Why Do Conservatives Hate Small Business And The Entrepreneurial Spirit?

Gwen Graham, first 2015 freshman to earn her clown outfit

Yesterday, the House passed Steve Chabot's Small Business Regulatory Flexibility Improvements Act of 2015 (H.R. 527), every single Republican plus 19 conservative Democrats-- overwhelmingly New Dems and Blue Dogs-- making up the 260-163 majority for what they're calling a "bipartisan bill." Two of the worst congressmen from the Republican wing of the Democratic Party-- Collin Peterson (Blue Dog-MN) and Henry Cuellar (Blue Dog-TX)-- were co-sponsors. These are the Democrats who crossed the aisle to vote with the GOP:

• Pete Aguilar (New Dem-CA)
• Brad Ashford (Blue Dog/New Dem-NE)
• Ami Bera (New Dem-CA)
• Sanford Bishop (Blue Dog-GA)
• Jim Cooper (Blue Dog/New Dem-TN)
• Jim Costa (Blue Dog-CA)
• Henry Cuellar (Blue Dog-TX)
• Pete DeFazio (OR)
• John Delaney (New Dem-MD)
• Gwen Graham (Blue Dog/New Dem-FL)
• Ron Kind (New Dem-WI)
• Ann Kirkpatrick (New Dem-AZ)
• Patrick Murphy (New Dem-FL)
• Ed Perlmutter (New Dem-CO)
• Scott Peters (New Dem-CA)
• Collin Peterson (Blue Dog-MN)
• Kurt Schrader (Blue Dog/New Dem-OR)
• Kyrsten Sinema (Blue Dog/New Dem- AZ)
• Tim Walz (MN)

The legislation was designed to pad the bottom line of big political campaign contributors in Big Business. Using "Small Business" in the title is typical Beltway subterfuge meant to mislead the public. Chabot's bill is more in line with GOP priorities-- further deregulating Wall Street, for example-- which are harmful to small businesses. Chabot's bill also seeks to help Big Business get around EPA regulations and to undercut regulations that protect consumers and workers from excessive greed from capitalist sociopaths. The three Democratic freshmen most blatantly in the pockets of Big Business-- Pete Aguilar, Brad Ashford and Gwen Graham-- all backed the bill, signaling the K Street lobbyists their offices are open for business.

Amit Narang of Public Citizen’s Congress Watch Division wrote that Chabot's bill is vague by design. "The SBRFIA is designed to mislead lawmakers and the public into believing they are helping small businesses, while giving large corporations a free pass on rules designed to hold them accountable and protect the public."

Wisconsin Congressman Mark Pocan was one of the progressives urging his colleagues to defeat the proposal. "This bill," he told us, "is what America has come to expect from House Republicans-- nothing more than a deregulation bill for Wall Street and big corporate polluters disguised as a small business bill. It would delay or block environmental safety, food safety, workplace safety and consumer product safety regulations even when those regulations don’t apply to small businesses."

Legacy business legislation in San Francisco is necessary to survival of humanity

"Family-owned bars and restaurants, corner groceries, unique boutiques, and arts- and culture-related businesses -- the very places that once gave San Francisco its charm -- have been the first to go" in the city's hemorrhage of small businesses. Cuco's, a Lower Haight taqueria, was run for 23 years by Carmen Campos and her husband Domingo.

"To live in a city without small businesses owned and patronized by people of all ethnicities is unthinkable to me."

-- the author

by Denise Sullivan

I don't know about where you live, but here in San Francisco, we have a disturbing phenomenon:  The city is hemorrhaging small businesses. Family-owned bars and restaurants, corner groceries, unique boutiques, and arts- and culture-related businesses -- the very places that once gave San Francisco its charm -- have been the first to go.

In the final quarter of last year, San Francisco Supervisors David Campos and Mark Farrell released the findings of a report they'd commissioned which revealed that by the end of 2014 San Francisco would lose 4,378 of its small businesses. Drawing on previous studies, the report stated the uptick in small business displacement was  "a significant increase from the 693 businesses lost in 1992, the first year of the study." Significant?  I'd call it criminal, but for corporations and tech-based companies in San Francisco it's just business as usual.  As you've no doubt read, the escalation of hyper-capitalism run amok (I hope that isn't a redundancy) is that much more . . . amok here.

