To many small business owners, the dream of a nice, lucrative government contract is enticing to say the least. Sure, the process is long and arduous, there are stacks of forms that have to be filled out, you have to comply with a variety of regulations, etc., but the playing field is level and you have a fair chance to compete with other small businesses for those government contracts set aside by law for small businesses. And even if there are some big companies pretending to be small to get this business, they get rooted out and are barred from doing business with the government again, right?  Normal 0 MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 That’s the PR version of the process, the bright and shiny version of what should happen, of what would happen if money and politics were taken out of the process, the version that gets you in the door. Unfortunately, it’s also a pretty misleading version as t... [Read Full Article]

  Government and Economy After the Fed’s Money Flood, Will Democracy Need a Bailout? The bailouts may be the least popular government program in history, and if the Treasury needs more money to keep it going, who knows whether Congress would provide it? As a result, Treasury and the Fed have been running what Kevin Hassett, director of economic-policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, sees as a scam. Bloomberg.com Small Business Fights Back Against the Banks As banks pull back on lending and work to purge bad loans from their balance sheets, some small business borrowers are on the attack, filing lawsuits, putting out news release... [Read Full Article]

It is a great idea and the time for it is ripe: Rebuild the nation’s government procurement process to make it leaner, less expensive, more efficient and more fair. President Obama is going to have Peter Orszag, Director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, work with cabinet and agency officials to create a new way for the government to buy what it needs and he estimates that by doing so, he can save the taxpayers some $40 billion a year. According to the White House, the new contracting rules, which will have to be developed by the end of September, would make it harder for contractors to cheat taxpayers while making some half-trillion dollars in federal contracts each year more accessible to independent contractors. The Take for Small Business That last part, making some half-trillion dollars in federal contracts each year more accessible to independent contractors, hints that small businesses will receive a larger piece of the federal procurement... [Read Full Article]