ORANGE BEACH, Alabama They started lining up outside Docs Seafood Shack amp; Oyster Bar before the restaurant even opened Sunday morning.

Its crazy, manager Cindy Holden said of the lunch crowd that had packed inside, waiting for a table. I think were about to go into a record season here.

For businesses along the beach, Memorial Day weekend, the rite of summer, also acts as an indicator of the season ahead.

And this holiday weekend showed signs that tourism would rebound strongly from last years BP oil spill: from the filled pews in the churches to the occupied beach chairs on the beach, from the packed parking lots of tackle shops and surf shops.

On Dauphin Island, officials touted tons of fun all weekend on the towns website, with a pig roast, a water slide and refreshing snowballs.

The clear skies and 90-degree temperature certainly played a role in luring visitors to the shores, but business leaders said they were ready to welcome folks back.

While Docs had the advantage of flying an advertisement over the beach, as well as the worlds best gumbo claim, many other companies also reported record numbers.

Blonde Johns Surf amp; Skate, near the base of Alabama 59 in Gulf Shores, stayed opened until midnight Saturday three hours past normal closing because people just kept coming in, said employee Blake Blair.

Compared to last year, were crushing all the numbers, he said.

Each day, the shop sets a sales target, Blair said, and through the weekend theyve reached that figure by mid-day.

I think its going to be the biggest summer weve ever had, said Blair, who has been coming to the shop as a customer and a worker as long as he can remember.

At Cosmos Restaurant amp; Bar, on Canal Road in Orange Beach, general manager Jennifer Kaylor barely had time to describe the weekend, as she cleared a table and rearranged chairs, while families lined up at the entrance.

Were really happy to have everybody, she said. It lets us know that from here on out, its busy.

Youngsters and adults alike took a break from the sands at Adventure Island, on the north side of Ala. 182, to play skeeball, ride in paddle boats and on go carts.

Owner Frank Hughes said he lost 40 percent of his business during last years oil spill, and with the turnout this weekend, he said he was already anticipating an increase over years past.

We already know its better, he said.

Hughes pointed to the weekend crowd at Gulf Shores Church of Christ, where he is a chuch elder.

Summer service typically draws about 400 people, but on Sunday morning, there were 685 in attendance, he said.

They want to be faithful to God, Hughes said, even on vacation.

Holden said the crowds at Docs, one of Orange Beachs oldest restaurants, started showing up Thursday and she wasnt expecting a lull any time soon.

They just havent been here for a while, Holden said. And from what I hear, its going to be filled all summer long.

Small business tax incentives are keeping businesses in Canada small, hindering business efficiency and disproportionately benefiting the wealthy, according to a new study from the University of Calgary.

The study, authored by Jack Mintz and Duanjie Chen of The School of Public Policy, said that Canada’s small business tax rate creates a “wall of taxation” in the country that keeps businesses small so they can remain in favourable tax brackets.

“Our analysis questions the effectiveness of the small business deduction and other small business incentives in addressing growth,” the authors wrote. “Instead, we find that the incentives undermine the neutrality of the overall tax system and the tax goals of simplification, economic efficiency and fairness.”

Canada has a special small business deduction that allows companies with less than $500,000 in revenue to be taxed at a rate of 12%, less than the standard 16.5% corporate rate. This is to lessen the tax burden on small firms in Canada, which are viewed as engines of job creation in the country.

But the authors counter that that particular argument is not supported by studies.

“One Canadian study in 1997 showed that only 12% of small businesses grew from having less than five employees to 5-19 employees, and only 1% grew to having more than 20 employees from 1985 to 1992, despite the large number of small business corporations created during that time,” Mr. Mintz and Ms. Chen wrote.

Instead of job growth, the authors said that the small business tax rate has led to an abundance of small businesses in Canada that have no intention to grow. Furthermore, the authors said that wealthy Canadians have used the favourable tax rate as a tax shelter, incorporating small businesses to avoid high personal income taxes.