Just today, the San Francisco Chronicle published a story about people with more money behaving like jerks more of the time than the rest of us. Referring to a survey conducted out of UC Berkeley, studies suggest drivers of luxury cars are more likely to run over pedestrians in a crosswalk than those behind the wheel of a "beater."  I'm fascinated by the stats, and believe the findings, based on personal experience. I'm also intrigued by the use of language in the article, as it reveals how changing mores, changing attitudes, changing language are all part of the gentrification process, though sometimes it's hard to tell garden-variety change from generalized gentrification, hyper-gentrification and what our local activists call "gentrifucation."

Since the city's initial 1992 report and its final analysis in 2011, the stats on closures and relocations leapt from 1,300 annually to nearly 13,000. The report judges this bleed unacceptable and, further noting that among those businesses many were longstanding neighborhood and community-serving establishments, for example purveying plaintain burritos and vending vintage housewares, advises a move toward legislation. Adding to the urgency is that many of these closures were in Campos' district, the venerable Mission, home to Latino families, artists, and now the tech elite (Facebook Mark Zuckerberg lives on a bordering neighborhood, where his McMansion looks down on the flatlands). Farrell's district recently lost 28-year-old All Star Donuts.



All Star Donuts closed in September after 28 years in the Marina.

The supervisors' report claims that London, Barcelona, and Buenos Aires have policies to aid local heritage, and San Francisco has established a program for its local bars and restaurants that qualify for legacy status. It's possible we could really lead the way here and become the first U.S. city to add small, local, and culturally relevant businesses to a roll call of brick-and-mortar establishments deemed worth preserving. Incentivizing commercial property rentals for landlords, providing assistance through city agencies for purchase of properties for tenants, issuing small business loans to businesses that need increased cash flow will all go some way toward preserving our neighborhoods' character and keeping jobs local. It's said stable local neighborhood businesses also lead to reduced crime.

But the political will of voting-age San Franciscans is weak: Aside from the overworked and underpaid activist and community-organizing committees who do the heavy lifting, the few here who vote on local issues are not enough to carry support for these kinds of measures. We who support protections are labeled old and in the way; it's said we are nostalgic, pining for a San Francisco that no longer exists.  That may or may not be true, but to live in a city without small businesses owned and patronized by people of all ethnicities is unthinkable to me.

"City Hall has a responsibility to protect successful businesses from the unnatural economic pressures created by the affordability crisis," said Campos in a prepared statement. Though one wonders what qualifies as a successful business?

I'll  tell you what a successful small business means to me, based on personal experience. One night, at closing time, I was at the counter of the bookstore where I work (one of my three jobs, supplementing my income as a writer, of course). A man asked if we had a Spanish-language copy of The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho. To my great pleasure and his relief, I said yes, and grabbed it off the shelf for him. We chatted, as you do in a bookstore, and he told me he was off to visit his relatives early in the morning; he needed the book as a gift for his 12-year-old niece, hoping it would inspire her to follow her dreams.

If not for transactions like these, a young woman may not have received the priceless gift of the message The Alchemist has delivered to its millions of readers. The human touch, books, and dreams are not generally the way of city governance, though they could be. Today, I am embarrassed to say I am San Franciscan, though I have hope that we can turn things around. "When we love, we always strive to become better than we are," writes Coelho in The Alchemist.  "When we strive to become better than we are, everything around us becomes better too."

Bruce Springsteen, "Human Touch"

The rights holder doesn't allow us to embed the song, but you can see and hear it here.

Denise Sullivan, the author of Keep on Pushing: Black Power Music From Blues to Hip Hop, is a San Francisco writer whose most recent DWT contribution was the January 19 post "Selma Songs and More Music for MLK Today."


