It’s a homeowner’s duty to shovel their sidewalk. Most places have laws that make not shoveling your sidewalk an offense punished by a fine.

Here in Delaware, some of the smaller cities are enforcing their ordinances making residents cleared their sidewalks or be fined.

In Newark Delaware fines are being imposed to the tune of $100 dollars or more. In Dover Delaware residents got a notices that if they don’t shovel their sidewalks they can be fined $25 dollars a day. However, in Wilmington Delaware the battle over who owns the sidewalk leaves the city unable to fine it’s residents.

Read more about shoveling your sidewalk rules and regulations at Delaware Cities Serve Notice.

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With snow come down back to back, this is the 2nd snow this week, with another one come again Sunday/Monday. This 2010 Winter snow storm has cover the east coast and keeping people home for days.

We had just recovered from an earlier snow storm, when on Tuesday another one hit. The snow storm is so bad that road aren’t being plowed, and city like (Philadelphia, and Delaware) are under emergency warning.

I, for one am sick of the snow. It took me 3 days of moving snow with the 1st snow storm. I tried a different method this time. Go out in the snow and get an earlier start. To my dismay, it doesn’t look like I did anything.

I tried on Tuesday to buy a snow blower. Good luck. From Walmart, Lowes, to Homedepot — all sold out.

Tell your 2010 Winter Snow Storm story — put it in the comment section.

Be prepared for Winter 2011 with a new snow blower/thrower

Check out this snow blower

Snow Joe Plus 322P 12-Inch 7.5 Amp Electric Snow Thrower

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Video the below video which contains the top ten super bowl ads. In the comment section vote for the one you like the best.

Top Ten Super Bowl Ads Video

Top Ten Super Bowl Ad Round-Up

• Man Crunch
• Careen Builders
• Go Daddy
• Machinima
• Kia Motors
• Hyundai
• CBS News
• Tru TV
• BridgeStone Tires
• Honda

Which commercial ad was your favorite? Leave your vote in the comment section of this blog.

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In an effort to promote small businesses to began hiring again, President Obama is proposing new tax credits. Read the small business tax credits details below.

The United States is still reeling from a recession. One in ten Americans can’t find work. The fact is — Americans are standing in a very different place than we were just a year ago.

Last year, businesses were cutting 700 thousand jobs every month. The markets were plummeting, and many people feared another Great Depression.

However, today the White House has stopped the flood of job losses, they have stabilized the financial system, and American has avoided another Great Depression.

While the Recovery Act has created and/or saved 2 million jobs, this recession has cost the American people 7 million jobs. That’s why the Jobs Bill is so important. This Jobs Bill will help small businesses. President Obama is proposing what he believes is the best way to cut taxes while promoting hiring by small businesses; through a tax credit. For companies that add workers or increase salaries this year a tax credit maybe in store.

Now is the perfect time for this kind of incentive because the economy is growing, but businesses are still hesitant to start hiring again. Companies are recovering but not yet taking that next step and taking on additional full time workers.

Tax Credit Details

Here’s how the tax credit will work.

• Employers will get a tax credit of up to $5000 for each and every employee that they add in 2010
• Employers will get a tax break for increasing salaries in 2010 for employees making under $100,000

This new tax credit can cut taxes for over 1 million small businesses. It will give them an incentive to hire more people and a little extra money to pay higher wages or to expand work hours.

In order to get this incentive working quickly, employers would actually be able to receive this money every quarter, as opposed to waiting a whole year to see it benefit their taxes.

Promoting Small Business Via a Tax Credit

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There are any number of actions the White House can take to enhance Americans competitiveness and secure a better future for American people, but few of them will make as much of a difference as improving the way we educate our child. Offering American children an outstanding education is one of our most fundamental — perhaps our most fundamental obligation as a country. And whether the White House meets that obligation not only reflects who we are as Americans, it will shape our future as a nation. Countries that out-educate us today will out-compete us tomorrow, and President Obama refuses to let that happen.

The Race To The Top Of Education

The race to the top of education is a national competition among states to improve schools. Over the past few months, the White House has seen such a positive response that today, the President is announcing a new intention to make a major new investment. the new investment into Education Reform is more than $1.3 Billion dollars.

After months of planning and preparation, the first round of Race to the Top applications is coming due today (January 19, 2010). And it’s a sign of how much states and schools believe this initiative will benefit them that the White House expects a significant increase.

Race To The Top Guidelines

Last year, President Obama set aside more than $4 billion dollars to improve schools. That’s one of the largest investments in reform in our nation’s history. States must compete for these funds. And it’s the competitive nature of this initiative that the White House believes helps makes “Race To The Top — Education Reform” work so effectively. The White House has laid out a few key criteria and said if you meet those test, the White House will reward you by helping you reform your school.

