Entries from BizBox Blog on Slate tagged with 'Politics'
The Politics Behind Obama's Small Business Plan
Robb Mandelbaum takes a look at the politics surrounding President Obama's new small business lending proposals. As we noted at the time, some of these proposals--most prominently, raising the ceiling on Small Business Administration-backed loans from $2 million to $5...
NYT: Health Costs Slamming Small Business
Over the weekend, the New York Times ran a must-read piece detailing a phenomenon we have noticed many times before: how the dynamics of our health care system put a disproportionately heavy weight on small businesses, such that they have...
Small Business and Health Care: Just the Facts, Ma'am
Small business owners have things to do with their days--like, say, running their businesses--besides following the politics and policy of the health care reform debate to the minutest details. So while it's understandable that, as both Business Week reports and...
The Small Biz Lobbies and Health Care
A perfect way to see the heterogeneity of small business views is to look, as John Tozzi does, at the Main Street Alliance's and the National Federation of Independent Business's respective (and conflicting) views of what would constitute ideal health...
First, Doing No Harm To Small Businesses
Let's start off this Monday morning with a video: Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.)--the chair of the Small Business & Entrepreneurship Committee, and a classic moderate "Blue Dog" Democrat--discusses small businesses and health care in the wake of President Obama's address...
If A Law Is Bad, Blame The Lawmakers
We would love to add something to Robb Mandelbaum's post from last Friday afternoon, which concerns Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Fl.)'s denunciation of the current pace of America's Recovery Capital loans. But, honestly, he touches all bases, and we agree (and...
Will Health Reform Cost Small Businesses?
A recent post over at OPEN Forum (which is published by our sponsor, American Express OPEN), contains a lot of what's right--as well as a bit of what's wrong--when it comes to the debate among small businesses over the proper...
Whither Health Care Reform?
Robb Mandelbaum has two excellent recent posts over at You're The Boss profiling two major players in the health-care reform debate that both purport to represent--to borrow the motto of one of them--the voice of small business. About a week...
Entrepreneurs: They're Not Who You Think They Are
Via Fortune Small Business, the Kauffman Foundation just published the fascinating results of a study, revealing that, contrary to the popular image of the entrepreneur as a young, loner, working-out-of-the-garage-type--say, a Bill Gates--most entrepreneurs started out middle- or upper-lower-class, are...
A Welcome New Health-Care Coalition
Let us now praise the National Federation of Independent Business. This is a rare sight; ordinarily, we are taking the prominent small-business interest group to task for disregarding the real needs of real small businesses in favor of the...
Read This Article!
We cannot say enough good things about today's utterly superb New York Times editorial on what health-care reform could accomplish for small businesses. In essence, it advocates an employer mandate--under which most employers are required either to insure their payroll...
Broadening Broadband
Back before he was even president, we praised Barack Obama's proposal to use government funds to expand rural broadband access as a pro-entrepreneur move. Now it will not matter where you live--if you have a great idea for a business,...
Obama's Report Card
Fortune examines how good a job President Obama has done at accomplishing what he promised he would for small businesses. They split his agenda into four categories: the credit crunch; health care; taxes; and job losses. Here's what Fortune had...
Getting The Health Care Surtax Right
Whether provoked by President Obama's proposed tax plan or good ol' Joe the Plumber, we have addressed proposals to raise tax rates on the higher income margins in the same fashion: by pointing out that, contrary to talking points proferred...
Why You Were Left Out of Credit-Card Reform
First over at his old Entrepreneurial Agenda blog, and now at his new one, You're The Boss, Robb Mandelbaum has done a stellar job cataloguing how the recent credit-card reform law passed small businesses and small-business cards over. (Time to...
In Case You Were Wondering...
...no, we don't oppose gay marriage on the grounds that it's bad for small business. The gay marriage debate is a legitimate one, and one that should be had out, honestly, by both sides. Linking it to small business's interests...
In Which Your President Talks About You
Did you catch that big speech last night? It apparently was not, technically, a State of the Union address, but it may as well have been. President Obama stood in front of congressmen and senators and Supreme Court justices...
The Anti-Card Check Lobby
On the whole, the National Federation of Independent Business does great work. As the single most powerful organization dedicated to looking out for small businesses in Washington and in state governments around the country (we constantly get press releases from...
