‘We don’t want the government dictating which doctors we are and are not allowed to see!’

‘We don’t want the government deciding which medical procedures we can and cannot have!’

‘We don’t want the government rationing care or creating inequities in the system!’

‘We want private insurance! Long live the free market!’

Of course, none of these noisy opponents appear to have noticed that, under the current system, private insurers do all of these things.

As lawmakers debate various elements of a health care reform bill, two thirds of microbusiness owners say they are watching closely, with about 60% feeling they have, minimally, a moderate understanding of the issues, according to a survey released last week by the National Association for the Self-Employed (NASE). The survey was conducted among microbusiness [...]

The Home Office Tax Deduction Simplification and Improvement Act of 2009 was introduced last week in the House (H.R. 3056) by my old friend Charlie Gonzalez (D-TX), and in the Senate (S. 1349) by Senators Kent Conrad (D-ND) and Olympia Snowe (R-ME). In both chambers of Congress, the legislation has been referred to their respective [...]

After a single year of tepid growth in 2006, the population of U.S. firms without paid employees other than the business owner(s) came roaring back in 2007 with almost a million new firms, according to data released by the Census Bureau last week. Overall, nonemployer firms increased in number by almost 940,000, or 4.5% in [...]

Right now, corporate America is trying to figure out how to marry sustainability with profit because, in corporate America, some things never change.

I don’t know how that’s going to work out for them because I don’t know how you wed the sort of thinking that considers the planet to be precious with the sort of thinking that favors plundering the planet for profit — that is, the sort of thinking that got us here to begin with.

At the risk of upsetting some people terribly, it sometimes seems difficult to tell one politician from another. It would be difficult to imagine two members of that calling who could be more different from each other than George W. Bush and Barack H. Obama. But President Bush, touting the efficacy of his economic policies [...]

The air is riddled with cliches during economic downturns, largely because the purveyors of said cliches are longing to say something encouraging and they don’t have the data to do it. One of those oft-heard cliches concerns the number of successful (and very large) companies we have today that were started during recessions. Microsoft, Apple [...]

Earlier this month, President Obama quietly fingered Winslow Sargeant, another venture capitalist, to head up the SBA Office of Advocacy. If confirmed, Sargeant will be moving into the position from Venture Investors LLC, a Madison, WI-based venture firm specializing in health and IT investments. He has been with Venture Investors for four years. Prior to [...]

What are those new policy needs, anyway, and just how are they different from those of larger small businesses?

And, by the way, why aren’t the House or Senate Small Business Committees asking any of these questions?

Of course, a big part of the problem is that the ongoing conversation is taking place among the same small group of people, over and over again. Many of those people have agendas that are older than my college-aged children.

While most of the nation’s Congress watchers are lining up in anticipation of much high drama and political theater around the various incarnations of proposals for health care reform, there are other and much quieter chores being attended to on Capitol Hill. For example, both the House and Senate Small Business Committees have begun the [...]