• First, states must adopt more challenging standards that will actually prepare American kids for college and their careers.
• Schools must adopt better assessments (not just one-size-fits-all). It should be a true measure of what kids know and what they are able to do.
• School districts must have excellent principals leading the schools and great teachers leading the classes by promoting rigorous plans to develop and evaluate teachers and principals by rewarding their success.
• States are to use cutting-edge data systems to track children progress throughout their academic career, and to link that child’s progress to their teachers.
• States must show a strong commitment to turn around some of their lowest-performing schools.

Four-eight states have now joined the Race To The Top Education Reform partnership.

Race to the Top Education Reform

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Over the past two years more than 7 million Americans have lost their jobs. Countless businesses have been forced to shut their doors. Few families have escaped the pain of this terrible recession. And rarely does a day go by that the President doesn’t hear from folks who are hurt. That’s why the White House has pushed so hard to rebuild this economy. But even as the White House works tirelessly to dig our way out of this hole, it’s important that we address what led us into such a deep mess in the first place.

Much of the turmoil of this recession was caused by the irresponsibility of banks and financial institutions on Wall Street. These financial firms took huge, reckless risks in pursuit of short-term profits and soaring bonuses. They gambled with borrowed money, without enough oversight or regard for the consequences. And when they lost, they lost big.

Little more than a year ago, many of the largest and oldest financial firms in the world teetered on the brink of collapse, overwhelmed by the consequences of their irresponsible decisions. This financial crisis nearly pulled the entire economy into a second Great Depression.

As a result, the American people — struggling in their own right — were placed in a deeply unfair an unsatisfying position. Even though these financial firms were largely facing a crisis of their own making, their failure could have led to an even greater calamity for the country as a whole. And that’s why the previous administration started a program — The Troubled Asses Relief Program, or TARP — to provide these financial institutions with funds to survive the turmoil that they had helped unleash. It was a distasteful but necessary thing to do.

Many originally feared that most of the $700 billion in TARP money would be lost forever. But when President Obama’s administration came into office, they put into place rigorous rules for accountability and transparency, which cut the costs of the bailout dramatically. The White House has now recovered most of the money they provided to the banks through TARP. That is good news, but as far as the President is concerned, it is not good enough.

President Obama wants the taxpayers money back — all of it — and the White House is going to collect every dime. That is why, this week, President Obama proposed a new fee on major financial firms to compensate the American people for the extraordinary assistance they provided to the financial industry. And the fee would be in place until the American taxpayer is made whole. Only the largest financial firms with more than $50 billion in assets will be affected, not community banks. And the bigger the firm — and the more debt it holds — the larger the fee. Because the White House is not only going  to recover the American taxpayers money but also help close the deficits; the White House is going to attack some of the banking practices that led to the crisis.

The fact is, financial firms play an essential role in our economy. They provide capital and credit to families purchasing homes, students attending college, businesses looking to start-up or expand. These are all critical to America’s recovery. That is why the White House’s goal with this new Financial Reform Fee, and with the common sense financial reforms is to seek not punishment but to prevent the abuse and excess that nearly led to its collapse. The White House’s goal is to promote fair dealings while punishing those who game the system; to encourage sustained growth while discouraging the speculative bubbles that inevitably burst.

Ultimately, that is in the shared interest of the financial industry and the American people. And of course, President Obama would like the banks to embrace this sense of mutual responsibility. However, banks have ferociously fought the financial reform efforts. The industry have even joined forces with the opposition party to launch a massive lobbying campaign against common sense rules to protect consumers and prevent another crisis. Now, like clockwork, the banks and the politicians who curry their favor are already trying to stop this financial reform fee from going into effect.

The very same firms reaping billions of dollars in profits, and reportedly handing out more money in bonuses and compensation than ever before in history, are now pleading poverty. Those who oppose this financial reform fee say the banks can’t afford to pay back the American people without passing on the costs to their shareholders and customers. But that’s hard to believe when there are reports that Wall Street is going to hand out more money in bonuses and compensation just this year than the cost of this financial reform fee over the next 10 years.

If the big financial firms can afford massive bonuses, they can afford to pay back the American people. those who oppose this financial reform fee have also had the audacity to suggest that it is somehow unfair. That because these firms have already returned what they borrowed directly, their obligation is fulfilled. But this willfully ignores that fact that the entire industry benefited not only from the bailout, but from the assistance extended to AIG and to homeowners, and from the many unprecedented emergency actions taken by the FDIC, and others to prevent a financial collapse. And it ignores a far greater unfairness: sticking the American taxpayers with the bill.

