Heard of the Snazzy Napper? Picking up where last year’s Snuggie craze left off, this product — out of neighboring metro Atlanta, GA — is poised to become this holiday season’s white elephant Christmas party gift of choice. It’s tearing up word-of-mouth channels online, particularly Facebook… …And of course, YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MthSUD8cMqk%20 Why on earth would […]
Seen that Snazzy Napper video yet? Read More »
Stacy Mitchell is with the Institute for Local Self-Reliance. She has an opinion editorial in the last edition of Business week dealing with an issue that I have blogged about many times. The U.S. Chamber and the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) are not representing the interests of small businesses on many issues. For six
More on NFIB and US Chamber Read More »
This past weekend I was in the Pittsburgh, PA, area visiting relatives. (They’re all fine. Thanks for asking.) On the way back to the airport a billboard caught my eye. It read: “Imagine. A bank that actually lends money.” What a great billboard! It resonates with the public because everybody knows that banks have almost
I received a call this week from a small business in Anderson, South Carolina. The lady told me that their 30+ year family cabinet-making company had fallen on hard times due to the economy and needed a loan to stay alive. Their attempt to get an SBA loan from the usual banks had failed because
Lending crisis over? Not for small businesses… Read More »
One good thing about being old (ok, relatively old) is that you have institutional memory. And that comes in handy regarding policy issues, because very few issues are completely new. Being able to recall and even document what has happened before can be quite useful in discussing the issues of today. Such is the case
Level the sales tax playing field Read More »
Leo Hindery, Jr. Recently in a Huffington Post blog, Mr. Leo Hindery, Jr. convincingly argued for our country to pursue two courses for re-energizing our manufacturing economy — to create the jobs we desperately need. Value-Added Tax and Domestic Sourcing He proposes that, “a large part or all corporate income tax” be replaced with a
Why dismiss growth potential of small business? Read More »
During the debate on health care reform, a familiar theme of the opponents was that it would increase taxes on small businesses. Of course, that was just fear mongering in an attempt to protect the insurance industry because there are no tax increases on small businesses in the new healthcare law. There will be a
Jarrett and Obama (image: romanticpoet) President Obama’s aides, Lawrence Summers and Valerie Jarrett, recently sent a letter to the national small business pretender organization, NFIB, thanking it for either its “praise” of or “support” for the Small Business Jobs Act of 2010. The letter was intentionally vague so that the NFIB could pick which applied to it. Actually, neither
NFIB’s new “Creditworthy” crusade falls flat for small business Read More »
(The following opinion editorial by Frank Knapp appeared today in The Hill.) Who is to blame for the state of our national economy is a political football. No one can argue that the recession that started prior to the Obama administration was owned by the former administration. President Bush responded with the Troubled Asset Relief
Who owns the economy? Read More »
Now here’s something you won’t often hear from me. Good job, Blue Cross and Blue Shield! No, I’m not talking about BC/BS of South Carolina. It’s BC/BS of Kansas City deserving the accolade. The health insurance industry was the loudest opponent of national health care reform but once it passed BC/BS of Kansas City decided
Kansas City, here I come Read More »
