#they also have strict rules on price markups

[smuggleyourbooze]

Fake Tampon Flask: The Ultimate Discreet Drinking Solution

When it comes to attending concerts, festivals, sporting events, or simply enjoying a day at the beach, many people prefer to bring their own beverages to save money and avoid long lines. However, public venues often have strict rules about bringing in alcohol, and finding a discreet way to carry your drink can be challenging. Enter the fake tampon flask—one of the most discreet and clever ways to carry a drink without raising suspicion.

This blog will explore what a fake tampon flask is, how it works, why it’s so popular, and how to choose the right one for your needs. We’ll also highlight the benefits of using this innovative drinking solution, and when and where you can use it.

What Is a Fake Tampon Flask?

A fake tampon flask is a cleverly disguised container that looks like a real tampon but is actually designed to hold a small amount of liquid. The “tampons” are often hollow plastic tubes with screw-off caps, allowing you to fill them with your favorite beverage, usually alcoholic. They come in small, portable sizes and often include realistic tampon wrappers to further the illusion, ensuring that your flask goes unnoticed.

These flasks are perfect for situations where you need to keep your drink hidden, as no one will think twice about seeing a tampon in your bag, purse, or pocket.

Why Use a Fake Tampon Flask?

There are several reasons why people turn to fake tampon flasks as a discreet drinking solution:

1. Discretion

The number one advantage of using a fake tampon flask is its ability to blend in completely. Most people wouldn’t think to question someone carrying a tampon, making it one of the most discreet ways to carry a drink in public. Whether you’re attending a concert or festival with strict alcohol policies or just want to enjoy a sip in a low-key setting, a fake tampon flask ensures that your beverage stays concealed.

2. Cost Savings

Events like concerts, festivals, and sporting events often have exorbitant prices for drinks. By bringing your own beverage in a discreet flask, you can avoid the markup and enjoy your favorite drink without breaking the bank. Over time, the savings can really add up.

3. Convenience

A fake tampon flask is small, lightweight, and easy to carry, making it convenient for on-the-go drinking. The compact size allows it to fit in most purses, pockets, or bags, so you won’t have to carry a bulky bottle or worry about running out of space.

4. Fun and Unique

Fake tampon flasks also offer a fun, tongue-in-cheek solution to the problem of sneaking in drinks. They make great conversation starters and can even be used as gag gifts for friends who love attending events or outdoor activities.

5. Environmentally Friendly

Many fake tampon flask are reusable, allowing you to reduce waste and avoid single-use plastic bottles. By opting for a reusable option, you can not only save money but also contribute to reducing your environmental footprint.

How Does a Fake Tampon Flask Work?

Fake tampon flasks are incredibly simple to use. Here’s a step-by-step guide on how they work:

Filling the Flask: Unscrew the cap of the flask and pour in your beverage of choice, whether it’s a cocktail, whiskey, or even a non-alcoholic drink. Most tampon flasks can hold about 1-2 ounces of liquid, which is enough for a quick sip or a shot.

Sealing the Flask: After filling, screw the cap back on tightly to ensure that the flask is leak-proof. Many fake tampon flasks come with secure lids to prevent spills while carrying them in a bag or pocket.

Wrapping the Flask: To complete the illusion, place the filled tampon flask into one of the provided wrappers. These wrappers are designed to look just like real tampon packaging, ensuring that no one will suspect a thing.

Enjoy Your Drink: When you’re ready, simply unwrap the “tampon,” unscrew the cap, and enjoy your drink. It’s that easy!

Where Can You Use a Fake Tampon Flask?

Fake tampon flasks are versatile and can be used in a variety of situations. Here are some of the most common places where they come in handy:

1. Concerts and Festivals

Many music venues and festivals have strict rules about bringing in outside drinks, and drinks purchased at these events can be incredibly expensive. A fake tampon flask allows you to discreetly carry your own drink without drawing attention, saving you money while you enjoy the show.

2. Sporting Events

Sporting arenas and stadiums are notorious for their high-priced beverages. Sneaking in a fake tampon flask can help you avoid paying these inflated prices while enjoying a day at the game.

3. Beach Days

A day at the beach is the perfect opportunity to relax with a drink, but alcohol isn’t always allowed. A fake tampon flask can help you keep your drink concealed while soaking up the sun, avoiding any unwanted attention from beach patrols.

4. Picnics and Outdoor Activities

When you’re spending time outdoors at a picnic or park, having a fake tampon flask allows you to enjoy a drink without needing to carry a large cooler or bottle. It’s easy to tuck into your bag or pocket for quick access.

5. Traveling

If you’re heading on a long flight or a road trip, a fake tampon flask can help you carry a small amount of your favorite beverage discreetly. Just be sure to follow any local laws or regulations about carrying alcohol in public places.

How to Choose the Right Fake Tampon Flask

With so many options available, here are some key factors to consider when selecting the best fake tampon flask for your needs:

1. Capacity

Most fake tampon flasks hold between 1-2 ounces of liquid, but some can hold a bit more. Consider how much liquid you’ll need to carry and choose a flask that meets your needs.

2. Realistic Design

Look for a flask that closely mimics the appearance of a real tampon, including both the flask itself and the wrapper. High-quality fake tampon flasks will look indistinguishable from real tampons, increasing the likelihood that they’ll go unnoticed.

3. Durability

Ensure that the flask is made from durable, leak-proof materials to avoid spills. Many fake tampon flasks are made from high-quality plastic, which is lightweight and resistant to damage.

4. Easy to Use

Choose a flask with a wide mouth for easy filling and a secure cap to prevent leaks. The easier the flask is to use, the more convenient it will be in different situations.

SEO Keywords for "Fake Tampon Flask"

Fake tampon flask

Discreet flask

Hidden alcohol container

Stealth drink container

Tampon alcohol flask

Concealed alcohol flask

Portable alcohol flask

Event flask for alcohol

Alcohol flask for concerts

Festival alcohol container

Including these SEO keywords in your blog can help improve its ranking on search engines, making it easier for people to find information on fake tampon flasks.

Pros and Cons of Using a Fake Tampon Flask

Pros:

Highly Discreet: Fake tampon flasks are one of the most discreet ways to carry a drink in public.

Portable and Lightweight: They are small and easy to carry, making them perfect for on-the-go drinking.

Cost-Effective: Save money by bringing your own beverages to events where drink prices are inflated.

Reusable: Many fake tampon flasks are made from durable materials and can be reused multiple times.

Cons:

Limited Capacity: Most fake tampon flasks hold only a small amount of liquid, so they may not be suitable for longer events or outings.

Potential Legal Issues: Depending on where you use the flask, sneaking in alcohol may be against the rules, so always be aware of local laws and event policies.

Conclusion

The fake tampon flask is the ultimate solution for discreet, on-the-go drinking. Its clever design, cost-saving potential, and portability make it a popular choice for those attending concerts, festivals, or any event where alcohol might be restricted. Whether you're looking for a unique and fun way to enjoy your beverage or simply want to avoid high prices, the fake tampon flask offers a smart, effective, and incredibly discreet option.

With the right flask in hand, you can confidently enjoy your favorite drink while blending into any environment.

[kansasjustgotgayer]

Its literally in the costco code of ethics to treat their employees well. It is their philosophy that when you hire good people and you pay them good wages, good things will happen.

Notice that it is only when all of those are met that shareholders are a priority. This is how you run a sustainable business. By treating the things you rely on as worthy of respect and attention. Also I do wanna say, the respect the law is not about cop worship. Its about not any cutting corners to make a profit no matter what, whether that be with produce, or forklift certification, or liquor licensing.

And Id like to share a small story about Costco because I work there. Because they dont stop at wages when it comes to keeping their employees wellbeing in mind. Recently in my city we had a water main break and it caused a boil advisory for our city.

This caused a LOT of people to come in panic buying (frankly way too much) water. They put a limit on it quickly so that we wouldnt run out too fast but the cheap kirkland water was sold out in hours leaving only a small amount of the most expensive brand by the end of the day.

On my break after close i went to get two cases for my family, only to be told by a manager to go to one of the coolers where they had saved two whole pallets of the affordable brand specifically for employees to be able to buy water for them and their families. Aside from the wages, the insurance benefits, and even Sunday premium pay, That was what told me they really care. Because that didn’t come from any company protocol, that came from a culture that thinks about the lives their employees have outside of the warehouse.

Also Costco has a union.

[umbrellalocal02]

How does voice search optimization agency help with your webpage content optimization on Google Search?

By now, you appreciate the relevance and need for tailoring your on-site content to a voice search optimization agency so that when prompted via a voice request, it appears higher in organic search results.

Keywords

In all aspects of marketing and advertising, keyword analysis has always been essential; when it comes to voice search or orders, it is no different. However, since individuals are likely to be more natural (as opposed to being more straightforward and precise for typed searches) in their requests, you need to account for the variations so that long-tail keywords and more conversational terms are appropriate for a more semantic search.

In addition, phrases can also be at the core of the approach you are going to use to target such voice search keywords. Google Analytics and the search results 'People Also Inquire' section are good tools to adapt the keywords to voice-based requests, with the latter offering similar advice on any given question.

Tone and writing

You need to speak their language to appeal to the customer better. Sometimes, you can not see a person speaking out his question in a strict professional tone at times. Instead, it typically often prefers a colloquial and casual style and so the material can fit this tone similarly as well.

Although changing and adapting the writing style to the likeness of the user, it is necessary not to distract from the main objective of transmitting meaningful information. The answer should be acceptable and about it you should be succinct. This is where voice search optimization services from agencies like Umbrella Local come into play.

Q&A for snippets included

As Google values direct replies that closely follow the user's question, FAQ pages and featured samples, or the iconic '0th position' on the search results go hand in hand. A perfect way to boost in-bound traffic and brand recognition is to have featured snippets.

With several individuals wondering 'what',' why' and 'how' about a specific product, service or entity, the basics are important here. Many of the snippets are linked to industries such as wellness or medical knowledge, data on trade and how-to explanations or cooking recipes.

Structured Data

Alternatively, known as schema markups or rich snippets, these appear below the website's URL and give the user a clue about the additional website details that they should redirect to and from there.

Such information may vary from price options to contact data, or even the various parts or hierarchies of the site. Such data is also of great use to search engines as it is easy for web crawlers or bots to 'understand' the website by making the metadata or sitemap transparent to them so that the information can be recognized as appropriate.

Mobile and Speed Optimization

Finally, for optimal outcomes, we need to understand where the real voice searches are coming from and how to succeed at that particular channel. There's no going to the voice-search heaven without first crossing the SEO river and that's why mobile optimization is completely important. The solution is already crystal-clear.

Making sure that the pages load in no more than 2 seconds is the most critical part of making an optimized mobile edition of any site. Remember, when they use verbal questions, users demand almost immediate responses and a slower site works to the opposite effect, frustrating the user away.

Conclusion

If we dive into the ever-expanding possibilities of technology, voice-enabled searches are here to remain and exponentially improve. In addition to the flexible and open choices, fast and appropriate answers only support such a feature. In order to build on it, organizations should use tactics that are not surprisingly different from those applied to support SEO rankings.

The same rules apply, which has platforms competing to refine their website's smartphone models, playing similarly with the user-input keyword(s), Q&As for improved significance and where there is little connection between voice search optimization agency and SEO, providing a casual sound to help meet the typical customer's preferences.

[theusuallyfreshcollectorstuff]

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[holytheoristtastemaker]

In this post, we'll see what atomic CSS is, how it relates to functional / utility-first CSS like TailwindCSS, and that big players are adopting it in their modern React codebases. As I'm not a expert of this subject, don't expect a deep dive about the pros and cons. I just hope you get an idea about what it's about. Note: Atomic CSS is not really related to Atomic Design.

What is atomic CSS?

You may have heard of various CSS methodologies like BEM, OOCSS...

<button class="button button--state-danger"> Danger button </button>

These days, people really like Tailwind CSS and its utility-first concept. This is close to Functional CSS and Tachyon.

<button class="bg-blue-500 hover:bg-blue-700 text-white font-bold py-2 px-4 rounded"> Button </button>

With a stylesheet of a bunch of utility classes, you can go a long way. Atomic CSS is like an extreme version of utility-first CSS: all CSS classes have a single, unique CSS rule. Atomic CSS was first used by Thierry Koblentz (Yahoo!), in Challenging CSS Best Practices in 2013.

