There's still a month to go before the end of the year, but most Americans will let their last remaining vacation days go unused.
The average American worker earned 14 vacation days this year but will only take 12 of them, according to a survey by Expedia. That's about the same number of days they left on the table last year.
While two forfeited days of vacation may not seem like a lot, it can really add up. Altogether, Americans are giving up 226 million unused vacation days this year. Considering that, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average full-time worker earns $39,416 a year -- that's $34.3 billion worth of time.

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/34-3-billion...



Be sure to get your vacation time in this year and don't give away part of your compensation package.

KMOV) – Nine businesses in Chesterfield Valley were ticketed on Black Friday starting at midnight for being open.

Officials say that Chesterfield has a city ordinance that prohibits retail stores from being open 24 hours.

According to authorities, all stores were contacted and notified of the ordinance.

A spokesperson for Target said on Friday that the Chesterfield Valley location was issued a citation for opening at midnight.

http://www.kmov.com/news/local/Nine-Cheste...

Big Brother is Watching.....

Starting on Black Friday and running through the entire shopping season, the Promenade Temecula shopping mall in southern California and Short Pump Town Center shopping mall in Richmond, Virginia plan to track customers locations within the mall by monitoring cell phone signals as reported by CNN earlier today. The malls intend to follow the path of each shopper and collect data to understand typical shopping patterns. While the malls claim that the data collected will be anonymous, mall officials will be able to tell which portion of the mall is unpopular, the amount of time that people spend inside a particular store and which stores compliment each other based off customer behavior.
The malls do plan to alert customers of the tracking program and encourage shoppers to turn off the cell phone while shopping.


http://news.yahoo.com/malls-plan-track-sho...

Big Brother is Watching.....

Starting on Black Friday and running through the entire shopping season, the Promenade Temecula shopping mall in southern California and Short Pump Town Center shopping mall in Richmond, Virginia plan to track customers locations within the mall by monitoring cell phone signals as reported by CNN earlier today. The malls intend to follow the path of each shopper and collect data to understand typical shopping patterns. While the malls claim that the data collected will be anonymous, mall officials will be able to tell which portion of the mall is unpopular, the amount of time that people spend inside a particular store and which stores compliment each other based off customer behavior.
The malls do plan to alert customers of the tracking program and encourage shoppers to turn off the cell phone while shopping.


http://news.yahoo.com/malls-plan-track-sho...

FRANKFURT (Reuters) - Deutsche Telekom and AT&T withdrew their application for approval by the Federal Communications Commission of a planned $39 billion deal for T-Mobile USA to focus on obtaining the green light from the Department of Justice.
At the same time, AT&T said on Thursday it expected to book a pretax $4 billion charge in this quarter for potential break-up fees, should the deal collapse.
"This formal step today is being undertaken by both companies to consolidate their strength and to focus their continuing efforts on obtaining antitrust clearance for the transaction from the Department of Justice," the companies said in a statement.
They added that they are continuing to pursue the sale of T-Mobile USA to AT&T.

http://news.yahoo.com/deutsche-telekom-t-w...


Well somewhat good news for now, however it appears that they will continue to pursue the merger

ST. LOUIS (KMOV) – A News 4 viewer says she is upset after learning her bank is charging her a $10 fee for having less than $1,500 in her checking account.

Tracy Clinton says she had no idea there was a new fee until she went to use her debit card and it was declined. Twenty dollars was deducted from her account because of a new monthly fee that was instated just last month.

A spokesperson for Regions Bank says that previously, it was $8 a month for customers who could not keep at least $1,000 in their checking account. When asked why the increase, the bank released the following statement:

More at

http://www.kmov.com/news/local/Customers-i...


It seems that Regions Bank may have missed the Bank of America & Netflix customer service debacles of the last few months. One wonders if an investment by the bank in a newspaper subscription for it's management might be a worthwhile use of their funds.

It turns out Sen. Claire McCaskill wasn't the only person who wasn't paying taxes on an airplane in St. Louis County.
County Assessor Jake Zimmerman says his staff discovered 79 aircraft that should have been — but weren't — on county tax rolls. They added $1.6 million to the county's personal property tax billings this year, including $300,000 paid by McCaskill and her husband.


Read more: http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/metro/s...



Now I have to pay my personal property tax to St. Louis County each year, isn't odd that people that own private jets seem to think they don't need to do so...............

Oh, wait those that can afford private aircraft might just be in the 1%, how silly of me.....

College student's idea grows into electronics thrift store with a purpose

Angela Haas was a senior at St. Louis University when she got the idea to refurbish and resell old computers to other students.
Now, a dozen years later, she's president of a nonprofit that last year recycled 7.5 million pounds of electronics and helped 5,500 families get computers free or for drastically reduced prices.
"Basically somebody said it couldn't be done, and I said 'I'm going to show you,' " said Haas, 37.
The headquarters of Wits Inc. sits at 643 East Holly Avenue in St. Louis, east of Bellefontaine Cemetery. The charity has a 23,000-square-foot warehouse and a two-story brick building that's used for office space.
Haas' corner office is painted bright orange and purple. The carpet, recycled from a casino, has stripes in similar hues. Chinese characters adorn one of the walls, and Haas said they mean "welcome."
"I was going for something feng shui," she said. "I've even got some bamboo over here that I haven't managed to kill yet."
Haas runs her charity with the help of hundreds of volunteers, but she is paid and she also employs 33 people, many of whom are referred by a homeless shelter.
"We give them a chance, and if they mess it up that's their fault," she said. "But a lot of them have gotten their lives back on track."
Haas said she tries to impress on them that their work is more than a paycheck; it involves giving back to those less fortunate.
Overall, she said she's pleased with the direction Wits has taken.

