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Come on, Thom. The Corpocrats are contributing to the problem also. Reagonomics morphed into Clintonomics/Rubinomics. The Republicorps may be worse but we still have a corporate party and a regressive, uber-corporate party. Since you're no longer on in L.A., I don't hear your show anymore. Are you talking about the TransPacific trade agreement being secretly negotiated by the Obama administration? Remember, the three recently-enacted free trade agreements were supported by both parties and signed by Obama.
Thank you Palindromedary for your considerate presentation of my problems as reiterated by a libelous uneducated creep who makes a living hosting Complaints from gardeners about every garden business, nurseryman, or rival on the internet. I have been approached by numerous hard-working people who want a class action against his search engine tactics and propagation of slander. He claims it is legal because an internet provider is not responsible for other people's posts.
You also must have it out for me because how would you possibly have known the name of my business?
Dave's Garden has put a number of struggling business to death.
He rides on other people's domains and then encourages unsubstantiated injurious posts. I have received 15 complaints in fifteen years. Some of the big well-funded companies in the country of course have received hundreds of complaints if not more.
Of course everyone has their own story. They love buying direct from the manufacturer, which is what I offer, but they don't know anything about the chain of custody a direct ordered product goes through, ending up with the freight lines. We have had to refund money many times
Nasty tyrants threaten to call the police and the attorney general when they don't get what they want when they want it. They also lie. We make it very clear in our store policy that we cannot promise to meet specific deadlines for events and occasions because the order has to go through 1)custom manufacturing 2)loading from the manufacturer to the freight company 3)delivery by the freight company.
I don't want to get started on freight companies.
But now, an update from the Prison Wife- I must flee now to pay his bail, but here's the real story for you as I finally heard it from the prisoner's one free phone call-
Last year we were unable to complete a whole shipment. We ran out of money. As compensation we delivered a wholesale account to the buyer, who can now purchase everything wholesale, and we drew up a Promissory Note with NO LATE Penalty or DEFAULT Clause, of which we have a signed copy, to pay the difference. We made a payment in May and were late in June. The customer company is having its own difficulties so they lied to the police and did not tell them about our Legally Executed Contractual Agreement as an attempt to scare us and extract funds from our company which are slated for other deliveries.
Since you are so up on my business, Pal, you will notice that I AM NOT incorporated, because I take personal responsibility for my work, and I don't file bankruptcies, even if making good on debts means I am subject to all sorts of indignations.
So celebrate. And may the road come up to hit your face.
P.S. Back from the pokey. The rent is gone for bail- AT &T has been double charging me for a year. Customer service did not call back with my resolution.
But I have a $27,000 crop of red mangroves ready for coastal restoration. If only people actually followed through with coastal restoration, things would be just peachy.
and FYI
It cost Dave Whitinger thousands of dollars to dispute the domain with hotsy totsy lawyers and it cost me $6.95 to be a respondent. So who wins? He has made more enemies in the plant industry than I can count. Further, his web content is old wives garden gibberish and Dave wouldn't know a Befaria racemosa from Borreria terminalis. Do you, without peeking?
The right-wing in this country is abominable. Their support of the 1% against the 99% is atrocious. They must be defeated.
Right- because the whole point of this blog topic is failure of American entrepeneurship. There is not a large corporation in this country that pays bills within 90 days. How do you think the furniture companies can offer No interest No Payments for Five Years?
I pay everything up front. I have no credit accounts with my manufacturers, and no lines of credit , grants, public assistance, or business loans upon which to default. In my landscape design business, I give cash money to growers and farmers and workers.This in spite of the fact my husband and I both would easily be qualified for disability with Florida disability lawyers.
Cash for the merchandise, cash for the phone company, cash for the shipper. We give cash to American-only companies.
I am not selling Florida swampland but custom finished garden art which is not Made in China. This is not an easy trade. It is like the restaurant business in a way. In which case, even in the finest restaurants, there are always those who didn't enjoy the meal as much as they expected to, so they want it taken off the check, or perhaps will even go so far as to poach a lighting fixture, item of decor, or flower arrangement off the table.
Or perhaps a mediocre writer will publish drivel and tripe criticism in a two-bit newspaper.
I do not file lawsuits because they are waste of paper, and I do not call the police to give me temporary power over another.