Congressional Entrepreneurs
Independent Street has a post up highlighting the strikingly high percentage of freshmen congressmen and senators--over one-third--who have some experience in running their own small business. Perhaps most surprising is the number of these rookie legislators who are Democrats. In...
Your New Small Business Committee Chairwoman
Yesterday, the 111th Congress was sworn in. Now begins the tenure of a new chairperson of the U.S. Senate Small Business & Entrepreneurship Committee: Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.). The previous chairperson, Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.), has left the leadership...
The Obama Stimulus Plan and Small Business
Everyone's focus is squarely on President-elect Barack Obama, who has entered office with the type of mandate for change not seen in nearly three decades and who is taking the helm as the U.S. faces its greatest economic crisis in...
Obama Accused Of Turning Back on Small Businesses
We've written before about the American Small Business League, the organization dedicated to seeing that federal procurement quotas are enforced. As things stand right now, of course, they aren't: the amount of federal contracts that go to small businesses is...
Habemus Small Business Administrator!
President-elect Barack Obama did not select Magic Johnson to head the Small Business Administration, but his choice seems like a good one nonetheless. He has tapped Karen G. Mills (pictured at right, on the right), a private equity wheeler-and-dealer and...
Magic Johnson for Small Business Administrator?
That's the "dream pick" of Karen Kerrigan, who heads the Small Business and Entrepreneurship Council, for who should be in charge of the Small Business Administration under President-elect Barack Obama, the Wall Street Journal reports. (Obama has already named New...
A More Liberal Small Business Agenda
The National Small Business Association--that would be the prime small business interest group that isn't the National Federation of Independent Business--has put out a snazzy new Website trumpeting its proposed small business agenda, called "Think Big. Start Small.", for...
Let Us Now Praise Olympia Snowe
Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Me.), who is the ranking member (i.e., the shadow chairperson for the minority party, which is currently the Republicans) of the U.S. Senate Small Business and Entrepreneurship Committee, has some very compelling thoughts on the Small...
Heath Shuler: QB, Congressman, Friend to Entrepreneurs
The National Federation of Independent Business, one of the prime small business interest groups, will frequently issue press releases extolling (or condemning) various bills and legislators. But it caught our eye when the group had praise for Heath Shuler,...
The Fed and the Treasury Get It. Sorta.
So here's some good news: the community banks--those small (under $1 billion in assets), locally-focused financial institutions that are prime sources for small businesses seeking ever-more-scarce credit--are getting a little extra encouragement to take a part of the $700...
Obama's Pro-Entrepreneur Broadband Proposal
It was easier to be a telecommuting evangelist when oil was approaching $150/barrel, instead of, y'know, under $50/barrel. Still, its advantages--greater flexibility for employees (which is a nice enticement to get them to come work for you); lower overhead...
How Did You Vote?
Independent Street raises the question of whether the small business vote swung Democratic this time around (certainly the rest of the country's vote did!). To back up a bit: although small business owners, representing an estimated 15% of registered...
The NFIB's Post-Election Agenda
The group's president and CEO Todd Stottlemyer lays it out here. Suffice to say that many of the items enumerated on the ten-point plan are not exactly Democratic priorities. Indeed, the NFIB is going to be none too pleased...
Rock The Vote!
It's that day. (Should your employees have time off? Here's your answer.) This election has created unprecedented excitement, and there is a chance turnout will be record-high, so chances are you've voted anyway. But really, make sure you go...
Highlights From Judy Estrin's BizBooks
Last Friday, we hosted Judy Estrin--entrepreneur, former Cisco executive, and author of Closing the Innovation Gap--as part of our of our BizBooks discussion series. Estrin is a big believer in innovation, and in the importance of the cultivation of...
Keep Helping Small Business
Though we tend to be big fans of journalist and editor Michael Kinsley--he did, after all, found our sister site Slate--we're going to have to take grave issue with a post he recently wrote on The Daily Beast titled,...
The (Un?)Importance of Joe the Plumber
If you watched the third and final presidential debate, you may have been forgiven for thinking that one of the candidates was named Joe the Plumber--so frequently was Ohio resident Joe Wurzelbacher referred to. The story is that Wurzelbacher...
