Initiative 1098 is a ballot referendum asking the voters of Washington state the following.

Should the state levy an income tax on an individual income earner, whose income is $200,000.00 a year or higher, conversely, should the state also impose an income tax on couples filing jointly, whose earned income is above $400,000.00?

Since this blog will not only be read by Washingtonians, but also by those residing in the other forty-nine states. I need to inform the reader residing in states other than Washington, that The State of Washington, does not currently have any form of income tax.

Therefore, since the residents of other states are now on the same page, I will continue with my opining.

I was interviewed yesterday October 15, 2010, by a local television station in Spokane, Washington, concerning Proposition 1098. The primary question asked, “Will you vote to approve or will you vote against Proposition 1098?” Here is the video: http://bit.ly/dfgB37

Therefore, as a registered voter, someone asked, “How say you on this matter?”
My answer is straightforward. To levy a tax against one-group verses another group, is class warfare. History as and object lesson, if we allow such class envy, we are endangering of being the next target.

The idea to punish other people for being successful is not economically wise. If we as a nation or any state travel this road of punishing the efficacious entrepreneur, where would any of us be employed? Many may not like the truth; the poor generally do not employ anyone.

What has happened to the ideal whom every American, young, old, poor, or middle class desire to better their economic condition?

Do not all American’s desire their children to attain to a greater degree of success than they did?

Have we as Americans come to believe that the government is our road to success?

America’s economic strength isn’t understood, until you understand the American Spirit. The American Spirit found in the individualism, entrepreneurship, and the risk takers, of the people who populate this nation. America’s foundations are sunk into the bedrock of its people.

If we as a people surrender the very individualism, and defer to the government as its subjects, then the American ideal is lost. If we are mere subjects of the ruling class, no matter what party, subsequently we are no longer America!

America is great because we believe in our ability to be great.

Since the laying of the foundations of the United States of America, the world at large called our country a bastard nation. Why such coarse word to describe America? The word bastard does befit our identity. The idea of a bastard is a child without a father. We are a nation without genetic similarity to any other nation on the earth. We truly have no father.

America is the envy of the world. If this is not, so why is it that most of the people of the world want to come to America?
Then why would we as American’s want to be like the rest of the world.

Initiative 1098 ask us to declare war against our more successful brothers, and sisters. Let us not be like every other nation. We are Americans let us be the shining city on the hill, that everyone else wants to be like.

Revoke to attempt of government to make us their dependents. Government should be our tool not our master.

This editorial will be a view of liberalism, and conservatism systemic beliefs. Furthermore, what these two divergent philosophies impede or promote.

The terms’ liberal, and conservative I believe are really talking points. The more accurate terms are socialism, and individualism.

These two philosophies can and do mutually exist in the economic system in the United States. The danger is when we believe that either viewpoint must dominate the economic landscape.

Historically, we learned that pure unadulterated individualism without regulation failed. The runaway corporate greed of the late nineteenth century gave rise to the term “Robber Barons.” These tycoons thought of their own welfare. The regulation of “Antitrust Laws” enacted not only protected the common good. By reestablished the most important tenant of capitalism competition.

Nineteen seventeen began the grand experiment with the establishment of the communist form of government in Russia. This form of centralized authority naturally fit well with the socialist economic system. This undiluted socialist system truly was the antitheses of the pure individualism.

The two philosophies socialism, and individualism, left undiluted did, and destined to fail.
These two divergent economic systems so polarized, and on opposite ends of the commercial spectrum. Each ideal impedes the same economic necessity competition.

Socialism, and individualism seek to promote the same thing the common good. Both economic systems left unregulated overlooked one important fact the human condition.

The social welfare manipulated by the state with absolute power, as we know, absolute power corrupts absolutely. The historical footnote found in the tyrannical reign of Stalin over the Soviet Union, and the “Robber Barons” of the late nineteenth century. Both examples expose’ the human frailty of greed.

To believe that the state knows what is better for the common everyday person is a fool’s desire. That the individuals are not responsible for their own needs, but the state is, ends in slavery. The unbridled greed of the “Robber Barons” of the early twenty-first century or any century, leads to servitude, too.

