The truth is, I’m a tad ambivalent about this deal. From a purely business angle, I love this deal! It makes a lot of sense for Microsoft and it gives B&N the cash they need to grow their eBook presence. However, as a book lover, and bookstore lover, I don’t love this deal.

Yes, a $600 million dollar boost of capital is a great thing for most any company. However, in this case, Barnes & Noble is spinning off their eBook, eReader, and tablet business, which is currently contributing greatly to the income of the company as a whole. One of the things that separates Barnes & Noble from the now defunct Borders is their entry into the eBook market. Barnes & Noble came to the party a little late, but Borders was even later and was turned away by the bouncer. While eBook sales are still a small percentage of overall book sales, nook has given B&N a lot more power in the industry, and has improved the company’s cash flow.

With the Microsoft investment, and the new emphases on nook, they are basically drawing attention away from paper book sales. The further problem is that Microsoft’s interest in this deal seems to be less about eBooks and more about entering the tablet market. While there is strategic value for both companies, they seem to have very different goals in mind. I also see the extra emphases on nook as the first step in closing many of their large stores, and the beginning of layoffs.

Furthermore, the amount Microsoft is paying to acquire its 17.6% stake in the eBook division values the eBook/eReader portion of Barnes & Noble at $1.7 billion. Sure, its big business and that’s just another figure, but think of it this way: The $1.7 billion valuation is almost double what Barnes & Noble’s entire market capitalization was at the close of business Friday, before this deal was announced. It’s also more than the entire company has been valued at since 2008.

This deal will reshape B&N’s business in some ways, but by no means do I think Barnes & Noble stores will go away altogether. However, I do think that over the next three to five years, we will see a reduction of their well known big box stores. I can definitely see a move to smaller, boutique stores (maybe in malls) that mostly sell nook and nook accessories, and probably a few paper books such as best sellers and new releases. Picture a small Apple Store with a bookcase in the back where the Genius Bar would be.

Overall, I do think this is a good move for Barnes & Noble. I think it strengthens their position, helps them better compete against Amazon and Apple, and helps them stay viable for a few more years. But all of this comes at a cost, and I believe that the cost is a reduction in stores that sell paper books, a reduction in the selection of paper books, and a reduction in jobs, at least at the store level.

2012 started with news from the now largest bookseller, Barnes & Noble, that they are entertaining the idea of spinning off their eReader device, Nook. Nook is the one thing that has kept Barnes & Noble’s doors open while we watched Borders close all of their stores. The thinking behind it is not necessarily flawed. Barns & Noble wants to attract investors so they can grow and market Nook, but investors are weary of putting money in a company who could just as easily go out of business like Borders did. So, by spinning off the popular Nook (and its accompanying eBook store), you have the chance to attract investors willing to back the nook and eBook business without the attached risk of the “brick and mortar” stores selling paper books.

When I first read that a Nook spinoff was possibly in the works, I thought that by “investors,” the company was talking about larger, corporate type investors, like Liberty Media who last year invested $204 million in Barnes & Noble after a deal to buy the company outright was not reached. But over this Super Bowl weekend, a rumor about a Nook sprinoff emerged that made me wonder just what Barnes & Noble meant by “investors.” The rumor, which Barnes & Noble will not comment on, says that the company is looking into the idea of spinning their Nook business off, not only into a separate company, but into a separate, publicly traded one. I want to make it very clear that this is only a rumor at this point, but there’s something about it that makes a lot of sense, which makes me think that they’re at least considering the idea.

In early 2010, while the full extent of Borders’ struggles were just becoming obvious, billionaire investor Ron Burkle attempted a hostile takeover of Barnes & Noble, citing his feelings that the company was being poorly managed by its Board, and by it’s founder and chairman, Len Riggio. After an expensive proxy battle, Riggio and B&N narrowly avoided a takeover. In the wake of that, Riggio decided to put the company up for sale. Why not just let Burkle buy it? Well, Riggio stated that he thought Burkle was trying to buy the company for much less than it was worth. So Riggio decided to attempt to sell it for a lot more. Problem was, no one else thought the company was worth what Riggio and the Board wanted for it. The best offer came from, of all things, a media company. Liberty Media expressed interest in buying Barns & Noble, but a deal could not be reached, and Liberty instead ended up becoming an investor in the company and now owns a 17% stake.

The Yale Bookstore, a Barnes & Noble College Bookstore

In my opinion, Riggio is and has been looking to get out, and to make some money while doing it. He already made millions off the company years ago when he forced them to buy a chain of college bookstores which he owned (and initially borrowed money from B&N to purchase in the first place). That purchase, which became Barnes & Noble College Bookstores, is what put the company in debt, and started their management and financial problems. Now, with the closing of Borders, and the growth of the eBook market—led by their competitor Amazon.com—it seems that Riggio knows the days are numbered for old fashioned bookstores.