Mr. Mintz and Ms. Chen suggest that instead of maintaining a separate tax rate for small businesses, the corporate tax rate in Canada should be brought down in line with the small business tax rate.

The authors do, however, acknowledge incentives are needed to help small businesses, especially considering they have limited access to financing and the stock markets when compared with their larger corporate counterparts.

Mr. Mintz and Ms. Chen suggest a good place to start would be to create incentives for depreciable assets, which would allow all firms, regardless of size, to expense capital up to a certain limit. An example of this has been implemented in the UK.

The authors also suggest the government create capital gains incentives for firms that chose to go public. Current capital gains tax policy is geared toward private companies, the authors point out, and many are lost once a company goes public (including the small business tax rate).

Finally, Mr. Mintz and Mr. Chen criticized the current capital gains tax regime which creates an exemption for investing in small businesses. That exemption allows investors to avoid capital gains taxes, but only if shares are held in small, private businesses, and only if the proceeds of selling those shares are used to reinvest in another private businesses within a certain time frame.

The authors suggest that instead of the current exemption, which encourages holding assets instead of rolling them over into alternative investments, a “capital gains deferral account” should be created.

“In the capital gains deferral account, any assets that yield taxable capital gains (such as investments in real estate, public corporation securities, etc.) would enable entrepreneurs and other investors to roll over assets on a deferral basis until the assets are disposed of,” the authors wrote.

May 30, 2011

Another no-brainer news flash for Lee County politicians: A recent survey of business owners in Lee County says local governments should cut business taxes to attract new companies to the area.

In the May survey of 224 business executives by the Fort Myers Regional Partnership, 30% of the respondents cited the need to cut business taxes, second most important behind the availability of skilled workers.

More than half of business owners in Lee County are confident that business will improve in the next year, but they’re not all as eager to hire people.

In fact, hiring plans by Lee County businesses are unchanged from a year ago, according to a survey by the Fort Myers Regional Partnership. Only a quarter of those surveyed plan to hire more people and 6% plan to reduce their labor force.

Rising fuel and healthcare costs are business owners’ chief concerns. One quarter of respondents said high gas prices had a significant impact on their operations.

While politicians can only dream about lowering fuel and healthcare costs, they can certainly lower your taxes. Maybe business owners would start feeling a little better about hiring people if they felt politicians were on their side.

Dear Mr Kerry you think that it was time to press the reset button in Pak-US ties. But people are not computers and that is why there are no reset buttons for human relationships. We have seen what is the worth of American ?guaranties? many a time and somehow we have lost trust in you. Our nuclear installations have since the beginning been a thorn in the side of India and Israel of whom you are the spokesman among others. Pressing a reset button wouldn?t even help if there was one because US Pakistani relations have never been ?on track?. What you mean is you want the silent compliance for your policy of aggression and repression of our successive governments back. But the people of Pakistan, and even this government realizes that now a certain limit has been crossed which should never have been crossed and that is endangering the very survival of our country and therefore, of its government.

You have always refused to understand and even to give just a thought to the fact that the national interests of Pakistan and of the US as understood and promoted by the US government are far from identical, they even have hardly anything in common. The reason for this is that we are part of this region and of its history, its people and we share their woes while you live far away, you have no connection to this region apart from your hunger for domination and power and you have no respect for us. You don?t understand the difference in values and world view between your and our societies and you even think that we have no right to be different, to think different and to adhere to our traditions. All you want is to extract use from us, our soil and our natural riches. You should not be surprised if we don?t like to obey that. And don?t even try to tell us you will change because resetting the button would mean that you also have to reset to some previous, better situation. There has never been a better situation ever before. The way you are behaving is since you had come to America two centuries ago by killing and extinguishing its native population ruthlessly and then importing purchased slaves to work on your lands to become prosperous. You have never changed your code of conduct since then; because it had worked so well for you.