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Carol Shea-Porter Is Certain Small Businesses Will Power An Economic Recovery

There are no sure shots in electoral politics. Anything can happen. But right now, we're looking at all the Blue America House races and we think the closest we have to sure shots for our candidates are Beto O'Rourke (TX) and Alan Grayson (FL). Alan Lowenthal (CA) seems pretty solid and Carol Shea-Porter appears to be in good shape as well. It looks like New Hampshire voters snapped out of it and realize what a dreadful mistake they made in 2010. The state legislature is likely to flip back to Democratic control and things like good for both Ann Kuster and Carol. Although a poll from UNH came out showing a drastic swing in favor of New Hampshire teabaggers, most unbiased observers say the poll was ridiculously flawed and unreliable. All other polls have shows Carol ahead of teabagger Frank Guinta. The last legitimate poll had her up 47-48%, even though the corporately-funded Guinta outraised her grassroots campaign $1,355,159 to $803,945 (as of the August 22 FEC deadline).

Although Carol is probably best known for her work on behalf of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans and to close the donut hole in the drafting of the Affordable Care Act, when she was in Congress from 2007-2011, she was a fierce advocate for small businesses, particularly from her position in the Education and Labor Committee. This weekend she did a guest post for us on why she believes in the ability of small businesses to help power an economic recovery.

Big Faith in Small Business

-by Carol Shea-Porter

After losing more than eight million jobs during the Great Recession, more than 700,000 of them just in December of 2008, we have gotten more than 4.5 million jobs back. The unemployment rate is now 7.8% across the country, and we've had more than 30 months of private sector job growth. Many Americans are still struggling and too many are suffering, but there is more optimism about our future. The newest Federal Survey of Economic Conditions, "The Beige Book," said New England's economic development "continues to expand at a moderate pace" and that manufacturing and business service and real estate sales are up, commercial construction is up, and retail is mixed. It reported that prices are steady, no inflation is expected, and that the mood is "cautiously optimistic" in 2012, and more "bullish" for 2013. While times are still tough and we have a way to travel to return to the "pre-Wall Street crash of 2008" economy, Congress and President Obama were able to avoid another Great Depression and put the country back on the road to full recovery. It's a good time to review what policies helped small business, and what do we need to do next?

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (the Stimulus) put more than $21 billion in new investment in small businesses. Congress eliminated all fees on SBA-backed loans. It also lifted the ceiling on the loan amount that the SBA would guarantee from 85% to 90%. There were significant small business tax cuts as well. Congress also passed The Small Business Jobs Act. This was supported by both the Small Business Majority and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and the President of the National Small Business Association said at the time that "It doesn't matter what aspect of small business you are in, this bill has something for you." We created a new lending fund for community banks. We encouraged small business investments by cutting the capital gains tax on people who invested in small businesses, and passed legislation allowing businesses to use net operating losses in 2008 and 2009 to offset profits from five previous years, instead of the two years that had been allowed.

The positive effects of the 2010 Small Business Jobs Act are still being felt in New Hampshire. The Union Leader wrote an article on July 9, 2012, called "New NH Business Start-Up Fund Will Aid High-Tech Firms", and in it, they discuss how $4.5 million in federal funds is being used to back up a partnership between a private company and the NH Business Finance Authority. This will attract private money to invest in high-tech firms. BFA's Executive Director is quoted as saying, "It's a private market solution. We're backstopping the deal through an innovative guarantee mechanism, but it's largely driven by private capital." To which I say, "Perfect!" This is another success story, creating wealth and business in New Hampshire.

There is still so much to be done though. We still need a comprehensive jobs bill, and small businesses still need help. What can we do next?

Congress needs to cut through some red tape still. While we all know that there have to be rules of the road, we must do only what is necessary, and eliminate some of the paperwork and provide regulatory relief whenever rules are unnecessary or too heavy-handed.

To help entrepreneurs launch new businesses, we should let them set up a tax-preferred account like a Roth IRA, instead of dipping into their retirement savings too much.

It's a good idea to double the small business start-up tax deduction, and we should provide tax credits and deductions to encourage new technologies. I believe that we need to help small businesses get more contracts with the federal government and help them export products. We also need to fully fund the Small Business Administration.

