What do right and left wing, Democrat and Republican Americans who use twitter have in common? They’re using a domain registered from the Libyan government. Both bit.ly and ow.ly use the Libyan country domain .ly for their URL shorteners, which people who twitter use to shorten their links to fit in the 140 character limit imposed by twitter. Both are US companies who are using the .ly domain for branding…what were they thinking? Who’s next, .ir and Ahmadinejad’s Iran?

These tools can take this URL
http://www.transworldnews.com/NewsStory.aspx?id=156359&cat=12

and create a 2nd link that is much shorter and saves space in twitter tweets.
http://4wrd.us/ahox

We’ve launched an American competitor to bit.ly, it’s 4wrd.US the american URL shortener it’s simple to use and it’s owned, operated and hosted in the USA. So tell muammar gaddafi goodbye.

Tell everyone your know USE http://4wrd.US

I’ve been running advertising for Web By Fred, my consulting business since early July on WCSX 94.7 Detroit. Today i’ve received 4 emails from bicyclists angry over a comment made on by the morning show DJs on August 5th. Well the comment was about throwing things at the heads of bicyclists, ala Grand Theft Auto and in my opinion is pretty stupid and offensive. Anyone inciting violence, whether Glenn Beck on Fox or Deminksi and Doyle on WCSX shouldn’t be placed on the air by responsible broadcasters.

Having said that, remember these DJs are charged with filling about 2 hours of air time, each day,with entertaining conversation. D & D work with a single producer, 3 people to fill 2 hours a day. Letterman, Conan, Jon Stewart all do it with a dozen or more writers/producers to fill 1 hour, of which 30 minutes are interviews and not scripted. My point is that they have a lot of time to fill and a live microphone, i’m sure every day they say things they wish they hadn’t, mostly because it wasn’t funny and sometimes because it was offensive.

So before everyone starts boycotting me, the radio station and the morning show, let’s see what these guys do in the next few days. let’s give them chance to see how they deal with the backlash before we call for their heads. Are there other incidents from that past that shows a pattern of irresponsible or offensive statements? If not, let’s give them a warning, see if they do the right thing and hope that they do.

So a friend of mine needs to contact Homeland Security to check the status of his application. He called and was told to email the inquiry, but the email bounced. He was worried he might have messed it up, so he asked me to email them in his behalf.

this is the email i sent:

Subject: Friend can’t get thru to dhs emails

hi
my friend attempted to email this address, for assistance, but his email bounced. I’m writing to see if this email bounces and if not, whether i can submit my friends information and question from my email account, without confusing everyone? Is there a fax number where he could fax his information as an alternative to email?

thanks
fred

Well, it was good to hear back from this address in less than 24 hours. The answer was a bit terse:

Pursuant to the Privacy Act, this office can only give out information on an application to the applicant or his legal representative on file with the application.

Admissibility review Office

Ok, i was hoping not to make this a politcial platform for my views, since it’s not really helpful in business. I am much more liberal than most business men in the US. I believe in civil liberties, but i also believe in the free market. i believe that the only way a country can make socialism work is to run it as a business rather than burdening business. I tend to vote Democrat, i tend to laugh at Republicans as they rail on the socialists running the Democratic congress, etc.

Well this last week Congress, in a fairly bipartisan way, passed a law to set a tax rate of 90% on certain bonuses at companies receiving $5 billion or more in government aid. While i think this is counter productive and about 50% higher than any income earner should ever face, it’s totally legal and morally acceptable. What isn’t legal or morally correct is setting this tax retroactively to “get” the AIG bonus earners. This lynch mob mentality violates Article 1, Section 9 of the US constitution, which defines and empowers congress. It says:

No Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed.

People need to speak out against this abuse of power and violation of the constitution by the congress. The President should veto this law based on its unconstitutional nature.

Does Congress really believe we are a nation of laws or are we some sort of facist country where those in power rewrite the rules to enforce their political beliefs ahead of enforcing the nations laws.

Well i hope someone will do something about slowing this crisis down. I heard/read yesterday that 30% of Prime rated borrowers are being turned down for car loans, vs 10% last year. The number for Sub Prime rated borrowers was a 90% rejection rate, vs just 30% last year, basically the sub prime market is gone. With all the automakers reporting sales down 35% and show room traffic down 45%, we can see these new financial realities hitting the society in many different ways and few if any are ‘good’.

I say let’s call these toxic securities(and i use the term securities loosely) as worth 35 cents on the dollar, for the purpose of “Mark to Market” accounting rule for a 6 to 12 month periods. This will bring borrowers into compliance with loan covenants thus slowing the crisis. In fact had this been the case last january, most of the crisis might not have happened.

Hat’s off to NBC’s Andrea Joyce for the digusting interview of the US Olympic Women’s Gymnastics Team and in particular the 1 on 1 interview with Alicia Sacramone.

How appropriate to continually asked her how it felt about….

1 what went thru your head when you made this mistake?

2. how did you feel when you realized your mistake cost your teamates a gold medal?

3. it seems like your mistake rattled your teamates, what did you say to them after you came back from the balance beam, where you fell?

4. How did you prepare for the floor excercises, that you made 2 errors on?

5. What was your the feeling about being the captain of the team and …..

these are not exact quotes, but they might as well be.

I spent the last few days chatting with a business associate about psychology and human development. My first bachelor’s degree is in Pyschology. Those discussions and some recent stories i’ve read about treating earthquake victims in china and helping people in trauma (physical, emotional/mental). Current thinking seems to be: the most effective way to overcome come the emotional trauma is ask what they need (within reason) not to ask them to replay the event and discuss its implications. Replaying the bad times often results in a reinfliction of pain.

While Andrea Joyce’s job isn’t to be trauma counselor, she could have let Scaramone just talk about her feelings and experiences. Instead Joyce work hard to seem like mike wallace interviewing some tin horn dictator.

Gold Medal for the Most offensive interview: NBC and Andrea Joyce. Contrast that with the way Meridith Viero asked the same questions on the Today show this next morning.

I’m happy to read that their is finally some action in Washington and the various state legislature across the US to deal with this outbreak of businesses operating as Non-Profits claiming that the purchase of their products are “donations”. Nothing could be farther from the truth. This fake charity issue is something i face each day as the CEO of an Offset company. There are a number of my competitors who sell the same services as I do, complete with branding, but their business is organized as a non-profit claiming to be a charity. It’s not true in many cases, rather the Non-Profit is a vehicle to enrich the staff of the non-profit, by offering their clients a tax deduction for the purchase of a product is not in anyway charitable.

Fortunately i’m not just a lone voice in the woods, various governments are starting to look into these businesses to put a halt to what are essentally a tax scam against the government and a confidence scam agains Offset clients. How many people bought an offset from a non-profit that was from the Chicago Climate exchange? Most offer that, so do we www.4offsets.com, nothing wrong with that, except that offset, in most cases, was bought from a commericial business. How is this in anyway a charitable contribution? Say the XYZgreen.org sells 1 ton of offsets for $10, that they bought for $6. What happens to the $4? In some cases i’ve looked into, it goes to pay the staff and not 1 dime is used for charitable works In a charity, it is used for charitable works, giving things to community whether money or knowledge.

Join me in the fight agains this abuse of the non-profit system and is a being used to scam million of Americans into believing someone’s source of wealth is really a charity. Don’t get scammed!
Ask for details of the non-profit’s charitable works and ask for IRS filings
Is the board of directors controlled by people who work at the foundation?
Where is the outside oversite?