So there we have it: The president's proposed budget. Or, as some people are calling it, the president's "political document."

I'm curious what the shelf life of this thing will be. Both sides will get some mileage out of it during their campaigns. Beyond that, I think it's nothing more than a paperweight -- made, ironically, out of paper. It'll never get passed in its current form.

Still, there are a number of proposals in this thing that CPAs should pay attention to, particularly when it comes to taxes. Let's take a look at some of them.

• President’s budget proposes AMT elimination, tax reform (from the Journal of Accountancy)
• Obama proposes tax reforms in 2013 budget (from Accounting Today)
• Obama proposes higher dividend taxes in focus on wealthiest (from Bloomberg)
• Obama seeks higher taxes on big business (from Reuters)
• Budget seeks to boost tax revenue (from the Wall Street Journal)
• Obama's new budget: The winners and losers (an Associated Press video)
• Analysis: Politics trumps policy in Obama budget (from CNN)
• What you need to know about Obama's budget proposal (from MSNBC)
• President Obama’s budget revealed: A look at the tax details (from Double Taxation, via the AECM listserv)
• What if Obama's budget were your family's (an ABC News video)

I still remember that day two years ago when our friend, Edith Orenstein, appraoched us with a "crazy idea." What if we created a music video in Second Life and brought together the accounting A-list bloggers virtually?

The rest, as they say, is history.

So here is a trip down memory lane (actually only two years ago). The first music video for auditors and accounting filmed in Second Life. Conceived by our friend and blogger extraordinaire, Edith Orenstein over at FEI, and the Singing CPA, Steve Zelin, a cast of accounting's top bloggers, and a set, animation, and avatar training by MACPA's millennial interns on our own CPA Island in Second Life.

Read Edith's post that started it all here: If I were an auditor: Introduction, Cast and Crew

Photos from the shoot are here.

A special shout out to our friends from the Auditor Love Story and a Happy Valentine's Day to all!

I love David Walker. He's a CPA with a history of government service, a boatload of troubling numbers in his pocket, and a soapbox. Plus, he's not afraid to say what he really thinks.

And he thinks our nation is in trouble.

Nothing new there. He's been on his sky-is-falling tour for years now and has even made a movie about it.

This time, though, he has election-year candidates in his sights.

Walker led off his most recent appearance on CNBC's "Squawk Box" with this assessment of our nation's economy: "We're not Greece, but we're making some of the same mistakes as Greece. Our government has grown too big, it promises too much, and we've waited too long to restructure."

Ouch.

He saved the really interesting stuff, though, for the president and presidential wannabes. His message: Unless you're talking about our economy and how to fix it, you're wasting our time.

"In the 2012 election, we need to make sure that the economy and how we're going to put our nation's finances in order are top priorities," he said. "It's absolutely essential."

What we're getting instead is all of the usual election-year drivel -- personal attacks, populace claptrap and no one with the guts to tell us what really needs to be done because, frankly, it won't get them elected.

Things could get interesting later this year, though. Walker is convinced a third presidential candidate -- chosen through the non-partisan, non-profit Americans Elect initiative -- will appear on the ballot in all 50 states.

He also said he would fall back on his standing as former U.S. comptroller general to actually endorse a presidential candidate. "The stakes to our country are that high," he said.

That's one endorsement I'll pay attention to. Stay tuned.

One more note: Walker wore his CPA lapel pin on the show. Former MACPA staffer Nancy Coradi tuned in and reports that Walker had this to say when asked why he was promoting the profession: "I am a patriot who can add. ... Why shouldn’t I promote it?”

Why not, indeed?

The next generation to dominate the workplace will be Generation Flux and they will have a new set of skills.

And the good news is Generation Fluxers can be any age, according to Fast Company editor Robert Safian, writing in the must-read February edition and lead article, Generation Flux (photo source: Fast Company).

He introduces the concept in "from the Editor":

"In our hypernetworked, mobile, global world, the rules and plans of yesterday are increasingly under pressure; the enterprises and individuals that will thrive will be those willing to adapt and iterate, in a disciplined, unsentimental way...Generation Flux is a term that describes all of this -- the chaotic business era that we have moved into -- as well as the people who are poised to thrive in this environment."

