I noticed a little article with a fairly partisan and incendiary headline, "How did Solyndra get $500 million when I can’t get $5,000?", and, to amuse myself and waste a little time, I gave it a read. Now, it is clear the article is meant to be a right-wing indictment of the president of the United States by another right-wing media outline that is more concerned with destroying an American President, and America, than it is with helping America progress, but I basically agree with the meat of the article (I just find the blatant partisanship distasteful.)
First, the actual meat of the article. The article is written by Lisa Qualls, "the CEO and managing partner of Fresh ID, an agency dedicated to improving and socializing the brand experience across all forms of media." (A BS description of a consulting firm trying to make money from actual companies by just telling them what they should be doing if I ever heard one.) She 'serves' on boards for the Salvation Army and the Christian Foundation for Children, and she lives in Kansas City, so it is obvious she is a hard-core "Christian soldier" that concentrates her time on bolstering the prison industrial complex by getting heathens thrown in jail.
So, I am sure that if I met her in person I would retch. Which is a shame, because she has an ounce or two of intelligence, and alludes to valid criticisms of the Small Business Administration (SBA), though she never really discusses them. She mentions her desire for the SBA to "make these loans fair and accessible to those who truly need [them]." That sentence was near the end of the article, and is presented like a great revelation. It should have been in the first paragraph and should have lead to a serious discussion of the history of the SBA. Ms. Qualis notes, briefly, that the SBA requires a business to prove a "minimum three years of top line revenue and profit growth of 20 to 30 percent." Well, those are pretty demanding requirements, and makes it clear that the SBA doesn't want to get involved with helping a small business grow, but only wants to ride along after a small business has already been growing at a healthy rate for many years.
The SBA doesn't want to help small business grow, but wants to tag along after the SBA perceives there is no stopping this business. The SBA doesn't really make loans to what you and I would think of as small businesses. I drive around town and see small businesses all over. The small, family owned auto shop that I visit, or the one the son opened up across town; local restaurants and bars; specialty grocery marts like fish or health food stores; small book stores and craft shops; and on and on. These are small businesses in my mind. None of these would qualify for a "small business" loan. (And if you go by the SBA website they constantly put "small" in quotation marks, signifying that the manner in which they are using the word is not the actual meaning of the word.)
Basically, the SBA is looking for semi-large corporations that are already growing at a healthy clip and they want to loan them hundreds of millions of dollars so they can make the leap to huge, multinational mega-corporations. Their basic criteria is that the are not the leader in their industry. Growing, but not yet the leader. So, a huge chain like "Panera Bread" might manage to qualify, or maybe something like "Target" department stores. These obviously aren't small businesses. They know this. The data says that most new jobs are created in companies with less than twenty employees. Those are small-businesses. But most of those won't qualify for an SBA loan.
My second point, besides what a joke the SBA is, would be what a joke these massive media outlets are. The Washington Post has carefully found an individual who will parrot their own partisan ideals. The SBAhas been a joke for many decades. Yet Ms. Qualis has managed to seize on a high-profile disaster and imply that it is a recent development that needs to be changed. Ms. Qualis is attempting to lay all of the blame at President Obama's feet. Now, I'm not fond of President Obama, and he probably deserves plenty of criticism. But the SBA catering to only large businesses is not a recent development, and probably has more to do with the long history of our right-wing influences than today's African-American President.
So instead of the Washington Post running lame little articles they should be taking a serious look at the history of the SBA and advocating that it actually help small businesses that are in danger of failing. Just betting on the New England Patriots doesn't really help anybody. Helping a great little family run auto shop to expand, like Aaron's Auto Center, here in Jacksonville, would help the economy.
But the SBA only bet's on big companies, and the Washington Post only takes partisan pot shots at the president. Niether are helpful to the United States of America or its economy.
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