Anyway, I believe that after seeing that he was wrong about his valuation of the company, and after finding out that the only company that was interested at all was a media company, he now realizes that the only thing of value is the digital business.

I can understand wanting to focus on the most profitable part of your business, but it’s starting to look like Riggio and the Board are actively trying to kill off the brick and mortar part of their business. There is no doubt that eBooks are probably the future of the publishing business, but that doesn’t mean that the traditional bookstore is worthless or dead. If Riggio wants out, he should find a buyer for the stores, even if it’s at a lower price than he initially wanted.

Barnes & Noble CEO William Lynch holding the Nook Tablet.

Here’s how I see this playing out: If they spinoff Nook as a publicly traded company, the IPO will raise tens (if not hundreds) of millions of dollars for them to spend on growing and marketing Nook and eBooks for it. Right now, Barnes & Noble sells its Nook devices to stores such as Walmart and Best Buy. Under the new separate Nook company, Nook would likely sell its devices to Barnes & Noble stores as well, treating them just like any other retailer. This means selling the device at wholesale, then allowing the stores to mark up the price. But here’s the problem: right now, Nook is accounting for most of B&N store’s profits because B&N and Nook are the same company. If, as a separate company, Nook sells devices to B&N stores, the stores will only make a very little amount off the device sales. Margins on electronics are tiny. Very tiny.

There’s a bigger problem though. What’s keeping the Barnes & Noble stores afloat is the sales of eBooks and other digital content for Nook. Currently, all of that is sold through bn.com, which is part of Barnes & Noble. In a Nook spinoff, all of that content (and the associated sales), will go to the new Nook company. If you take content sales away from B&N stores, they will not survive. At least not at their current size. The only way they could stay in business would be to move to smaller stores, maybe inside malls, and sell bestsellers, new release, and of course, Nook devices. Maybe even eReader devices from other companies such as Sony, or even Amazon.

Conversely, Nook (the company) would continue to make money mostly from the sale of eBooks, while directly competing with Amazon, Apple, and others for their share of the growing eBook market. Either way, unless eBooks turn out to be nothing more than a bubble, the future of big box bookstores looks bleak. On the upside, maybe we will see the return of intendant bookstores over the next decade or so.

On May 1st, President Obama announced to the world that an Navy SEAL team had killed Osama bin Laden. While it’s somewhat morbid to rejoice in someone’s death, there’s no denying that the death of bin Laden gave many in the world a bit of closure. And just a few months prior, the world witnessed the people of Egypt take to the streets and demand the resignation of their leader, Hosni Mubarak. Mubarak resigned days later. In fact, the protests in Egypt’s Tahrir Square inspired similar protests throughout the Middle East, including a civil war in Libya which resulted in the fall of its government. The spirit of the Arab Spring spread to the US, too as the Occupy Movement took to the streets by the thousands in cities across America, occupying streets and city parks, demanding attention to the income inequality in this country.

Thousands fill the Wisconsin Capitol

However, months before there was an Occupy Movement, tens of thousands of protesters surrounded the Wisconsin Capitol, and later occupied it, in protest of Governor Scott Walker and his attempts to strip unionized workers of their rights. By February 16th, the number of protesters in front of the Wisconsin State Capitol was estimated at 30,000. On February 23rd, Buffalo Beast editor Ian Murphy placed a prank telephone call to Gov. Walker claiming to be Walker’s billionaire supporter, David Koch. Over the course of the 20-minute call, Walker repeatedly admitted to strategies that many considered to be ethics violations. The Society of Professional Journalists condemned the Buffalo Beast, calling its actions “underhanded and unethical”.

2011 also brought us the repeal of US military’s 18-year-old “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy. Now, gay and lesbian service members are allowed to serve openly. Then, on December 15th, the flag used by US forces in Iraq was lowered, marking the end of a war that left 4,500 Americans and 110,000 Iraqis dead at a financial cost of more than $800 billion. On December 18th, the last convoy of heavily armored US troops left Iraq, crossing quietly into Kuwait in the final moments of a nine-year war.

Congresswoman Giffords husband, Mark Kelly, holds her hand as she recovers.

The year did start off on a tragic note, with the attempted assassination of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords on January 8th. Six other people were killed that day. Though the story of Congresswoman Giffords turned an otherwise tragic event into one of the best stories of perseverance and determination. By April, her doctors reported that she was making great progress. She was even cleared to travel to Florida to watch her husband, astronaut Mark Kelly, take to space in his final Space Shuttle mission. Then, on August 1st, she made her first public appearance on the House floor to vote in favor of raising the debt limit ceiling.