Fast Company has no doubt that people and organizations can and will thrive in this new environment. 

But how?

The most important skill for this chaotic future is quite simply the ability to acquire new skills, according to Safian. Our own research as part of the CPA Horizons Project led us to the same conclusion. 

We saw it as a future-minded and flexible mindset combined with boundary-crossing "network leadership," because change can come from anywhere, anytime. We even had a group of young professionals describe the leadership model of the future in a MACPA whitepaper titled, "What got you here won't get you there."

According to these young professionals, the future is one in which CPAs:

• are proactive, flexible, adaptive and collaborative by nature;
• have regained the trust of their clients and the public at large
• have successfully bridged the profession’s “leadership gap” by focusing on succession planning,
• personal growth, and generational cooperation
• have created the profession’s premier global industry standards and best practices
• have redefined the profession through work / life integration, collaboration, and a team-first approach; and;
• have earned a reputation as technological innovators.

To achieve this vision of the future, they will need to focus on these six key strategies:

1. Professional unity
2. Work / life integration
3. The evolving nature of leadership and new leadership models
4. Proactive, goal-focused planning
5. Networked collaboration
6. Embracing and adopting new technologies 

Sounds a lot like Generation Flux, doesn't it?

Then there are these core competencies to succeed in the future from the CPA Horizons 2025 project:

1. Communications skills
2. Leadership skills
3. Critical thinking and problem-solving skills
4. Anticipating and serving evolving needs
5. Synthesizing intelligence to insight
6. Integration and collaboration

These are different skills that the CPA has traditionally held, yet they are the key to surviving and thriving in a rapidly changing and complex world. What are the skills you think will be most important in the future and how do you plan to get them?

Applications are being accepted for MACPA's next Leadership Academy class on May 7-9 in Timonium, Md. Get details and an application here.

Looking for these future-focused skills? Try the Business Learning Institute. 

• New MACPA white paper outlines future CPA leaders' vision for the industry
• Next-generation CPA Leaders chime in on the future
• What's over the horizon for CPAs?

Sorry to disappoint all of you late adopters and social media naysayers out there, but here's the deal: If you're not embracing the social revolution, you're quickly becoming irrelevant. Erik Qualman said it best: "The ROI of social media is that your business will still exist in five years."

In a world where people are at the center of everything we do, social media is becoming less optional every day.

But what about mobile?

Sure, we all carry around our iPhones, iPads, Androids, BlackBerrys -- whatever our device of choice is these days. But how many of us truly grasp their world-warping importance?

Reggie Henry does.

Reggie is chief information officer for the American Society of Association Executives, and at an annual gathering of state CPA society communicators, he said the mobile revolution is moving even faster than most had thought it would.

According to Henry, smartphone sales topped PC sales in 2011 -- a year earlier than predicted. In fact, he said it won't be long before most people access the Internet through their mobile devices.

So long, PCs and laptops.

"Things that we were predicting a couple years ago are here now," he said. "It's past time to move on mobile."

"So what?" you might be saying. "I carry a smartphone. I'm up to speed."

Really? Is your website mobile-friendly? Do you have an app? Is it optimized for the iPhone? The iPad? Android?

Let's take the iPad as an example. Some people have been debating whether it's a serious computer, but according to Henry, the iPad is about 125 times faster and has nearly 3,200 times the storage space of the top PC in 1986.

"Not only is the iPad a computer," Henry said, "but it's probably the best computer we've ever seen. ... Our mental models of computers and computing need to go. They're not accurate anymore."

Sometimes, he said, we fail to realize what we're holding in our own hands.

Sometimes, he said, we take too long to lead our clients to the next big thing and risk leaving them behind, doomed for extinction.

Technology is only going to evolve more quickly, folks. It's not going to wait for us to catch up.

Your clients depend on your ability to embrace these trends. Your job, after all, is to make sense of a changing and complex world. Your very existence depends on it.

Today is ancient history. The horizon is where the important stuff resides.

We don't need more answers, we need more powerful questions.

