If you were to step outside and walk down the street right now, one of every eleven or twelve people you passed would be involved in some stage of starting or managing an entrepreneurial venture, according to a newly released report from the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM). One of the more noticeable things about this [...]

It seemed as if everyone in Small Business-ville, USA, was abuzz with excitement earlier this month when the White House convened a Small Business Financing Summit hosted by Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and SBA Administrator Karen Mills. Only about 100 people were invited to participate in the summit but I’m happy to report that, among [...]

In case you hadn’t heard, Washington is girding its loins for the Next Big Fight, even though the Last Big Fight isn’t over yet. Congressional Democrats are evidently already internally bickering over the health care reform versus climate change legislation debate. According to some news reports, one set of Democrats says that energy legislation should [...]

When everybody else was saying they were thankful for the food they ate or for their wonderful families or for their good health, I was longing to say something flippant.

“I am thankful for the mole under my right eyebrow. I think it makes me look interesting.”

(Yes, even at the tender age of ten I was already full of incipient snark.)

I find myself in much the same position right now.

The National Retail Federation is not expecting this year’s holiday shopping season to be the sort of thing that will make the hearts of retailers glad. At least not much. Overall receipts are expected to decline by 1%; all the price slashing that will be needed to lure wary and broke customers into stores will [...]

Truth to tell, everybody set about health care reform in the wrong way. In a more just universe, small business owners would have had the earliest and most influential input as policy makers were making policy.

As a group, they were yelling for reform first and most consistently. A few years ago, those in the know were saying that health care reform was “essentially a small business issue.”

That was before the insurance industry lobbyists stepped in and started throwing their weight around.

While House Democrats were congratulating themselves on pulling off a squeaker to pass the Affordable Health Care for America Act (H.R. 3962) by a scant five votes, it is worth nothing that one set of stakeholders who remain unenthusiastic about the bill is the nation’s small business owners. The tax credits that have gotten so [...]

Congress returns from its brief Veterans Day break this week and will leave town again next week for Thanksgiving. One of the things expected to happen during this particular flying visit to Capitol Hill between District Work Periods is a vote in the House on a fistful of small business related bills. Three of them [...]

The President is in Asia at the moment, doing unheard-of but very American things like holding town hall meetings in China and bringing his very own Obama-ness to the Pacific Rim. Of much more concern to us is the fact that, just before he left, he announced that he would be holding a forum on [...]

Now, it is entirely possible that another hearing before another committee would have produced the sorts of witnesses who would have gratified that particular questioner with answers that reinforced his pre-existing ideas.

If you watch enough of these hearings, you see it fairly frequently. The Committee Member will question their own witness or someone who they can tell from prepared testimony already agrees with them. They will phrase questions in such a way as to get the witness to make their favorite points for them. It is all for the sake of the record.

But we have to be glad that didn’t happen in this case, because nobody learns anything that way, do they?