More at link

Read more: http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/metro/b...

Like hundreds of thousands of young American men, Henry Johnson returned from World War I and tried to make a life for himself in spite of what he had experienced in a strange and distant land. With dozens of bullet and shrapnel wounds, he knew he was lucky to have survived. His discharge records erroneously made no mention of his injuries, and so Johnson was denied not only a Purple Heart, but a disability allowance as well. Uneducated and in his early twenties, Henry Johnson had no expectations that he could correct the errors in his military record. He simply tried to carry on as well as a black man could in the country he had been willing to give his life for.

He made it back home to Albany, New York, and resumed his job as a Red Cap porter at the train station, but he never could overcome his injuries—his left foot had been shattered, and a metal plate held it together. Johnson’s inability to hold down a job led him to the bottle. It didn’t take long for his wife and three children to leave. He died, destitute, in 1929 at age 32. As far as anyone knew, he was buried in a pauper’s field in Albany. A man who had earned the nickname “Black Death” in combat was quickly forgotten.

The denial of a disability pension, the Purple Heart oversight, the fleeting recognition—none of it surprised his son, Herman Johnson, who later served with the famed Tuskegee Airmen. The younger Johnson knew all about Jim Crow, second-class citizenship and the systematic denial of equal rights to black Americans. But in 2001, 72 years after Henry Johnson’s death, a great and unlikely mystery was revealed to the soldier’s estranged son: On July 5, 1929, Henry Johnson had been buried not in an anonymous grave in Albany, but with military honors at Arlington National Cemetery. Historians who located Johnson’s place of burial believed there could be no more appropriate honor for Herman’s father, who proved his valor on the night of May 14, 1918, in the Argonne Forest.

full story at http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/history/20...

(KMOV) -- A growing number of car companies are changing the standard of providing spare tires in new models of their vehicles.

Hyundai, Chevy and Cadillac are among the growing list of companies doing away with spare tires.

Car-focused website, www.edmunds.com reports that 14% of 2011 car models don't come equipped with spare tires.

Many companies have decided to get rid of the tires to cut costs and to fulfill some driver's desires for lighter, more fuel efficient cars.

Instead of providing the spares, car companies are now opting for replacing the tires with tire sealant fix-it kits.

The kits only work for small holes in a tire's tread, but car makers say their roadside assistance plans should cover major problems.

http://www.kmov.com/news/local/Car-compani...


While there may be logic to the car companies argument, I just don't think I would like driving without a spare and it comes across as simply a way for them to cut costs to me.

none at all."
John Adams


Just thought this appropriate....

none at all."
John Adams


Just thought this appropriate....

Dear ************,

I was able to spend the past month criss-crossing Missouri, hearing from hardworking folks across the state - folks who want their leaders to stop worrying so much about the next election and start working together.

Politicians in Congress should borrow some common sense from Missouri’s manufacturers.

I spent the month of August visiting businesses back home, listening to employers’ concerns about job creation and gathering their ideas and input.

In Kansas City, employers voiced a need for stronger, more efficient job skills training. At the St. Louis Agency on Training & Employment (SLATE), we discussed the need for eliminating duplication and waste in federal job training efforts.

Manufacturers across the state, from Sikeston to Concordia, from Springfield to Hannibal, told me about the need to crack down on unfair trade practices that put American businesses at a disadvantage. I heard frustration from our businesses about duty evasion - the practice of foreign companies smuggling products into the country to avoid paying penalties they owe when they have been caught engaging in unfair trading practices.

This week I will introduce legislation to address duty evasion, a direct result of my meetings in Missouri. The legislation would, among other things, make it easier for officials to hold cheating foreign companies to account.

We need solutions, but we need unity and common sense to prevail. Already, I’ve started working on ways to help our businesses grow and create jobs.

In Columbia, I announced a new measure aimed at protecting American jobs from being shipped overseas. Visiting with the folks at the MBS Textbooks call center, I described how we can encourage companies to keep call centers in the United States and boost transparency for consumers. My plan may help prevent call center jobs from being outsourced by requiring customer service representatives to alert callers to the fact that their calls are being transferred abroad.

Across the state, it didn’t matter what kind of business they ran, or their political affiliation - the message from employers was the same: elected leaders in Washington need to put political games and extremism aside, and compromise on commonsense ideas to create jobs.

Those are the voices I brought back with me. I plan to fight for their ideas in the U.S. Senate. And I hope to hear the same from the President and my colleagues in Congress.

All the best,





..................... One would note in Claire's letter that she never mentioned talking to employees or workers, only Employers, Businessmen & Manufacturers.... I guess we can figure where she stands.

"Labor is prior to and independent of capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration." - Abraham Lincoln

I believe the gentleman understood how things work, as opposed to those in his party (and many Democrats) who came later.

starting with the iPad Nano and heading on to the iToast this looks to be an amusing assortment...

Introducing the iPad Nano, the world’s smallest tablet computer. With a dual-core A5 chip, two cameras for FaceTime and video recording, and access to 90,000 apps, this amazingly revolutionary device offers up everything you love about the iPad, but at less than a tenth of the size. Whether you’re surfing the Web, checking email, playing video games, reading a book, or editing an HD movie, the iPad Nano puts the whole world at the tip of your finger. Smart Cover not included. Starting at $699.

http://www.csmonitor.com/CSM-Photo-Galleri...