A recent FastCompany article featured the work of Bill O'Connor at Autodesk who set out to find the secret to innovation. He worked with a team of students from Hult International Business School and came up with these six questions:

1. What could I look at in a new way? (Steve Jobs looked at the computer in a new way, leading to the Mac and the personal computer revolution.)
2. What could I use in a new way? (Paleolithic humans turned fire from a scourge into a means of cooking, heat, light, and protection.)
3. What could I re-contextualize in space or time? (The Sumerians moved language from spoken to written form, expanding its power and reach.)
4. What could I connect in a new way? (Thomas Edison connected the light bulb to the electrical grid, leading to electrified cities.)
5. What could I change, in terms of design or performance? (Nearly 3 million years ago, the world’s first “innovator” transformed a simple rock into a stone hand-axe.)
6. What could I create that is truly new? (In 1776, American colonists created the first “intentional” nation, based on specific abstract principles.)

When you begin asking powerful questions, make sure you are focusing in inquiry and not advocacy or you will quickly shut off the creative and collaborative flow of ideas.

Turns out that innovation is not invention. Innovation involves a fresh look at what is versus the creation of something brand new, insights if you will. Our i2a:Insights to Action Strategic Thinking System is based on this premise and develops the ability to ask questions and facilitate collaboration. 

• Ten powerful questions for the CPA profession
• Eight questions for planning to grow in 2011
• The top five skills of Innovators

Here are a few titles for training your team on innovation from our Business Learning Institute (contact pam@bizlearning.net for more information).

Are you looking for answers or asking more questions?

Note: The following is a guest post from the MACPA's director of finance, Skip Falatko, CPA.

========

The Maryland Bankers Association held its fifth annual First Friday Economic Outlook Forum in Baltimore last month, where prominent economists and chief investment officers opined on the economy and markets.

It’s always an interesting event, but more so this year because of diverging opinions on which direction we’re going. I especially liked the fact there wasn’t much “on the one hand / on the other hand” economist-speak. They just put it out there.

This year’s panelists included:

• Jay Bryson, a global economist with Wells Fargo Securities, LLC
• Gregory Miller, chief economist with SunTrust Banks, Inc.  
• Jeffrey Schappe, CFA, chief investment officer with Sterling Capital Management/BB&T

 Moderating the panel was Anirban Basu of Sage Policy Group.

 First, let’s look at comments from last year’s panel and see how they stood up.

• Last year, the panelists predicted the range of 2011 unemployment to be around high 8 percent to 9 percent. Officially, we finished 2011 at 8.5 percent.

• Panelists predicted 2011 GDP to range from 2.9 percent to 4.5 percent. Actual 2011 GDP was 1.7 percent.

• BB&T’s Jeffrey Schappe was bullish on the 2011 stock market. The Dow finished up 5.5 percent, the S&P 500 was almost exactly flat, and NASDAQ was down 1.8 percent.

Here are the comments that stood out among this year’s panelists:

• Wells Fargo’s Jay Bryson expects more of the same economy we’re currently experiencing -- not necessarily a recession, but low growth. So, 2012 and 2013 will be a lot like 2010 and 2011. Europe is the biggest risk factor to our economy as Italy and Spain are too big to bail out.

• SunTrust’s Gregory Miller noted our problems are more than just housing. They are complex, have been a long time developing and will take years to work out. That being said, Miller anticipates 2012 GDP to be around 3.5 percent based on fewer negatives than in the recent past. These negatives include housing contraction and government intervention in the economy which he sees diminishing.

• Gregory Miller added that the real labor market issue is the decline in real wages which impacts 140 million Americans.

• BB&T’s Jeffrey Schappe was less optimistic, noting that people are too complacent about the economy. Schappe stated third quarter 2011 GDP was revised downward (twice) to 1.8 percent, industrial production contracted in November, much of Europe is in a recession, China is slowing down, and we have weak (0.21 percent) gross domestic income, which he sees as a better economic indicator than GDP. Schappe predicts a return to recession in 2012, albeit not as severe as in 2008.