Surely I would love to have access to my own family funds so I could run my business smoothly. I would be another Martha Stewart. But my financing was actually stolen by transportation lawyers.
Any more bright ideas concerning what I should do with my life are welcome.
Deleted by author.
As far as your banking and paying credit card bills or mortgages you don't have to pay online or by mail. You can have an automatic payment deducted from your bank account for either set mortgage amount or whole credit card bill amount. No fees, no penalties, no post. For verification if you don't want to check the balance by computer, there is also ATM balance statement, and touch tone phone balances.
http://davesgarden.com/products/gwd/c/2279/
http://www.lawguru.com/legal-questions/florida-business-law/online-garde...
http://domains.adrforum.com/domains/decisions/1125595.htm
I wish Thom would start supplying links to the original sources. I don't know why so many in the media leave this out.
Here are 3 relevant links:
http://markets.newamerica.net/sites/newamerica.net/files/policydocs/Out%20of%20Business,%20July%202012_0.pdf
http://www.newamerica.net/publications/policy/out_of_business
http://www.newamerica.net/publications/articles/2012/the_slow_motion_collapse_of_american_entrepreneurship_69385
I'm a small business owner since 1994. In 2000 I took home a profit of about $200,000. Nice.
Ever since 2001 (isn't that when Bush took office?) my business has been plagued by industry labor actions against giant multinationals who don't CARE if people go on strike, they just hire scabs and outsource. These same companies retaliate against uppity folks by instituting rollbacks so that this year I will earn 80% LESS for the same sales I did in 2000.
I'm still hanging in there, but I, and all my colleagues, have really taken a hit. Thank heaven I own my car and my house!
In the meantime, my health care costs have tripled, and the value I get for that money has been cut by 75%. My family has to spend $28,000 on premiums and out of pocket care before those theives at Anthem pay dime one.
So, I just called the offices for all five so-called Democrats who voted to repeal the ACA to calmly explain to them EXACTLY how they should be helping small business - by not only supporting the ACA, but moving on to Single Payer. Four of them listened politely, however, the assistant to the alleged gentleman from Arkansas hung up on me.
Welcome to the Oligarchy of America, where anyone trying to be in business with a gross of less than $500 million will be either starved to death or eaten by bigger fish.
Maybe someday I'll just declare bankruptcy and screw them all. It worked for Donald Trump, right? He did it four times, if I recall correctly.... Maybe he's not an idiot after all! ;-D
Years ago, 63", to be precise, my country and my 22 yer old brain sterilized me. There was no way I would bring a child into this flawed republic, apparently populated by all my redneck relatives.
I'm a patrion, meaning I will defend the Constitution, a veteran meaning I was willing to risk, and an optimist meaning I think humans have some limited potential and value.
Lots of pats later I'm so grateful I need not worry about future generations. Not with the sellouts we have elected in the past 40 years, not with the amoral boomers in the banks , and not when we have rewarded slime like Cheney.
They better hurry. The environment is failing and tar sands are on the way.
There's plenty of room for internet entrepreurs yet, and may be 1 way of the future.
The right has a way of shooting itself in the foot ...take money out of the hands of the middle class or leave too many in poverty and no one will be shopping. Sooner or later they will hit a downturn that will force even the republicans to act for the people. Since they have not learned from our history...they will likely be forced to repeat it.
On a side note: In support of higher taxes for the wealthy: I believe it was Socates, when asked why he did not leave the country/accept banishment when sentenced to death, who said one owes something to the country that clothes him/her, fed him/her, educated him/her and basically gave him/her opportunity.
Nobody knows the trouble I've seen...Just this very morning my husband was taken from our house in handcuffs on a charge that he did not ship goods ordered from our garden catalog a year ago. I was ordered by a swat team to stay inside. They all had vests on and stared at the front door as if I would come out shooting. I was not allowed to know who the accuser is. There was a sheriff's car, an unmarked car, and three officers who made a very big scene interviewing my cuffed hubby in front of our house for an hour.
As we know that an arrest can be made on simply a complaint (from out of state) without corroboration or investigation by the police, I will now have to pay a lawyer as well as post bond, which does not help our pitiful cash flow as it is.
We started the catalog in 1997 when my husband almost died of peritonitis in a private hospital waiting 13 hours for a surgeon. What would have been a simple to repair intestinal tear with timely treatment turned into a life or death surgery because there was no surgeon on duty, leaving him with a temporary colostomy. It was supposed to be reversed in six months, but we couldn't afford it. The colostomy is right on the beltline so he cannot wear normal clothes, and due to this complicated lifestyle, continuing to work outside the home was impossible.
