Mediaboss Marketing

The movie-making business can be a lucrative industry. Money flows in from producers, theater-goers, advertisers, dvd/digital sales, and merchandising. An often overlooked source of money for the film industry, however, are state governments.

Tax incentives and expense reimbursements are what cash-strapped states offer Hollywood to get it to spend money and Washington is no different.

Washington filmmakers got a big boost from the state yesterday when the legislature voted to reinstate film subsidies for locally-sourced productions. Lots of states seduce the film industry, but Washington at least demands to be treated like a lady. The Film Credit Bill (SB 5539) would pay back 30 percent of production costs to any movie, but only those whose crews employ a large majority -- 85 percent -- of Washington workers .

Supporters have framed the bill as a boost for Washington jobs. During a recession, voting for jobs sounds like a no-brainer, and the legislative break-down reflected that reality. The bill passed 40-8 in the Senate and 92-6 in the House.

Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee Ross Hunter was one of the few who opposed the bill. He argued that the subsidy was flawed in that many of the jobs created would be temporary and that the money could be better used elsewhere, like hiring more teachers instead of actors.

So do subsidies really get Hollywood to spend money in Washington?

The state film office, Washington Filmworks, which put forward the bill and has an obvious economic interest in saying "yes" says..."yes." Executive director Amy Lillard says that in the first five years that the subsidy was in place, 71 films employing 4,800 in-state employees generated a whopping $70 million in direct spending for the economy, numbers that are difficult, at best, to fact check.

That sounds like a good return on investment for the $3.5 million the state spent in the same time period. It's also a fraction of what other states offer to bring studios to town.

Nearly every state -- 39 in total -- currently has some type of legislative bait on the books, and the results have reportedly been mixed. Some states like Louisiana are courting studios with generous tax credits and claim to be turning a profit. Others like Michigan aren't as happy with the results.

"We're not seeing benefits of the subsidy," says Kurt Weiss of the Michigan budget office. "The jobs and economic activity were only temporary so the new administration has scaled way back."

Read more:
Should Washington State Subsidize the Movie Industry?

BRATISLAVA (Reuters) - The centre-left party of former Slovak prime minister Robert Fico looks on course to win an outright parliamentary majority, giving him a mandate to deliver on pledges to tax the rich and cut the budget deficit, early election results showed on Sunday.

Results from 67 percent of districts showed Smer took 46.2 percent of the vote on Saturday, which would give it 86 out of the 150 seats and displace a centre-right cabinet that collapsed in October after a liberal party refused to back a plan to beef up a fund to help crisis-hit euro zone countries.

A government led by the pro-European, 47-year-old lawyer would please Slovakia's euro zone partners, who were upset by the outgoing coalition's refusal to contribute to the first bailout of Greece and the delaying of the rescue fund.

"I predict that Smer will have won the vote ... and will receive the mandate from the president to form a government," Fico said after exit polls earlier showed him far ahead of all rivals.

Fico's strong showing would knock his reformist rival Mikulas Dzurinda's centre-right SDKU out of power after the SDKU-led coalition fell apart after less than two years.

Damaged by allegations of graft, Dzurinda's party would win just 5.5 percent, according to the partial results, a third of what it won in the last election in 2010. But it was likely to avoid being knocked out of parliament altogether.

Another centre-right party, the Christian Democrats (KDH), had 8.8 percent in the partial results.

The partial results may be somewhat skewed in Fico's favour because larger urban districts, where Fico's Smer party has traditionally been weaker, tend to be counted later. But his lead seemed wide enough to secure an unprecedented victory for any single party in Slovakia's 19-year independent history.

Final results were expected to be released later on Sunday.

TAXING THE BANKS

Read this article:
Slovak left looks set for sweeping election victory

Published: Sunday, March 11, 2012 at 5:27 p.m. Last Modified: Sunday, March 11, 2012 at 5:27 p.m.

Recent tension between health care advocates and predominantly Catholic institutions about preventive health care measures that include insurance coverage for contraceptives has again highlighted conflicts involving religious freedom. It's not a new debate.

Religious organizations have sought and occasionally received exemptions from rules that apply to others. Courts have examined religious exemption clashes case by case; for example, protecting the ability of churches to make core religious decisions, but denying broader claimed exemptions from health and safety regulations.