So there you have it. Three divergent views of where we’re headed economically. 2012 will bring us anywhere from a recessionary negative GDP to 3.5 percent GDP growth. Given the weakness in the U.S. and world economies, I tend to be more pessimistic. I’ll predict 2012 GDP of 1.5 percent.

What do you think?

Sometimes obscurity is easier, isn't it? No one's expecting you to win anyway, so why not just pack it in, go home, and get some rest?

Except ...

Except what if you won? What if you decided that "good enough" wasn't good enough? What if you decided that you wanted to keep winning?

That just makes it that much harder, doesn't it? If you want to keep succeeding, you need to keep working. Keep busting your butt. Keep defying the odds. Keep doing the improbable.

Sure, it's hard. If it were easy, everyone would do it.

So you work. And you win. And then you win again. And again.

And suddenly, you're the New York Giants.

You're a team that was one loss from oblivion. You were an afterthought. You were picked to go nowhere. But you kept working, and winning, and then one day, you won it all.

We're all capable of great things. We just need to do great work, and believe.

Nobody is annointed champion. We have to earn it.

The Giants earned it. Hats off to them.

What are you doing these days to earn it?

My daughter had one of those "Why do I have to learn this stuff?" episodes on the way home from school recently.

Using, without a hint of irony, some of the math skills she's learned on the way to fourth grade, she said, "I can't believe I have to go to school for 12 more years!"

Partly because parents are required to say stuff like this but mostly because I believe it, I said, "If you do it right, sweetheart, you'll be learning new stuff for the rest of your life."

That's what I love about CPAs -- you get to learn for a living. Most of us struggle to carve out time to learn new stuff, but your designation -- your very careers -- depend on it.

How cool is that?

And yet I still hear instructors complain about folks who come to their CPE programs and hide behind newspapers or laptops for two or four or eight hours. "I don't really want to learn anything," these "students" are implying. "Just give me my hours."

Really? In a life this short, you're going to blow this opportunity to learn something new?

Given the rate of change and complexity these days, you could throw a digital dart at our online catalog and find a relevant technical topic you need to learn. Or ditch the technical stuff and brush up on some "success skills" -- leadership, sustainability, social media, change management, personal growth. There's plenty of that to be found through the Business Learning Institute.

Or forget about CPE for a while and learn something really radical -- like computer programming, or web development, or pretty much anything that MIT has to offer. Even places like iTunes U, TED and the Khan Academy offer fantastic education opportunities -- and they're all free.

Here's a great list of some other free educational opportunities floating around out there.

Look, I don't care what you do. Play guitar. Cook. Needlepoint. Map your family tree. Rewire your house. Create a blog and start writing for it every day. (Imagine that.)

Just learn something. Then learn something else. Then share it. Don't forget about that part -- share what you've learned with others. Help other people learn. (Social media is a great way of doing that, by the way.)

The point is this: Always be learning. Most everything else is a waste of our all-too-short lives.

It's a head-scratching kind of day on the tax front.

Exhibit A is seeping out of Washington, where the IRS and the Justice Department have launched a nationwide crackdown on identity theft and refund fraud. The numbers so far: Sixty-nine indictments and 939 criminal charges against 105 suspects in 23 states, including action in Silver Spring, College Park, D.C., and Wilmington, Del.

That's certainly good news. There's a special level of hell reserved for identity thieves, but since we can't send 'em there ourselves, we can at least take them out of circulation for a while.

At the same time, though, the IRS reveals that nearly 280,000 federal employees -- including 217 Senate employees, 467 House employees and 36 aides to President Obama -- owe about $3.42 billion in unpaid taxes. In other words, federal workers are responsible for almost 1 percent of the entire tax gap.

The IRS might want to launch its next crackdown a bit closer to home. Let's call it "Operation Cough-It-Up."

Exhibit B comes from Maryland, where business groups are blasting a proposal by Gov. Martin O'Malley to raise income taxes on families that earn $100,000 or more annually. "That would significantly impact small business owners, the majority of whom pay their businesses’ taxes on their personal income tax returns, according to (the National Federation of Independent Business)," Scott Dance reports in the Baltimore Business Journal.