Yes, militancy is and militants including Osama bin Laden can be termed as our enemies also. But we do remember all along that they were planted by you who had come loaded with dollars and stingers to our country for Jihad against USSR in Afghanistan in 1980 and when the purpose was fulfilled you abandoned them because their parent countries were not ready to allow them back, so many of them continued to live by virtue of getting married to locals in Afghanistan and in the Pakistani tribal areas. After the 9/11 incident you launched an attack on Afghanistan to dislodge Taliban government with whom President Bush?s oil cartel was unable to ink a deal for oil pipeline project, these Jihadi supporters of Taliban became the first victims because of your occupation of Afghanistan in 2001.

In order to secure our country we demanded raising steel fences along the Pak-Afghan border which was rejected under your control, and later the militants were pushed inside our territory, to justify your drone attack to kill innocent women and children, who are all Pakistanis. Today your government is reported in our press tendering apology for recent drone attack killing civilians, but that does not help to bring them back. Is this not a crime against humanity, then why arrest warrants have not been issued against the delinquents as has been done very swiftly without any moral ground against Ghadafi and his son? These militants and their former sponsors are not at all friends of Pakistan also. But we ? other than you- never forget that this militancy has been is a novel gift thrown upon us by you for your own convenience thus misguiding thousands of Muslims to serve your political games and that the militants though they are on the wrong path are still human beings and part of our society. That is why our dealing with them would always be different from your dealing.

We will fight militancy but we will not kill and torture militants mindlessly as you do because we realize that they are human beings and part of our society. That is why we tried to find a different way to deal with them. Unfortunately, your insistence and interference has destroyed our own initiatives we had been taking from 2004 onwards in negotiating peace deals and addressing the rightful complaints of the militants when you started looking with suspicion. You know much better that this was also the considered and only way to peace expressed by late Richard Holbrooke, who wanted a settlement with Taliban as narrated by his doctor attending him minutes before he died. Every time such a peace deal was concluded a drone attack hit the tribal Pashtuns who had been concluding it and the peace deal was gone. Your misadventures of drone attacks have made militancy spread out over the whole of Pakistan and have brought death and destruction to our cities. Unfortunately on Tuesday morning NATO helicopters not only intruded into Pakistani territory but opened fire on the Pakistani border check post killing two soldiers. There is no common ground between us because you keep your national interests superior at all times as you have been telling us repeatedly. Your national interests which consist in furthering and steadying your military domination in our part of the world to get hold of our mineral and natural resources are contrary to our national interest which is to guard our sovereignty and to make peace and align ourselves to our neighbours with whom we share a good part not only of political interest but of social values also.

That is why we rightfully demand that you should just go away and leave us alone. We will manage our situation alone rather than be ruined by your ?love and affection? in the form of so-called aid attached with strings to compromise our sovereignty and solidarity, that leads us into slavery.

There were people actively gambling at the time of the service of these warrants, said Salt Lake police detective Lisa Pascadlo. She described the men Albert Chavez, 35, and Nikalaos Stanworth, 33 as hosts of the gambling activity. Both were arrested for investigation of gambling offenses.

Fourteen others who were there were identified and photographed. We anticipate screening charges with the district attorney against those people, Pascadlo said. I do not know the extent of those charges.

A man who said he was at the Main Street poker game when it was raided described the group as a bunch of friends who get together and try to get some competitive juices going.

He said he has been involved with Utah poker games for eight years, and that players find games by word of mouth and text messages.

You would have thought the world was coming to an end the way police came in, he said, describing the players as ranging from business owners to high-powered attorneys.

Speeding is illegal and people still speed, the man said, acknowledging that gambling is illegal in Utah.

Pascadlo said the evidence police seized suggests the operation was more than a series of friendly card games.

When you have someone, or in this case two persons, that in this case are arrested for money laundering, that tells me its more than just a few friends coming together, she said.

Steve Fidel

Twitter: SteveFidel

AAP

The federal government is claiming a win on the pokies after the states and territories agreed that setting gambling limits can be beneficial.