Small businesses are the economic engine of our country. Our nation's full recovery depends on their full recovery and success. We have come so far, and they have worked so hard. We must not fail them now.

Senate Republicans Filibuster DISCLOSE Act... To Death-- While House Democrats Muscle Through Aid For Small Businesses In The Face Of GOP Obstruction

Boehner tries to kill tax relief bill for small business; fails

In a strict party-line vote yesterday-- every Democrat voting for cloture to shut down the filibuster, every Republican voting to continue the filibuster (yes, the Maine girls too)-- the Senate killed S.3628, the DISCLOSE ACT for this year. The summary of the bill, in part:

Democracy is Strengthened by Casting Light on Spending in Elections Act or the DISCLOSE Act-- Amends the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971 (FECA) to prohibit: (1) independent expenditures and payments for electioneering communications by government contractors if the value of the contract is at least $10 million; and (2) recipients of assistance under the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) of the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 (EESA) from making any contribution to any political party, committee, or candidate for public office, or to any person for any political purpose or use, or from making any independent expenditure or disbursing any funds for an electioneering communication.

Applies the ban on contributions and expenditures by foreign nationals to foreign-controlled domestic corporations.

Requires the highest ranking official of a corporation, before making any contribution, donation, expenditure, independent expenditure, or disbursement for an electioneering communication in connection with a federal election, to file a certification with the Federal Election Commission (FEC), if this has not been done already, that the corporation is not prohibited from carrying out such activity.

President Obama says he's disappointed by the Republicans' knee-jerk obstructionism. Have Jim Messina and Rahm Emanuel been hiding that from him for the past couple years? “I am deeply disappointed by the unanimous Republican blockade in the Senate of the DISCLOSE Act, a critical piece of legislation that would control the flood of special interest money into our elections. Today’s decision by a partisan minority to block this legislation is a victory for special interests and U.S. corporations-- including foreign-controlled ones-- who are now allowed to spend unlimited money to fill our airwaves, mailboxes and phone lines right up until Election Day. And it comes at the expense of the American people, who no longer have the right to know who is financing these ads in an attempt to influence an election for their preferred candidate. Wall Street, the insurance lobby, oil companies and other special interests are now one step closer to taking Congress back and returning to the days when lobbyists wrote the laws. But despite today’s setback, I will continue fighting to ensure that our democracy stays where it belongs-- in the hands of the American people.” 

On the other hand, President Obama was elated that the final version of his bill to aid small businesses (real small business, not the GOP version of small business) passed the House 237-187. Only one Republican, Walter Jones of North Carolina abandoned Boehner, the GOP leader famous for always being in bed with lobbyists-- and now infamous for being in bed with one particular lobbyist-- to cross the aisle and vote in favor of tax breaks and credit easing for small businesses. Every other Republican voted NO, along with 13 of the mangy old corporate-whore Blue Dogs types: Marion Berry (Blue Dog-AR), Allen Boyd (Blue Dog-FL), Travis Childers (Blue Dog-MS), Vic DeFazio (D-OR; don't ask me... I have no idea), Chet Edwards (D-TX; bad polling today), Stephanie Herseth Sandlin (Blue Dog-SD), Harry Mitchell (Blue Dog-AZ), Collin Peterson (Blue Dog-MN), Jared Polis (D-CO; see DeFazio above), Heath Shuler (Blue Dog-NC), Gene Taylor (Blue Dog-MS) and Dina Titus (D-NV; bad polling today and everyday), and, inexplicably Nydia Velázquez (D-NY). This time President Obama was more upbeat in his comments and promised to sign the bill on Monday:

The small business jobs bill passed today will help provide loans and cut taxes for millions of small business owners without adding a dime to our nation’s deficit. After months of partisan obstruction and needless delay, I’m grateful that Democrats and a few Republicans came together to support this common-sense plan to put Americans back to work.

