Is anyone's business affected by politics?

Re: Is anyone's business affected by politics?

Randy, John,
More to the OP. Did your business bounce or dip during the grandstanding by Cruz?
Were clients moved by his act of patriotism, and order lots of Reso Tune and Gartner Sound installations?
Or were they distracted or dismayed, and sales slipped?

Jack
 
Re: Is anyone's business affected by politics?

Jack Arnott said:
Randy, John,
More to the OP. Did your business bounce or dip during the grandstanding by Cruz?
Were clients moved by his act of patriotism, and order lots of Reso Tune and Gartner Sound installations?
Or were they distracted or dismayed, and sales slipped?

Jack
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I don't think my customers missed a beat (rimshot), but my business has been quite soft due to recent cheaper competition, not macro economic effects. I take full ownership of my personal situation. I should be working on marketing instead of pontificating on the WWW. :-(

JR
 
Re: Is anyone's business affected by politics?

I wonder if a government shutdown will affect customs and the entry of the X32-Rack into the market place.
 
Re: Is anyone's business affected by politics?

mark anderson said:
I wonder if a government shutdown will affect customs and the entry of the X32-Rack into the market place.
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Whoa, that's a good question. I have an overseas shipment that should hit the warehouse tomorrow.
I might have news on this.
 
Re: Is anyone's business affected by politics?

I can't accurately predict the future but I expect a short extension to the continuing resolution (not really a budget) to get us to the next bump in the road which is the debt limit a few weeks from now.

This is mostly arm waving by both sides to sell their sound bites du jour. There is some real anger from a fraction of the public bot nobody believes shutting down the government or defaulting on debt obligations made in good faith is a viable path toward improvement.

I really don't expect more than a brief shutdown if at all (to make a point), and then the debt limit will get increased like the last 72 times since the 1960s.

Of course I could be wrong..

JR
 
Re: Is anyone's business affected by politics?

mark anderson said:
I wonder if a government shutdown will affect customs and the entry of the X32-Rack into the market place.
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According to the NPR website, CBP (Customs and Border Protection) is still open.


(edit) And my shipment cleared customs already this morning.
 
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Re: Is anyone's business affected by politics?

Jack Arnott said:
Randy, John,
More to the OP. Did your business bounce or dip during the grandstanding by Cruz?
Were clients moved by his act of patriotism, and order lots of Reso Tune and Gartner Sound installations?
Or were they distracted or dismayed, and sales slipped?

Jack
Click to expand...
Neither Ted Cruz nor Obama will affect my business in the short term.At this time I am very busy because I have one large job going which will carry me into the middle of November.Another one is on the books to begin about the time this one wraps up.Usually,when I have one large project going, the small jobs fill in the holes in the schedule keeping me busy.If the shut down has any affect on my business,I won't know for sometime.
 
Re: Is anyone's business affected by politics?

Government shut down screwed me. I am also in the National Guard and was supposed to have drill this weekend. Because of that I did not take 4 shows planning for drill. Now, drill is also cancelled. So I have a week of zero income. Scrambling to pick up one or two. All in all losing about $1,400.00 this weekend. (keep in mind I am still a small operation.)
 
Re: Is anyone's business affected by politics?

Just to be clear, it's not Sennheiser's fault that the service is down, it's the FCC's doing. You can see for yourself at the ULS homepage. Sennheiser's frequency finder and other similar sites rely on the FCC's ULS (Universal Licensing System) search function to conduct geographical searches for licensed television stations within a defined radius of the search location.

Here's where I rant about politics (the shutdown) affecting my business. Please forgive me in advance.

I rely on the ULS system as an RF professional. I have shows this weekend in one of the most hostile RF environments in the country. The FCC claims to have shut down their automated search system as a result of the government shutdown. However, this shutdown is simply a result of congress failing to do their duty to fund the government, and a law known as the Antideficiency Act, passed by Congress in 1870, which prohibits government employees from incurring any monetary obligation for which Congress has not appropriated funds. Here's the GIANT hole in the FCC using it as their lame excuse; the ULS system is automated. It runs just fine on every weekend and holiday when government employees are at home watching football. I challenge anyone to show me an example of a large scale web hosting service, such as the ULS system would require, that doesn't require advance payment for their services. I could be wrong about that, though, and hope to be proven wrong. If the datacenters and servers are "government provided" they are almost certainly subcontracted, and it would be extremely unusual for any contractor of that type to require daily payments or to bill for services rendered after the fact. This leads me to believe that the ULS system that our tax dollars have paid for many times over is being denied us by either extremely bad management (failure to purchase hosting services in advance at deep discounts), or this is some kind of petty attempt to influence the outcome of this ridiculous political mess by denying us citizens services that we have already paid for, which normally run without glitches in the absence of daily funding.

