employers who hire veterans.

While unemployment is beginning to incrementally decline, it continues to rise for veterans, many of whom left jobs to serve in two wars launched during the administration of George W. Bush who left the country with a more than $1 trillion dollar deficit. At the same time, Bush and his fellow Republicans instituted tax breaks to the wealthiest 1 percent of the nation, with little or no job creation in return.

Consequently the U.S. was left in a recession implemented, in part, by some of the same Republicans who, up until last Thursday, obstructed every effort by the Obama administration to remedy it.

Not to be deterred by their obstructionism, Obama has instituted some job-creating measures that didn’t need the approval of Congress. More than 120,000 veterans have been hired by the federal government in keeping with Obama’s directive to hire more.

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Jim Skinner, CEO of McDonald’s says the government must cut taxes and decrease public spending in order for the company to turn around.  His assessment of the current economy will likely be played up by the opponents of President Obama over the deteriorating economy and high unemployment.  McDonald’s is one of the companies still hiring workers for its stores.  It has also consistently scored same-store sales growth in recent months, reports The Telegraph.

Mr Skinner said. “In order to create jobs in America, you’re going to have to cut taxes… particularly in the business community.

“We pay some of the highest [corporate] taxes around the world. There needs to be some levelling.”

Asked about federal borrowing, he said: “It’s not a good story… the government has to spend less. We have to grow the economy, grow GDP… and you have to be able to do it in an organic way and not through borrowings and increasing debt.”

Skinner’s intervention will be seized upon by President Obama’s opponents amid a fierce debate in Washington over the country’s deteriorating finances and high unemployment. As Democrats and Republicans fire up their 2012 election campaigns, the focus is on the “9pc nightmare”, with both the US budget deficit and jobless total at that level.

Federal government debt has climbed to $15 trillion (£9.4 trillion), about the same as annual GDP. Worse still, America’s credit rating was recently downgraded by Standard & Poor’s.

As the leader of a remarkable turnaround at McDonald’s, Skinner’s comments will resonate across the country.

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Steven Grossman, Treasurer and Receiver General of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, and Robert Baker, President of the Smaller Business Association of New England (SBANE), in a Huffington Post article, urge the government to extend the highly successful federal initiative to December 31, 2012.  They claim that the effect of the previous funding was dramatic.  SBA hit a record $12 billion in loan guarantees for fiscal year 2011.  A federal loan guarantee is very important for financial institutions to step up lending.

With the economy still struggling, there could not be a worse time to abandon a highly successful federal program that has created at least 650,000 private sector jobs throughout the country.

In 2009, and again in 2010, the federal government acted to increase lending to small businesses. The most effective elements of this legislation, according to Small Business Administration (SBA) data and a study by the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service, were an increase in federal guarantees for SBA loans to 90 percent (from 75-85 percent), the elimination of loan fees, and an increase in the ceiling for each loan from $2 million to $5 million.

Regrettably, however, the initiative ran out of money back in January, and there is no pending effort to fund it. We call on a bipartisan coalition in Washington to extend the program until December 31, 2012 and provide enough funding to allow the incentives to continue uninterrupted until then.

Based on the data for the average level of weekly loan activity when the incentives were in effect, we estimate that about $2 billion will be required to extend and expand the effort.

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“We’re doing O.K., even if we’re not doing great. The odds of a double-dip recession are lower, at least.”  This is the reaction of Augustine Faucher, Director of Macroeconomics at Moody’s Analytics on the 80,000 job positions filled in October according to The New York Times.  This figure is far from the rosy picture painted by President Obama in January 2009 when he urged Congress to pass the stimulus package bill.

Could have been worse.

That was the reaction on Friday to the government report that the nation’s employers added just 80,000 jobs in October. While the pace was not exactly robust, it was better than over this summer, when monthly hiring fell to 20,000. Upward revisions in the report for September and August gains contributed to the sense that the economic picture was a little less bleak.

“The underlying momentum of the economy is better now than we thought it was a few months ago,” said Augustine Faucher, the director of macroeconomics at Moody’s Analytics. “We’re doing O.K., even if we’re not doing great. The odds of a double-dip recession are lower, at least.”

