Small Business

What I want GOP candidates to promise:

The National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) has endorsed Ken Buck for the U.S. Senate and four Republicans for Congress: Scott Tipton (CD-3), Cory Gardner (CD-4), Doug Lamborn (CD-5), Mike Coffman (CD-6) and Ryan Frazier (CD-7). The NFIB also endorsed 40 candidates for the state legislature. About 15% of voters own small businesses and about 43% own and work for small businesses, according to the NFIB. LINK: 40 Colorado Senate and House candidates win endorsement of NFIB. The NFIB voter guide is here. The legislative endorsements are reported below the jump.

While President Obama this week will proposed another $50 billion in spending on roads, bridges, smart grids and other pork projects in an effort to save and create jobs, consumers will react by cutting their spending because they know that Obama will pay for his $50 billion binge by increasing the Federal budget deficit and debt and by increasing taxes. More government spending and higher taxes on the 50% of Americans who pay income taxes and buy the most stuff will kill jobs.

A summary of the Small Business Jobs Act (HR 5297) that President Obama is pushing the Senate to pass is here. The Bill and some amendments are here. Nothing in the act stimulates consumer demand, which is what would get small businesses back into making capital expenditures and hiring. This should be called the Small Business and Agriculture Jobs Act, because it allows lending to farmers:

Dan Maes has told the Colorado Independent that he called on his former employer’s customers but didn’t take his customer list. He apparently had his own list of contacts. 

There is no one a small business owner despises more than a former employee who quits, takes a list of customers, starts a competing business and tries to win the former employer’s customers. I can’t think of many things besides outright fraud that an employee or former employee can do that are more dishonest. Like plagiarism, taking a customer list and using it to try to steal customers is considered theft by most small business owners.

Taking the gloves off, former Colorado Lieutenant Governor Jane Norton said in an 85-minute interview in her Centennial office today that Ken Buck, her opponent for the Republican nomination for the U.S. Senate, is the real Washington insider and that she’s the fiscal conservative in the race.

“I am not the Washington insider in this race. That would be Ken Buck. Ken has a Washington insider 527 running over $1 million of ads on his behalf. And he received over a third of all his donations from employees of one company that relies on stimulus money and millions of dollars of special interests contracts,” Norton said.

(Her campaign provided me with a list of employees of Greeley-based Hensel Phelps Construction Co. who have contributed $141,800 to Buck’s Senate campaign.)

In reply to the Buck campaign’s charges that Norton is a Washington insider because she is backed by Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) and is related to a Washington lobbyist, Norton said, “Ken Buck was Governor Bill Ritter’s best man. If we’re going to play the guilt by association game, that’s an interesting connection.”

Like Buck, Norton says she would not vote for a bill that would help Colorado if it included a tax increase.

Appointed Democrat Senator Michael Bennet “is totally out of touch with Colorado values. . . He’s a rubber stamp for anything the Obama administration wants.”

As executive director of the Colorado Dept. of Public Health and Environment between 1999 and 2002, Norton said, “My general fund request was down 28% when I left office. We eliminated programs that were not authorized by the state statute or in the state constitution.”

Norton also noted that when she ran for lieutenant governor, she took an unpaid leave of absence from her state job. Ken Buck continues to serve as the district attorney of Weld county even though he’s often absent so that he can attend campaign events, she said.

She also clarified her role at the Englewood-based Medical Group Management Association, where she was in charge of monitoring changes in states’ laws and regulations and informing managers of some 7,000 medical group practices about how they could comply with new state laws. She wasn’t in charge of the MGMA’s lobbyist in Washington and she never managed lobbyists or served as a lobbyist, she said.

“I have never been a lobbyist,” she said.

To see the 27 questions and answers, please click on the hed of this story. If you’re viewing this story at Rocky Mountain Right or Peoples Press Collective, go to www.businessword.com.

Do you work for a small business in Colorado?

Most Coloradans do!

John Hickenlooper started as a small business owner.

He brewed beer. His brewpub biz got so big that he forgot what it’s like to work for or own a small business.

Indeed, he forgot what it’s like to own a business.

John Hickenlooper became a government union man! He went where the campaign contributions are—the executive suites of Colorado’s unions.

Now John Hickenlooper wants you to pay higher taxes.

He’s drunk with power. And he wants more power. He wants you to elect him governor.