Lawyers, scholars and civil libertarians have differed on how to resolve conflicts between sometimes competing values: an individual's right to exercise religious expression free of government regulation; the need to uniformly enforce neutral rules on important issues like rules barring employment discrimination, the obligation of government not to interfere in the core mission of religious institutions and the need to safeguard the religious freedom of those of one religious faith (or no religious faith) from being subjected to the rules of others' faith. The government's efforts to ensure that all women have access to contraceptives as part of the national health care law is creating conflict with the Catholic Church and some religiously affiliated organizations. The government's current plan is to require that insurance companies provide coverage for contraceptives for women not only to regulate fertility but that doctors also prescribe to treat a variety of medical conditions. (This includes women whose religious principles do not bar the use of contraceptives.)

But this most recent flare-up is especially troubling in Florida. Here, some of the same groups that are demanding exemption, based on religious freedom, from parts of the national health care plan are, at the same time, asking voters to give them long-forbidden access to tax dollars to help fund their religious activities.

This radical departure from Florida's 125-year constitutional tradition of "no aid" to religious institutions will appear as proposed Amendment 8 on November's ballot, written by the Legislature in a cleverly deceptive way that is designed to seduce voters into supporting "religious freedom." On closer inspection, "religious freedom" means the "freedom" to get access to tax dollars.

These Florida groups want to exempt themselves from some government laws if those laws conflict with their religious practices, while insisting that government fund those very same religious practices. They want the money but not the rules.

That position seems a bit hypocritical. It is also short-sighted. Many defenders of religious liberty and far-sighted faith leaders oppose government funding of religion in part because government money comes with government strings. It's naive to think that government will not require recipients of public funds, including religiously affiliated institutions, to account for how those funds are spent.

By asking to be let out of rules that apply to everyone else, churches also are creating a slippery slope. If churches can opt out of policies that infringe on their beliefs, taxpayers might claim the right to opt out of paying taxes used for religious practices they don't support. They also may want to opt out of having to pay taxes for even nonreligious uses they disagree with or that violate their conscience, such as funding wars or providing foreign aid.

But we can't. Taxes aren't optional.

Link:
Having it both ways on ‘religious freedom'

Expatriates working in Abu Dhabi have just weeks to register for their Emirates ID cards before being subject to fines by the Emirates ID Authority (EIDA).

Workers in the emirate who fail to apply for their compulsory cards will be charged up to AED20 per day from April 1, with a maximum fee of AED1,000.

Foreign residents living and working in Dubai have until June 1 to register for their ID documents, but are currently unable to renew their residency visas without having submitted an application.

The northern emirates became subject to fees for non-registration from December 1, while workers in Sharjah were penalised from February 1.

Since the launch of the Emirates ID scheme in 2005, EIDA has made a series of moves to boost the number of card holders.

Expatriates have been given more time than UAE nationals to register with the authority, but are now all required to have submitted the necessary documents to renew their residency visas.

In a bid to put further pressure on residents to sign up for the scheme, the UAE government is increasingly requiring expatriates and nationals to present ID cards when dealing with federal agencies.

Read more:
ID card deadline looms for Abu Dhabi expats

A Russian couple who've made St. John's home say that, despite the big protests, Russia isn't ready for democracy.

Born in the East, the couple came to this province as refugees.

They say they're happy raising their family in St. John's, but life in the old USSR was ideal.

"People lived peaceful life, had jobs, travelled around the country," said Olga Dudko, who came to St. John's 10 years ago. "We had everything."

After the fall of the USSR, there was no security. "Criminal minds, they basically took over the entire country," Sergey Chudinov said.

Dudko and Chudinov left the USSR separately but met in St. John's.

Chudinov is from a fishing community is Northern Russia, a place called the Kola Peninsula.

When he arrived in this province he worked as a fisherman off Newfoundland's shores for 15 years before driving a taxi to spend more time at home. The couple has two boys.

They say when President Vladimir Putin took power in 2000 life in Russia improved. He stayed as on as president until 2008, but that was as much as the constitution allowed at the time.

In the recent election, Putin ran for an unprecedented third term. He won with 64 per cent of the vote, but has been accused of election fraud.

Excerpt from:
Russian expats question democracy in their homeland