/* Atomic CSS */ .bw-2x { border-width: 2px; } .bss { border-style: solid; } .sans { font-style: sans-serif; } .p-1x { padding: 10px; } /* Not atomic, because the class contains 2 rules */ .p-1x-sans { padding: 10px; font-style: sans-serif; }

With utility/atomic CSS, we acknowledge it's ok to couple the structure and presentation layers: when we need to change the button color, we modify the HTML, not the CSS. This tight coupling is also acknowledged in modern CSS-in-JS React codebases, but it seems the CSS world figured out first that the "separation of concern" of the web didn't feel right. Specificity is also less a problem, as we use simple class selectors. We are now styling via the markup, which has several interesting properties:

the stylesheet grows less as we add new features

we can move the markup around, and the styles are moved at the same time

we can remove features, and be sure that we remove the related styling at the same time

For sure, the html is a bit more bloated. This can be a concern for server rendered web apps, but the high redundancy in class names compress well with gzip, in the same way it worked well for duplicated css rules previously found in your CSS files. You don't need to use utility/atomic CSS for every cases, just the most common styling patterns. Once your utility/atomic CSS is ready, it will not change or grow much. It's possible to cache it more aggressively (you can append it to vendor.css for example, and expect it to not invalidate across app redeploys). It is also quite portable, and you can use it in other applications.

Limits of utility/atomic CSS

Utility/atomic CSS looks interesting, but they come with a few challenges as well. People usually write utility/atomic CSS by hand, carefully crafting naming conventions. It can be hard to ensure the convention is easy to use, consistent, and not bloated over time. Can multiple persons work on this CSS and keep it consistent? Is it subject to the bus factor? You also need to work on a good utility/atomic stylesheet up-front, before being able to iterate on features that will use it. If the utility/atomic CSS is made by someone else, you will have to learn the class naming conventions first (even if you know everything about CSS). This convention is opiniated, and it's possible that you don't like it. Sometimes, you need some extra CSS that is not provided by your utility/atomic CSS. There's no unique way to provide the remaining one-off styles.

Tailwind to the rescue

The approach of Tailwind is very convenient, and solves some of these problems. It does not really provide a unique utility CSS file for all websites. Instead, it only provides a shared scope and naming conventions. From a configuration file, it allows you to generate your own custom utility CSS. Knowledge of Tailwind is portable to other applications, even if they don't use exactly the same class names. It reminds me a bit of the "Learn once, write anywhere" philosophy of React. I've seen people reporting that Tailwind classes cover something between 90% or 95% of their needs. It seems the scope is large enough, and we don't often need to use one-off style. At this point you might wonder why use atomic CSS instead of Tailwind?. What would you gain in enforcing the atomic CSS rule of 1 rule, 1 class? You would end up with a larger html markup, and a less convenient naming convention? Tailwind already has many atomic classes anyway. So, should we abandon the idea of atomic CSS, and simply use Tailwind? Tailwind is a great solution, but there are still a few problems that remain unsolved:

the need to learn an opiniated naming convention

CSS rules insertion order still matters

can unused rules be easily removed?

what do we do with the remaining one-off styles?

Handwritten atomic CSS might not be the most convenient compared to Tailwind.

Comparison with CSS-in-JS

There's a relationship with CSS-in-JS, and utility/atomic CSS. Both approaches advocate for styling from the markup, somehow trying to emulate performant inline styles, which gives them many similar properties (like the ability to move things around with confidence). Christopher Chedeau greatly helped spread the idea of CSS-in-JS in the React ecosystem. In multiple talks, he explains the problems of CSS:

Utility/atomic CSS solve some of these problems too, but definitively not all (particularly, the non-deterministic resolution of styles). If they share similarities, can't we use them both together?

Enter atomic CSS-in-JS

Atomic CSS-in-JS can be seen as "automatic atomic CSS":

You don't need to create a class name convention anymore

Common and one-off styles are treated the same way

Ability extract the critical CSS of a page, and do code-splitting

An opportunity to fix the CSS rules insertion order issues in JS

I'm not aware about all CSS-in-JS libraries out there currently supporting atomic CSS. Supporting it is actually an implementation detail of the CSS-in-JS library. Support might come and go, or can even be made optional. I will highlight 2 particular solutions, that recently lead to 2 large-scale atomic CSS-in-JS deployments, using 2 talks as sources:

React-Native-Web at Twitter (more details in Nicolas Gallagher's talk)

Stylex at Facebook (more details in Frank Yan's talk)

See also: Styletron, Fela, cxs

React-Native-Web

React-Native-Web is a very interesting library: it permits to render React-Native primitives on the web. We are not really talking about cross-platform mobile/web development here (watch the talks for more details). As a web developer, you just need to understand that React-Native-Web is a regular CSS-in-JS library, that comes with a small set of primitive React components. Wherever you see View, you can replace it in your mind with div, and you are good to go. React-Native-Web has been created by Nicolas Gallagher, working on Twitter mobile. They progressively deployed it to mobile, not sure when exactly but probably around 2017/2018. Since then, it has been used by other companies (Major League Soccer, Flipkart, Uber, The Times...), but the most significant deployment has been the new 2019 Twitter desktop app by a team lead by Paul Armstrong.

Stylex

Stylex is a new CSS-in-JS library developed at Facebook for the 2020 Facebook rewrite (currently in beta). It seems they plan to open-source it some day, possibly under a different name. It's worth mentioning that Nicolas Gallagher, the author of React-Native-Web, was hired by Facebook 2 years ago. It's not a big surprise to see some of its concept being reused by Facebook. Unlike React-Native-Web, Stylex does not seem focused on cross-platform development. All the infos I have are from the talk :) We'll have to wait for more details.

Scalability

As expected with atomic CSS, both Twitter and Facebook have seen a massive reduction of their CSS, as it now follows a logarithmic curve. There's an initial price to pay for simple apps though.

Facebook shared concrete numbers:

Their old site was 413Kb of CSS just for the landing page

Their new site is 74Kb for the whole site, including the dark mode

Source and output

The 2 libraries looks quite similar here, but it's hard to say, considering we don't know much about Stylex. It's worth highlighting React-Native-Web will expand the CSS shortand syntaxes like margin: 0.

Production inspection

Let's look at what the markup looks like on Twitter:

Now, let's look at the new Facebook:

Many people will probably be horrified when seeing this, but it actually works, and remains accessible. It might be a bit harder to navigate styles in the Chrome inspector, but devtools can help:

CSS rules order

Unlike handwritten utility/atomic CSS, the JS libs are able to make the styling not dependent of the CSS rules insertion order. As you may know, in case of conflicting rules, it's not the last class of a class attribute that wins, but the rule that is inserted last in the stylesheet. Specificity issues are solved by only using simple class-based selectors.

In practice, these libraries avoid outputting classes with conflicting rules on the same element. They ensure that the last style declared in the markup always wins. The "overridden classes" are filtered, and don't even make it to the DOM.

const styles = pseudoLib.create({ red: {color: "red"}, blue: {color: "blue"}, }); // That div only will have a single atomic class (not 2!), for the blue color <div style={[styles.red, styles.blue]}> Always blue! </div> // That div only will have a single atomic class (not 2!), for the red color <div style={[styles.blue, styles.red]}> Always red! </div>

Note: This predictable behavior is only possible thanks to using the most strict atomic CSS. If a class had multiple rules, and only one of them was overridden, the CSS-in-JS library wouldn't be able to filter that class without removing the non-overridden rules as well. If a class had a single shorthand rule like margin: 0, and the override was marginTop: 10, it's the same problem. The shorthand syntax like margin: 0 is expanded to 4 distinct classes, and the library is able to filter overridden classes that should not appear in the DOM with more granularity.

You still prefer Tailwind?

Once you know all the Tailwind naming conventions, you can code an UI very fast. It might feel less productive to go back to writing every CSS rule by hand, like you do in CSS-in-JS. Nothing prevents your for building your own abstractions on top of an atomic CSS-in-JS framework. Styled-system might be able to run some of the CSS-in-JS libraries supporting atomic CSS. It's even possible to reuse naming conventions for Tailwind in JS, if you feel you are productive with it. Let's take some Tailwind code:

<div className="absolute inset-0 p-4 bg-blue-500" />

Now, let's take a random solution (react-native-web-tailwindcss) I just found on google:

import {t} from 'react-native-tailwindcss'; <View style={[t.absolute, t.inset0, t.p4, t.bgBlue500]} />

In term of productivity, this is not very different. And you could avoid typos with TypeScript.

Conclusion

To me, using Atomic CSS, CSS-in-JS, and Tailwind all at the same time makes sense. That's almost everything I have to say about atomic CSS-in-JS. I have never used atomic CSS, atomic CSS-in-JS, or Tailwind in any large production deployment. I'm probably wrong on some parts, feel free to correct me on Twitter. I think atomic CSS-in-JS is a trend to watch in the React ecosystem, and I hope you learned something useful with this post. As I've not been able to find any article about atomic CSS-in-JS, I wrote this mostly for myself. I want a resource to link to when I mention atomic CSS-in-JS in upcoming blog posts (I plan to write more articles about React-Native-Web and cross-platform, stay tuned). Thank you for reading.

[reviewape-blog]