Reid Breaks The Republican Filibuster Of Obama's Small Business Jobs Bill

Prez pushing the small biz bill at a Tastee Sub Shop in Edison, NJ

Despite our disparaging remarks-- and fabulous picture-- about the Senate yesterday, they are all back in town (except Gregg who was presumably doing something in New Hampshire for Ayotte and Murkowski, who is still trying to figure our her future) and back at work. Priority #1: Obama's (and Barney Frank's) Small Business Jobs and Credit Act which passed the House on June 17, 241-182 (only 3 Republicans breaking with Boehner's obstructionist posture), and has been languishing in the Senate under a Republican filibuster, clearly motivated by a desire to worsen the economy to hurt Democrats' chances in the November elections. The filibuster was broken yesterday just before noon as George Voinovich (R-OH) and George LeMieux (R-FL) abandoned McConnell and his "Party of No!" obstructionism and voted with all the Democrats (including even Ben Nelson, as well as Lieberman). Reid pulled off the cloture victory 61-37. Interestingly, both of Maine's senators and Scott Brown (R-MA), who have prided themselves on sticking with more or less mainstream conservative principles as the Republican Party slid further and further into the abyss of extremism, voted to continue the filibuster of a bill meant to reinvigorate the economy and make sure small businesses could get credit and would be encouraged to hire American workers.

Earlier in the day Mike Johanns (R-NE) offered a cockamamie amendment to gut healthcare form. It failed 46-52, all Republicans voted for it, along with 5 ConservaDems, Evan Bayh (IN), Michael Bennet (CO), Blanche Lincoln (AR; a co-sponsor), Ben Nelson (NE) and Mark Pryor. It ostensibly addressed a redtape matter and Democrats tried addressing that too-- although, of course, the Republicans filibustered that to death.

Many Democrats who support repealing the “1099 provision,” which is named for the associated IRS form, panned the offset that Johanns would use to pay for the change.

The Democratic alternative would exempt businesses with fewer than 25 employees and would raise the reporting threshold for the remaining companies to $5,000, from the $600 under current law. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., proposed paying for the $10.1 billion cost of the amendment by preventing the largest oil companies from obtaining a 6 percent tax deduction designed to aid domestic manufacturing.

That failed to get through the GOP filibuster, 56-42 ConservaDems Mark Begich (AK), Mary Landrieu (LA), and Blanche Lincoln (AR).

Passage of the Small Business Jobs Bill has been Obama's top priority-- and, of course, derailing it has been the GOP's. The Big O yesterday after Reid buried the filibuster:

“Today’s vote brings us one step closer to ending the months-long partisan blockade of a small business jobs bill that was written by both Democrats and Republicans. This is a bill that would cut taxes and help provide loans to millions of small business owners who create most of the new jobs in this country. It is fully paid for, it won’t add to the deficit, and small businesses across the country have been waiting for Washington to act on this bill for far too long. I am grateful to Senators Reid, Baucus and Landrieu for their leadership on this issue as well as the two Republican Senators who put partisanship aside and joined Democrats in overcoming this filibuster. I urge all members of the Senate to support final passage as soon as possible."

UPDATE: Small Business Jobs and Credit Act Passes

The Republicans tried to filibuster one more time, it failed, 61-38, Lemieux and Voinovich voting with the Democrats, and then the bill itself passed by the same margin.

Obama Visits The Republican Congressional Caucus-- As Well As Real Americans-- In Baltimore

Earlier today I saw some of the more partisan and extremist of the GOP obstructionists furiously twittering away about their hatred for President Obama, particularly two noisy closet queens, Aaron Schock (R-IL) and Patrick McHenry (R-NC) who seemed to be operating in tandem, like two giggly little girls.


Oh, of course, Pence and Issa and some of the other hard core haters were doing the same. And then I realized that the big pow-wow between the president and the obstructionists was today-- and in Baltimore, not in Hawai'i. The exotic, luxurious Hawai'i GOP retreat where they're trying to come up with a purity or litmus test that even Mike Castle, Charlie Crist, Joseph Cao, Mark Kirk and Michael Steele can pass, is an RNC meeting and that this one in Baltimore is the one where Obama was hoping to reason with the Republicans about working in a bipartisan manner for the good of the whole country. Judging by the nasty tweets, it didn't work.