Two days after that BBJ report hit the streets, the folks at The Tax Foundation released a report that claims Maryland has the ninth-worst state business tax climate in the nation.

Cause and effect? Hardly. At the very least, though, it's an interesting coincidence.

Clearly, there's a lot that needs fixing -- and a lot of obstacles standing in the way. What's your answer?

I don't know much, but I know this: Modern accounting goes way beyond the numbers.

Business today is global. The really good CPAs add context to the numbers, scan the horizon for weak signals of disruptive change, and help their organizations navigate an ever-changing world.

In short, CPAs and management accountants today are more than number-crunchers. They're strategic business partners.

Now, they have a designation that reflects that role.

The AICPA and the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants have launched their new Chartered Global Management Accountant (CGMA) designation, a title that emphasizes the strategic role management accountants play in their organizations.

The designation moves the spotlight away from the investment world's obsession with short-term financial results and places it squarely on long-term strategy. The CGMAs themselves will lead that conversation by helping companies "experience maximum integration between financial and non-financial information" and "make better informed decisions," AICPA President and CEO Barry Melancon said.

The designation also dovetails nicely with a couple of other important trends:

• CGMAs are emphasizing the human nature of modern business. An AICPA / CIMA report titled "Rebooting Business: Valuing the Human Dimension" says that "relationships with customers, employees, partners and communities ... will be key to getting things moving again and sustaining success over the long run." Now where have I heard that before? It's a people-first world, and the CGMA is built to thrive in it.


• CGMAs also focus relentlessly on transparency. Said CIMA Chief Executive Charles Tilley: "Global business leaders have to embrace and harness transparency if they're going to succeed in these changing times." I'm guessing XBRL, with its promise of data transparency and efficiency, will play a role in the CGMA world going forward.

But don't ask me. Ask a few of the world's first CGMAs:

MACPA Executive Director Tom Hood: "The CGMA puts an exclamation mark on the CPA license for those of us in business and industry. It recognizes the broad set of skills required by a management accountant in today's rapidly changing and increasingly complex world."

Joselin Martin, an MACPA board member and financial manager with Hayles and Howe, Inc.: "The CGMA credential tells users -– both internal and external -- that I have the skill and experience to translate business data into strategic insights that are future-based, accessible and understandable. It is the perfect complement to my CPA to position myself as the trusted source of strategic financial information in my company."

MACPA Director of Finance Skip Falatko: "The CGMA credential will help me, as an industry CPA, deal with an increasingly complex world by broadening my skills in strategy, leadership, and communication. In short, it will help me connect the dots -- not all of which are financial -- inside and outside my organization.”

The AICPA and CIMA are offering a ton of resources to examine the new designation in detail. They include the following:

• The official CGMA website
• Creating a new worldwide designation to meet the challenges of global business: A Q&A with Barry Melancon and Charles Tilley
• FAQs about the CGMA
• How to qualify
• Why CGMA?
• Benefits of becoming a CGMA
• What is management accounting?

New skills for a new designation: BLI's got 'em
In launching the CGMA designation, officials emphasized the new "success skills" that are critical for sustainable success. They including things like leadership, change management, strategy and ethics, and they're at the center of the MACPA's Business Learning Institute.

"These skills are based on the research from the CPA Vision 2011 Project and were recently refreshed and renewed through the CPA Horizons 2025 Project," said Hood. "We at the Maryland Association of CPAs are ready to help our CPA.CGMA members succeed in the new economy."

Learn more about what BLI has to offer here.

If not, it should be!

That was one of the tweets made during our BLI Thought Leader Symposium held last Friday at the CPA Center in Towson, Md. (Pictured are BLI's Top Guns Ryan, Perry, Padar, Dean, Pisano, Magee, Margaritis, Birnbach, Elder, McDaniel, Park, Alrichs, Sheridan, Hood, Conderacci).

Are you kidding? Life changing CPE? How?

The answer is simple: BLI. 

BLI is short for the Business Learning Institute, a center that facilitates the development and sharing of competencies and strategic knowledge required for leadership in today’s rapidly changing business environment. BLI delivers competency-based curriculum, courses, content and community to enhance learning and grow intellectual capital for organizational and executive leadership. See our story in a short clip here or read more about us in our glossary here.