As a business owner, I operate my business under this supreme rule. I treat other, as I would want to be treated. This phrase probably sound familiar; it should it is the golden rule utter two thousand years ago by Jesus Christ.

In closing, I ask should all of us not only be concerned with our own needs, but also the needs of others.

Many visitors have asked, “How did you learn to write”? The standard answer I offer is, “Writing is a learned skill, the more you practice, the better you write.” To all those would be authors start writing, compose something every day.

As an author I am embolden by the kind comments of the readers of Mr. Decal’s blog post. I am also thankful for those who analyze my writing talent.

Before September of 2009, I had not written any article, save the essays written in school. Since that first published article writing has become a passion. Two months ago, I challenged myself, to write a twenty-page narrative. The project had three purposes, first to write a story, two to develop characters, and three to write dialog. The fourth unmentioned objective that the story line, with characters, and dialog, would all work together to form a plot, and the readers are entertained. During this self-imposed undertaking, I did learn how to construct a plot using the three elements noted above.

A friend helped me identify another bright spot in my writing ability. He is an author and teaches writing at the university level. He recognized my talent of painting pictures with the written word. Something I always wanted to be able to accomplish.

After I completed the writing project, I found a hobby that I loved. Because of my experiences during the assignment, I did not want to stop writing. The next decision came from the newfound passion. I decided to write a novel.

Writing a novel is a daunting task. The average novel consists of 250,000 words, a narrative that is interesting, and keeps the reader turning pages. I find the task overwhelming, exhilarating and challenging. I write everyday a minimum of 500-1,000 words. I am learning the frustration of writers block, and taking advantage of the creative juices when they flow unabated.

Therefore, I want to thank all of my readers of Mr. Decal’s Blog for your kind comments and helping me launch my writing career.

The night before brewing, I had to cold steep coffee in other words I had to take my ground coffee add cold water to it and let it sit overnight.  Then the next day we added that coffee mixture to the water.  Because the coffee has certain oils in it, it will actually kill the head of a beer.  So as part of the grain mixture we had to add carapils.  These make the head frothier to counteract the oils in the coffee

You start off with 6 gallons of purified water (which gets boiled off to 5 gallons).  Once you bring the 6 gallons to a boil you start adding the ingredients.  The first thing you have to do is add the barley grains.  You can use wheat but for my brew we used barley.  You use a grain bag which is essentially a mesh bag you use to put the grains in and steep the grains.  Much like you would steep a tea bag in a hot cup of water.  However this cup is 6 gallons.  After the water has cooled down to 170 degrees you put the grains in the bag and you steep them for about 20 minutes.  Basically you are adding the grains for color and flavor only.  You are not extracting sugar from the grains with the steeping (which is called mashing).  The reason you are not extracting the sugars is because I bought a recipe that had an extract in it.  Once you add the extract the mixture is now called the wort.

Once the extract is added then you bring the wort to boil.  Then once the mixture is at a rolling boil you start a timer for 60 minutes and you add the hops.  When you add hops this early in the boil you will not get any of the aroma or the flavor.  These are called the bittering hops.  They add bitterness to the beer.  The reason these are bittering the beer is because all of the boiling you have to do is extracting the alpha acids out of the hops.  Once you add those hops it gets boring because you are just letting the wort boil.

Just before the boil ends I had to add the lactose (which is milk).  I wanted to brew a coffee milk stout so I have to have lactose in there. Now the lactose has to be un-fermentable sugars because I wanted the milk taste in the beer.  I did not want the yeast to eat the lactose sugars.

Once the boil ends things get very fast and interesting.  You have to take the wort off of the burner and you have to put a wort chiller in the wort.  Basically it is a heat transfer system.  It is a very long copper tube that is twisted around and around in a circle and goes in the wort.  You run cold water through it and the cold water cools down the wort, to the point where it is safe to pitch (add) the yeast.  Basically you have to pitch the yeast at a certain temperature.  Too cold and the yeast takes longer to get active.  Too hot and the yeast dies.  You want to infect the wort with the yeast ASAP.  Basically you are infecting the wort with the yeast so that nothing else can infect the wort.