I have always been self employed, but with the wrong degree. I am a marine environmental consultant living in a fully developed coastal area where environmental laws are scarcely enforced.
Without his job, therefore, we created the online catalog from nothing but imagination and labor. Over the last fifteen years I do not deny we have had cash flow problems, but not because we don't live frugally. We have not owned a home since 1993. Our car was purchased for $1600 cash. That is what we have, but I don't go around calling the police and the Attorney General on AT&T who has been double-charging us on an iron clad contract for the last year! We call customer service.
Many times we have been ripped off by customers who took goods, kept them, then charged back on their credit cards. We have fought tooth and nail to eke out an honest modest living without resorting to welfare and credit cards. There have been occasions when we did not know about customer problems, and there have been occasions where once solid manufacturers who we ship from have disappeared overnight and we ncan't complete an order. People order things and then hold their money back forever after we have worked hours and hours on their order. Frequently customers agree to new shipping arrangements and then charge back on their credit cards anyway, or make horrible complaints wherever they can. Some customers have stuck us with hundreds of dollars in freight charges they agreed to pay. Others use the police instead of e-mail and phone to settle their customer service issues, when they unilaterally rescind our agreement.
It has now been five hours since my man was hauled off and I haven't heard a thing and there is no information available.
Thom, we are condemned not to fail or file bankruptcy, but to be dragged right to the old fashioned Debtor's Prison, until I can even find out who has made this charge against our pitiful business. If I can't afford bond and an attorney, I don't even know how to manage things to keep the catalog going.
What the WA WA.
Her name was Tanya? I thought that it was Orly Taitz...
"Let me finish! Let me finish!"
Tanya (?sp) is absolutely the worst guest you have ever had. You should have hung up on her for her disgusting and misinformed remarks. Some people don't deserve respect. Please, never have her on again!
I wonder how many small businessmen/women, or entrepreneurs, are Republican or who have voted Republican? I wonder how many of them voted for Reagan and Bush? It's like they used to say "don't worry, all the jobs that we are sending overseas will be replaced, here in the US, with higher level jobs. But this didn't happen, did it? Or , if it did happen on a very small scale...those jobs didn't last long because they were disappeared overseas as well. Republicans and gutless, turncoat Democrats ruined America! Smoke and mirrors!
"We know about banksters, but what's an iceberg?" (comment circa July 2112)
The time period I heard about was the same time I had a mortgage interest rate based on LIBOR and my payments rose significantly over a 2 years period so much that I re-financed to a fixed rate. It was the only time I ever did an ARM loan and should have known better, since I'd been in the mortgage business as a loan officer and also a private mortgage broker, so I've no excuse. What still galls me is that no one goes to jail, ever.
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New E-Banking Trojans Target Android Users:
"The security firm Trusteer reports that new Web-based attacks are targeting Android smartphone users in a campaign to circumvent two-factor sign-on features used by many banks to protect account holders.
Writing on the Trusteer blog on Tuesday, CTO Amit Klein of Trusteer said that researchers there have identified new attacks against mobile banking customers that use both the SpyEye and Tatanga banking Trojans. The attacks, which target Android mobile device users, but not those of other platforms, is the latest evidence that cyber criminals are concentrating on Google's Android platform, which makes up 51% of the mobile smart phone market in the U.S. and between 46% and 61% in the major European markets."
http://threatpost.com/en_us/blogs/new-e-banking-trojans-target-android-u...
Then again..maybe things may be changing...an update on the Ocean Bank vs Patco Construction Company..as of July 10, 2012:
"A Maine construction company that saw its online bank account fraudulently drained of about $589,000 might get some of it back due to what a US federal court has deemed shoddy security systems at its bank.
Patco Construction Company, based in Sanford, Maine, sued Ocean Bank - later acquired by People's United Bank - after thieves put through six wire transfers using the Automated Clearing House (ACH) transfer system in 2009.
A three-judge federal appeals court panel last Tuesday agreed with Patco, finding that Ocean Bank's online security measures were not "commercially reasonable," reversing a lower court ruling from May 2011.
Over the course of seven days in May 2009, the criminals pilfered $588,851.26 from the construction company's account.