The spring of 2011 was a difficult one. On March 11th, Japan was hit with a powerful earthquake and a devastating tsunami followed, claiming the lives of nearly 20,000 people. In the US, tornadoes ravaged the southeast. During a four-day period from April 25th to the 28th, more than 200 tornadoes touched down in five states. The deadliest day was April 27th, when 316 people died, mostly in Alabama and Mississippi, from 122 tornadoes. On May 22, Joplin, Missouri was hit by an EF-5 tornado that swept through the heart of the city, destroying over 75% of the town and killing 160 people. The death toll from this year’s tornadoes were so high that they tied for the second highest number on record. By summer, wildfires dominated the weather headlines. The worst was in Arizona, which also saw a number of huge dust storms in the fall.

The economy was still a big part of the news in 2011. Congress debated a new budget, and we almost witnessed a government shutdown in the process. Along with all this bickering came the nation’s first credit downgrade by Standard & Poor’s. The outlook for the American economy is still a bit bleak, as joblessness remains at record highs. But it wasn’t all bad news. The American auto industry made a big comeback in 2011, just two years after being all but left for dead. Record hirings and profits lead the way and officials announced plans to spend $380 million to expand facilities, adding more than 1,200 more jobs by 2013. In fact, all three major US automakers are increasing investment US manufacturing and hiring more workers.

A key point of contention in Washington this year was the extension of the Bush-era tax cuts, an issue that I’m sure will continue to dominate the news in 2012. But it wasn’t just the US economy that struggled in 2011. Toward the end of the year, problems across Europe began pilling up and spinning out of control. In Athens and Rome, a looming recession created panic on world markets. Reports emerging from Brussels said that Germany and France had begun preliminary talks on a break-up of the eurozone, amid fears that Italy would be too big to rescue. Markets around the world wondered what the fate of the Euro was, and currency prices plummeted.

On a lighter note, on April 27th, President Obama released his long form birth certificate, proving once and for all that he was in fact born in the US…well, to most people. Still, some hard right-wingers and conspiracy theorists claim it’s a fake. One thing we can all agree on (I hope) is that on April 29th, Prince William married Kate Middleton in the biggest Royal Wedding since Charles and Diana.

However, on another sad note, Apple founder Steve Jobs died of cancer on October 5th. Not before he brought the world a new iPhone, iPad, and Mac OS X though. His legacy stands and his ideas and creativity have forever changed the way everyone uses technology.‎

Other key events of 2011 included Casey Anthony being found not guilty of murder, manslaughter, and child abuse in the 2008 disappearance and death of her 2-year-old daughter, Caylee. Rupert Murdoch’s media empire crumbled a bit as public backlash over claims of phone hacking and other illegal tactics mounted. On October 20th, Moammar Gadhafi, Libya’s dictator of 42 years, was killed as revolutionary fighters overwhelm his hometown of Sirte. On December 18th, Kim Jong Il, North Korea’s leader, died of what was described as a massive heart attack.

2011 also saw the death of the bookstore chain Borders. A casualty of bad management, slow adaptability, and the emergence of the eBook revolution. With it’s closing also went another 11,000 jobs. We also witnessed the end of the 30-year-old space shuttle program when the Space Shuttle Atlantis landed for the last time at Cape Canaveral, FL on July 21at. And in an event that is sad to some, Oprah aired her last episode of “The Oprah Winfrey Show” on May 25th.

As we close the books on another year, I wish all of you a Happy New Year! May 2012 bring you everything you desire, and may the Mayan calendar thing turn out to simply be a case of not having enough space to keep writing….

It’s still early in the life of eBooks and eReader devices, and it is entirely possible that this is a bubble. It’s also entirely possible that eBooks are the future. The growth in eBook popularity doesn’t lie. It took Amazon just four years of selling their Kindle eReaders for their digital sales to surpass their print sales. And just a few days ago, at an investor meeting, Barnes & Noble made some lofty predictions about their share of the digital book market. While eBook sales accounted for around $250 million of their revenue last year, their current projections are putting eBook sales at more than $2 billion by 2015.

Now, in business, projections—particularly when stated to investors—are usually nothing more than pure guesses or best hopes. However, some figures are hard to ignore. Recently, publisher Hachette Book Group announced that their eBook sales were up 134% from 2010. According to the company, eBooks now represent 21% of their net sales. In October, the American Association of Publishers released sales figures for paper books, which were down significantly. One of the hardest hit areas was adult mass market books (the small paperbacks you most often find in the supermarket checkout line), which saw a 36% decrease in sales. Conversely, downloaded audio books were up 30% and downloaded eBooks were up 117%.

