Liberty Gives Michigan Chance to Invest In Ethanol

Michigan Public Schools saw a significant “raising of the bar” for graduation standards in 2006. Governor Jennifer M. Granholm signed the Michigan Merit Curriculum into law after a team of educational and community leaders created recommendations for stricter and more comprehensive graduation standards. The new graduation requirements began with last year’s eighth grade classes in the Michigan Schools, and received broad support from the educational community.

Spring of 2007 marked the last time that juniors in the Michigan Schools were required to take the Michigan Educational Assessment Plan (MEAP) used in Michigan’s system of school rankings. Instead, Michigan Schools will now administer the Michigan Merit Exam (MME). One benefit of the new exam is that it will provide the students with the ACT test scores required for college admission, and therefore save families the cost and time of that additional test.

Michigan Schools See a Need for Change

According a Time Magazine article in December of 2006, the fall of the automobile industry was a major factor in prompting the Michigan Schools to make changes. The loss of jobs for non-graduates in that industry highlighted the need to increase the percentage of graduates from Michigan Schools. According to numbers from the EPE Research Center, Detroit Schools ranked 11th lowest in the nation for graduation rates with 21.7% in 2006.

The 2007-2008 school year will be the first year that Michigan Schools will see these changes in full force. According to a parent pamphlet created by the Michigan Schools, every student will create an Educational Development Plan (EDP) starting in the seventh grade. The plan will assist parents and students in the Michigan Schools with exploring career options and creating a guide to get the students to these goals.

Michigan Schools Raise Expectations

The Michigan Merit Curriculum High School Graduation Requirements are among the most demanding in the nation. Students in Michigan Schools, starting with those who entered 8th grade in 2006, will need to meet the following course load requirements to qualify for graduation: 4 English credits, 4 math credits, 3 science credits, 3 social studies credits, 1 physical education credit, 1 visual, performing and applied arts credit, an online learning experience, and 2 credits in a language other than English.

Prior to these unified state standards, graduation requirements differed among each district in the Michigan Schools. The 16 core graduation requirements are designed to give students better preparation for working in a global economy, and the skills needed to succeed in both college and the workplace.

Students in the Michigan Schools take up to 24 possible credits in their high school years. The additional electives are designed to help students pursue their specific field of interest like music, science, or business.

The pressure is on the Michigan Schools to rise to both national No Child Left Behind mandates, and the self-imposed new Merit guidelines. While most Michigan Schools residents are in agreement that the standards are overdue, the big question is how the state will help students achieve these goals. The 2007-2008 school year is critical as parents, teachers, and administrators strive to help the students in Michigan Schools achieve these goals

The Most Unusual Businesses

Since childhood I’ve had an interest in unusual businesses. I grew up with four brothers, and when it was time to vote for which television show we would watch, I sold my vote to the highest bidder. You could call that the business of politics. I collected the paper-wads that fell all over when my brothers had their wars, and then sold them back to them for a couple cents each. I was a war profiteer in the paper-wad wars. I also sold candy out of a hollow book in school.

My business activities were more conventional as an adult, but I still loved to hear about and read about the more unusual businesses. Sitting around a fire in an Arizona desert, I once talked to a man who sold used stuffed animals on the side of the highway. He claimed he sold $3000 worth his first month.

The Most Unusual Businesses

Then there was the guy I talked to in Grand Rapids, Michigan, who collected the bodies of dead deer. The county needed the deer carcasses off the roadsides for health reasons. They contracted with this guy for $25 per body. I’m not sure how he disposed of them, but maybe his other business was providing meat to dog food companies.

When I was living in Traverse City, Michigan, someone started a dog poop cleaning business. Want the dog without the responsibility of cleaning the yard? Call A-1 Pooper Scooper. I’m not sure if this would be better or worse than the dead deer collecting business.

Right here in Tucson, Arizona, there is a man who takes leaves from palm trees and twists and turns them into amazing animal sculptures. He sells these for anywhere from $2 to $12 in the street. The palm-leaf scorpions are the best. He just grabs leaves from the nearest palm tree and he can sell dozens of these in a day.

Unusual Online Businesses

Maybe you remember a few weird businesses from back before Ebay got all their rules. One woman made thousands per month selling used panties to fetishists. She bought new panties for her friends, who got them for free as long as they returned them to her unwashed, trading them in for the next new pair. The used and unwashed panties sold for $10 or more on Ebay auctions and they sold fast.

Perhaps you have heard about the online fantasy role-playing game called “Runescape.” It has four million players now. What you might not know is that in addition to buying “virtual real estate” in the game, and earning online gold pieces, you can buy these game things for real cash. There are Runescape entrepreneurs who sell their online houses in the game for hundreds of real U.S. dollars. I think it would start to get confusing – what is real here and what isn’t?

Then there was the guy in who decided last year to finance college by selling one million pixels of advertising space on his web page for a dollar per pixel. You had to buy a minimum of 100 pixels and you could have any image you wanted linking to anywhere you wanted. He succeeded in selling all one million within a few months. Maybe it’s time for me to get back into unusual businesses.

Why Bounced Cheques Mean Bad Business

Small businesses rely heavily on maintaining a good cash flow and having their clients pay on time. So when half of the UK’s small businesses are suffering from poor cash flow that is bad news for small businesses.

Recent research shows that small, medium and large companies have had many bounced cheques. Micro companies, with less than 10 employees, have been less affected.

One way in which this can happen is when someone pays a business by cheque for goods or services. The business pays it into their bank. The prudent business owner checks that the cheque has cleared and writes out new cheques based on the money that is in the business bank account. It later turns out that the cheque hadn’t cleared at all and the business owner is now overdrawn and in debt. This means steep bank charges and makes it less likely that business facilities will be extended in the future.

Understanding The Cheque Clearing System

Most people know that a cheque takes anywhere from three to seven working days to clear. The date that a cheque clears depends on:

1. The currency that the cheque is in. Sterling cheques in the UK clear more quickly than cheques in French francs, for example.

2. Whether the bank that has issued the cheque is in the same group of companies as the bank the cheque is being paid into. Cheques usually take longer to clear when paid outside the banking group.

3. Whether the cheque is paid in on a business day.

What most people don’t know is that most banks ‘clear’ cheques when the normal clearing period has elapsed. This sometimes happens before the bank has verified that the funds are available. The bank makes the amount of the cheque available for withdrawal but it hasn’t really cleared.

Some unscrupulous people can use this to their advantage. For example, they could pay by cheque for goods or services, write the wrong amount on the cheque, ask for a refund and disappear with the money well before the cheque clearing process is complete. When the original cheque bounces, it is the small business that is left facing an angry bank manager and a large bill.

Payment Help For Businesses

Luckily, there are other ways for businesses to receive money from their customers. The first is the Banks Automated Clearing System (BACS). This is a secure system in which payments take only three days to clear. This system is commonly used to pay salary cheques directly to employee’s bank accounts.

A more costly system (with fees around 25 per transaction) is the Clearing House Automated Payment System (CHAPS). This system allows same day electronic money transfers.

Business owners who are worried about being left with a large debt should consider getting their customers to pay by one of these systems where possible. This will reduce the high business cost of bounced cheques.