But even without a second recession, frustration over the sluggish recovery could impede President Obama’s re-election chances.

The administration is still haunted by its overly optimistic predictions, made in January 2009, of what the economy would look like once Congress passed a $787 billion stimulus package. White House economics advisers predicted that the stimulus would bring unemployment down to 6 percent by the end of this year and close to 5 percent by the end of 2012. Instead, unemployment dipped slightly to 9 percent in October from 9.1 percent, about where it has been all year long.

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A bill put forth by President Obama aimed to create jobs via payroll tax cuts and a $447 billion package for infrastructure projects is facing opposition in Congress and small businesses. Newsmax.com reports that the International Franchise Association, in a letter to the Senate, says it prefers permanent tax reforms in lieu of this temporary payroll tax breaks. Tax reforms will allow small businesses to create jobs now.

The U.S. economy stands a 40 percent chance of falling into a new recession within a year if Congress doesn’t pass a White House-sponsored jobs bill, says Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics.

The bill, put forth by President Barack Obama, is a $447 billion package designed to create jobs via payroll tax cuts and investments in projects like infrastructure.

“All of the proposals are temporary. All of the temporary proposals are being paid for. So it’s not adding to the deficit, or the debt, or to the size of government,” Zandi tells Slate, an online publication.   ”But if you go into recession, then yeah, the deficit will be a lot larger, and government measured by spending will be bigger.”

If anything merits attention in the bill, it’s the call for payroll tax cuts.

“The extension and expansion of the payroll tax holidays for workers would be number one on my list and key to avoiding recession,” Zandi says.

The bill has faced opposition in Congress, although Zandi says he’s counting on growing Republican support for items outlined in the bill.

“I’m counting on it.

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Franchise leaders led by International Franchise Association’s President & CEO Steve Caldeira are asking members of Congress to repeal or amend the health care law.  IFA says these leaders are worried that many franchise businesses will close shop, and millions of employees will lose their jobs.  This is according to a report prepared by the Hudson Institute for the IFA.

“Franchise small businesses need government to get out of the way in order to continue creating jobs at the rate they have historically,” said IFA President & CEO Steve Caldeira. “We applaud Senate Minority Leader McConnell for echoing that message and urge the administration and all members of Congress to develop bipartisan, pro-growth solutions that help franchise businesses to create jobs.”

“The government itself is the problem now,” said McConnell. “We have to allow the private sector to do what it does best which is to to grow, expand, and create jobs.”

“In recent years, one of the reasons I have not sought to grow is uncertainty surrounding the health care laws,” said David Barr, Chairman of PMTD Restaurants LLC and its affiliates (a franchisee of KFC and Taco Bell) and Rita Restaurant Corp. (the owner and operator of Don Pablo’s Mexican Restaurants). “Obamacare will force me to either decrease employees or move workers from full-time to part-time employees to avoid paying penalties.”

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Republican contender Henry Cain, according to All Business, is giving Godfather’s Pizza, his former company, free publicity.  With the negative reviews from customers received by Godfather’s Pizza for its product, pundits say that the company’s pizza needs a lot of improvement to boost the chances of Cain’s candidacy.  Do you think Cain’s candidacy will be affected by Godfather’s Pizza’s not-so-good product?

As it is, Godfather’s Pizza get negative reviews from consumers.  Pundits say that the company’s pizza needs a lot of improvement to boost the chances of Cain’s candidacy.  Do you think Cain’s candidacy will be affected by Godfather’s Pizza’s not so good product?

Could crappy pizza ultimately sink The Republican contender’s surging candidacy?

Is Herman Cain doing more for Godfather’s Pizza than he ever did when he was CEO? His former company, which he ran from 1986 to 1995, is being showered with free publicity thanks to his new role as a Republican presidential hopeful.

But is all press good press for Godfather’s? GOP consultant Patrick Hynes thinks so. “I definitely think it helps the brand. It associates their product with a very hot ticket candidate in the news cycle,” he says in this article published in all Business.