Ron Callari, InventorSpot.com

There is a simple reason for this: People gravitate to what ever is easiest. It’s not necessarily a case of laziness either. People are busy, and after working all day, taking the kids to their sporting events, getting dinner ready, etc., shopping in a bookstore for something to read doesn’t always sound fun. They have to leave the house, drive to the bookstore, stand and shop, stand in line to pay, then drive home. With an eReader, they can stay home, get the kids in bed, sit down in their chair, and within minutes, find something good to read. The downloads come fast, and it’s cheaper than going to the bookstore.

From the business side of things, eBooks make a lot of since, too. When a publisher decides to publish an author’s work, they are taking a huge financial risk. They have to buy the rights to the book (in some cases, they have to pay the author an advance, too). They have to pay an editor to get the book ready for print. They have to pay a designer to lay the book out for print. Then they have to pay another designer to come up with a cover for the book. Now, all of this is true when publishing an eBook as well, but what differs is that, for an eBook, their expenses largely end here. For a print book, they still have to pay a printer to print and bind the books. Then they have to pay their salespeople to talk retailers and libraries into buying copies of the book. Then they have to pay to ship (heavy, expensive) boxes of books to those stores and libraries. All of this expense comes before even one copy is sold. It’s a huge risk, and in today’s digital world, it’s an outmoded business model. Digital is cheaper to produce, there’s no shipping, and if it doesn’t sell well, there’s no inventory clogging up warehouse shelves.

As of now, the future of printed books is unclear. I certainly hope that eBooks aren’t the death of print books, but one thing is clear, we will see a lot more eBooks published in the coming years. And with that, we will see more bookstores close, as illustrated by the recent Borders closings. The writing is on the wall, and in big block letters: THE REVOLUTION IS COMING.

A Sam Goody store having a going out of business sale.

This particular revolution is shaping up a lot like the iTunes/iPod music revolution did. With the iPod, there was some initial hesitation from people over buying a device to listen to their music, but as prices of iPods and other MP3 players fell, more and more people joined the revolution. People embraced the revolution because it meant they had access to a bigger selection of music, at much lower prices. Bands embraced the revolution because it allowed them to have more control over their music, and to see more of the profits from the music they created. Additionally, music listeners were no longer limited to the bands on the record store shelf. The revolution allowed smaller bands from around the world—bands who had never been signed by a record label—to produce their own albums and make them available to anyone in the world. The Internet allowed them to market their music, and iTunes allowed them to sell it to a huge potential audience. And when music listeners could download an unknown band’s album for $10, instead of buying an $18 CD in the store, they were more willing to take a shot on the new band.

Another, and more recent analogous of this type of revolution is the Blockbuster Video/Netflix revolution. It used to be that when you wanted to watch a movie that you didn’t own a copy of, you’d go down to the video store and rent one. Much like shopping for a new book, it was somewhat inconvenient, but it was the only way to rent a movie. Then came a company called Netflix (though previous variations such as the failed DivX rental system had attempted to revolutionize the industry, Netflix was the first to suceed). Neflix eliminated the trips to the video store by having DVDs come straight to your mailbox. It took Blockbuster a long time to join the revolution, but once they did, movies by mail became the norm. That is, until Neflix found a way to eliminate trips to the end of your driveway to get a DVD. Streaming, on-demand movies are now the norm. For a reasonable monthly fee, you’re free to watch all the movies and TV shows you want without even getting off the sofa.

eBooks offer the same conveniences for the consumer. And like the digital music industry, eBooks offer greater conveniences to the content creators. There is a common view of book authors as rock stars in their own right. Many people assume that published writers are rich and famous. This is usually not the case. Their publishers make the most money, and the writer gets what’s leftover. This is somewhat fair, since the publisher is taking the financial risk. However, the new digital book world shifts this paradigm. Now, for a minimal financial risk (typically around a few hundred dollars), a writer can publish and distribute their own eBook, and keep all of the profits from it.

Self-publishing is by no means a new idea. Many well-known books were originally self-published (Chicken Soup for the Soul, The Joy of Cooking, The Elements of Style, and many, many more). What has changed with eBooks is the distribution of self-published books. Typically, when self-publishing a print book, it was incredibly difficult for an author to get their book onto store shelves. With big box bookstores like Borders and Barnes & Noble eliminating the small, interdependent booksellers across the country, authors were at the mercy of corporate policies. To be fair, Barnes & Noble has long had a program in place where they carry self-published authors in local stores, but it is still difficult for authors to get their books in stores not in their local markets. eBooks solve the problem of geography. Once your eBook is available in major eBook stores like Amazon and Barnes & Noble (which is much easier to do than getting a print book on a store shelf), it is immediately available to anyone with an eReader or eReading app on their smartphone or tablet computer. The only obstacle remaining for the author is marketing and publicity, a problem authors have in any kind of publishing. (Another misconception of the published writer is that their publisher markets their book, this is not always the case, and most published authors receive very little publicity from their publisher.) Digital self-publishing would probably die there, suffering the same hurdles as self-publishing a print book, if not for one very important thing: Social media.

