Bush's SBA
Much like the Capital One commericial where a fat cat bank executive is amused by a small business owner attempting to get a loan....
Jim Hightower has an excellent missive on how the Bush administration treats small business owners... excerpts below.
"I love to be in the presence of entrepreneurs and small business owners and dreamers and doers," President Bush
Small businesses, which the SBA defines as those with fewer than 500 employees, make up 99.7% of the United States' 22.9 million businesses. They also generate 60 to 80% of new jobs each year.
Bush has cut the SBA agency's budget by 25% since taking office. One of Bush's early actions was to demote from his cabinet the head of the Small Business Administration (SBA).
Bush's SBA chief recently bragged that the agency had awarded more than 25% of its contracts to small business, offering this as proof that "The president and his administration are committed to helping small businesses get there fair share of government contracts."
Of the 26 million business firms in America, 99.9 percent are officially considered small, the SBA claims to award 25% of its contracts to SMALL BUSINESS, where the hell are the other 75% of the contracts going?? You guessed right, BIG BUSINESS.
It turns out that even SBA's 25% number is a lie, for it includes contracts awarded to huge corporations that use legal loopholes to grab money set aside for small firms.
For example, Boeing has 37 of SBA's "small business" contracts, General Dynamics has 47 of them, and Northrop Grumman has 121.
The trick is that these giants either set up or buy small subsidiaries that get SBA cash. As a Boeing spokesman so cleverly rationalizes this ruse, "these companies shouldn't be penalized because they are associated with a large company."
Hello... are you stupid, or do you just hope we are? Your corporate subsidiaries are not "associated with" Boeing – they're wholly-owned by it, integral cogs in the Boeing machine.
Every dollar siphoned out of SBA by these connivers is a dollar denied to legitimate and deserving small businesses.
To learn more and to help put the "small" back in SBA, call the Business Alliance for Local Living Economies at 415-255-1108
Jim Hightower has an excellent missive on how the Bush administration treats small business owners... excerpts below.
"I love to be in the presence of entrepreneurs and small business owners and dreamers and doers," President Bush
Small businesses, which the SBA defines as those with fewer than 500 employees, make up 99.7% of the United States' 22.9 million businesses. They also generate 60 to 80% of new jobs each year.
Bush has cut the SBA agency's budget by 25% since taking office. One of Bush's early actions was to demote from his cabinet the head of the Small Business Administration (SBA).
Bush's SBA chief recently bragged that the agency had awarded more than 25% of its contracts to small business, offering this as proof that "The president and his administration are committed to helping small businesses get there fair share of government contracts."
Of the 26 million business firms in America, 99.9 percent are officially considered small, the SBA claims to award 25% of its contracts to SMALL BUSINESS, where the hell are the other 75% of the contracts going?? You guessed right, BIG BUSINESS.
It turns out that even SBA's 25% number is a lie, for it includes contracts awarded to huge corporations that use legal loopholes to grab money set aside for small firms.
For example, Boeing has 37 of SBA's "small business" contracts, General Dynamics has 47 of them, and Northrop Grumman has 121.
The trick is that these giants either set up or buy small subsidiaries that get SBA cash. As a Boeing spokesman so cleverly rationalizes this ruse, "these companies shouldn't be penalized because they are associated with a large company."
Hello... are you stupid, or do you just hope we are? Your corporate subsidiaries are not "associated with" Boeing – they're wholly-owned by it, integral cogs in the Boeing machine.
Every dollar siphoned out of SBA by these connivers is a dollar denied to legitimate and deserving small businesses.
To learn more and to help put the "small" back in SBA, call the Business Alliance for Local Living Economies at 415-255-1108
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