Time Off For Election Day?
20 days 'til Election Day. If you're like us, you've been near-obsessed with the news; you track the polls; and you're figuring out whom to vote for or enthusiastically advocating for whomever you've decided on. But if you're a...
Schumer Sez: Loan To Small Businesses!
We actually were waiting to post on this until we heard back from Sen. Chuck Schumer's office, which we called yesterday, but it's been a day and we haven't yet, so you should be aware that Schumer held a...
Should Small Businesses Support The Bailout?
"I had heard that there was not much in the bail out bill for small businesses, so I hope you are right," a commenter writes on our earlier post, "How The Bailout Would Help Small Business". A good post...
Fixing Small Business Procurement in the Bailout Bill
The American Small Business League, a nonpartisan group (it has endorsed Sen. Barack Obama for president) that represents 100,000 small businesses nationwide, has been hammering away at a very specific aspect of the $700 billion bailout bill, which was...
How The Bailout Would Help Small Business
Just yesterday we asked, of the proposed bailout, "What's In It For The Small Businesses?" The answer, among other things (firming up the credit markets, as the $700 billion asset-purchase program is intended to do, would most definitely be...
What's in It For The Small Businesses?
If the performance of the Dow Jones Industrial Average yesterday is any indication, the broader business community was not well served by the failure of the U.S. House of Representatives to pass the $700 billion bailout plan (although this...
For A Standard Home Office Deduction
We've already discussed how, as the political season heats up, now is the time for you to try to enact changes that will help small businesses. Here's one, as suggested here and here: simplifying the home office tax deduction,...
This Is What We Mean By Creative Marketing
From our corporate sister The Washington Post: Classic Sleep Products, a Jessup, Md.-based bedmaker, has offered to send--free of charge!--535 mattresses to Congress so lawmakers can work 'round-the-clock to "iron out" (their pun; not ours) the current financial crisis....
Putting Democracy Into Action
You can tell your elected representatives what you think should be done all you want, and it still will not amount to the influence you have with your vote. That said, there are ways to combine the use of...
McCain Leads Among Small Businesses; Good News For Obama?
When we layed out McCain and Obama's positions on issues particularly relevant to small businesses (think taxes, trade, health care, and the like), we noted that owners of such businesses tend to lean Republican due to that party's reputation...
Winning The Hearts (And Votes) Of Small Business Owners
The New York Times runs a phenomenal article on the 16-23 million (depending on your estimate) people who own small businesses, who represent at least around 15% of registered voters. The article specifically explores what these voters would like...
"As the political season heats up..."
Chances are you've read your fair share of articles, blogposts, or even emails that begin with some variation of the above in the past couple months. Fact is, politics is on everyone's mind right now (and for good reason)....
Fannie and Freddie Leave The SBA In The Dust
Among the constituents of the U.S. government, “Homeowners” and “Small Business Owners” both seem to rank highly. The words evoke virtuous Americans who watch baseball, bake apple pies, and call their mothers regularly; possibly all three at the same...
XX Entrepreneurs: Women's Groups Advocate For Reforms
Sharon McLoone over at (BizBox sister site) washingtonpost.com has a great post up about recent advocacy steps, some timed to coincide with the political calendar, that have been taken by and on behalf of female entrepreneurs: the women who...
McCain and Obama's Positions
As we gear up for the relatively brief (under two months!) remainder of the presidential contest,, it is worth taking a gander at the candidates' respective positions on issues that especially affect entrepreneurs and small business owners--and, through them,...
High Energy Costs and Small Businesses: Like, Er, Oil and Water
Sharon McLoone, the small business blogger at our sister site Washingtonpost.com, has a great post today on this survey just released by the National Association for the Self-Employed. The survey's finding? The recent streak of sky-high energy costs have...
Cashing in on the Campaign
Sen. Barack Obama is set to break all fundraising records, and even Sen. John McCain looks likely to hold his own in that department. More broadly, the 2008 election features the first-ever African-American candidate and the first campaign with...
Universal Health Insurance: Good For (Small) Business?
In a recent conversation at Bloggingheads.tv, Mark Schmitt, the editor of the liberal political and policy monthly The American Prospect, makes the case for increased public health coverage of the type Sen. Barack Obama has proposed from the perspective...
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