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Get Your Writing Fighting Fit reveals the inside information professional editors know about how to approach the editing task. Written for today’s writer, it provides both timeless information about how readers approach hard copy text and up-to-date information about how reading from a screen is different. Important information in simple language finally puts self-editing within your reach. Keep in mind that “editing” is not “writing”. “Editing” is what enhances our “writing”. Before editing can do you a blimey bit of good, you need to start with solid writing. Your idea needs to be there, composed in reasonable sentences and paragraphs. Then put your own writing through Audrey’s great seven step editing process and Bingo! You’ve got a great piece of prose.” Dear Writer,I know how it feels to worry about your writing and not know where to find help.I write myself, and as an editor, I work with writers like you all the time.I decided to extend the help I give writers by writing out the solutions to the most common problems writers have and making them available to you.Now my ebook helps writers to help themselves with those very real concerns about whether a text is good enough. “I have finally made it through GYWFF. I love it! You know how much I want to become a good writer and this book certainly helps. Why? Because it’s about editing, not writing. While reading it I realized that it’s okay to make mistakes while writing, because you can always go back and fix them. Sounds silly, but for an anal engineer like me it’s almost a revelation. Even though I’ve always known that I don’t have to get it right in the first draft, GYWFF reinforces the point. Now I can relax while writing and enjoy the process a little more.” –Bill Drago, East Islip, NY loving-long-island.com. When I began to share sections of the text as I was creating the book, the writers were thrilled.Before I get into the details, let me introduce myself.My name is Audrey Owen. I’ve loved words since I was a wee mite who slept in a crib. At two I reeled off nursery rhymes. As a child, I read for hours curled up in the big green stuffed chair. In University, I studied English literature. As an adult, I taught both native English-speaking children and preservice ESL teachers how to use language to best advantage. My natural love of language and my habit of asking how and why writing works the way it does or how and why it misses the mark caught the attention of peers and a professor of writing.With their encouragement, I began to edit formally.Within the editing community, I’ve set myself apart by offering an educative edit that shows readers not only what needs to change, but why.The response from my clients gives me daily confidence in the value of what I have to share.So, just how will you benefit from my skill and experience?You need a competitive edge. . . “An excellent read, it’s going to be really helpful to me when I have to write things for my employer. “I found the parts about paring paragraphs really useful.” –Lesley Pinkett, Otter St Mary, England You probably know that only one in ten submitted manuscripts gets even a first read at a publishing house. That manuscript is error-free and written in a compelling style. You face an uphill battle against the idea that all self-published material is second-rate. The idea has a solid foundation in reality. To overcome the prejudice, self-publishers who want sales must be better than the rest. Your words form your image as much as your power suit does. Within your business, you need your communications to be clear and concise. Time is money and confusion can lose you significant money.When you write to clients, you need to be compelling as well as clear. Know this: Your instructors would not read most papers unless they were paid to do so. I’ve marked enough university-level assignments to know the effect of writing that makes a clear point in an interesting way. Make no mistake, you do need to be making a good point to get a good grade. But if you are teetering between a B+ and an A, showing yourself to be articulate will tip the balance. You write for a different breed of reader than those who write for hard copy publication. Not only do you need to know the rules for hard copy writing, but you also need to know what makes reading from a computer screen different and how to help your reader through your message. Yes, Get Your Writing Fighting Fit removes the guesswork from your self-editing. No more wandering aimlessly through your text. Follow a system to fully check for the most common errors. Briefly, Get Your Writing Fighting Fit gives you a system for editing your own work. It removes the mystery from what an editor does with your text, so you can do it yourself.That’s right, you can edit yourself! The upsides of using Get Your Writing Fighting Fit are numerous and compelling: You will learn how to self-edit. You will know what to look for and how to fix problems you find. You will save money. For less than what you would pay for an hour of editing, you have the information you need to improve your own writing. Even if you go on to hire a professional editor, your editing costs will be lower because the editor can use a lighter hand. Time is money, and the less the editor has to change, the less you should be paying for your edit. You will stop worrying and write with confidence. With a system in place for editing, you can focus on your ideas as you write. You will get fast results. Good editors usually have a desk piled with work. When you can edit your own writing, you can work to your own schedule. You will never have to pay rush fees again. You take control of your own written expression. When you become adept at fixing your own writing problems, you say what you want to say with certainty. Your writing moves you to the top of the pile. Whether you are dealing with a publisher’s slush pile, a professor’s pile of assignments, or the dog pile of competition in the office, writing with clarity moves you to the top. You will discover how easily you can edit your own work. A checklist keeps you focused on one task at a time. You can rest easy that your written work is as good as it can be. When you are done, you are done. You won’t be longing to reach into the mail box to retrieve your manuscript, letter, or assignment. You can move on to your next task. “I just downloaded your new e-book and read it front-to-back. I love it. It’s all substance. Very useful. You’re now an important part of my metamorphosis as a writer.” –Charles Tutt Columbia, MO, USAchar When I started using a system like the one I have put into Get Your Writing Fighting Fit, I was impressed by how relaxed I became about the whole process. I use this system on my own writing and on the writing of my clients.Writers who have used Get Your Writing Fighting Fit speak highly of it. My clients often say how helpful my explanations are.I wanted to create a tool geared to your needs as a writer. I believe I’ve done just that. “Thanks for the technical explanation of reading longer words. It makes sense, and gives me something to aim for.” –Cathy Campbell, Queensland, Australia inspired-personal-development.com Each chapter of Get Your Writing Fighting Fit zeros in on one specific aspect of self-editing. These are the topics I comment on most frequently when I edit for clients. Most of the material is simply what every good editor knows, but I’ve also included material I have not seen anywhere else — material I believe offers unique insights into the reading and writing process.Here is what you’ll get in the 11 Chapters of Get Your Writing Fighting Fit:  Bottom line: Get Your Writing Fighting Fit guides you through the editing maze so you can be the successful writer you were meant to be.  “As soon as I started reading, I quickly realized that your book would help me to review and edit my work with a much more critical eye. Your book offers excellent advice and practical tips to improve our writing skills.” –Lyn Huet, Calgary, AlbertaLocalbiz-online.com Learn the common shorthand of professional editors. Using only a handful of the markup symbolswill speed and simplify your self-editing.Check the list of commonly misused and confusing words before you put your work out into the world. I sort out the confusion and give you examples to improve your understanding. Use the list of additional resources to learn more about specialty areas of writing or editing. Every item in the extensive list is a personal recommendation from me. This ebook gives you the best of both worlds. Print out the downloaded pdf file and mark it up as you would any other book. In particular, you’ll want to print out the quick assessment steps.Use it on your computer where you can use the search feature and linking capability that finds you the exact material you need immediately. Clicking the link below takes you to a secure page where you can pay for the book and receive instructions on how to download it. Within minutes you can be on your way to a lifetime of DIY editing.  My best wishes to you as you continue to grow as a writer. PS I am confident that you will find Get Your Writing Fighting Fit to be just what you are looking for. But if you do decide for any reason that it is not, this is my personal guarantee, backed by ClickBank, the online distributor, that you will receive your money back if you ask within 8 weeks.PPS I am a Canadian, but the material applies to writers of English anywhere. Join the ebook affilate program for Get Your Writing Fighting Fit Click here to get Get Your Writing Fighting Fit — Self-Editing Secrets Revealed at discounted price while it’s still available… All orders are protected by SSL encryption – the highest industry standard for online security from trusted vendors. Get Your Writing Fighting Fit — Self-Editing Secrets Revealed is backed with a 60 Day No Questions Asked Money Back Guarantee. If within the first 60 days of receipt you are not satisfied with Wake Up Lean™, you can request a refund by sending an email to the address given inside the product and we will immediately refund your entire purchase price, with no questions asked. - ReviewApe - https://www.reviewape.com/?p=13770

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5 Finest Small Company Credit Card Processing Companies|Merchant Radical

The 5 Best Small Business Credit Card Processing Companies

Advertiser Disclosure: Our unbiased reviews and content are supported in part by affiliate partnerships, and we adhere to strict guidelines to preserve editorial integrity.

Trying to choose the best credit card processing company can be overwhelming. This is especially true when you are a new small business owner who has never even heard of a “merchant account” before — but the truth is that even seasoned CEOs can get dizzy while researching the payment processing industry. (Trust us, we’ve spoken to them.) There are so many processing companies, they all seem to be doing more or less the same thing, and they all have both glowing testimonials and terrible complaints. How are you supposed to choose the best company under these circumstances? Who can you trust?

We get it. We’ve been reviewing credit card processing companies for years. We hear from dozens of small business owners every day all trying to answer the same question: “Which merchant services solution is the best of my business?” And our answer is always the same: “It depends.”

There is no simple answer to this question. But over the years we’ve found that there are some good guidelines to follow, and by using these guidelines we’ve created this short list of the best small business credit card processing companies, whittling down the field of providers to a manageable number. Some of these payment processors are good for ecommerce via your website, others for mobile payments on your smartphone, others for retail with a credit card machine, for phone order with a virtual terminal, for large transactions, for iPad POS, for high-risk businesses. (I told you, it depends.) But all of them follow some simple rules that we live by, which we’ll discuss in detail below.

The Best Credit Card Processing Companies for Small Businesses in 2018

Good for higher volume (over $20K/month)

Good for mid volume ($10K-20K/month)

Good for lower volume (under $10K/month)

Here’s a quick look at our list of the highest-ranking credit card processing companies for small businesses. (They’re great for medium and large business too, for the record.) Scroll down for in-depth discussions.

How to Choose the Best Credit Card Processing Company

We have four simple rules for picking a high-quality company to accept credit and debit card payment with. We followed them closely to formulate our list of the best credit card processors. You can use them in your search as well.

Rule 1: Transparency is the best policy

For any credit card processor to make it onto our list of recommendations, there can be no hidden fees and no surprises. That’s why we insist that our featured merchant account providers use a pricing system that separates wholesale from markup cost (interchange-plus, aka “pass-through” pricing). The interchange rates are set by the credit card brands (Visa and Mastercard foremost) and are the same for every credit card processor. It’s the markup that really matters here. In addition to using this cost-plus pricing model, all our top picks make in-depth fee disclosures up front. All of our top-rated processing companies will also meet or beat your current rate if it’s lower than their advertised price. And all new businesses are guaranteed a fair starting rate thanks to the standardized public rate disclosures.

We do not tolerate high-pressure sales tactics or long-term commitments. Some salespeople will say anything to get you to sign the dotted line — and then will force you to pay hundreds or thousands of dollars when the company doesn’t live up to its promises. We only recommend companies that employ honest, respectful sales reps and offer service with no long-term contract commitments. You should be able to accept credit cards without making a deal with the devil.

Rule 3: Look for value and savings

Some credit card processing companies only give you barebones service, but they do so at rock-bottom prices. Others charge a bit more, but provide valuable software as part of the service. Which is best for you? That depends on your budget and your wants/needs. The cheapest credit card processor isn’t always the best. Likewise, you don’t always get what you pay for. It’s important to determine the value of a merchant account to your particular business needs. The topic of credit card processing fees is way too broad for us to cover completely in this post, but if you’re interested we have an in-depth resource that explains everything you could ever want to know about card payment processing rates and fees.

Rule 4: Reputation matters

We carefully consider every complaint we find to figure out what went wrong. We then weigh these conclusions against the number of businesses the credit card processor services to make decisions about which companies we feel comfortable recommending. Our top-rated merchant account providers have extremely low complaint counts and numerous independent reviews validating good practices. A proven track record of satisfaction is imperative for us.

That’s not so much to ask, is it? We don’t think so, and we never settle for less.

Should You Just Take Cards With Square?

If you’ve done much reading (or purchasing) recently, you’ve no doubt come across Square Payments. I said earlier that “Which merchant service solution is the best of my business?” is the most common question we receive. Well, after that, it’s “Should I use Square?” The simple answer is that if you process small transactions (maybe $15 or less on average), you process only a couple thousand dollars each month, or you just absolutely positively do not want to pay any monthly fees, then you really need to at least give Square some consideration. For many small business owners, especially in retail or small food service businesses, it’s an excellent value given the low cost and high-quality software. Larger businesses, however, can end up saving hundreds or thousands of dollars each month by not using Square. So, again, it depends. High-risk businesses should avoid Square at all costs because Square is incredibly risk-averse and will shut down your account and hold your money if you are high-risk.

Square vs. Merchant Account for Payment Processing

Merchant Account Square Payments Reviews CompareReview Visit SiteLowest Cost ForMost BusinessesSmall-Ticket or Low-VolumeGood for Large-Ticket BusinessesYesNoGood for All Business TypesYesNoGood for Low-Volume/Sporadic BusinessesNoYesIncludes Mobile POSUsually, sometimes basicYes, high-qualityMonthly FeeUsually $10+$0 for basic serviceRatesBetter for transactions over $15Better for transactions under $15Rate matching/negotiable pricingYesNoEarly Termination FeeNoNoWorks with most POS softwareYesOnly Square POSIncludes Free Card ReaderSometimesYes, magstripe only

ReadereCommerceRetailFood ServiceFree App & ReaderSquare eCommerceSquare for RetailSquare for RestaurantsGet StartedGet StartedGet StartedGet StartedFree, general-purpose POS software and reader for iOS and AndroidEasy integration with popular platforms plus API for customizationSpecialized software for more complex retail storesSpecialized software for full-service restaurants$0/month$0/month$60/month$60/monthAlways FreeAlways FreeFree TrialFree Trial

Does Square Offer the Best Credit Card Machines for Your Business?

There are positives and negatives to using Square’s credit card processing hardware for small businesses. While the Square swipe reader is free and the Bluetooth payment terminal is only $49, neither of these devices can perform all the functions that a traditional countertop credit card machine can. Here’s a rundown of the feature comparison.

Features to Look For in a Credit Card Machine

Still can’t decide? Check out our in-depth post on reasons why Square may or may not be the best way for your business to accept credit card payments. You could always try both. Since none of our top merchant services providers lock you into long-term contracts, it’s safe to try it out for a few months with no major commitment. If you’re set on getting a Square-like option but you feel skeptical of Square as a company, we have a post dedicated to Square alternatives for you to consider.

Pick The Best Credit Card Processor

It’s hard to make superlative claims in an industry this large, but we truly believe these merchant services providers are the best around, especially when it comes to setting up accounts online and over the phone. Each has excellent products, services, marketing, and sales practices. Take a look and see what you think.

Payment Depot

Payment Depot is a merchant account provider headquartered in Orange, California. The company has been in business since 2013 and is best known for its use of subscription or membership-based pricing, a spinoff of the interchange-plus model. While it isn’t the only provider in the industry to offer this type of pricing, Payment Depot’s reputation for open, honest sales practices and excellent customer support put it ahead of many of its competitors using this relatively new pricing model.

So, how does it work? Most providers offering interchange-plus pricing will charge “interchange + markup” rates, with the markup including both a small percentage of the sale and a per-transaction fee. You’ll also incur several monthly and annual fees for individual services, such as PCI compliance and account statements. In contrast, Payment Depot’s model combines all your monthly fees into a single monthly subscription ranging from $49.00 to $199.00 per month, depending on which plan you choose. You’ll also pay lower processing rates, with the elimination of the percentage markup. Your rates will be the interchange rate, plus a per-transaction fee that varies between $0.15 and $0.05 per transaction, depending on your pricing plan.

Best All-Purpose Credit Card Processing Company

Payment Depot accounts are month-to-month, but you can also save money on your subscription fees by paying them annually instead of monthly. Annual subscriptions are protected with a 90-day satisfaction guarantee, so merchants who are not satisfied with their service within the first 90 days will be refunded their membership fees (not interchange fees or transaction fees, of course). This is a fair, reasonable offer, and should give you some peace of mind.

For more information about this company, contact them now or see our in-depth Payment Depot review.

We like Fattmerchant (see our review) for every business type, but it really shines for ecommerce and card-not-present merchants. One of our favorite things about this company is its subscription pricing model. With this fee structure, you have a 0% mark up alongside a small per transaction fee ($0.08 – $0.15) and a larger monthly fee ($99). Don’t let that monthly fee discourage you. The truth is that the 0% mark up saves most small businesses so much money that it more than pays for the monthly fee. This is especially true for ecommerce and other card-not-present business because Fattmerchant does not charge an inflated mark up on these accounts. Just about every other merchant services provider, even our favorites, charge a lot extra for phone order and ecommerce businesses. Because you don’t pay a percentage mark up on your processing volume, you save more as you process more. This is exactly how the markup process had ought to work in our opinion.