BLI was formed in 1999 as a subsidiary of the MACPA to provide the high level success skills need by CPAs and businesses to compete in a rapidly changing and increasingly complex world. Last year BLI ran almost 600 customized on-site programs across the US, including 21 state CPA societies.

BLI partners with the best of the best to work with the best of the best. Pictured above is a recent meeting of BLI's instructors at our first thought leader symposium. The meeting started with yours truly playing Kenny Loggins' "Danger Zone," reflecting our "Top Gun" instructors. You can follow this meeting on our Storify page and on our blog post, "Top Guns" featured at BLI Live in Towson, Md.

Listen to testimonials from young professionals who attended the AICPA's Leadership Academy in 2009.

• Check out the Twitter stream from our "Top Gun" session.
• Check out our blog here.

So the next time you are thinking about CPE or training for your firm or organization, make it life changing by contacting BLI and asking for one of our Top Gun instructors.

View our course catalog of customizable programs that can be delivered on-site at your organization or firm. For information, contact Pam Devine at Pam@bizlearning.net.

Social media ROI has taken on urban legend status. It's like Bigfoot: Every now and then you hear about a sighting, but mostly, it's just a myth.

I think it's time to bury it once and for all.

Michelle Golden wrote a brilliant blog post recently in which she said the whiners who complain that they're not getting any return on their social media investment simply aren't doing it right.

"How have they been using social media?" Michelle asks. "Did they define their purpose? Specify goals? Once that was done, did they use the right tools? In the right way? With the right groups or people? And for how long? Did they track the right success metrics? ... Social media isn't the problem. Lack of planning and spotty execution are the problems."

I'll take it a step further. The whiners themselves are the problems.

In "Linchpin," Seth Godin puts forth a pretty radical idea: Generosity generates income.

Godin believes in giving stuff away -– giving away our knowledge, our resources, adding value to other people’s lives and not expecting anything in return. That’s how we become indispensable.

Pretty radical idea. It flies in the face of everything that capitalism stands for, right? The classic business model that we've all grown up with was all about product and profit. Make something and sell it for more. People were merely cogs in the production machine.

Here’s the thing, though: That business model? It’s dying. It’s been dying for probably five years. The rules have changed. We’re living in an era in which people are at the center of everything we do. Tom Hood likes to say we’ve moved away from an era of command-and-control to one of communicate-and-collaborate, of building communities and relationships. That takes people, trust, and a commitment to serving others, not just making money. People first.

Back to the concept of giving stuff away. Godin says there are three "circles" of gift-giving.

• The first is a circle of true gifts -– stuff we willingly share with friends, family and co-workers. You invite a friend over and give her a meal. You don’t charge her for it.


• The second is a circle of commerce. People in this circle willingly pay us for what we produce –- our consulting services, our financial advice, the books we write, the widgets we make.


• Now, the Internet has given us a third circle, and it’s kind of a combination of the first two. It consists of people who might one day pay you for what you do, but first they need to know you and trust you and be comfortable interacting with you.

Social media is part of that third circle. It's a place where we give away stuff, share what we know, add value to people’s lives. It's where we build trust, credibility, and relationships.

Do that, and you stand a decent chance of moving your followers into that all-important second circle. Fail to do that, and you're a relic in a changing world.

And still, the social media naysayers spout their nonsense: “Where’s the ROI? How come we’re not making any money on this stuff? I’ve been on Twitter for a week and nobody’s bought anything yet.”

There is no ROI in Twitter, or blogs, or Facebook. Not if you do it right. Those things are simply the tools we use to build relationships in a social world.

What's the ROI of social media? As Michelle Golden says, that's like asking, "What's the ROI of my phone?"

The ROI isn't in the tools. It's in the relationships you build through the use of those tools.

The irony is, the more we give away, the more we’ll make in return.

That’s today's business model. In a people-first world, maybe our organizations need to become more human.

Our friends over at Financial Executives International recently shared this list from FEI's CEO, Marie Hollein. 