But it still faces an uphill battle to implement its mandatory pre-commitment scheme after all states, except Tasmania, argued that it should remain optional.

The scheme would require patrons to nominate their maximum losses before they started playing the pokies.

LAS VEGAS –
Nevada gambling regulators on Thursday unanimously approved a Station Casinos Inc. bankruptcy restructuring that keeps members of the founding Fertitta family in charge.

The Nevada Gaming Commission approved the Chapter 11 reorganization plan at a special meeting in Las Vegas, saying the alternative of lost jobs and casino closures would be disastrous for the state.

AAP

The AFL is urging the federal government to make cheating in sport a crime, punishable by up to 10 years jail.

The leagues general manager of football operations Adrian Anderson says bribery and corruption have cast a shadow on other sports abroad and the government should introduce laws to protect the integrity of Australian sport.

We have seen countless examples of international sports brought to their knees by gambling-related corruption, Mr Anderson told reporters at the launch of Responsible Gambling Awareness Week on Sunday.

Theyre gone now – but hardly forgotten.

The lovebugs.

In recent weeks, they prompted thousands of Floridians to abandon outdoor pastimes and form
lines at carwashes.

I hadnt seen such a bug in Florida, even though Ive made about a dozen trips to the Sunshine
State and many of them early in May – a peak season, Ive learned.

For the uninitiated: Lovebugs emerge twice a year – in April/May and again in August/September.
They seem to exist primarily to mate (hence the name).

The bugs travel in pairs. Like love-struck teenagers, the twosomes mill around in groups, the
males and females closely attached, with the larger females seeming to do the navigating.

Lovebugs chill, too, in groups.

At our condo complex, they favored the bushes and the wooden railings along the patios.

My introduction to the critters came as we left the Fort Myers airport in our (upgraded) rental
car: a pristine Buick Enclave.

Driving off the airport property, we were greeted with splat, splat, splat, spat – not unlike
the sound of an enthusiastic rainstorm in central Ohio, with a bit of hail mixed in.

It was raining lovebugs.

The wipers, unfortunately, served only to spread bug guts more evenly across the windshield.

Upon arrival at our condo, we encountered more – lots more.

The magnificent view of the teal Gulf of Mexico was obscured inside and out by hundreds of
lovebugs. Hundreds more that had done their thing and gone to their eternal reward littered the
floor of the condo near the sliding glass door.

Two thoughts quickly came to mind: Call the condo managers to find out what on earth the bugs
are; and, should the bugs continue to linger at the complex, decide where else we might go.

You see, a bigger issue was at work: Not only were we visiting Florida for a vacation, but we
were also planning to host my son and his girlfriend – who, by the time we left Florida, was to
become our future daughter-in-law.

I just couldnt see my Nathan on his knees at sunset on the beach, swatting bugs while
professing his undying love to Schauna.

Our worries didnt last long, though.

The lovebugs gave the lovebirds a break – by (mostly) bidding farewell.

And Schauna said yes.

Dispatch Assistant Business Editor Barbara James reports that the happy couple is thinking
about a spring 2012 wedding – in Columbus.

bjames@dispatch.com

Antiques/Art/Crafts

Boardwalk Craft Show Boardwalk at Rio Grande Ave. All handmade products. 609-522-0378 or 609-522-0198. Wildwood Beach amp; Boardwalk, Lincoln Ave., Wildwood; 609-522-0378. 5/28.

Bucks County Senior Art Show Senior citizen artists will display their work. Wesley Enhanced Living Doylestown, 200 Veterans Lane, Doylestown; 267-895-1100. 5/27.

Crafts amp; Antiques for Memorial Day Country crafts, folk art, custom jewelry, antiques amp; Victorian items. Our Lady Star of the Sea Church, 525 Washington St., Cape May; 609-884-5404, 800-275-4278. www.capemaymac.org. $1; free for children 12 and under. 5/28. 10 am-4 pm.