It's disgusting. But at least it's not as disgusting as National Parks working to keep veterans away from their memorials while they're not supposed to be working at all.

End of rant.
 
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Re: Is anyone's business affected by politics?

Jason Raboin said:
Congress created the shutdown and still receive pay. They are considered "essential".
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Well since only they can approve the CR and debt ceiling they actually are essential.

They need to spend less time talking at us, to stir up public opinion to solidify their opposing positions, and more time talking to each other to reach a solution.

Ignore their words, watch what they do. Especially ignore sound bites.

JR
 
Re: Is anyone's business affected by politics?

While I don't have much respect for congress,I have less for the president.As Jason pointed out,there was no reason to shut down the FCC website.There was mo reason to shut down the open air mall in Washington and trying to keep our WWII vets from getting to their own memorial.These things were done to make maixmum discomfort for the public so Obama will not have to negotiate.Remember,we wouldn't be in this position if the senate dems put together a budget.Instead we have to run our goverment through continuing resolutions (CR's).This is no way to run a government. The Prez met with house leaders last night and before the meeting,his press secretary said Obama wasn't going to negotiate over the debt limit.A leader,is supposed to bring people together and seek compromise.Obama isn't a leader.He never had any leadership experience.He wasn't a mayor,governor,a business owner or even a Boy Scout.He has no experience leading anything.And I feel pretty much the same way about John Boehner,Mcitch McCobnnel and Harry Reid.Not one leader in the whole bunch.
 
Re: Is anyone's business affected by politics?

The strange thing that has been pointed out to me most recently about the government shutdown is that it really doesn't have much immediate effect besides the people on furlow and companies that largely rely on contracts with the government for work (around here near the nation's captiol, it does affect me more). Interestingly enough, most people don't seem to notice a difference. The biggest difference will come when and if they nation is unable to pay off their bonds/debts, or when significant cuts actually come around. Until then, most of the effects are indirect.
 
Re: Is anyone's business affected by politics?

Max Warasila said:
The strange thing that has been pointed out to me most recently about the government shutdown is that it really doesn't have much immediate effect besides the people on furlow and companies that largely rely on contracts with the government for work.
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Yeah, aside from the 800,000 federal employees currently unemployed, and the vast majority of scientific research, NBD.
 
Re: Is anyone's business affected by politics?

Max Warasila said:
The strange thing that has been pointed out to me most recently about the government shutdown is that it really doesn't have much immediate effect besides the people on furlow and companies that largely rely on contracts with the government for work (around here near the nation's captiol, it does affect me more). Interestingly enough, most people don't seem to notice a difference. The biggest difference will come when and if they nation is unable to pay off their bonds/debts, or when significant cuts actually come around. Until then, most of the effects are indirect.
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Yes, the budget (actually continuing resolution) impasse is really a side-show to the main act. The debt ceiling due to bump around Oct 17 is the real deal. The expectation is that no rational actor would allow a US default because of the huge cost implications from a damaged credit rating.

It is the nature of politicians to try to scare voters with threats of catastrophe and apocalypse to pressure each other when they think they have the high ground. For now despite one side trying to talk down the market with scary talk, there are companies floating new IPOs and the market is not predicting a debt default. Ironically the market may need to fall significantly from here to pressure them to deal.

I can't imagine a debt default but I am an optimist (and rational). One piece of bad news is that both political parties are receiving a strong flow of new contributions from their base stirred up by the fight. As is their nature, the politicians may continue to suspend the people's business a little longer to fatten up their personal campaign kitties.

Relax for now, but as Oct 17 draws closer be very worried. I expect a grand deal to cover 2 or three issues combined, after they tire from the heat of the spot lights trained on them.

JR

[edit] yes, this shutdown will have an additional downward impact on the already slow economic growth, so expect more wimpy growth. If the debt ceiling is allowed to default, we could re-enter recession from this already weak growth position. The sooner they resolve this the better for all of us. [/edit]
 
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Re: Is anyone's business affected by politics?

Max Warasila said:
The strange thing that has been pointed out to me most recently about the government shutdown is that it really doesn't have much immediate effect...
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Before I go off on a rant, I want to clarify what you are saying.
Are you saying, government must not do much, because they shut down and I can't tell the difference?
Or are you saying, it's not a real shut down, because about 80% of the government is still going on?
 
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