Best Payment Processing and Billing Platform

Still not convinced that it’s worth it? Well, Fattmerchant adds even more value to your account with high-quality invoicing and billing tools, customer management, virtual terminal, POS app, inventory management, detailed reporting analytics, and more. It’s a growing platform that is constantly improving and adding new features, so the value you get from the service will only grow over time. Even now, the tools Fattmerchant offers rival the offerings of the ever-popular Square Payments service. Fattmerchant’s invoicing and billing tools are the stand-out solutions of this service.

So whether you are a standard retail business, an online store, a phone order business, a professional service provider, or just about any other seller, we recommend Fattmerchant as a good place to start your search. It’s our top all-in-one payment processor pick because of its versatility, predictability, reliability, and value for a wide range of business types.

For more information about this company, see our in-depth Fattmerchant review.

Dharma Merchant Services

Dharma Merchant Services (see our review) takes its name from the term dharma, which is found in several Eastern religions. While it can mean many different things and there is no direct translation, it roughly refers to a “right way of living.” The folks at Dharma take this seriously, offering a full range of credit card processing services for a fair and reasonable price alongside some of the most in-depth and accurate educational material we’ve ever seen. Its fee structure is transparent – interchange-plus pricing is used exclusively, and there are no annual fees. This includes OptBlue pricing for accepting American Express transactions. They also don’t charge account setup fees, early termination fees, or have a monthly minimum. Fees that they do charge (including PCI compliance fees) are fully disclosed on their website. This is a company that strives to do the right thing with all its business practices. 

Best Nonprofit Credit Card Processing Company

Dharma is unique in the world of credit card processing companies in that they donate a significant percentage of their profits to charity, living up to their motto “Commerce with Compassion.” Related to that, Dharma provides discounted rates for nonprofit businesses. Our guide for nonprofit payment processing discounts has more information for charities looking to save money on credit card acceptance. While many believe that nonprofits get the best rates with a software specialist like Blackbaud Merchant Services, Dharma provides much lower rates and better service. Nonprofits that accept credit card with Dharma pay a markup of only a 0.20% + $0.10 markup for in-person payments. And Dharma Merchant Services will meet or beat your current rate to win your business and rate are always negotiable in this industry. We recommend Dharma highly to nonprofits, but this company serves all merchants well and made it onto our list of the best retail credit card processing companies too.

While there is no minimum monthly volume requirement, Dharma openly acknowledges that their full-service merchant accounts don’t make financial sense for low-volume businesses processing less than $10,000 per month in transactions. If your business falls into that category, they recommend Square (see our review).

For more information about this company, see our in-depth Dharma Merchant Services review.

Payline Data (see our review) covers all the bases for small business transactions, from mobile and online payments to in-store sales. They offer easy-to-understand pricing plans that are very affordable, especially for low-volume sellers. However, the company’s website fully explains all of the extra features and their associated costs, so you know up front what you’ll have to pay. Payline also stands out from the crowd for their corporate philosophy of charitable giving and support for non-profits through discounted pricing and their “Commercial Co-Venture” program.

Credit Card Processing Company For Best Overall Value

The company offers four standardized pricing plans, all of which feature interchange-plus pricing and come with free hardware and software to get you up and running in no time. A standard feature of all four plans is a virtual terminal that allows you to process credit card transactions from any internet-connected computer. Transactions can be keyed in manually or swiped with an optional USB card reader. All plans also feature month-to-month billing with no long-term contracts and no early termination fees. These are great terms, but be aware that these plans also come with a $25.00 monthly minimum. (As a point of comparison, this means that Payline is still less expensive than Square as long as you process around $1,000 per month.)

For brand-new or mobile businesses, Payline Start is the most affordable plan. There’s no monthly fee, and pass-through markup rates are set at 0.30% + $0.10 per transaction. In addition to the free virtual terminal, you’ll also receive a free Ingenico GX5 card reader and the Payline Mobile app to go with it. If you’re looking for value, but want better equipment and lower rates, the Payline Shop plan might be right for you. This plan includes the same features as the Payline Start plan, but lowers your processing rate. The plan costs $10 per month, and markup rates are set at 0.20% + $0.10 per transaction. Mobile businesses and small to medium retailers will benefit the most from this plan.

Payline also offers accounts to for high-risk merchants through partner banks that specialize in difficult to place accounts. Our short list of the best high-risk payment processing options can help you make some comparisons if you’re having trouble getting approved for a merchant account.

For more information, see our complete Payline Data review.

Another one of our favorite providers, CDGcommerce (see our review) has been around since 1998 – long enough to have figured out what it takes to run a successful processing company and keep customers happy. CDG stands out from the crowd by not charging you any of the nickel-and-dime hidden fees that most other companies in the industry are notorious for while also managing to add significant value to your account with a variety of free products and services. CDG merchant accounts come with no account setup fees, no PCI compliance fees, no monthly minimums, and month-to-month billing with no early termination fees.

Best Online Credit Card Processing Company

A basic merchant account with CDGcommerce costs only $10.00 per month and includes free use of its Quantum payment gateway/virtual terminal (a free Authorize.Net gateway is also available as an alternative). While we generally highly recommend buying your credit card terminals outright instead of leasing them, we’ve made an exception for CDG. Rather than lock you into an expensive, four-year lease, CDG only charges $79 per year (that works out to $7 per month) for terminal insurance. This is a much better deal than a standard terminal lease, which can end up costing you thousands of dollars over the full term of the lease. So even though CDGcommerce makes the grade as one of the best online credit card processing companies out there, it also provides solid benefits for retail merchants.

CDG also offers very competitive processing rates. All advanced pricing is interchange-plus and disclosed on their website. Swiped retail and mobile businesses see a standard markup rate of 0.25% + $0.10 per transaction, while online and other card-not-present businesses pay 0.30% + $0.15 per transaction. Rates are negotiable for higher volume businesses and CGD will meet or beat your current rate to win your business.

For a more detailed look at CDGcommerce, be sure to check out our full review.

“Trust, transparency, and fair pricing” is Helcim’s motto, and they live up to it by providing the most up-front, clearly-explained pricing structure of any of the credit card processing companies we’ve reviewed here. A Canadian company, Helcim (see our review) also has an office in Seattle and provide full support to US-based merchants. Beyond being a fantastic option for Canadian businesses, Helcim provides an exceptionally well-equipped all-in-one payment processing package that includes POS, inventory, mobile payments, invoicing, billing, an API, and more. This adds a ton of value to every Helcim account.

Best Canadian Credit Card Processing Company

Helcim’s website features a variety of EMV-compliant and NFC-capable credit card terminals (to accept payments from chip cards and digital wallets), starting at $199. Unlike many of their competitors, they encourage US customers to buy their terminals outright, rather than renting or leasing. Helcim will reprogram your current equipment for free if it’s up-to-date. If your current terminal isn’t compatible, they’ll exchange it for a refurbished terminal for $75.00. Unfortunately, Canadian EMV-compliant terminals are not designed to be transferred or resold, so Canadian customers will have to use the rental option or buy a new machine. Renting on a month-to-month basis (which is not the same as leasing) is usually the best option for Canadian merchants. Our comprehensive post on the best and worst Canadian credit card payment processing companies will give you a complete rundown of your options. Helcim will be the best bet for most Canadian businesses.

Helcim uses a Cost+ pricing model, which includes a monthly subscription fee and interchange-plus pricing for each transaction. Retail users pay $15.00 per month, while eCommerce users pay $35.00 per month. In addition to the per-transaction interchange rate charged by the issuing credit card company, Helcim charges a markup of 0.25% + $0.08 per transaction for retail and mobile payments. Online transactions are charged 0.45% + $0.25 per transaction, plus the applicable interchange rate. Of course, these rates are negotiable for higher-volume businesses and Helcim will meet or beat your current quote to get you onboard. Helcim supports e-check payments (also known as ACH or EFT processing) for an extra $25 per month and $0.25 per transaction. Helcim also includes excellent resources to help you understand how American Express card payments are priced.  If you’re curious about the pros and cons of accepting e-check payments, take a look at our guide to ACH payment processing. Helcim’s website includes a detailed explanation of their fees, plus some truly eye-opening disclosures about how their bank-owned competitors are ripping you off with hidden fees and long-term contracts.

For more information about this company, see our in-depth Helcim Commerce review.

All-In-One on a Budget: Square vs. Shopify

Finally, no review of small business credit card processing companies would be complete without a look at the biggest all-in-one processors out there. To us, that means Square Payments and Shopify Payments. You could make an argument for PayPal to be included in this comparison, but it lacks some core features that Square and Shopify offer. And while Stripe and Braintree are certainly major names, they both (like PayPal) are really designed primarily for web developers and businesses that want to create custom solutions. In this side-by-side comparison, we look at both features and pricing for Square and Shopify to help you make the best decision regarding value for your business. Neither will be as versatile or as inexpensive as a merchant account, but each has its own merits.

Comparing Industry Leaders for Low-Cost Multichannel Payments

Square was the first company to offer smartphone-based mobile payments when it launched back in 2009. Today, it has plenty of competitors, but its lack of a monthly fee, reasonable transaction fees, and robust features still make it a great choice, especially for low-volume sellers. Square replaces the traditional credit card terminal with a simple credit card reader that connects to your smartphone or tablet and works in conjunction with Square’s mobile app to process credit or debit cards. (Check out our post on the best credit card readers for small businesses to make more comparisons.) Square supports retail locations, ecommerce, and (naturally) mobile payments.

Shopify has a very similar offering to Square, but with more of an emphasis on online selling. While most businesses on a budget can get by with the webstore building tools that Square provides, those in need of more features and great control will find a much more powerful solution at Shopify. These businesses will also be stuck paying a larger monthly fee, but remember that high value always trumps low cost alone.

Unfortunately, one of the downsides to using Square or Shopify Payments is that stability issues for high-risk businesses or brand new businesses without a processing history arise at a rate that’s well above the industry average. This often results in sudden, unexplained account terminations and account holds of up to 180 days. There are multiple reasons for this, but one major factor is that Square accounts are aggregated together (aka, third-party payments), rather than each account having its own unique Merchant ID number. To make matters worse, phone-based customer service from these companies hasn’t always been the best.

Many businesses considering Square and Shopify are looking for the least expensive option available. If that describes you, take a look at our guide to the cheapest credit card processing services. Square is often — but not always — the best option. Note that some low-cost options are too good to be true, as we outline in our in-depth look at so-called free credit card payment processing companies.

A Full List of Credit Card Processing Companies We Recommend

The top companies at a glance…

Final Thoughts on Credit Card Processors

Whether you’re trying to juggle multiple retail locations or just selling products online, one of the five services we’ve highlighted here should be a “best match” for your business. While each service has its own standout features, they all offer competitive rates, transparent pricing, and an easy, low-cost setup. While all of them perform more or less the same essential service (connecting an acquiring bank to an issuing bank), each brings its own value to the floor. Square is a solid contender for very small, low volume businesses, while Fattmerchant, Payline, Helcim, and CDGcommerce are better for larger retail establishments. If you’re running a non-profit, Dharma may very well be your best choice. In any event, all of these services will, in most cases, provide you with a better, more affordable service than you’re likely to get with any of the traditional, bank-owned credit card processing companies. You can also compare our top processors (except for Square) head-to-head using our merchant account comparison chart. Those interested in mobile credit card processing specifically should consult our mobile chart. And those most interested in ecommerce tools can take a look at our shopping cart software comparison.

Here’s a final look at your options. We hope one of these will be the best choice for your small, medium-sized, or even enterprise business! Let us know how it goes.

A final look at your payment processing options…

headingPayment DepotSquareFattmerchantDharma

Payment Depot

Square Payments

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Dharma Merchant Services

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US-based businesses

US, Canada, UK

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Frank Kehl

Frank Kehl has been writing about merchant services, payment gateways, and international money transfer services since 2015. He has a Bachelor of Science degree from Penn State and a Juris Doctorate from the Ventura College of Law. After a long and enjoyable career of traveling around the world as an Air Force navigator, he’s comfortably settled down in the wine country town of Paso Robles in California’s scenic Central Coast region. He enjoys reading, photography, hiking, and numerous other outdoor pursuits.

[jasonjtierney8]

9 Relatively easy Means to Aid Asphalt Grinding.

Good Reasons To Find Out About Home-based Business Taxes

Using a solid plan will help any home-based business. The next information is intended to offer you a couple of basics of planning, conceptualizing the building blocks, and letting you pull everything you want, to acquire a good home based business plan placed into action.

