Dare to be Different

Dare to be different. I have chosen this title for the presentation because our cow-calf operation though similar to a lot of cow-calf operations, has some aspects about it that are quite a bit different. To begin with, I was 32 years old before I ever lived on a farm. I graduated from Oskaloosa High School in 1957 and went to work for a construction crew as a laborer, and continued in the construction world for 40 years until I semiretired in 1998. I married my wife in 1960, and like so many middle-class families dreamed of having a place of our own in the country. Ten years later with a family a 3 little girls, we purchased a very poor, run-down, neglected 160 acre pasture farm in the Otley area. We went to the sale barn and bought 13 Hereford range cows that were definitely someone’s culls. Looking back, we refer to them as the 13 Herefords from hell. To say that we knew nothing about farming or livestock would be the biggest understatement in time since Noah looked at the sky and said, “It looks like it could rain.” But, by reading everything we could get our hands on, going to field days, seminars, asking a lot of dumb questions and making a lot of mistakes and taking some huge risks, we slowly grew our management abilities along with our expanding cattle operation

Repeating Routines? How transfer and inheritance to corporate spin-offs varies among gestation contexts

In economic geography literature the attention for spin‐off entrepreneurship has been steadily growing. Its main driver is that spin-off firms are said to have intrinsic advantages over other start-ups because of their embedded link to a parent company. Through this embedded link spin-off firms have a relatively ââ¬Ëeasyââ¬â¢ access to resources for production which has several interesting implications on both the firm and the regional level. At the firm level, spin-off firms seem to outperform other entrants on at least some aspects of success including employment growth and survival chances. At the regional level, they may play a key role in the development of clusters. Despite the increasing number of studies addressing the effects of spin-off processes, important issues remain unresolved. Most importantly, there is still work to be done in identifying what it is that spin-off entrepreneurs take with them from their previous employer and how this affects their innovative behavior, business strategies and performance; and ultimately their alleged contribution to regional economic development. This has been acknowledged before: ââ¬Åââ¬Â¦ we know little about how conversion [between knowledge and technology commercialization] actually occurs, even though knowledge conversion is at the core of what spin‐offs doââ¬Â¦Ã¢â¬ (Zahra et al., 2007: 570). Based on a review of recent spin-off studies, this paper draws on key inheritance mechanisms in an attempt to develop a new conceptualization of explanations of spin-off effects. Following Koster (2006), initially a distinction will be made between direct resource transfers between parent and spin‐off (providing accommodation or guaranteed turnover) and indirect transfers (spin‐off entrepreneurs capitalizing on previously gained skills). We explore the concept of indirect transfers further in differentiating between personal skills of spin-off entrepreneurs gained while working in the parent organization on the one hand, and the inheritance of specific features of the parental organization, in particular its organizational characteristics and strategies. This closely fits in with the evolutionary economics vocabulary, especially with Nelson and Wintersââ¬â¢ (1982) famous DNA metaphor: the knowledge and routines of firms (their ââ¬ËDNAââ¬â¢) are partially inherited by their spin‐offs (Boschma et al., 2002).

Economic Nexus: Legislative Presumption or Legitimate Proposition?

This article discusses the theory of economic nexus, the present nexus conditions in various states, and the constitutional issues surrounding nexus. These constitutional issues will then be applied to the theory of economic nexus in order to draw conclusions concerning the constitutionality and feasibility of this theory

Bankruptcy Officials vs. The Internal Revenue Service: A Federal House Divided Against Itself

This article will discuss several current areas of dispute between bankruptcy officials; i.e., trustees and judges, and the Internal Revenue Service ( IRS ) as evidenced by litigation in the U.S. Supreme Court and certain federal circuit courts of appeal. A policy resolution to the numerous conflicts will be suggested along with specific statutory modifications to alleviate the costly burden of continued future litigation

Bankruptcy Officials vs. The Internal Revenue Service: The Beat Goes On

This author has previously addressed several areas of conflict between bankruptcy officials; i.e., trustees and judges, and the Internal Revenue Service ( IRS ). Due to continued litigation, both in the U.S. Supreme Court and in certain federal courts of appeal, some of these areas will be reevaluated in this article. In addition, new areas of conflict resulting in litigation in various levels of the federal court system will be discussed. Policy and statutory modifications will be suggested to alleviate the growing costly burden of litigation

Choice of Business Tax Entity After the 1993 Tax Act

The first section of this article presents a discussion of the decision itself, as well as a description of each of the most common types of business forms. The second section provides a summary of the tax classification requirements imposed on certain entities by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). The third and fourth sections examine the non-tax and tax considerations of the choice of entity decision. A chart is also provided which summarizes the non-tax and tax considerations addressed in the article (see Appendix A)