Once the wort is chilled, you transfer it to a car-boy.  A car-boy is a 5 gallon glass bottle.  Up until this point it has been very easy to keep things sanitized because everything that you are working with is at a boil so anything that got in there was killed instantly because it was boiling.  Now that we are no longer boiling it can get infected very easily, and everything must be sanitized.

Once the wort is transferred to the car-boy you pitch the yeast.  What the yeast is going to do is eat all the fermentable sugars and poop alcohol, and fart CO2.  That is how the beer gets its alcohol content.

That is basically how you brew a coffee milk stout.  Or at least it was my observation of the whirlwind of activity in the process of brewing beer

Jason Bryant

www.decalfactory.com

First we must set a baseline for the discussion about the fading of color printing. Fading of color is a dilemma common to all industries. The plain truth is all color fades. Products such as carpeting, cars, decals, signs, banners, and a host of other products printed or pigmented with color fade.

The question we need to ask, “How quickly does a products color fade?”  This answer to this inquiry depends on the method of how a product is tinted.

The product that is pigmented implies the product’s color  is imbedded into the substrate. The pigmented product such as carpeting fades very slowly, but the product still fades. The product that is painted such as automobiles also fades gradually, but still fades.

The products that are printed such as decals, banners, signs, and other products exposed to sunlight. The process of printing these products utilizes two methods of printing, digital and screen-printing. The other methods of printing such as, flexography, offset will not be considered. These techniques are exclusively for indoor use.

I will highlight one product line, the plastic security sign. The plastic security sign is printed using the screen-printing method of printing. This technique is extremely fading resistance, but as noted before everything fades.

The question again, “How quickly does a products color fade?” The answer to this query depends on a few factors. The security lawn sign printed correctly will never fade to white. The printed colors will lighten over time, red may morph to an orange, dark blue may lighten.

The factor that lengthens or shortens the fading effect of a security sign is placement. The sign that is mounted facing north will not have significant color modification for five or more years. The security sign that is placed on the southern exposure will see color transformations in shorter durations. The east and west placements also have varying times of color degradation.  

Little known fact

Screen-printing companies test the veracity of their inks, by placing the security sign on a test board facing south. Every month a sign is left on the test board is equivalent to four months of sun exposure.

To conclude plastic security signs will not fade to white. Color changes will occur differently due to sign placement. So the question,” How long will my plastic security sign last”?  The answer is a general between 3-10 years.

The Decal Factory’s first and foremost desire is to make sure our customers are satisfied. When we print your decal, sign, banner, or security sign, we desire to keep printing your products for ever. The company has a long history of servicing our customer for decades. The Decal Factory works for you.  

Doug Bryant

<br><a href=”http://www.decalfactory.com“>The Decal Factory – The best decals, signs, labels, posters, stickers and banners in the industry for business and hobby.</a> <br>Toll Free – (800) 369-5331

We as a society have become very specialized in our chosen expertise. We call the Plummer to fix our broken pipes because they are an expert. We use an accountant to file our taxes, because they are an expert in their field.

This idea of a fiduciary relationship is seen more clearly when you either sell or buy a home. Most of us understand that if you are purchasing a home, you enter into a purchase agreement using your own real estate agent. We would feel uneasy about purchasing a home from the seller’s agent.

The reason we employ our own real estate agent is because by law, they represents you in as fiduciary. Your, purchasing agent looks out for your interest, not the seller’s interest. In real estate by law there is a line of demarcation separating the selling agent from the purchasing agent.

The agent that represents the home seller and the home purchaser must by law inform the purchaser and seller that there is a dual fiduciary. By informing both parties of the dual fiduciary the agent is communicating that the fiduciary relationship is in question.

The captured sales agent for a printing manufacture has a fiduciary relationship to that manufacture. Those agents only sell what that company manufactures, and will not inform you if their products do not fit your need.