As Think Progress pointed out this morning, Obama was there-- at John Boehner's invitation-- to make good on his promise of bipartisan outreach and, as he offered in the State of the Union speech, to welcome ideas from the Republicans. It would be impolite to point out that they have no ideas other than the ones that drove the economy into a ditch and the ones they've hatched to ratfuck America so they can regain power. Wall Street shill Paul Ryan (R-WI) wrote about a so-called GOP road map for America's future (appropriately enough, on the radical right editorial page of the Wall Street Journal. It's actually a road map for the corporations and their wealthy management class to continue exploiting ordinary American working families. But that wasn't something Obama was there to say.

He did, however, point out to them that, for all their obstructionism of the Stimulus package-- every single one of them, without exception, voted "no"-- several dozen of them (68 to be precise) had gone out of their way to try to take credit for the infrastructure spending in their districts that the Stimulus is paying for. Most economists agree that the Stimulus is working and the only dissenters say it should have been much bigger, something the Republicans have hysterically opposed.

In his introduction, Obama gave a strong defense of the stimulus package-- which most economists agree has worked-- saying, “there’s not a single person in here” would who would not be “going home to more laid off teachers,” firefighters, and police officers. Obama also chided Republicans for taking credit for the benefits while also bashing it:

And then the last portion of it was infrastructure, which as I’ve said, a lot of you have gone to appear at ribbon cuttings for the same projects that you voted against. Now I say all this not to re-litigate past, but it’s simply to state that the component parts of the stimulus are consistent with what many of you say are important things to do-- rebuilding our infrastructure, tax cuts for families and businesses, and making sure that we were providing states and individuals some support when the roof was caving in.

If you watched the SOTU address this week, you saw them there, all sullen and pissed off, sitting on their hands when the president talked about creating jobs and educational opportunities for working families. If they weren't such a bunch of pathetic jokesters he might have felt like Daniel going into the lion's den. But he didn't waste his whole visit to Baltimore on these clowns. He also visited the Chesapeake Machine Company where he announced details of the Small Business Jobs and Wages Tax Cut, one of his new proposals to create good jobs and bring relief to small businesses. Obama:

“Today, I am proposing what I believe is the best way to promote hiring by small businesses: through a tax credit for companies that add workers and increase salaries this year. Now is the perfect time for this kind of incentive. The economy is growing, but job growth is lagging. This is only one part of our larger jobs package, but it will be a key element to spur hiring and give all small businesses that participate significant tax relief.”

Democrats And Republicans Unite To Aid Small Businesses-- Except Lunatic Fringe Virginia Congressman Virgil Goode

Tom Perriello, supporter of small business

After Congress rejected the Bush Regime's bailout/giveaway for Wall Street, they moved on to something far less controversial, HR 7175, the Small Business Financing Improvements Act of 2008. Unless McConnell and McCain and the rest of the McCreeps in the Senate McObstruct it-- and if Bush signs it (and he wouldn't dare to not), the bill reauthorizes small business assistance programs through the Small Business Administration. Even the craziest right wing fringe maniacs joined the Democrats in supporting this... well, let me re-phrase that. All the craziest right wing fringe maniacs but six joined the Democrats in supporting small business, the real engine of whatever is left of American prospertity.

No one should be surprised-- least of all the residents of Virginia's economically hard-hit 5th CD-- that their corrupt member of Congress, Virgil Goode, was one of the half dozen irresponsible Republicans to vote no. We asked Tom Perrielllo, the Blue America-endorsed Democrat running to give the district some serious representation, if Goode had had some kind of breakdown to make him take such a destructive stand against small business.

"It's nothing short of unbelievable that in the middle of an economic meltdown, Congressman Goode would oppose assistance programs for small businesses, who are the most vulnerable to the current credit crisis. His vote is amazingly out of touch. Congressman Goode talks a good game about standing up for the middle class, but where is he when it matters? He has sided time and time again with the special interests and even today-- of all days-- he votes against Main Street. It's unbelievable and unacceptable."

If you want to see a corrupt delinquent like Goode retired from Congress so he will no longer be causing problems for Virginians-- and Americans-- Tom Perriello is one of our priority candidates this year and even $5 and $10 donations are gratefully accepted.