It has never been easier for a self-published author to gain an online fan base than it is right now. A writer can build a following on sites like Twitter, Facebook, LiveJournal, and Google+ even before they’ve written their book. Then, when the book is done, they can tell hundreds, if not thousands, of people about it with the push of a button. The best part is, they can provide a link in their posts making it even easier for anyone to purchase their eBook. Pricing is another big advantage. Since the author will keep most of the sale price of their eBook, and because they don’t have printing costs to recoup, they can price it much lower than they could a print book. If an eBook is under $5, it stands to reason that more people will be willing to take a chance on an unknown author. Conversely, a self-published author selling a traditional paperback book in a store may have to charge upwards of $20 (when a typical paperback is $14) in order to make the production of the book financially possible. Few people will take a $20 chance on reading a book from an unknown author, but the odds of someone spending $3 or $4 dollars on an eBook that sounds interesting are a lot higher.

So, it is with a certain amount of reluctance that I accept this coming revolution. As much as I love paper books, the advantages of eBooks are clear. I hope libraries never go away. I hope I’ll always be able to browse the selves of a real bookstore. I hope that the library of books in my home doesn’t someday look like a museum instead of an actual library. But I also hope that the eBook revolution turns many more people onto reading, empowers more writers to share what they create, and helps those who already love to read to find even more great books to read. If those things happen, then this will be a revolution worth embracing.

For those unfamiliar with the movement, Occupy Wall Street was started by Adbusters, an anti-consumerist group based in Canada (a group I’ve been a fan of for years). The inspiration was born from scenes from the Middle East—demonstrations such as Cairo’s Tahrir Square—spawning visions for an American version of the Arab Spring. The movement has taken hold. Hundreds, if not thousands, have traveled to lower Manhattan to take part in the protest and similar “Occupy” protests have taken place in Boston, Chicago, D.C., Denver, Los Angeles, Miami, and Portland.

On basic principle, the Occupy Wall Street movement is an easy one to support. The is no denying that the large banks on Wall Street screwed middled America in the lead-up and aftermath of the 2008 financial meltdown. In short, banks made loans to people they knew were a high risk. Worse yet, the lenders convinced these high-risk borrowers that they could (with the bank’s creative financing) have their own piece of the American Dream and own a home. For the most part, the people these lenders made loans to were not financially healthy enough to afford a mortgage, but the bankers convinced them they were.

As a result, millions of Americans have seen their homes seized by banks, while millions more worry everyday that they will be next to lose their home. Once the collapse began, some of the country’s largest banks began to crumble and the government stepped in to bail them out of trouble. Why? Well, no one was really sure what would have happened if our major investment banks failed. Perhaps the free market would have just corrected itself, or perhaps the entire world’s economy would have collapsed. With no clear-cut answer, the government used our tax dollars to prevent a total collapse.

It seems to have been a success. Taxpayers have even seen most of that money repaid. However, that’s of little comfort if you’re one of the unlucky who lost their home in the wake of this mess. While the banks who made obvious bad loans got their money back, millions of Americans lost their life’s savings and their homes.

It’s not surprising that Americans would want to take to the streets and protest. The basic, original, message of Occupy Wall Street seems to be clear: Protesters are fed up with corporate greed in all its forms. From bad bank loans, to BP oil spills, to companies like GE paying no taxes. However, as the movement grows, so does the message and the list of demands. What started as a call to end corporate greed has grown into a laundry list of complaints about American politics. The list now includes ending capital punishment, ending wealth inequality, ending corporate censorship, eradicating joblessness, stopping police intimidation, stomping out American imperialism, and ending every war.

Billionaire Investor Warren Buffett -- He'd like to be paying more in taxes and I say we let him!

This lack of focus, I fear, is doing more harm than good. At the heart of things, Occupy Wall Street addresses a hugely important issue: The underlying problems of America’s financial and political system. However, whether it is the media’s fault or the movement’s lack of focus, the arrests of protesters and videos of police brutality become the headline, distracting Americans from other issues. Leading up to this, there had been a lot of media coverage on jobs bills, unemployment numbers, the good that unions do, and the idea of taxing the super rich a fair share seemed to be really gaining traction. Now, protesters being pepper sprayed and drug through the streets of New York fill the nightly headlines.

There is also the issue of the location. Yes, Wall Street is symbolic as the place for greed and uber-capitalism, but not everyone who works on Wall Street is an evil, greedy bastard. I promise you that every weekday morning, there are hundreds of young workers, fresh out of college, going to their Wall Street jobs and struggling to get by just like many of the protesters they pass on their way into work. They no doubt dream of someday running Goldman Sachs or JPMorgan Chase and making millions of dollars, but isn’t that a part of the American Dream? Financial and professional success at work has long been a part of The Dream, wherever you work.