The Decal Factory® is not a captured agent of any manufacture. Therefore The Decal Factory® can promote and nurture fiduciary relationships, because we answer only to our customers.

The singular fiduciary relationship is practiced by many printing distributors like The Decal Factory®.

Doug Bryant

<br><a href=”http://www.decalfactory.com“>The Decal Factory – The best decals, signs, labels, posters, stickers and banners in the industry for business and hobby.</a> <br>Toll Free – (800) 369-5331

This article will not fully detail the ins and outs of the flexography printing method. If you would like a full detailed understanding of this method of printing please read my previous article Flexography printing what is it? At the following location http://www.decalfactory.com/wp-index.php/2010/01/flexography-printing-what-is-it/

Custom printed banners printed as individual banners not on a roll in small quantities usually digitally printed. In larger quantities, the method of printing used is either screen-printing, or offset printing.

The roll-to-roll custom banners are printed using two methods of printing; the method of printing determined by the quantity, width, and repeat or length of the banner on the roll. To define some terms would help at this time. The width of the roll banner called the web width and the length of each banners image on the roll known as the repeat size.  

The digital method of printing would be selected for a small quantity of banners on a roll. The digital method prints any substrate on a roll with web widths ranging from one foot to as large as sixteen feet wide. This method of printing does not have a restriction on repeat length, but because of the slow speed of this method the roll lengths tend to be shorter.

The flexography method of printing is the only economical choice when a large roll length is required. The minimum roll length for a roll-to-roll banner usually is one thousand feet long. Some printing manufacturers using this type of printing may have smaller roll lengths, but not many have lengths less than 500 feet.

Flexography methods of printing roll-to-roll banners also have two other limitations, web width, and image repeat lengths. The largest image web width is thirty-six inches, and the longest image repeat lengths are seventy-two inches long. Since flexography printing uses printing plates, the printing plate web image width would be three feet by six feet image repeat length, if we printed the maximum size available.

Using this method of printing for roll-to-roll banners is very inexpensive, except for the first time set-up charge to produce the printing plates. This printing method can print one color up to four-color process or CMYK. The cost of the printing plates could $500.00 for one color to many of thousands of dollars for the four-color process image.   

The question is who uses this type of banner? The number one industry that uses the roll-to-roll banner is the radio broadcast companies. I am sure many of you have seen a particular radio station in your town or city broadcasting in front of a retail store.

If you remember in the background was this long ribbon of material with the stations logo call letters and frequency number printed and repeated along the entire length of the ribbon of plastic. The roll-to-roll banner you have seen, but most of us did not know what it was.

The question is how a banner printed using flexography printing, when this type of printing does not last long in sun exposure? The reason using this style of printing works is the banners used by the radio station after two to three days on location the banner is trashed. The next time the station goes on location another section of the one thousand foot banner roll is used.

Doug Bryant

<br><a href=”http://www.decalfactory.com“>The Decal Factory – The best decals, signs, labels, posters, stickers and banners in the industry for business and hobby.</a> <br>Toll Free – (800) 369-5331

Point of Purchase Advertising-Counter Mats

There are many types of in store advertising that companies can utilize, such as floor decals, shelf talkers, shelf danglers, mobiles and product displays.   The counter mat is usually displayed at the point of purchase in a retail store.  We have all seen the counter mat at the local auto parts store, or electric supply house when we are paying for the merchandise we have purchased.  Why do manufactures of products use the counter mats to advertise their products at the register? 

To most of us if we have not purchased the product advertised by the counter mat it seems to the buyer to little too late.  It only seems that way.  Advertising is not only asking the consumer to buy the advertised product, but the intent is to build brand awareness. 

Let us look at a possible situation.  You and your family for years have seen the Television commercial for ketchup advertising a very well known brand.  Even if I do not write the brand name and keep most of you guessing of what brand I am eluding to.  I will wager that most of us already see the word Heinz as the brand of ketchup, I am thinking about. 