He doesn’t care about your small business.

He doesn’t care about your job.

John Hickenlooper cares about his job and his political career. Not about you or your job.

John Hickenlooper cares about the jobs of government workers. His job and government workers’ jobs are expensive.  Very expensive.

That’s why John Hickenlooper wants you to pay more taxes. He wants you to payer higher taxes for more government. He wants to hire more government workers and unionize all of them. He wants you to pay very high taxes.

Like in California.

Even if you don’t have a job!

John Hickenlooper’s rich and famous. Make him powerful, too.

If you want to be unemployed and pay high sales taxes, property taxes and car taxes, vote Democrat.

Tim Jackson, president of the Colorado Auto Dealers Assn., posted a link to his executive memo to dealers on Facebook. It’s interesting because it shows how trade association executives communicate with their members and try to recruit more members to support their efforts to make their voices heard in Denver and Washington. 

When I was a member of the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) and on the Colorado Assn. of Commerce and Industry’s (CACI) health care committee, I got to watch Jackson use the backing of his some 13,000 Colorado NFIB members to gain influence on key issues with state legislators. Having watched a lot of trade association executives over the years, I think Jackson’s one of the best and hardest working guys in the association management profession. Many auto dealers are small businesses, and others are regional and national companies. If you want to understand a little more about “special interersts,” lobbyists and the political process, take the time to read Jackson’s letter.

FactCheck.Org has published a long article that quotes so-called experts who predict that Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s health spending bill (HR 3962) won’t have much of an impact on jobs. The CBO and Rand Corp. reportedly have come to similar conclusions. FactCheck’s report is full of holes:

The National Federation of Independent Businesses (NFIB) and the National Small Business Assn. (NSBS) suddenly are finding their voices on ObamaCare (HR 3962). But they and The Wall Street Journal still have to discuss the huge costs small employers would incur in an effort to comply with the bill and to qualify for tax credits provided for under the bill.

Impact graphs:

Karen Kerrigan, president of the Small Business & Entrepreneurship Council,  writes in Politico’s Arena:

Four of Colorado’s five House Democrats voted for the anti-jobs and anti-Colorado health spending bill otherwise known as ObamaCare and Fannie Med even though it will put the country and state in a long-term recession.

Here’s how:

Back in 2003, Colorado’s health insurers fooled naive state legislators into enacting a bill that ended community rating of health insurance risks for small employers. They said rate increases would slow. They soared.

Insurance brokers and insurers are trying to roll back the reinstatement of modified community rating, which cuts their commissions and profits. Insurers want premiums to rise because they get their 4% take regardless. And apparently brokers and agents make more money when there is medical risk rating instead of community rating. It’s obvious that this isn’t about those who pay the premiums.

One of the smartest, most pro-small business moves that Governor Bill Ritter and Democrats in the General Assembly have done was the enactment of House Bill 1355. It reinstates community rating, which makes health insurance less expensive for small businesses that have older and sicker employees while increasing costs for those that have younger, healthier employees. Most small businesses are owned by people over 40, and most have older, less healthy workers. Or, as anyone who’s been in business knows, an employee can have an accident or get cancer tomorrow. And when that happens, you’re no longer a healthy employer.

Under today’s community rating system, your rates won’t go up because an employee or family member suddenly begins filing financially catastrophic claims on an insurer. Both for-profit and not-for-profit insurers want to be able to screw their consumers with medical risk rating of small groups. Even though most of the insurers’ customers in the state are small employers and their employees, insurers want to be able to take them to the cleaners.

At this point, the Democrats are the pro small business party in Colorado because they support community rating. Republicans killed modified community rating in 2003 when it passed HB03-1164, and the GOP was the anti-small business party until several Republicans supported HB 1355.

Now, Colorado’s health insurers are trying to mislead small employers and legislators again. I hope that Ritter and the GOP’s gubernatorial candidates, Scott McInnis, Josh Penry and Dan Maes, don’t take the bait.

Impact graphs and links back to 2003 on this issue:

Ryan Frazier, the leading GOP candidate for Democrat Ed Perlmutter’s 7th Congressional District seat, today published the “Top 12 Reasons the Pelosi Healthcare Bill Hurts YOU; A Layman‚Äôs Guide to Understanding the Real Story.

Must reading for all.