Money isn’t the problem here. In fact, Adbusters is fulled by donations from millionaires and from an indirect link to billionaire George Soros, proof that money isn’t inherently evil. The problems are greed, missus of money, and political corruptness. We need to change the system. Protests are a great way to give people a powerful voice, but for that voice to be heard, protests need to be focused. What made Tahrir Square a success was that everyone there was focused on the same goal. It really didn’t matter where the protesters met, what made it work was they were meeting with a unified message and a unified goal in mind. The “Occupy” movement has the right sentiment behind it, but the message needs to be fine tuned. If corporate greed is the main concern, focus on that and take that message to the streets—not just Wall Street, but any street.

Doug Lamborn

I live in Colorado’s Fifth Congressional District where we are currently “represented” by Rep. Doug Lamborn (R). On Friday, in an interview with KHOW radio in Denver, Mr. Lamborn said that compromising with President Barack Obama would be “like touching a tar baby.”

Granted, my Oxford dictionary states that tar baby is an informal noun meaning a difficult problem which is only aggravated by attempts to solve it. And of course, as kids, most of us heard the story of Brer Rabbit wherein a tar covered doll was used as a trap for Brer Rabbit.

Mr. Lamborn claims that he intended the dictionary meaning in his use of the term. He has also sent a letter of apology to President Obama. However, many are outraged that he would even consider using such a racially-charged phrase. Tar baby is an archaic term, one that almost no one would honestly equate with “a difficult problem.” To most people, tar baby is more commonly known as a derogatory term for a black person.

Jeff Anderson as Randal Graves

Either Mr. Lamborn is, at heart, a racist, or he is ignorant. Neither option is attractive in an elected official. If he is a racist, then I (and many others) do not want him representing our district. Conversely, if he is truly unaware that the term has any racial meaning, that’s almost as bad. Someone that out of touch should not be representing us either. Or, perhaps it is secret option #3 and Mr. Lamborn was “taking it back,” like Randal in Clerks 2…

Anyway, vague Kevin Smith movie references aside, I deliberated for much of the day about what I wanted to say to Mr. Lamborn. All of what appears above crossed my mind, but in the end, I decided to keep my letter to him more succinct. Below is what I sent him. I eagerly await some sort of response.

It saddens me that, in 2011, racism still runs so deep in our culture. It is especially disheartening to see it in our elected officials. I live in your district and find your “tar baby” comment to be absolutely deplorable. You were elected to represent the people of your district. I can assure you that you do not speak for me or for anyone I know.

Your attempts to step away from a phrase that, in modern language, is associated only with a derogatory term is even more disappointing.

I am pleased to hear that you’ve sent a letter of apology to President Obama. However, as I say, you have clearly shown that you do not represent me, my friends, or my family, and I therefore ask that you resign at once so that we may replace you with someone who better represents Colorado’s Fifth District.

Regards,

Ryan Lowery

The U.S. government is currently operating in a deficit—that is, they spend more than they take in. This is a way of living that many American households can easily relate to. So, like many American’s, our government is living paycheck to paycheck while using credit to pay for things it couldn’t otherwise afford. Problem is, the nation’s credit is just about maxed out.

When a person reaches the point where their credit cards are maxed out, they can either stop spending, file for bankruptcy, or they can decide to apply for another credit card. This last option, in simplest terms, is what Congress is trying to do. They are currently holding a family meeting to decide if the family should go deeper into debt.

However, when the U.S. government needs more credit, instead of getting a new Visa card, it issues Treasury bonds to investors. These investors include individuals, institutions (like mutual fund companies), and even foreign governments. The money raised from these bonds is used to keep the government in business, i.e. supporting wars and paying retirees their Social Security payments.

These Treasury bonds are attractive to investors because they pay a steady interest rate and are considered very safe investments. When the U.S. sells a  Treasury bond to an investor, the U.S. is making a promise to pay the investor a certain amount of money, at a specific interval, for a specific period of time. If, however, the U.S. does not raise the debt ceiling, it will be in danger of not being able to meet these financial agreements. If it cannot pay the interest payments to bondholders—even if just one payment were missed—the result would be what’s known as a default.

What would happen if you were unable to pay your credit card bills? After a few missed payments, your creditors would stop allowing you to buy things on credit. Also, if you were unable to make any payments to your credit cards, your credit score would take a hit, which would make it harder and more expensive for you to get credit in the future. If the U.S. were to default, basically the same thing would happen. Their credit would get cut off and their credit rating would be lowered, making future borrowing more difficult and more expensive. There are short-term consequences, too. For instance, retirees might stop receiving Social Security checks and military veterans could see an interruption to their benefits.

