Recent Articles

• The difference between fair and fraudulent mechanics liens

  Nate Budde Construction & Building Materials

  Mechanics liens are extremely powerful tools for protection against nonpayment in the construction industry. Just like any powerful tool, however, mechanics liens can be abused. Unscrupulous parties who want to get more than their proper share, who just want to cause problems for a particular project, or are just looking to make a fraudulent grab for cash sometimes file liens for these underhanded purposes. Filing an incorrect and improper mechanics lien for a knowingly fraudulent purpose is problematic in several ways.

• Metals Thoughts: Light at the end of the tunnel

  Brad Yates Natural Resources

  Gold prices are off about $25 in the last week and silver off an impressive $1.50. Our gold longer-term models based on rates and currencies still show some further weakness to come, but I think that with the Fed March hike now priced in and some support from moving averages, it’s more of a mixed bag. We’ve been doing some work here at analyzing prior recent low-volatility regimes and their duration/outcomes, which can be seen in Table 1 of this edition of Metals Thoughts.

• Church vision isn’t enough

  Mark MacDonald Religious Community

  Many churches go through a vision process. This includes hundreds of committee hours researching and praying, and formulating a vision statement and purpose platitudes. What I've discovered is that the church leadership loves the navel-gazing. They lean forward to examine the inner workings of who they are and how they do it. They find nooks and crannies that haven’t been examined for years; what a church should be, and what it should be doing. And they almost always discover exactly what every other house of worship does.

• Are fitness trackers doing more harm than good?

  Noelle Talmon Sports & Fitness

  Fitness trackers from Fitbit, Garmin, and other manufacturers are big business. Millions of the devices are sold each year to help people monitor their physical activities and their number of calories burned. But how effective are they in actually improving an individual's health? According to Dr. Greg Hager, an expert in computer science at Johns Hopkins University, users should be particularly aware of devices that track people’s steps and advise them to walk 10,000 steps a day, which equals about five miles.

• Get ready to pay more to improve US airports

  Matt Falcus Transportation Technology & Automotive

  Airports and airlines across the United States have been reacting to a new bill put forward by Congress that could increase ticket prices, as a passenger fee cap is lifted for the first time in over 15 years. Passenger Facility Fees (PFC) are a common way for airports and their operators to raise revenues on top of charges to airlines for every passenger passing through them, whether inbound or outbound. Under the new terms put forward by Congress, airports would be allowed to set their own PFC in accordance with their needs.

• 3 questions to start asking today

  Catherine Iste Business Management, Services & Risk Management

  If Tony Robbins and Tim Ferriss both gave you the same advice, would you consider taking it? Both men are incredibly successful, yet they come from backgrounds to which many of us can relate. When Robbins interviewed Ferriss for his podcast last December, they enthusiastically discussed and agreed upon the importance and impact asking the right questions can have. In less than five minutes, Ferriss walked through three powerful questions he asks himself regularly.

• 3 ways pests can hurt businesses

  Doug Haymore Facilities & Grounds

  If you’ve ever been inside of a business and saw an insect flying around or a mouse dart across the floor, your thoughts probably turned to what was going on behind the scenes. Simply looking at a pest inside of an otherwise clean business makes you feel as though the place is dirty and that you don’t want to spend time there, especially if it was a restaurant or grocery store. You would probably also tell your friends and family to avoid the business at all costs. This is just one of the ways that a pest infestation can seriously hurt a business.

• Understanding the new school choice push

  Bambi Majumdar Education

  President Donald Trump’s announcement of a broader school choice initiative has baffled many. His idea is to empower disadvantaged youth from lower-income families so that they have more options than just public schools. On paper, this doesn’t sound too bad. So why is there so much opposition to it? To answer that question, we need to understand the concept of school choice and our education system.

• When is travel time compensable under the FLSA?

  D. Albert Brannen Business Management, Services & Risk Management

  Travel-time issues are some of the most difficult of all hours-worked questions for non-exempt employees. Whether and to what extent travel time counts as hours worked under the Fair Labor Standards Act depends on the specific facts and circumstances presented. Below are some broad rules of thumb that apply to the most common kinds of travel. The rules vary depending on whether the travel is local, out of town with same-day return, or out of town with an overnight stay.

• Discovering America’s most beautiful sand dunes

  Dave G. Houser Recreation & Leisure

  The accumulation of windblown sand presents one of nature’s most interesting and beautiful phenomena. Windswept and rippled, sand dunes form throughout the world, from coastal and lakeshore plains to desert regions. They are nonetheless rare environments, making up only 15 percent of the earth’s deserts. They can range in height from a few feet to as tall as a skyscraper and in color from white to tan to red. Come along with us for a look at a number of major American sand dunes.

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