Others aren’t so sure. Forget about hot tickets. Cain had better hope that Godfather’s is more concerned with hot pizzas. After all, a bad customer service experience at Godfather’s could sour some voters on the Cain candidacy, say observers.

The pizza chain itself insists it is remaining neutral on the race.

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Orly Taitz will earn a brief footnote in history as the “Birther” movement leader. She was at the forefront of a movement of Birthers who doubt that the president’s birth place was the United States. She famously took the issue to a California court to find out if Obama was U.S. citizen and to hold a special presidential election if he wasn’t. Since then the movement and the intensity of volume has increased. Donald Trump took up the issue and found yet another way to get the mainstream media to interview him.

This red herring would serve as the comic relief in a play. Trouble is that all of the players have taken it seriously and it went from a side note to a major plot point. It is understandable that those in the Obama camp would think enough is enough; they’re going to release the long-form of the birth certificate and put an end to this foolishness. The flaw in that logic is that there is absolutely no logic behind the Birther movement and it is not a movement in search of logic or facts.

If there was video that showed President Obama being born and that video was released to the media, it wouldn’t matter a bit. The Birther movement revolves around accusations and diversions and you do not (and more importantly you cannot) battle that type of attack, at least via the media, with facts. This is akin to a religious cult; you are not going to weaken their faith with something as cumbersome as reality. This is also a politically motivated buzz. It is a dangerous game. Push it too far and the American middle ground is going to tire of the noise and relegate Birthers to the status of reality stars. America loves to watch and listen to reality stars, but no one takes them seriously.

Obama’s strategic PR mistake was that he in fact did begin to take them too seriously. He then took them on with proof and details. A losing game: not unlike trying to put out fire with gasoline.

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According to the just released findings of analysts employed by the federal government of the United States of America to monitor real estate transactions in the wake of recessionary property depreciations, the Mortgage Debt Relief act has done rather more than merely alleviate the debt of deserving homeowners since taking effect on January 1, 2011. If the studies compiled by the U.S. Department of the Treasury are accurate, a little less than half a billion dollars may have been dispersed on the behalf of potentially ineligible citizens who fudged parts of their documentation or willfully submitted fraudulent information to the overwhelmed governmental arbiters. To make matters worse, the majority of misspent funds, some three hundred twenty million dollars at the federal accountants’ last reckoning, didn’t involve stipends sent directly to home owners (therefore able to be easily reclaimed) or debt relief tax waivers that could be reassessed.  Instead, the brunt of the monetary outlay went directly to the lending institutions who’d foreclosed upon the over mortgaged residences of borrowers owing significantly more than what the properties managed to garner when auctioned off by local officials.

Prior to the establishment of the Mortgage Forgiveness Debt Relief Act, Americans who qualified under a governmental program for the alleviation of some or all of the equity loan burdens placed against their home would still have been subject to eventual income tax assessments that perceived the amount of debt relinquished as tantamount to income.

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No matter what side you were on, here are a few observations, affirmations and truths, post-election, with respect to selling:

1. Strategy and tactics are equally important. The purpose of executing tactics in a sales campaign is to drive a well-founded strategy. Tactics without a strategy is like playing darts with your eyes closed.
2. Message! Not messages, messages, messages. Decide what you are going to count on to win based upon research – a focused, objective assessment of the sales opportunity.
3. You can successfully change the ground rules even if you temporarily lose ground.
4. The understanding and leverage of political influence is crucial.
5. Messages must be clear, concise and compelling and paint the vision of a better situation for the buyer. One fumbled message can dilute the impact of a hundred perfect ones.
6. Logic and the facts aren’t the only things buyers consider.
7. Discipline rules. Seat-of-the-pants doesn’t.
8. Knowledge of your opponent’s plan to win is vital for devising and refining your own plan.
9. Direct and blatant “bad-mouthing-the-competition” doesn’t generally work.
10. Never underestimate the underdog.
11. Want to win? Look the part.
12. Tell the truth before your opponent exaggerates it.
13. Choose the right team. The salesperson is CEO of their own virtual sales corporation. Whom they choose to stand next to them and to advise them can make a big difference.
14. Whomever has momentum at the time of close generally wins. Its very difficult to build momentum just at the right time without a plan.
15. Embrace technology. It permeates pretty much everything most of us do.
16. Go broad and deep into the customer’s organization as appropriate. (Ideally effective marketing will have blazed the trail in advance.