The company who manufactures this brand of ketchup has succeeded in keeping the consumer aware of their brand of ketchup.  This would hold true also with peanuts packaged in a jar.  Even if I do not divulge the brand name most of us have already seen the word Planters Peanuts as the brand I am writing about. 

How many of us when we visit a grocery store to buy a product to blow our nose say we are going to purchase a box of Kleenex and not tissues.   The company that manufactures Kleenex has done such a good job of identifying their brand of tissues that the brand name has become the generic term for the product.

The companies that manufacture these products have done such a suburb job of advertising their brands that each brand name has become synonymous with the product they produce.   If we visit a retail store to buy ketchup we usually buy Heinz brand.  The same is true if we go to the store to purchase jarred peanuts we usually leave with a jar of Planters Peanuts brand.   We blow our noses with Kleenex not tissues.

How was this accomplished by these companies, advertising, advertising, and more advertising?   Advertising in any and all venues, such as; TV, radio, magazines, newspaper, banners, decals, product labels, floor decal, and shelf strips, shelf danglers, and counter mats where possible.

So why do manufactures use counter mats at the point of purchase?  The counter mat is just one part of a company’s attempt to build brand awareness.  Since advertising is subliminal it takes constant advertising to build the consumers awareness that a brand is synonymous with a particular product or service.

Counter mats are used, in the construction trade, electrical contractor outlets, hobby stores, lighting retail stores, auto part outlets, and many other venues that have a counter.

Doug Bryant

<br><a href=”http://www.decalfactory.com“>The Decal Factory – The best decals, signs, labels, posters, stickers and banners in the industry for business and hobby.</a> <br>Toll Free – (800) 369-5331

Bumper Stickers

The custom printed banner has been used in various venues, such as an in store promotion of a retail product.  The banner can also be affixed to the outside wall of a retail store to announce that a particular product is in the retail establishment inventory and is for sale.

 Banners make up one part of the circle of advertising to announce.  The circle of advertising for national products usually begins with media advertising such as television, radio, print advertising.  The banner’s graphics will have continuity relating to the media advertising.  Following is an example of the use of banners in a marketing plan.

 The product and service was XM Satellite Radio, this company used their logo and tag line in their media advertising to the consumer.  Their logo was a simple XM and the tag line “Beyond, FM/ AM” and a second tag line “To the Power of X”.  Now every banner we printed for this company had the simple XM logo with corresponding colors and every banner also highlighted the tag as a part of its logo.  The banner was an extension of the media advertising. 

 This ad campaign worked well when The Decal Factory® was commissioned to supply the banners for XM.  Their subscription base was numbered in the hundreds of thousands.   By the middle of the first year XM had increased their customer base to 1 million listeners.  Then in each years to follow the number of XM devotees was increasing by the millions, by the time XM was acquired by Sirius Radio XM had 9 million listeners. 

 No matter what your view is of the XM product and its difficulties, is besides the point;  This idea of using banners as an augmentation of media advertising was a successful strategy.     

 Banners are also utilized for civic purposes, such as the boulevard banners attached to light standards in a city downtown core to announce events, civic pride and festivals.  Banner are also used for: trade shows, special events, dealer banners, events banners, exhibit banners, expo banners, fair banners, farewell banners, festival banners, flea market banners, food fair banners, for rent banners, for sale banners, garden banners, grand opening banners, Greek dinner banners, hockey banners, hotel banners, league banners, roll banners, this surely is not an exhaustive list, but is enough to show that banners can be used for any reason.

 Digitally printed banners allow the small business or event to order as little as 1 banner at a low cost.  In the past this was not available because banners were printed by the screen printing method and minimum quantities and cost where prohibitive under 25 units. 

The Decal Factory® can print on various material and using various printing methods, such as screen printed, digital, offset, flexographic.  Each material and method of printing is chosen to fit to the need of each customers need.

Doug Bryant

<br><a href=”http://www.decalfactory.com“>The Decal Factory – The best decals, signs, labels, posters, stickers and banners in the industry for business and hobby.</a> <br>Toll Free – (800) 369-5331