1. Controlling the U.S. deficit
2. Tax reform
3. Health care uncertainty
4. Dodd-Frank Act implementation and revision
5. Employer-provided retirement plans
6. XBRL
7. Convergence of U.S. GAAP and IFRS
8. Private company accounting

Last August, the MACPA had a group of CFOs and controllers in for a roundtable on what was keeping them up at night and came up with this list:

1. Communicating effectively (new tools vs. face-to-face)
2. Talent / training / succession planning
3. Economic environment
4. Generational / work-life balance
5. Supply chain / rising costs
6. Strategic planning in uncertainty
7. Financial literacy about business
8. Increasing government regulations
9. IT security / privacy
10. Multi-tasking and increasing workload

Then there's the latest top trends to watch in 2012 from the CPA Horizons Future Forum process. And here are the lists from 2009 and 2008 from our CFO roundtables.

What I find interesting is that the current list from FEI is focused purely on the business finance and economics issues, whereas our group of CFOs (and the CPA Horizons 2025 research) included much more of the general business, talent, and leadership issues. 

We have been gathering resources for CPAs in the form of training, articles, and podcasts to help them deal with these major issues. Here is a page with each major future trends and links to resources. We also have plenty of programs available for almost all of these topics, either in our conferences and public seminars or available to your firm or organization through our Customized Learning Team. 

Here is our "future trends" resource center. Click on each trend link to see all of our resources for you.

The other interesting insight I take away from all of this is the change from 2009 (in the thick of the recession) from the other years. Three of the seven issues -- layoffs, capital spending cuts, and access to credit) -- have disappeared. Does that mean we are seeing bright posts on the horizon?

Here are upcoming events just for our Business & Industry members:

• Don't miss our special town hall / professional issues update for our business and industry members on March 21 in Timonium (free to MACPA members). Register here.
• Our Business and Industry Conference will be held on April 20 at Turf Valley in Ellicott City. Register here.
• The MACPA's CPA Summit features lots of programming around these big issues. It will be held on June 12 at the BWI Hilton in Linthicum, Md. Get details here.
• Leadership development with our 2012 Leadership Academy is scheduled for May 7-9.

What do you think? Are the big issues of leadership, generations, talent, and communication bigger than the more technical economic issues and why or why not? 

See the top 5 skills of the post-recession leader.

So there you have it -- just your ordinary, run-of-the-mill, election year State of the Union Address and opposition responses. Nothing at all political there. Nudge-nudge, wink-wink.

It's almost impossible to scrape the politics off your shoes after one of these things, isn't it? You can never quite get it all.

Still, let's give it a shot by taking a glance at some of President Obama's tax proposals.

• He called for a longer-term extension of the payroll tax cut -- not a terribly bold move, since Congress was likely to do that anyway after passing a short-term extension in December.


• He called for "lowering corporate taxes and providing incentives for U.S. manufacturers to bring overseas jobs back to America, while ending tax breaks for businesses that continue to outsource." That's a direct quote from CNN's coverage. "At the same time, Obama said, every multinational company should pay a basic minimum tax, while giving American manufacturers a tax cut."


• And here's the big one: He endorsed the so-called "Buffett Rule" by calling for a tax code overhaul that includes a 30 percent tax rate on people who make $1 million or more per year. In addition, Obama believes that people impacted by such a provision "should not receive tax deductions for housing, health care, retirement and child care," the New York Times reported.

As if any of this stands a snowball's chance of seeing the light of day anytime soon. What happens when a divided Congress enters an election year? Nothing. Absolutely nothing.

Still, let the debate begin. Here's a sample of some of the analyses that have surfaced in SOTU's wake.

Take it all with an extremely large grain of salt -- and watch where you step.

• Taxes and the State of the Union (from TaxGirl)
• Obama backs tax reforms (from Accounting Today)
• Tax policy references in the State of the Union (from the Tax Foundation)
• GOP response: State of the union is 'grave' (from MSNBC.com)
• Fact checks: FactCheck.org | USA Today | Washington Post | ABC News | Fox News | NPR
• Obama's State of the Union in a word cloud (from Reuters)
• Obama's State of the Union address in under 60 seconds (Washington Post video)