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Business is and always has been a man’s world. To some extent that is largely still true because more men are occupying Chief Executive roles within companies all over the world. This is not to say that there are not powerful women out there who could serve as a fantastic example for other women to follow. In fact, there are many powerful women running huge multinational companies and corporations.

The top 20 most powerful women in the world in 2008 are as follows:

1. Angela Merkel – The most powerful woman in the world in 2008 is the German Chancellor. Merkel has been at the helm of Germany since 2005. She is extremely well respected in her home country and is a key player in the European Union. As a result, her position as the most powerful woman in the world is well deserved.
2. Sheila C Blair – Blair is the highest ranked American on the list. The Chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. In simple terms, she runs the company that guarantees Americans a certain sum of money back should the bank they save with goes bust. As we are in a credit crunch at the moment, her ranking has increased.
3. Indra K Nooyi – The Chairman and Chief Executive of PepsiCo, which is the fourth largest food and drink company in the world. She is considered to be one of the best corporate leaders in the world and earns $14.7 million a year as a result.
4. Angela Braly – Braly is the Chief Executive and President of WellPoint and earns $14.9 million in salary.

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In America, the small business owner has been used to sitting on the sidelines and watching whilst the large corporations dominate all areas of industry. Many small business owners have gone out of business whilst others often struggle to survive. One of the reasons behind this was that the Bush administration tended to offer very little support, instead making tax cuts for the corporate world. With the election campaigns now in full swing, Barack Obama has pledged to help small businesses survive and enable to thrive in the coming years.

Obama has put a number of measures in his manifesto that could help small businesses to take root and grow in the world of business because he fully recognizes that they are the heart of the American economy. Small businesses provide valuable jobs and income to millions of Americans up and down the country and, were they to go out of business, could actually make the economic situation worse. In fact, in some quarters, financial experts are touting the possibility of a recession on the scale of the 1929 Depression. By keeping small businesses alive and healthy, it can strengthen the economy and give Americans everywhere a little security of peace of mind.

Tax Issues

Obama has pledged to help small businesses by putting a series of measures that may help them into place. For example, he has pledged to reduce the burden on the owners of small businesses that may struggle to make ends meet by providing them with a little tax relief. Every small business owner has to pay both employee and business owner taxes, but with the $500 tax credit per worker that Barack Obama is proposing the burden of those payments will lift somewhat.

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John McCain, the Republican candidate for the 2008 Presidential Election, is a man on a mission. He has extremely strong views about all sorts of areas of American life, and the economy is no different. However, unlike his opponent in the election Barack Obama, very few people have any idea what measures he will put in place to boost the business economy, and the American economy in general, should he be elected in November. The business economy is an extremely important area of policy for whoever the next President is to be because recovery from the impact of the credit crunch and Bush’s economic policy is going to be extremely difficult.

McCain’s Business Economy History

McCain’s business economy history is a little ambivalent to say the very least. This is because he freely admits that his economic knowledge is not as good as it could be, and should be considering his election campaign is not in full swing. This has the potential to leave him open to the influence of his cabinet, which has the potential to take care of the corporate world over the small business owners that are already struggling.

However, McCain does seem to have very strong views on the subject, even if they do change over time. McCain initially fought to prevent President Bush’s tax cuts but has now proposed to cement them, thus cutting corporate taxes from 35% to 25%. This may be a direct result of the fact that a number of corporations have supported him throughout his campaign.

Economic Stance

What McCain lacks in business economy knowledge, he makes up for in conviction. He describes himself as a free-enterprise capitalist and appears to be committed to reviving the business economy for the good of the country.

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