Getting Our Money Back From Wall Street Through A New Reform Act — finanical reform fee

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New airline protections coming because of the attempted attack on Christmas. Because of the attempted attack on Christmas, there will be an increase of screening practices and security measure at the airport.

The President has announced that there has been a review of the terrorist watch system, and a review of the travel screening process. These reviews will determine what went wrong, and how to fix the problem. The review process started just after the attempted attack.

What attempted attack?

From the President “It’s been widely reported that the father of the suspect in the Christmas incident warned U.S. officials in Africa about his son’s extremist views. It now appears that weeks ago this information was passed to a component of our intelligence community, but was not effectively distributed so as to get the suspect’s name on a no-fly list. There appears to be other deficiencies as well.”

President Obama Update On Airline Protections

More from the President ” We have achieved much since 9/11 in terms of collecting information that relates to terrorists and potential terrorist attacks. But it’s becoming clear that the system that has been in place for year now is not sufficient.”

For more and up-to-date information on Transportation and Security go to the TSA website.

What are your comments?

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What’s hot for 2010 is the question, and the answer is …. (Check out the list below to see the hot new trends for 2010).

Media Predicts: 2010 - What’s Hot / What’s Not (Video)

Special Predictions for 2010 made by:
Robert Scoble, Fast Company
Jon Swartz, USA Today
Jim Goldman, CNBC
Rob Hof, Business Week
Victoria Murphy Barrett, Forbes
Don Clark, Wall Street Journal
Elise Ackerman, The Mercury News
Mark Vevrka, Barons
Richard Waters, Financial Times
John Markoff, New York Times
Matt Marshall, VentureBeat
Om Malik, GigaOM
Steven Levy, Wired
Connie Guglielmo, Bloomberg News
Ben Worthen, Wall Street Journal
Brad Stone, New York Times
Byron Acohido, USA Today

Hot Trends for 2010

Apple tablet (read more)
Amazon
Merging companies
Netflix
The Return of AOL
Bye Bye Twitter

These are some of the Media Predicts for 2010. Do you think there will be no more twitter? Will Apple Tablet be worth the hype? What we Amazon do that will be so great? Will Netflix replace cable TV? AOL returning to do what?

If you have the answer to some of the above questions, please feel free to comment!

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The Senate passes the Health Reform bill. This is a historic step towards health insurance reform.

In a historic vote that took place this morning, members of the Senate joined their the House of Representatives and passed a landmark (historic) health insurance reform package (bill). Now that both the House and the Senate have passed the Health Insurance Reform Bill what’s next?

The President believes that real and meaningful health insurance is soon to come for all Americans. The health insurance reform package will bring more security and stability to the American people.

What’s in the Health Insurance Reform Bill?

• Insurance companies will no longer be able to deny you coverage on the basis of a pre-existing condition.
• Insurance companies will no longer be able to drop your coverage when you get sick.
• No longer will you have to pay unlimited amounts our of your own pocket for the treatments you need.
• There’s a new way to appeal unfair decisions made by your insurance carrier.

Important Point of the Health Insurance Reform Bill

• If this legislation becomes law, workers won’t have to worry about losing coverage if they lose or change jobs.
• Families will save on their premiums.
• The Health Insurance Reform Bill will strengthen Medicare.
• The Health Insurance Reform Bill will make insurance affordable for over 30 million Americans who didn’t have insurance.
• If this legislation becomes law, it will be the most important piece of social policy since the Social Security Act in the 30’s.

President Obama on Senate Passage of Health Reform

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We are in the season of giving. Giving not only to our families, but people in need. Read how and to whom you should donate to. All charities are not made equal.

Nothing says more about people than the way we open our hearts and pocketbooks to those in need. And this is the prefect time to be charitable. Not just because of the season, but because of the hard economy times we all find ourselves in.

For charities life GoodWill donations fund education, and many other programs. Goodwill’s mission is to “train and develop skills in people with disabilities”. This training helps people with disabilities become self support within our communities. Therefore, step 1 “Charity, Donation, and Giving” tip is to search for a great charities that support your community members. Make sure the charity’s mission statement is in line with your giving spirit.

The second tip is to find out how much of your charitable donation is going towards the mission. If too much money is going for salaries and administrative costs how much is funneled down to the people in need. Therefore, step 2 “Charity, Donation, and Giving” tip is to find out just how much money is making it to the hands that need it most.

The last tip is call group giving. Join forces with friends and family and give big. Therefore, step 3 “Charity, Donation, and Giving” tip is to give as a group.

Charities - 3 Tips for Smart Donating

Side Notes to Charity, Donation, and Giving

Charity Tax - Donations of cash and property to qualified non-profits are tax deductible. To be deductible, taxpayers must keep records of their contributions.

What To Donated

• Auto
• Gift Cards
• Clothes
• Cash

Whatever you can give!

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