Starting an enterprise you could work towards from your own home could be enjoyable and challenging concurrently. Find your niche and leverage away from this once you begin. Try to find something that you are great at and possess knowledge in already. Before placing your eggs in a single basket, do thorough research. Network with other people who may have home businesses to have some very nice ideas.

Learn how much cost goes into these products you happen to be selling in order to be in a position to determine profits. The regular markup for wholesalers is double the production cost. If you are going to market it at list price, then multiply your wholesale price by two. You should locate a price-per-product you are aware of will satisfy both your financial allowance and your customers https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iFCcJJF9oVw

It is advisable to possess a PO box as being a mailing address for your house based business. You don’t desire to use your property address when setting things up online. Using this step allows you and your family to keep anonymous.

Distribute email messages to everyone you realize when you are launching your home-based business. Offer freebies or price breaks as a way to obtain the business going. Tell men and women to mention your small business on their friends. Recommendations can help make your business thrive greatly.

Have business cards printed. There are also some really good business card printing totally free or cheap online. Be sure to include information such as your name, company name and phone number. Your organization card should likewise present an email address, and the URL to your website. Giving your prospects multiple choices to contact you are going to make it simpler for them to achieve this.

Once your business makes a profit, set several of it aside so it is possible to pay taxes at year-end. Taxes find yourself running 15 to 20 percent of revenue, so if you don’t set these funds aside as you go, you may be in the budget crunch come tax time.

If you want to open your own personal business, will it be profitable? Study the marketplace for saturation. You might not wish to enter a market which includes an excessive amount of competition. In other words, perform your due diligence first to ascertain if you are picking a business that you can succeed in without lots of competition.

It may be tempting to become financially lenient together with your customers as you learn to build business relationships, but accomplishing this may ultimately jeopardize your profitability. Ensure you have strict rules about payments and late fees in the first place, or people may benefit from you.

A bit of expert advice truly makes certain that you’re ready to get involved with your very own business. It won’t necessarily be easy, but hopefully reading this article has allowed one to jump-start ensuring your success!.

from Real Estate Investing Advice with Company Life Insurance http://www.company-life-insurance.com/9-relatively-easy-means-to-aid-asphalt-grinding/

[gstblue-blog]

Why GST Is Good For Retailers?

With the implementation of GST, three sectors will benefit the most:

Retail

FMCG

Consumer companies and Logistics Business

It is a comprehensive tax imposed on manufacture, sale and consumption of goods and services at a national level.

The Bill’s draft does away with the additional tax on the movement of goods across state boundaries. States will be compensated for revenue losses in the first 5 years of implementation of GST and a mechanism has been put in place to decide on conflicts between states, if any.

How Can Output Tax Benefit Your Business?

As a GST registered the business, you will hold the tax which you have collected from your customers for up to 4 months before you are required to pay it to us. This money could be placed in a business deposit account to earn interest for your business.

You must remember though, that this money doesn’t belong to the business and should not be used to supplement cash flow.

Example of a GST Calculation:

Importer

First, the importer buys a television from overseas for £400(Rs. 28874.50) but experiences a further cost of £200(Rs.14437.25) in packaging, transport, insurance fees and other Customs duties. These costs are considered to be part of the value of the television and, at the time of import, the importer must so pay £30 in GST, signifying 5% of £600(Rs. 43311.75). On the other hand, since the importer can reclaim the £30 he paid as GST to customs, the net cost is only £600(Rs. 43311.75).

Importer to wholesaler

When the importer adds his mark up of £200(Rs.14437.25), his selling price to the wholesaler becomes £800, to which GST of 5% (£40- Rs. 2887.45) is added, making a GST inclusive price of £840(Rs.60636.45). However, the cost to the wholesaler is only £800 (Rs. 57749.00), since he is also able to reclaim the £40 (Rs. 2887.45) of GST.

Wholesaler to Retailer

After adding his markup of £200(Rs.14437.25) the wholesaler sells the television to the retailer for £1,000 (Rs. 72186.25) plus 5% GST of £50 (Rs. 3609.31), making the selling price £1,050(Rs. 75795.57). Again, the retailer is able to reclaim the GST of £50(Rs. 3609.31), so the actual cost to him is only £1,000 (Rs. 72186.25).

Retailer to consumer

Finally, the retailer sells the television to a consumer and applies his markup of £200(Rs.14437.25), making the selling price £1,200 (Rs. 86623.50) to which 5% GST (£60- Rs. 4331.18) is added. The consumer pays £1,260 (Rs. 90954.68)(GST inclusive) and pays the full cost of the £60 (Rs. 4331.18) of GST in the final selling price.

Since all the registered traders involved in the sale have been able to claim back the GST paid on the television, there is no cascading tax effect on the consumer, who doesn’t pay GST on GST.

 Benefits of GST on Retail Sector:

Increased efficiency in supply chain

As the retail business can be carried out in every state upon single registration, the retailer will not have to maintain warehouses in every state and this will be very useful regarding the cost to the retailer. The transportation industry will show as they would carry more goods from one state to the other as the transfer goods are much easier under GST. The lead time will also reduce in transporting the goods as the inter-state boundaries would be more free-flowing. GST will help the retail sector become more proficient in their operations.

Avoiding Duplicate Product:

If any suppliers deliver the duplicate products to the customers and if customers complain about it then the government will track the record of delivering the duplicate products and take a strict action towards the suppliers. So now the customers or retailers will not get cheated by anyone.

Tax on Promotional Items and Gifts

In the GST model, any supply without consideration will attract tax and so, everything will have to be accounted for. The retailers would give out gifts and promotional items with products as a part of their marketing strategy which used to be tax-free in the current taxation system. Now, the GST gets implemented from 1st July 2017, so no such rule will be applicable and the retails will have to pay tax on the gifts and promotional items as well, thus, rethink their promotional strategies.

Hyper Local E-commerce:

Nowadays, most of the E-commerce sites are moving to the new phase which is its new strategy. They are coordinating with the retailer so that they can easily run their business with the help of local business retailer. Thus, local business retailer will get benefited from this as well as the reputation will get increase as they are linked to top e-commerce site.

Example: Top online food ordering sites like Swiggy, Foodpanda, Zomato, etc. They are linked with local business restaurants and delivering the food to their customers very easily. So, the local restaurant will get benefited through this and also their reputation will get increase.

Growth of Retail Market

GST will lead to the association of markets as it will simplify the state and the central tax and eliminate all the confusion of taxation in different markets. The retailers can easily expand their business beyond boundaries as they have to register their business only once and then can carry operations in all the states. This will also contribute towards the growth of the retail market and help boost the economy of the country.

Better Strategies

GST will force the retailers to rethink their supply chain strategies and re-model their network as it will open a lot of doors and opportunities for retailers to expand their business. It will give them the freedom to draft better business strategies and implement it for further growth of the retail sector.

Reduce Complications

The retailers would be able to carry out the business with more ease as the taxation, and other policies would be effective under the new GST rules, and they would not have to waste their time in paying various taxes and waiting to fulfill all other policy requirements of the current taxation system. But doing manually all the tax related documentation is tough. So, we are offering GST READY Billing software so that you don’t need to do all the documentation manually. You just need to purchase our Desktop or POS model software so that you can carry out the business with more ease. For more details, you can visit our website: http://gstblue.com

[takebackthedream]

Why Republicans Are Rebooting the For-Profit College Industry by Jeff Bryant

A controversial rewrite of the Higher Education Act that just passed out of committee in the House of Representatives in a strict party-line vote will likely reboot floundering for-profit colleges and revive the scandals associated with this industry should it clear intact the full House and Senate.

The Promoting Real Opportunity, Success, and Prosperity through Education Reform (PROSPER) Act aims to, according to a report in The New York Times, “dismantle landmark Obama administration regulations designed to protect students from predatory for-profit colleges and to repay the loans of those who earned worthless degrees from scam universities.”

During the House committee markup, Democratic Representative Mark Takano proposed an amendment to “hold for-profit colleges accountable,” he reported to his Twitter followers, with a graphic showing that of the 98,868 complaints filed against colleges that have “defrauded or misled” students, 97,506 were complaints leveled against for-profit colleges versus 789 against non-profit colleges. His amendment was overturned by a solid Republican block of opposition. “This should not be a partisan issue,” he tweeted after the defeat.

But support for the for-profit college industry is “partisan,” and here’s why: big money.

Trump, DeVos Feed the For-Profit Beast

The morning after the 2016 general election ushered in the Donald Trump presidency and Republican majorities in both houses of Congress, stocks of for-profit education companies spiked, and mere days later, investors on Wall Street declared “the cloud has lifted” on the prospects for investments in the for-profit college industry.

Concerns that these schools pushed desperate students into useless degree programs that led to massive debts and few prospects for jobs –all at taxpayer expense – had prompted the Obama administration to crackdown on for-profit colleges.

But by December, before Trump had uttered a single word of support for these schools, investors had already “poured hundreds of millions of dollars,” according to The Wall Street Journal, into large for-profits such as DeVry Education Group, Strayer Education, Bridgepoint Education, and Grand Canyon Education.

Much of the speculation was doubtlessly driven by the fact Trump had lent his name to a scam school of his own – Trump University, which became the subject of three lawsuits that he settled for a $25 million payout shortly after his election. His appointment of billionaire heiress and Republican mega-donor Betsy DeVos to be his education Secretary also seemed a strong enough indicator for investors to open the sluices.

DeVos seemed to respond according to investors’ plans. First, she delayed implementation of the gainful employment rule, an Obama reform that penalizes career-oriented for-profit programs from letting students run up huge debts while they pursue careers that are low paying or have few job prospects. She also withdrew key federal student loan servicing reforms that make it easier for college students to have loans discharged when they’ve been defrauded by schools. And she gave strong signs her department would ease the regulatory environment for the taxpayer-financed career education sector, which for-profit colleges dominate.

Encouraged by these signs, reported the Chicago Tribune, investors sent stock price increases for for-profit colleges significantly beyond the rest of the market, with Grand Canyon University up 55 percent, DeVry up 52 percent, Strayer University up 37 percent, and Career Education up 34 percent, while the broader Standard & Poor’s 500 index was up 10 percent over the same period.

More recently, DeVos picked to head a unit that investigates fraud in higher education a former dean of for-profit college, Julian Schmoke Jr., who worked at DeVry University from late 2008 to 2012. For the senior counselor and regulatory reform officer for her department, DeVos pcked Robert Eitel, a former top executive at Bridgepoint. Bridgdepoint is a for-profit higher ed provider that has had numerous violations involving mistaken financial information given to government agencies and students and is currently under investigation by the department.

She also “stopped cancelling the student-loan debt of people defrauded by failed for-profit schools,” according to a report by Reuters, “and those borrowers face mounting interest and other burdens.”

The Secretary’s actions are a repudiation of Obama’s efforts to rein in irresponsible for-profit colleges, in this case, by canceling debts of people who attended Corinthian Colleges, which collapsed in 2015 when Obama’s department of education fined the schools $30 million for misrepresenting their job placement rates.

The favors Trump and DeVos are granting to the for-profit college industry reflect the generosity of campaign contributions the sector has generally showered on Republicans, especially since the advent of the regulatory constrains issued in the Obama years.

History of Scandal

After 2008, negative news reports about the for-profit college industry increased significantly when those schools ratcheted up recruitment efforts to take advantage of workers who lost their jobs during the Great Recession and recruit from veterans returning from the Iraq War.

Education policy observers began to notice that between 2001-2009, students attending for-profit versus nonprofit colleges were way more often needing to borrow money –nearly double the rate in 4-year for-profits and quadruple the rate of less-than-4-year institutions. Meanwhile, the dropout rates at the for-profit institutions was rising sharply, by 20 percent for for-profit 4-year institutions and 9 percent for for-profit less-than-4-year institutions –  compared to a 6 percent increase in the overall higher ed market.

By 2010, only 22 percent of first- and full-time students pursuing bachelor’s degrees at for-profit institutions in 2008 graduated, compared with 55 percent and 65 percent of students at public and private nonprofit universities, respectively.

The bad publicity included a 2010 report by the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pension that found while for-profit colleges were rapidly gobbling up larger shares of federal college student loan funds and swelling the ranks of dropouts, the businesses themselves were reaping much higher profits. According to the Senate committee’s findings, 16 companies generated profits of $2.7 billion in 2009 alone, and between FY2009 and 2010, one company had more than doubled its profits – from $119 million to $241 million – while a second went from $235 million to $411 million.

Buying Up Legislators

The for-profit college industry responded to these negative reports not by instituting an industry overhaul, but by ramping up their political donations.

“Campaign contributions from the for-profit education industry have been steadily increasing nearly every year since 1990,” reports OpenSecrets, a watchdog on political donors and their recipients.