That’s just the near-term effects of a default. Further fallout would be felt for years and years to come. Treasury bonds would be less attractive to future investors. The U.S. Dollar, as a commodity, would fall in price, making things more expensive for all Americans. Stock markets around the globe would decline, affecting the retirement funds of not just Americans, but people around the world. Mortgage rates would also climb, causing more damage to an already sluggish housing market.

Elected politicians are playing a very dangerous game of chicken right now. Both sides are trying to use the nation’s potential default as a bargaining chip. Republicans want to extend the debt ceiling just long enough so that we have to revisit the issue during the 2012 presidential election. Meanwhile, members of the Tea Party are using the threat of default as a way to punish Republicans who are seen as not conservative enough. This is an important issue and we as citizens must tell our elected officials what we think of their games. Please use the links below to locate your Congressmen and Senators and write or call them to tell them what you want.

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A Borders Store in Liquidation

It’s a sad day for book lovers. And for the economy and the unemployed. Today, Borders Group Inc. announced the company will be liquidated and all of its remaining stores will be closed.

After failing to find any last-minute bidders willing to keep the company in operation, the company canceled a planned auction that would have taken place tomorrow, and will soon turn the company’s assets over to liquidators.

Last week, Najafi Companies, a Phoenix, AZ based privet equity firm, offered to buy Borders for $215 million, but Borders’ creditors had objections with the buyout over fears that the deal was structured in a way that would permit Najafi to sell off parts of the company without repaying the company’s debts.

With no other buyers, the bankruptcy court has approved the sale of the company’s assets to Hilco Merchant Resources and Gordon Brothers Group, a pair of retail liquidation firms.

Borders had been the second largest bookseller in the US, once operating more than 1,000 stores. By the time the company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in February of 2011, its numbers had dwindled to 642. In its bankruptcy restructuring, the company trimmed that number to 399 with just under 11,000 employees, who will all be jobless once the liquidation is complete.

The liquidation of Borders is a sad day for many book lovers. The company’s management has been criticized for myriad reasons over the years, but perhaps the key factor leading to the company’s collapse was due to it’s late and perfunctory entry into the eBook market. The release of its overpriced and under-featured Kobo eReader was delayed a number of times, and was outdated by the time it finally hit the shelves late last year. The day it was released, Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble both dropped the prices of their eReaders, making Kobo way overpriced for the features it offered in comparison to Amazon’s Kindle and Barnes & Noble’s nook.

On the upside of an otherwise depressing piece of news, with hundreds of big box stores gone, maybe we will see a re-emergence of small, independent book stores, even if all they offer is used books. While eBooks will likely keep increasing their market share, I don’t think we’ll ever see books go away completely.  At least that is my hope.

This comes one day after Ronald Burkle of Yucaipa Companies purchased another 603,000 shares of Barnes & Noble.

For years, Burkle has been publicly vocal about his view that Leonard Riggio, the chairman of Barnes & Noble and its largest stockholder, has not acted with the best interests of other shareholders in mind. Frankly, I feel comfortable in speculating that Burkle may well be the one who has involved Weiss & Lurie in this battle, but perhaps with good cause. As a former shareholder of Barnes & Noble, I agree with Burkle’s assessment of Riggio’s actions.

It’s probably unlikely that a class action suit will come of this, but it is an interesting plot arc in the Barnes & Noble saga, and it does raise good questions regarding other offers the company has received. By the end of 2010, it was being reported that more than twenty private equity firms were considering a deal. So, what happened to those offers? With twenty-plus suitors, Liberty Media cannot be the only attractive offer. Presumably, other offers have been made and shareholders have the right to full disclosure regarding any potential offers made.

All of this could be moot anyway. Liberty’s offer was for $17 a share, and ever since the offer was made public, shares have been trading much higher than that. Today, shares of Barnes & Noble (NYSE: BKS) closed at $19.21. With tons of uncertainties surrounding a media company owning and running a retail bookseller, the offer price was really the only attractive part of Liberty’s offer, so if other offers are made, they will have to be well above $17 a share for shareholders to even entertain them. However, every aspect of a potential deal should be made available to shareholders, regardless of who the bidder is.

'80s Mega Band Mötley Crüe

Do you remember the ’80s? No, not the big hair, stonewashed jeans, and Swatch watches, rather the “merger madness” that ruled the business world. The 1980s saw big business takeovers like no other decade. It was the ’80s that gave birth to the corporate raider, the leveraged buyout (LBO), and the unprecedented growth and consolidation of America’s biggest businesses. In fact, many of this country’s biggest companies became the huge companies they are today during the 1980s. At a time when a large section of the country was making the exciting switch from their Atari 2600s to the new, 8-bit Nintendo Entertainment System, a smaller, more select group of Americans were buying up companies and consolidating their wealth.