Ocean Bank managed to block or claw back $243,406.83 of that, leaving Patco $345,444.43 in the red.
It's not that Ocean Bank's security system didn't flag these transactions. On the contrary, each of the six transfers were flagged as high risk, given that they didn't match the timing, value and geographic location of Patco's typical payment orders.
Regardless of the high-risk flags, the bank failed to notify Patco, allowing the bogus transfers to flow unchecked."
"A three-judge federal appeals court panel last Tuesday agreed with Patco, finding that Ocean Bank's online security measures were not "commercially reasonable," reversing a lower court ruling from May 2011."
"It's not that Ocean Bank's security system didn't flag these transactions. On the contrary, each of the six transfers were flagged as high risk, given that they didn't match the timing, value and geographic location of Patco's typical payment orders.
Regardless of the high-risk flags, the bank failed to notify Patco, allowing the bogus transfers to flow unchecked. "
"...Patco discovered that a system had been infected with the Zeus/Zbot banking Trojan, which steals banking information via keystroke logging and form grabbing - an advanced method of snaring web form data within browsers.
The hypothesis is that the thieves captured a Patco employee's keystrokes when she entered answers to challenge questions - questions that came up every time the company initiated a transfer, thanks to Ocean Bank's having pegged the challenge questions to any transfer of $1 or more."
"That still won't get Patco back its money, though.
The court declined to award damages, instead suggesting that the parties settle out of court.
The judges noted that Article 4A is a sticky wicket that needs to be untangled vis-a-vis a bank customer's responsibilities in protecting its own systems. The UCC doesn't allow claims such as negligence, fraud or breach of contract."
"As it now stands, liability for financial damages due to hacking is a hot-potato lobbed from businesses to financial institutions and back again.
Of course, as the judges made clear, responsibility for strong security doesn't reside only with financial institutions. Customers, be they individuals or businesses, must do their part.
But the security missteps brought to light in this ruling shine a clear light on exactly what second-rate security looks like. It's not that Ocean Bank didn't spend money on its security, mind you: the bank bought the Premium offering from its vendor. "
http://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2012/07/10/bank-online-security-breach/
A hacker claiming to have broken into networks of dozens of banks and stolen customer data, has released as proof a file that contains names, addresses, e-mail addresses, and phone numbers in plain text, but no credit card numbers.
"I penetrated over 79 large banks, I've been targetting these banks since 3 months," read a tweet from the Twitter account of Reckz0r. "Actually, I didn't hacked VISA & Mastercard, I hacked the banks, #Chase..etc."
A Pastebin post from today has a link to a downloadable file on the AnonFiles.com site that appears to have data from about 1,700 accounts in the U.S. and other cities around the world. Reckz0r said only a portion of the credit card information is being leaked because there is just too much of it, and that the credit card numbers are being withheld. Reports in Dutch media referred to 50 gigabytes of data and 113 pages.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1009_3-57455693-83/hacker-claims-breach-of-79-...
"...in May a mannequin company in Brooklyn, N.Y., lost $1.2 million in just a few hours. Verizon (VZ) analyzed hundreds of data breaches in 2010 and found that 63 percent of them happened at companies that had 100 or fewer employees."
"..According to a report from computer security company McAfee, a unit of Intel (INTC), and online banking security vendor Guardian Analytics, hackers are using fraud automation to increase the power and speed of their attacks. Tools also abound on hacker sites to help people illegally tap into company information networks.
The solution? There may not be one, and for the same reasons that large companies remain vulnerable. Computer security is expensive. To many executives, it's a black hole for spending. Even big companies with significant IT staffs have difficulty keeping up with all the changes, updates, modifications, and upgrades necessary to keep up with the world of criminal hacking."
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505124_162-57467265/hackers-target-small-bus...
Criminal hackers have found a way round the latest generation of online banking security devices given out by banks, the BBC has learned.
After logging in to the bank's real site, account holders are being tricked by the offer of training in a new "upgraded security system".
Money is then moved out of the account but this is hidden from the user.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-16812064
Iran's Central Bank has announced that the electronic information of 3 million customers of 10 Iranian banks have been compromised. These banks now require their customers to change their ATM pin numbers before they can access their account. This has caused a rush to the ATM machines by the worried customers.
http://thehackernews.com/2012/04/banking-system-vulnerability-3-million....