But from 2008 to 2010, PACs and individuals associated with for-profits increased contributions to federal political campaigns from $850,000 to over $2.4 million 2010.

Money spent on lobbying by for-profits intensified too, rising to nearly a million dollars by 2011.

By 2014, campaign contributions from the for-profit college industry had exceeded four million, according to OpenSecrets, with much of it going “to members of Congress who oppose greater regulation of the industry, including proposed curbs on aggressive recruiting of veterans with G.I. Bill benefits,” The Hechinger Report found.

While political giving from for-profit colleges was growing, the partisan nature of it was changing. Since the Bill Clinton presidential administration, political donations from the for-profits had been generally bipartisan. But by 2010, contributions swung decidedly to the Republican side. In 2017, of the top 20 recipients of for-profit education donations, only five are Democrats.

There are reasons for the swing.

First, the scathing Senate report on for-profit colleges that came out in 2010 was authored by a Democrat, committee chair Senator Tom Harkin of Iowa. Senate Republicans accused Harkin of conducting a “witch hunt” and walked out of the committee hearing where he presented his findings. Ever since, Republicans have conducted a campaign repudiating the findings and defending for-profits. Then, new regulatory reforms rolled out by Obama to address those problems further distanced the two parties’ stances on the industry.

That turn of events, as well as the decidedly strong shift in Republican wins at all levels of government, likely influenced for-profit college political giving to favor Republicans.

Who Really Prospers

The PROSPER legislation approved by the House committee was authored by Republican Representatives Virginia Foxx of North Carolina and Rep. Brett Guthrie of Kentucky.

Foxx and Guthrie are among the five most generous recipients of for-profit college industry money in 2017, with Foxx ranking at the top with $45,450 and Guthrie fourth at $17,500.

Foxx and Guthrie both serve on the House Education and Workforce Committee that approves education-related legislation. Foxx chairs that committee.

Other current members of that committee getting for-profit college industry cash include Republicans Duncan Hunter of California, Todd Rokita of Indiana, and  Lou Barletta of Pennsylvania. Ranking Member Bobby Scott, a Democrat from Virginia, has also gotten donations.

Foxx, who has a background in higher ed, has claimed for-profit colleges are “more efficient.” She once compared attempts to regulate the industry to the Holocaust and said in an interview with the Chronicle of Higher Education in 2016 that the Obama administration cracked down on for-profit colleges “arbitrarily,” and that, “We don’t have evidence that [students in these institutions] were defrauded.”

Foxx has long maintained that government should not be funding education, although she is obviously okay with for-profit education funding her.

For her 2008 re-election campaign, Foxx received $3,000 in donations from the political-action committee of The Association of Private Sector Colleges and Universities, which represents for-profit colleges, and employees of Keiser University, a for-profit institution headquartered in Florida – far her district in North Carolina – gave $2,300 to her campaign.

As of 2012, OpenSecrets counted 22 companies or trade associations in the for-profit college industry that are Foxx’s top contributors, including: Bridgepoint and the Apollo Group (which owns the University of Phoenix). The education sector is the second largest donor to her campaigns, according to campaign donation site VoteSmart, with her largest donor being Full Sail. Full Sail, you may recall, is the for-profit college praised by Mitt Romney when he ran for president in 2008.

Reason for the Reboot

What PROSPER calls for is to undo regulations that have shown some evidence of working, argues Kevin Carey of New America foundation in The New York Times.

The evidence Carey cites is that among the 500 programs that ran afoul of the Obama administration’s gainful employment rule, at least 300 shut down before they were required to do so.

Despite the progress, the need to rein in these schools and rescue their students remains acute. In 2015-16, federal government reports show 3.9 million undergraduates with federal student loan debt dropped out. More than 900,000 of these students left for-profit universities, making up 23 percent of all indebted dropouts, although only 10 percent of all undergraduates attend for-profits. In a ranking of colleges by their numbers of indebted dropouts, for-profits comprise the top five.

Republican efforts to reboot the for-profit college industry, including the PROSPER bill, are the result of the industry’s abilities to purchase government officials and political appointees with their donations in order to turn the clock back to the days when it had a free hand to do whatever it wanted.

[adambstingus]

5 Tiny Groups Of Nobodies That Are Shockingly Powerful

Conspiracy theorists drone on and on about the secret groups who really control the world — the Illuminati, the Jews, the Skull and Bones, the Rothschilds, the Jews, the Vatican, the shapeshifting reptile people, the Jews, etc. Well, it turns out that there actually are hidden groups that surreptitiously control aspects of your daily life. It’s just that you haven’t heard about them. Generally, the folks secretly manipulating the world are big on that “secret” part. Spoiler alert: It’s not the Jews. Jews are not a secret.

5

The U.S. Medical Industry Is Controlled By 31 People

If you live in the U.S., you know healthcare is wildly expensive. Or maybe you don’t. Because you’re dead. From not being able to afford healthcare. Supposedly, this is all a natural consequence of the free market doing its job. Who can control that market? It is so wild. So free. Like a majestic Palomino prancing in a glade.

In reality, the price of medical procedures is almost entirely decided by 31 people, all sitting in a room together and throwing darts at a bingo card.

Rachel Murray/Getty Images for Baskin-Robbins Above: an artist’s impression of the room.

The American Medical Association Specialty Society Relative Value Scale Update Committee (nicknamed RUC, because AMASSRVSUC is an abominable Elder God summoned to our plane by successfully pronouncing his unwieldy name) consists of a mere 31 physicians, each representing one of the different medical specialties, but all tasked with deciding what literally everything they do should cost. You might have heard of this practice before, but using different words — in basically any other industry, it’s known as “price fixing,” the culprits are called “cartels,” and the whole thing is incredibly illegal. In the case of American medicine, it’s standard government-approved practice.

Here’s how it works (or rather, “works”): The committee assigns every medical procedure a number of relative value units (RVU), which account for the amount of work a doctor performs, the costs to the practice, and malpractice liability.

everydayplus/iStock The ARM (arbitrary random markup) is built into each value automatically.

And though the RUC technically only makes “suggestions,” the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) accept the committee’s recommendations 90 percent of the time. Private insurance companies in turn base their negotiations on whatever CMS pays through Medicare. In a healthcare system dominated by fee-for-service payment models, physicians’ pay is based on how many RVUs they produce. Three types of specialist — orthopedic surgeons, neurosurgeons, and general surgeons — are members of the “Two Million Club,” meaning each type of physician makes, on average, more than $2 million a year for their hospital, based on their RVUs.

Interestingly, assigning RVUs is a zero sum game; if the RUC wants to increase RVUs for one procedure, they need to decrease it for others. Needless to say, the arguments can get pretty heated, since the members know they are essentially negotiating their salaries. Specialists absolutely dominate the RUC. As a result, the committee is partly responsible for the gap in pay between specialists and primary care physicians. This has led to a shortage of primary care physicians in the U.S., and an emphasis on complex procedures at the expense of preventive health measures. RVU assignments may also explain why 15 minutes became the standard amount of time for each doctor appointment. Typical wellness visits are not given very high RVUs, so doctors are pressured to crank through patients like Pringles.

gpointstudio/iStock A child’s smile, though, is priceless! (It is worth nothing.)

4

Fine Restaurants Succeed Or Fail On The Word Of A Tire Company

For the past half century, restaurants all over the world have bowed to the power of one small, omnipresent cartel: Michelin. Yes, you’ve heard of them. You probably assumed the name was unrelated to the tire company, but if so, you were mistaken. For some reason, a tire company decides the fate of fine dining.

To be fair, their expert does look like he’s had some experience with eating.

Michelin’s unlikely influence in the world of high-class cuisine began in 1900, when hardly anyone owned a car. They started publishing the Michelin Restaurant Guide as a free brochure that mapped the best restaurants in France (their home country), using a three-star rating system. The rather flimsy subtext was “You could visit any of these places right now if you had a car. A car with tires. Specifically, our tires.” It was a cheap, desperate gimmick, and it didn’t really matter.

It was like that time a beer company put out a trivia book, and everyone responded reasonably.

But over the next hundred years, Michelin continued to publish its annual guide, and its standards began to evolve. Today, earning a single Michelin star is the restaurant equivalent of winning an Oscar. Having two means you’re one of the top dining establishments in the entire world. Three Michelin stars means you’re the kind of place Bill Gates has to budget for, and you’re serving meals that Caligula would call “a little over the top.”

So who decides the rating of all these restaurants? Well … nobody knows. Their reviewers are anonymous. Even the company executives don’t know their names or what they look like. Very rarely will a Michelin reviewer grant an interview, and it’s always given with strict instructions to obscure all personal information. Severe penalties are given to any establishment that tries to fish for some. Nobody knows how many reviewers even exist, or what their training is. And since they’re completely unaccountable, there’s no way of knowing whether they even ate at any damn place or just hand out stars to their chef buddies.

All we know is they’re presumably really good at changing tires.

Nevertheless, the Michelin Guide is such a huge deal that losing a Michelin star can easily bankrupt a restaurant. In fact, at least two world-renowned chefs have committed suicide after discovering that their rating had been downgraded. That’s quite a lot of power for a few connoisseurs to have, considering that, technically speaking, they work for a damn tire company.

3

A Small Town In Macedonia Influences American Elections

We’ve all been in a panic lately about foreign powers maliciously influencing the American presidential election. And while most fingers are being pointed squarely at Russia, nobody seems to be looking at Macedonia, a tiny country in Eastern Europe that’s influenced more elections than Putin could shake a stick at. And he’s a stick-shaker, that guy.

But calling him that breaks Russia’s law against gay propaganda.

Though President Trump has made every effort to define “fake news” as anything he doesn’t like, from The New York Times to a particularly difficult word jumble (some of the words go diagonally, Donny!), fake news is a real problem. In the run-up to the 2016 election, social media was swamped with false viral news stories, and when the real media tried to trace them to their sources, they discovered that most of them were, weirdly enough, coming from the small Macedonian town of Veles, which has a population of around 50,000.

The teenagers and young adults of Veles have become rich off an entire cottage industry of fake news, having set up around 100 websites dedicated to making up stories about American politicians and sharing them on Facebook for ad revenue. And when we say rich, we mean these kids are making upwards of $100,000 a year from Google Ads — all in a town where the average annual wage is around $4,800.

Its next-biggest industries are turnip farming and begging.

According to the young men in question, they don’t have any ideological reason for focusing on pro-Trump articles — those are simply the ones that succeed. During the election campaign, they also tried making up pro-Hillary and pro-Sanders bullshit, but people weren’t sharing it. In Veles, new nightclubs have opened this year just for local youths to spend their money on. The impoverished streets are now lined with brand-new BMWs, all purchased with ad revenue from viral articles they wrote about Hillary Clinton being diagnosed with Ebola and Trump having a secret Iron Man suit.

2

Half Of The World’s Opioid Supply Comes From One Valley

The U.S. and Canada are currently dealing with one of the biggest drug crises of all time. Drug-related deaths are higher than ever before, particularly from opioids like heroin, opium, morphine, codeine, and OxyContin. These drugs all come from the seeds of one plant: the opium poppy. And by sheer volume, almost all of those plants come from one place: Afghanistan.

Which is weird, because when has anything bad ever come out of Afghanistan?

Not only does Afghanistan produce almost 90 percent of the world’s poppy extract — both the good stuff that gets delivered by a doctor in a hospital and the bad stuff that gets delivered by a guy named “Docta” in the alleyway behind Arby’s — but fully half of that 90 percent comes from a single valley: Helmand Province.

Those fields aren’t grass.

The poppy seed trade in Afghanistan is so massive that it accounts for around 15 percent of the country’s GDP, and although poppy seeds are also a non-mind-altering culinary ingredient, the bulk of this annual harvest doesn’t wind up sprinkled on a disappointing muffin. Afghanistan has the biggest drug economy in the world, leaving even South America’s cocaine industry in the dust and making Pablo Escobar’s empire look like a Kickstarter project.

We hope this doesn’t lead to Afghanistan becoming a dangerous place sometime in the future.

The 2001 American invasion of Afghanistan only made this issue worse. The ruling Taliban had a lot of really, really shitty ideas, but one of their better ones was “zero tolerance on opium production.” When the regime fell, poppy production and exports skyrocketed, despite a multi-billion-dollar effort by the U.S. to curtail it. Technically, the practice is still illegal in Afghanistan, but the government knows how much money it rakes in for the country and how well poppy farmers, uh, “tip” the authorities.

1

Every Beer Brand In The U.S. Is At The Whim Of One Obscure Bureaucrat

Each of the hundreds of American beer brands — from Coors on down to the craft brew your hipster uncle whips up in his basement — has its own unique name and label. And every single one of them has to be individually approved by one single bureaucrat. Also, he’s a lunatic.

The Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau’s Malt Beverage Labeling Specialist is the title given to the one person in charge of approving or denying the name and label design of every single beer that is sold in America — an industry that grossed $252 billion in 2016. Until his retirement in 2015, that person was Kent Martin, who demanded that people refer to him simply as “Battle.”

That’s not the crazy part. That’s the awesome part.

Battle was feared like a dictator for the decade that he worked as the TTB’s chief beer dude. Since there are no clearly defined regulations on what can or cannot appear on a beer label, Battle was handed the power to approve or veto the designs of one of America’s biggest industries based on little more than his intuition … and how much he likes puns. Because beer brewers seem to love them.

Battle was renowned for being irritatingly pedantic. Among those beers he vetoed, one was called “Liquid Wisdom” (rejected because “the name contains a medical claim” — a medical claim to �� wisdom?), one featured a King of Hearts playing card (any image of a heart apparently implies a health benefit), one had a picture of a hamburger (supposedly misled customers into “thinking the beer includes a meat product” — how ripped off would you feel if you bought it and it wasn’t Baconator-flavored?), and one had a picture of Santa Claus, but according to Battle, Santa looked drunk. And Santa doesn’t get drunk. That’s an official government opinion.

Other labels should have been banned for implying the beverage contains alcohol.

Brewers knew that his word was law, and in all his time in office, there was only one known example of someone winning a battle against Battle. A California brewer wanted to market a beer called Weed Ale, which Battle vetoed because of the marijuana implication. But the beer was brewed in the town of Weed, CA, named after Civil War hero Abner Weed. It took an intervention from the ACLU, a senator, and goddamn Congress before Battle agreed to back down. Turns out his name wasn’t just bravado — the dude would fistfight God himself if the Almighty dared to put a Whopper on a Pilsner label.

Adam Koski took a big step toward secretly running the world when he wrote half of a fantasy book. Nathan Kamal lives in Oregon and writes there. He co-founded Asymmetry Fiction for all your fiction needs. Ryan is currently a medical student at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the host of the Penn Health-X Podcast, which focuses on healthcare management, entrepreneurship, and technology. Check out https://soundcloud.com/pennhealthxpodcast for more info!

Also check out 6 People You’ve Never Heard Of (Who Secretly Rule The World) and 6 Random Nobodies (Who Secretly Run The World).

Subscribe to our YouTube channel, and check out The 5 Most Hilariously Insane Ads In The History Of Local TV, and other videos you won’t see on the site!

Follow us on Facebook, and we’ll follow you everywhere.

from All Of Beer http://allofbeer.com/2017/09/13/5-tiny-groups-of-nobodies-that-are-shockingly-powerful/ from All of Beer https://allofbeercom.tumblr.com/post/165309565232

[samanthasroberts]

5 Tiny Groups Of Nobodies That Are Shockingly Powerful

Conspiracy theorists drone on and on about the secret groups who really control the world — the Illuminati, the Jews, the Skull and Bones, the Rothschilds, the Jews, the Vatican, the shapeshifting reptile people, the Jews, etc. Well, it turns out that there actually are hidden groups that surreptitiously control aspects of your daily life. It’s just that you haven’t heard about them. Generally, the folks secretly manipulating the world are big on that “secret” part. Spoiler alert: It’s not the Jews. Jews are not a secret.

5

The U.S. Medical Industry Is Controlled By 31 People

If you live in the U.S., you know healthcare is wildly expensive. Or maybe you don’t. Because you’re dead. From not being able to afford healthcare. Supposedly, this is all a natural consequence of the free market doing its job. Who can control that market? It is so wild. So free. Like a majestic Palomino prancing in a glade.

In reality, the price of medical procedures is almost entirely decided by 31 people, all sitting in a room together and throwing darts at a bingo card.

Rachel Murray/Getty Images for Baskin-Robbins Above: an artist’s impression of the room.

The American Medical Association Specialty Society Relative Value Scale Update Committee (nicknamed RUC, because AMASSRVSUC is an abominable Elder God summoned to our plane by successfully pronouncing his unwieldy name) consists of a mere 31 physicians, each representing one of the different medical specialties, but all tasked with deciding what literally everything they do should cost. You might have heard of this practice before, but using different words — in basically any other industry, it’s known as “price fixing,” the culprits are called “cartels,” and the whole thing is incredibly illegal. In the case of American medicine, it’s standard government-approved practice.

Here’s how it works (or rather, “works”): The committee assigns every medical procedure a number of relative value units (RVU), which account for the amount of work a doctor performs, the costs to the practice, and malpractice liability.

everydayplus/iStock The ARM (arbitrary random markup) is built into each value automatically.

And though the RUC technically only makes “suggestions,” the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) accept the committee’s recommendations 90 percent of the time. Private insurance companies in turn base their negotiations on whatever CMS pays through Medicare. In a healthcare system dominated by fee-for-service payment models, physicians’ pay is based on how many RVUs they produce. Three types of specialist — orthopedic surgeons, neurosurgeons, and general surgeons — are members of the “Two Million Club,” meaning each type of physician makes, on average, more than $2 million a year for their hospital, based on their RVUs.

Interestingly, assigning RVUs is a zero sum game; if the RUC wants to increase RVUs for one procedure, they need to decrease it for others. Needless to say, the arguments can get pretty heated, since the members know they are essentially negotiating their salaries. Specialists absolutely dominate the RUC. As a result, the committee is partly responsible for the gap in pay between specialists and primary care physicians. This has led to a shortage of primary care physicians in the U.S., and an emphasis on complex procedures at the expense of preventive health measures. RVU assignments may also explain why 15 minutes became the standard amount of time for each doctor appointment. Typical wellness visits are not given very high RVUs, so doctors are pressured to crank through patients like Pringles.

gpointstudio/iStock A child’s smile, though, is priceless! (It is worth nothing.)

4

Fine Restaurants Succeed Or Fail On The Word Of A Tire Company

For the past half century, restaurants all over the world have bowed to the power of one small, omnipresent cartel: Michelin. Yes, you’ve heard of them. You probably assumed the name was unrelated to the tire company, but if so, you were mistaken. For some reason, a tire company decides the fate of fine dining.

To be fair, their expert does look like he’s had some experience with eating.

Michelin’s unlikely influence in the world of high-class cuisine began in 1900, when hardly anyone owned a car. They started publishing the Michelin Restaurant Guide as a free brochure that mapped the best restaurants in France (their home country), using a three-star rating system. The rather flimsy subtext was “You could visit any of these places right now if you had a car. A car with tires. Specifically, our tires.” It was a cheap, desperate gimmick, and it didn’t really matter.

It was like that time a beer company put out a trivia book, and everyone responded reasonably.

But over the next hundred years, Michelin continued to publish its annual guide, and its standards began to evolve. Today, earning a single Michelin star is the restaurant equivalent of winning an Oscar. Having two means you’re one of the top dining establishments in the entire world. Three Michelin stars means you’re the kind of place Bill Gates has to budget for, and you’re serving meals that Caligula would call “a little over the top.”

So who decides the rating of all these restaurants? Well … nobody knows. Their reviewers are anonymous. Even the company executives don’t know their names or what they look like. Very rarely will a Michelin reviewer grant an interview, and it’s always given with strict instructions to obscure all personal information. Severe penalties are given to any establishment that tries to fish for some. Nobody knows how many reviewers even exist, or what their training is. And since they’re completely unaccountable, there’s no way of knowing whether they even ate at any damn place or just hand out stars to their chef buddies.

All we know is they’re presumably really good at changing tires.

Nevertheless, the Michelin Guide is such a huge deal that losing a Michelin star can easily bankrupt a restaurant. In fact, at least two world-renowned chefs have committed suicide after discovering that their rating had been downgraded. That’s quite a lot of power for a few connoisseurs to have, considering that, technically speaking, they work for a damn tire company.

3

A Small Town In Macedonia Influences American Elections

We’ve all been in a panic lately about foreign powers maliciously influencing the American presidential election. And while most fingers are being pointed squarely at Russia, nobody seems to be looking at Macedonia, a tiny country in Eastern Europe that’s influenced more elections than Putin could shake a stick at. And he’s a stick-shaker, that guy.

But calling him that breaks Russia’s law against gay propaganda.

Though President Trump has made every effort to define “fake news” as anything he doesn’t like, from The New York Times to a particularly difficult word jumble (some of the words go diagonally, Donny!), fake news is a real problem. In the run-up to the 2016 election, social media was swamped with false viral news stories, and when the real media tried to trace them to their sources, they discovered that most of them were, weirdly enough, coming from the small Macedonian town of Veles, which has a population of around 50,000.

The teenagers and young adults of Veles have become rich off an entire cottage industry of fake news, having set up around 100 websites dedicated to making up stories about American politicians and sharing them on Facebook for ad revenue. And when we say rich, we mean these kids are making upwards of $100,000 a year from Google Ads — all in a town where the average annual wage is around $4,800.

Its next-biggest industries are turnip farming and begging.

According to the young men in question, they don’t have any ideological reason for focusing on pro-Trump articles — those are simply the ones that succeed. During the election campaign, they also tried making up pro-Hillary and pro-Sanders bullshit, but people weren’t sharing it. In Veles, new nightclubs have opened this year just for local youths to spend their money on. The impoverished streets are now lined with brand-new BMWs, all purchased with ad revenue from viral articles they wrote about Hillary Clinton being diagnosed with Ebola and Trump having a secret Iron Man suit.

2

Half Of The World’s Opioid Supply Comes From One Valley

The U.S. and Canada are currently dealing with one of the biggest drug crises of all time. Drug-related deaths are higher than ever before, particularly from opioids like heroin, opium, morphine, codeine, and OxyContin. These drugs all come from the seeds of one plant: the opium poppy. And by sheer volume, almost all of those plants come from one place: Afghanistan.

Which is weird, because when has anything bad ever come out of Afghanistan?

Not only does Afghanistan produce almost 90 percent of the world’s poppy extract — both the good stuff that gets delivered by a doctor in a hospital and the bad stuff that gets delivered by a guy named “Docta” in the alleyway behind Arby’s — but fully half of that 90 percent comes from a single valley: Helmand Province.

Those fields aren’t grass.

The poppy seed trade in Afghanistan is so massive that it accounts for around 15 percent of the country’s GDP, and although poppy seeds are also a non-mind-altering culinary ingredient, the bulk of this annual harvest doesn’t wind up sprinkled on a disappointing muffin. Afghanistan has the biggest drug economy in the world, leaving even South America’s cocaine industry in the dust and making Pablo Escobar’s empire look like a Kickstarter project.

We hope this doesn’t lead to Afghanistan becoming a dangerous place sometime in the future.

The 2001 American invasion of Afghanistan only made this issue worse. The ruling Taliban had a lot of really, really shitty ideas, but one of their better ones was “zero tolerance on opium production.” When the regime fell, poppy production and exports skyrocketed, despite a multi-billion-dollar effort by the U.S. to curtail it. Technically, the practice is still illegal in Afghanistan, but the government knows how much money it rakes in for the country and how well poppy farmers, uh, “tip” the authorities.

1

Every Beer Brand In The U.S. Is At The Whim Of One Obscure Bureaucrat

Each of the hundreds of American beer brands — from Coors on down to the craft brew your hipster uncle whips up in his basement — has its own unique name and label. And every single one of them has to be individually approved by one single bureaucrat. Also, he’s a lunatic.

The Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau’s Malt Beverage Labeling Specialist is the title given to the one person in charge of approving or denying the name and label design of every single beer that is sold in America — an industry that grossed $252 billion in 2016. Until his retirement in 2015, that person was Kent Martin, who demanded that people refer to him simply as “Battle.”

That’s not the crazy part. That’s the awesome part.

Battle was feared like a dictator for the decade that he worked as the TTB’s chief beer dude. Since there are no clearly defined regulations on what can or cannot appear on a beer label, Battle was handed the power to approve or veto the designs of one of America’s biggest industries based on little more than his intuition … and how much he likes puns. Because beer brewers seem to love them.

Battle was renowned for being irritatingly pedantic. Among those beers he vetoed, one was called “Liquid Wisdom” (rejected because “the name contains a medical claim” — a medical claim to … wisdom?), one featured a King of Hearts playing card (any image of a heart apparently implies a health benefit), one had a picture of a hamburger (supposedly misled customers into “thinking the beer includes a meat product” — how ripped off would you feel if you bought it and it wasn’t Baconator-flavored?), and one had a picture of Santa Claus, but according to Battle, Santa looked drunk. And Santa doesn’t get drunk. That’s an official government opinion.

Other labels should have been banned for implying the beverage contains alcohol.