The ’80s were the heyday of corporate raiders and LBO firms. We saw DuPont acquire Conoco for $8 billion. We witnessed the $6.6 billion dollar purchase of Marathon Oil by U.S. Steel, and then we saw Texaco buy Getty Oil for over $10 billion. And then there was the battle over Gulf Oil, which eventually ended with Chevron acquiring them for a mere $13 billion. By the mid-eighties, the now infamous Kohlberg, Kravis, Roberts, and Company (KKR) was becoming a well-known powerhouse in the world of corporate finance. In 1986, KKR completed their $6.2 billion acquisition of Beatrice Foods. Two years later, Philip Morris successfully acquired Kraft for $13.1 billion. This, perhaps, set the stage for the largest leveraged buyout the world had ever seen: The now famous LBO of RJR Nabisco by KKR for an unheard-of $25.1 billion.

Then, like an inevitable Sunday morning hangover, the 1990s arrived. Recession and recovery became that decades theme, perhaps a predictable end to one of the most unfettered financial eras in history. As far as mergers and acquisitions go, the past two decades have been quiet, in comparison. Though we have had plenty of entertainment in regards to corporate scandals. Enron. WorldCom. And of course the complete Wall Street meltdown of 2008. However, emptied retirement accounts and handcuffed executives aside, big business still thrives and mergers and acquisitions happen all the time. What we don’t get everyday is billionaires going head-to-head over control of a company.

A battle over Barnes & Noble has been going on for years now. While Barnes & Noble technically started decades ago in Wheaton, Illinois, what we know as a Barnes & Noble today began in 1971, when Leonard Riggio, a Bronx native, bought a New York City book store called Barnes & Noble. Over the years, he bought more book stores and expanded Barnes & Noble into the big box retail chain it is today.

However, there are some who feel that, in recent dealings, Leonard Riggio (the company’s largest shareholder) has not acted with the other shareholders’ best interests in mind. Case in point, the acquisition of Barnes & Noble College Booksellers. The criticism comes from the fact that Riggio and his wife borrowed money from Barnes & Noble to purchase hundreds of college book stores and then Riggio sold the bookstores to Barnes & Noble at a personal profit of millions of dollars. All of that is perfectly legal, but many shareholders argued that the college book stores were not useful to Barnes & Noble and in fact, saddled them with hundreds of millions of dollars in debt.

Ron Burkle

Chief among these critics is billionaire investor Ronald Burkle. Burkle heads Yucaipa Companies, a California-based private equity firm. In 2008, Burkle started purchasing large amounts of Barnes & Noble stock, and in 2010, he launced a proxy battle in an attempt to win a seat on the board of directors for himself and two outside directors he’d chosen. Burkle felt that Riggio had stacked the board too heavily with his own hand-picked friends. The battle got a little ugly, and it was a close fight, but in the end, Len Riggio narrowly defeated Burkle. Only 44% of shareholders voted in favor of Riggio (and about 30% of those votes came from Riggio himself), but it was enough to fend off the takeover. However, in the middle of this battle, Riggio announced that the board had decided to put the company up for sale.

Late last week, billionaire businessman John Malone, who heads media giant Liberty Media Corporation, announced he was interested in buying Barnes & Noble for $17 a share, or about $1 billion. This immediately sent Barnes & Noble shares higher, to levels they haven’t seen in about a year. Malone’s deal comes with the stipulation that Leonard Riggio remain on board. Why would a media guy want to buy a book store? Most likely because of Barnes & Noble’s share of the eBook market. B&N came a little late to the eReader party, but their nook eReaders have been a huge success and have placed Barnes & Noble in second place of eBook sales, right behind Amazon.com, who introduced their first Kindle eReader in late 2007.

Then, today we learned that Ron Burkle was not yet done with Barnes & Noble. According to filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Burkle has bought another 603,000 shares of the company at $18.489, well above the Liberty Media offer of $17. And Burkle’s average purchase price is still under the Liberty offer of $17 per share.Today’s purchase brings Burkle’s total ownership to 19.74%, which is just under the 20% “poison-pill” trigger recently adopted by the company during Riggio’s last battle with Burkle.

Barnes & Noble is not the only major book store in acquisition territory. Borders and Borders U.K. have had their fair share of offers, as has U.K.bookseller Waterstone’s. It will likely be a good while before we see any deal involving Barnes & Noble, but the real question is: What kind of deal will we see? Most likely, any deal will involve store closings, layoffs, and a downsizing of the company’s brick and mortar retail presents. What is the interest though from any potential buyer? Are they even looking at the sales of real books? Or could this be the first step toward a world dominated by eBooks? I think I’ll go listen to Green Day on vinyl while I think about it…