Brewers knew that his word was law, and in all his time in office, there was only one known example of someone winning a battle against Battle. A California brewer wanted to market a beer called Weed Ale, which Battle vetoed because of the marijuana implication. But the beer was brewed in the town of Weed, CA, named after Civil War hero Abner Weed. It took an intervention from the ACLU, a senator, and goddamn Congress before Battle agreed to back down. Turns out his name wasn’t just bravado — the dude would fistfight God himself if the Almighty dared to put a Whopper on a Pilsner label.

Adam Koski took a big step toward secretly running the world when he wrote half of a fantasy book. Nathan Kamal lives in Oregon and writes there. He co-founded Asymmetry Fiction for all your fiction needs. Ryan is currently a medical student at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the host of the Penn Health-X Podcast, which focuses on healthcare management, entrepreneurship, and technology. Check out https://soundcloud.com/pennhealthxpodcast for more info!

Also check out 6 People You’ve Never Heard Of (Who Secretly Rule The World) and 6 Random Nobodies (Who Secretly Run The World).

Subscribe to our YouTube channel, and check out The 5 Most Hilariously Insane Ads In The History Of Local TV, and other videos you won’t see on the site!

Follow us on Facebook, and we’ll follow you everywhere.

Source: http://allofbeer.com/2017/09/13/5-tiny-groups-of-nobodies-that-are-shockingly-powerful/

from All of Beer https://allofbeer.wordpress.com/2017/09/13/5-tiny-groups-of-nobodies-that-are-shockingly-powerful/

[allofbeercom]

5 Tiny Groups Of Nobodies That Are Shockingly Powerful

Conspiracy theorists drone on and on about the secret groups who really control the world — the Illuminati, the Jews, the Skull and Bones, the Rothschilds, the Jews, the Vatican, the shapeshifting reptile people, the Jews, etc. Well, it turns out that there actually are hidden groups that surreptitiously control aspects of your daily life. It’s just that you haven’t heard about them. Generally, the folks secretly manipulating the world are big on that “secret” part. Spoiler alert: It’s not the Jews. Jews are not a secret.

5

The U.S. Medical Industry Is Controlled By 31 People

If you live in the U.S., you know healthcare is wildly expensive. Or maybe you don’t. Because you’re dead. From not being able to afford healthcare. Supposedly, this is all a natural consequence of the free market doing its job. Who can control that market? It is so wild. So free. Like a majestic Palomino prancing in a glade.

In reality, the price of medical procedures is almost entirely decided by 31 people, all sitting in a room together and throwing darts at a bingo card.

Rachel Murray/Getty Images for Baskin-Robbins Above: an artist’s impression of the room.

The American Medical Association Specialty Society Relative Value Scale Update Committee (nicknamed RUC, because AMASSRVSUC is an abominable Elder God summoned to our plane by successfully pronouncing his unwieldy name) consists of a mere 31 physicians, each representing one of the different medical specialties, but all tasked with deciding what literally everything they do should cost. You might have heard of this practice before, but using different words — in basically any other industry, it’s known as “price fixing,” the culprits are called “cartels,” and the whole thing is incredibly illegal. In the case of American medicine, it’s standard government-approved practice.

Here’s how it works (or rather, “works”): The committee assigns every medical procedure a number of relative value units (RVU), which account for the amount of work a doctor performs, the costs to the practice, and malpractice liability.

everydayplus/iStock The ARM (arbitrary random markup) is built into each value automatically.

And though the RUC technically only makes “suggestions,” the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) accept the committee’s recommendations 90 percent of the time. Private insurance companies in turn base their negotiations on whatever CMS pays through Medicare. In a healthcare system dominated by fee-for-service payment models, physicians’ pay is based on how many RVUs they produce. Three types of specialist — orthopedic surgeons, neurosurgeons, and general surgeons — are members of the “Two Million Club,” meaning each type of physician makes, on average, more than $2 million a year for their hospital, based on their RVUs.

Interestingly, assigning RVUs is a zero sum game; if the RUC wants to increase RVUs for one procedure, they need to decrease it for others. Needless to say, the arguments can get pretty heated, since the members know they are essentially negotiating their salaries. Specialists absolutely dominate the RUC. As a result, the committee is partly responsible for the gap in pay between specialists and primary care physicians. This has led to a shortage of primary care physicians in the U.S., and an emphasis on complex procedures at the expense of preventive health measures. RVU assignments may also explain why 15 minutes became the standard amount of time for each doctor appointment. Typical wellness visits are not given very high RVUs, so doctors are pressured to crank through patients like Pringles.

gpointstudio/iStock A child’s smile, though, is priceless! (It is worth nothing.)

4

Fine Restaurants Succeed Or Fail On The Word Of A Tire Company

For the past half century, restaurants all over the world have bowed to the power of one small, omnipresent cartel: Michelin. Yes, you’ve heard of them. You probably assumed the name was unrelated to the tire company, but if so, you were mistaken. For some reason, a tire company decides the fate of fine dining.

To be fair, their expert does look like he’s had some experience with eating.

Michelin’s unlikely influence in the world of high-class cuisine began in 1900, when hardly anyone owned a car. They started publishing the Michelin Restaurant Guide as a free brochure that mapped the best restaurants in France (their home country), using a three-star rating system. The rather flimsy subtext was “You could visit any of these places right now if you had a car. A car with tires. Specifically, our tires.” It was a cheap, desperate gimmick, and it didn’t really matter.

It was like that time a beer company put out a trivia book, and everyone responded reasonably.

But over the next hundred years, Michelin continued to publish its annual guide, and its standards began to evolve. Today, earning a single Michelin star is the restaurant equivalent of winning an Oscar. Having two means you’re one of the top dining establishments in the entire world. Three Michelin stars means you’re the kind of place Bill Gates has to budget for, and you’re serving meals that Caligula would call “a little over the top.”

So who decides the rating of all these restaurants? Well … nobody knows. Their reviewers are anonymous. Even the company executives don’t know their names or what they look like. Very rarely will a Michelin reviewer grant an interview, and it’s always given with strict instructions to obscure all personal information. Severe penalties are given to any establishment that tries to fish for some. Nobody knows how many reviewers even exist, or what their training is. And since they’re completely unaccountable, there’s no way of knowing whether they even ate at any damn place or just hand out stars to their chef buddies.

All we know is they’re presumably really good at changing tires.

Nevertheless, the Michelin Guide is such a huge deal that losing a Michelin star can easily bankrupt a restaurant. In fact, at least two world-renowned chefs have committed suicide after discovering that their rating had been downgraded. That’s quite a lot of power for a few connoisseurs to have, considering that, technically speaking, they work for a damn tire company.

3

A Small Town In Macedonia Influences American Elections

We’ve all been in a panic lately about foreign powers maliciously influencing the American presidential election. And while most fingers are being pointed squarely at Russia, nobody seems to be looking at Macedonia, a tiny country in Eastern Europe that’s influenced more elections than Putin could shake a stick at. And he’s a stick-shaker, that guy.

But calling him that breaks Russia’s law against gay propaganda.

Though President Trump has made every effort to define “fake news” as anything he doesn’t like, from The New York Times to a particularly difficult word jumble (some of the words go diagonally, Donny!), fake news is a real problem. In the run-up to the 2016 election, social media was swamped with false viral news stories, and when the real media tried to trace them to their sources, they discovered that most of them were, weirdly enough, coming from the small Macedonian town of Veles, which has a population of around 50,000.

The teenagers and young adults of Veles have become rich off an entire cottage industry of fake news, having set up around 100 websites dedicated to making up stories about American politicians and sharing them on Facebook for ad revenue. And when we say rich, we mean these kids are making upwards of $100,000 a year from Google Ads — all in a town where the average annual wage is around $4,800.

Its next-biggest industries are turnip farming and begging.

According to the young men in question, they don’t have any ideological reason for focusing on pro-Trump articles — those are simply the ones that succeed. During the election campaign, they also tried making up pro-Hillary and pro-Sanders bullshit, but people weren’t sharing it. In Veles, new nightclubs have opened this year just for local youths to spend their money on. The impoverished streets are now lined with brand-new BMWs, all purchased with ad revenue from viral articles they wrote about Hillary Clinton being diagnosed with Ebola and Trump having a secret Iron Man suit.

2

Half Of The World’s Opioid Supply Comes From One Valley

The U.S. and Canada are currently dealing with one of the biggest drug crises of all time. Drug-related deaths are higher than ever before, particularly from opioids like heroin, opium, morphine, codeine, and OxyContin. These drugs all come from the seeds of one plant: the opium poppy. And by sheer volume, almost all of those plants come from one place: Afghanistan.

Which is weird, because when has anything bad ever come out of Afghanistan?

Not only does Afghanistan produce almost 90 percent of the world’s poppy extract — both the good stuff that gets delivered by a doctor in a hospital and the bad stuff that gets delivered by a guy named “Docta” in the alleyway behind Arby’s — but fully half of that 90 percent comes from a single valley: Helmand Province.

Those fields aren’t grass.

The poppy seed trade in Afghanistan is so massive that it accounts for around 15 percent of the country’s GDP, and although poppy seeds are also a non-mind-altering culinary ingredient, the bulk of this annual harvest doesn’t wind up sprinkled on a disappointing muffin. Afghanistan has the biggest drug economy in the world, leaving even South America’s cocaine industry in the dust and making Pablo Escobar’s empire look like a Kickstarter project.

We hope this doesn’t lead to Afghanistan becoming a dangerous place sometime in the future.

The 2001 American invasion of Afghanistan only made this issue worse. The ruling Taliban had a lot of really, really shitty ideas, but one of their better ones was “zero tolerance on opium production.” When the regime fell, poppy production and exports skyrocketed, despite a multi-billion-dollar effort by the U.S. to curtail it. Technically, the practice is still illegal in Afghanistan, but the government knows how much money it rakes in for the country and how well poppy farmers, uh, “tip” the authorities.

1

Every Beer Brand In The U.S. Is At The Whim Of One Obscure Bureaucrat

Each of the hundreds of American beer brands — from Coors on down to the craft brew your hipster uncle whips up in his basement — has its own unique name and label. And every single one of them has to be individually approved by one single bureaucrat. Also, he’s a lunatic.

The Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau’s Malt Beverage Labeling Specialist is the title given to the one person in charge of approving or denying the name and label design of every single beer that is sold in America — an industry that grossed $252 billion in 2016. Until his retirement in 2015, that person was Kent Martin, who demanded that people refer to him simply as “Battle.”

That’s not the crazy part. That’s the awesome part.

Battle was feared like a dictator for the decade that he worked as the TTB’s chief beer dude. Since there are no clearly defined regulations on what can or cannot appear on a beer label, Battle was handed the power to approve or veto the designs of one of America’s biggest industries based on little more than his intuition … and how much he likes puns. Because beer brewers seem to love them.

Battle was renowned for being irritatingly pedantic. Among those beers he vetoed, one was called “Liquid Wisdom” (rejected because “the name contains a medical claim” — a medical claim to … wisdom?), one featured a King of Hearts playing card (any image of a heart apparently implies a health benefit), one had a picture of a hamburger (supposedly misled customers into “thinking the beer includes a meat product” — how ripped off would you feel if you bought it and it wasn’t Baconator-flavored?), and one had a picture of Santa Claus, but according to Battle, Santa looked drunk. And Santa doesn’t get drunk. That’s an official government opinion.

Other labels should have been banned for implying the beverage contains alcohol.

Brewers knew that his word was law, and in all his time in office, there was only one known example of someone winning a battle against Battle. A California brewer wanted to market a beer called Weed Ale, which Battle vetoed because of the marijuana implication. But the beer was brewed in the town of Weed, CA, named after Civil War hero Abner Weed. It took an intervention from the ACLU, a senator, and goddamn Congress before Battle agreed to back down. Turns out his name wasn’t just bravado — the dude would fistfight God himself if the Almighty dared to put a Whopper on a Pilsner label.

Adam Koski took a big step toward secretly running the world when he wrote half of a fantasy book. Nathan Kamal lives in Oregon and writes there. He co-founded Asymmetry Fiction for all your fiction needs. Ryan is currently a medical student at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the host of the Penn Health-X Podcast, which focuses on healthcare management, entrepreneurship, and technology. Check out https://soundcloud.com/pennhealthxpodcast for more info!

Also check out 6 People You’ve Never Heard Of (Who Secretly Rule The World) and 6 Random Nobodies (Who Secretly Run The World).

Subscribe to our YouTube channel, and check out The 5 Most Hilariously Insane Ads In The History Of Local TV, and other videos you won’t see on the site!

Follow us on Facebook, and we’ll follow you everywhere.

from All Of Beer http://allofbeer.com/2017/09/13/5-tiny-groups-of-nobodies-that-are-shockingly-powerful/