WHEN YOU REDEFINE BIG GOVERNMENT TO MEAN FEDERAL AGENCIES ALLOWED TO BE FLEECED OF TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS BY CORPORATIONS AND FEDERAL AGENCIES BEING BUILT ONLY TO SERVE GLOBAL CORPORATIONS OVERSEAS AND NOT PUBLIC INTEREST-----THAT IS NOT SOCIAL DEMOCRATIC GOVERNMENT THAT SPENT FAR LESS MONEY HELPING LOW-INCOME PEOPLE.
Global pols are now trying to make sure the US does not rebuild its local economy as it uses all kinds of scam policies to make sure small businesses cannot takeoff. Entrepreneur/startups/public sector as non-profits all are geared to make sure no real market competition is rebuilt.
Trans Pacific Trade Pact is all about installing every policy that kills small business. Ending corporate taxes will always move more taxes to small business and citizens. IT RAISES TAXATION ON THE 99% OF PEOPLE.
I will talk the next few days about how all of this is tied to the 'small government' mantra----small government means a few become very powerful and wealthy at the expense of 99% of all other citizens-----AS IN BALTIMORE
'Trade tariffs are also useful to small businesses that don't have the resources to globalize. Big businesses, of course, love free trade because it gives them license to move their manufacturing overseas. However, such movement often means the collapse of local small business'.
That's right---and it is why social democrats from FDR to LBJ regulated and enforced regulations on big corporations ----and it is why Republicans and Clinton neo-liberals hate and dismantled regulations---they work for corporate power and wealth.
I like the reference to Sarbanes Oxley harming small businesses----WHILE AT THE SAME TIME CONGRESS DOES NOT ENFORCE THESE POLICIES ON THE FRAUDSTERS OF WALL STREET AND BIG BUSINESS. Could it be that the Sarbanes were only wanting to harm small business?
By Geoffrey James MoneyWatch October 25, 2010, 10:58 AM
Government Regulation is Good for Business
Last Updated Oct 25, 2010 11:04 AM EDT
Yes, you read that right. Government regulation is good for business...depending on how you define the term "business" and on how the regulations are written.
Many people (and especially the "business" press) tend to use the umbrella term "business" to mean any organization that tries to make a profit. But that usage is, like most generalizations, misleading.
There is very little commonality of self-interest between, say, a mega-billion dollar company like Walmart, and a locally-owned boutique.
Quite the contrary. Business conditions that help Walmart to be successful are almost always going to make it more difficult for that boutique to survive.
It's much more accurate to say that there are two broad segments of profit-making organizations: big businesses and small businesses.
This is an important distinction to make because majority of business activity in the United States takes place in small business. According to the U.S. Department of State:
Fully 99 percent of all independent enterprises in the country employ fewer than 500 people. These small enterprises account for 52 percent of all U.S. workers, according to the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA). Some 19.6 million Americans work for companies employing fewer than 20 workers, 18.4 million work for firms employing between 20 and 99 workers, and 14.6 million work for firms with 100 to 499 workers. By contrast, 47.7 million Americans work for firms with 500 or more employees.
What does this have to do with government regulation? Everything.
A lack of government regulation is almost always to the advantage of big businesses and to the disadvantage of small businesses. Such a condition always results in the formation of monopolies and the suppression of smaller firms, even if those firms might be highly innovative.
As the great Adam Smith pointed out: "People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices."
Does this mean that all government regulation is favorable to small business? Of course not.
In fact, government regulations are often intentionally written so that they favor big businesses over small ones. This always happens because legislators and regulators are usually "owned" by big businesses, either through campaign contribution bribery or the promise of future employment.
A perfect example of this is Sarbanes-Oxley, the financial regulation enacted after the Enron debacle.
Even though the culprits of the debacle were very much from the world of big business, the net effect of Sarbox on small businesses was to add a fixed cost (massive accounting fees) to going public, an expense that large companies could easily afford, but which was (and is) burdensome on smaller firms.
The problem is that the elected government of the United States has become like the elected government of Imperial Rome. All the forms of the republic remain in place, but the actual decisions are made elsewhere.
In this case, though, it's not an emperor that is pulling the strings, but the forces of big business. Those forces would prefer to have no regulations, but if that's not possible (for political reasons) will tolerate regulations that favor big business.
So here's the reality of today's situation: if you work for or own a small business, when it comes to government regulation, it's a classic "heads they win, tails we lose" situations. To a greater or lesser degree, it's the small businesses who are going to get screwed, no matter what.
On the other hand, there have been times in the history of the United States, where the government has enacted regulations (and laws) that help small businesses. The anti-monopoly regulations, for example, help small businesses at the expense of large ones, which is exactly why they're so seldom invoked any longer.
Trade tariffs are also useful to small businesses that don't have the resources to globalize. Big businesses, of course, love free trade because it gives them license to move their manufacturing overseas. However, such movement often means the collapse of local small business.
To summarize, here are the rules of the game:
Now, if politicians and regulators really wanted to help the most number of businesses and employees, they'd enact regulations that would favor small businesses, since that's where the majority of the economic activity takes place.
However, since both parties are "owned" by big business, that will never happen, so the choice will be between the Republican idea of deregulation (which will vastly favor big business) and the Democratic idea of regulation (which will also favor big business, as shown by the laughably impotent attempt to "regulate" Wall Street).
What we won't see -- barring Teddy Roosevelt rising from the grave -- is government regulation that favors small businesses. And that's a shame, because that's probably the only kind of government activity that's likely to rebuild the middle class and create substantial numbers of jobs in the United States.
________________________________________
Please stop allowing global pols to rebrand social democracy as BIG GOVERNMENT----it worked well under enforced rules and regulations----hiring people with strong and steady salaries vs allowing corporations to loot 10 times the cost of those salaries? REALLY???????
The American people of both parties have been constantly bombarded with terms like BIG GOVERNMENT DEMOCRATS AND LOOK AT THE BUDGET EXPLODE UNDER SOCIAL DEMOCRACY.
Well, when Reagan/Clinton started the small government push they dismantled all oversight and accountability and outsourcing----- opening the door to widespread corporate fraud of Federal programs---they knew what they were doing. They took hold of Federal agencies that had worked fine for low-income citizens for decades and filled them with corporate fraud.
IT MADE GOVERNMENT LOOK BIGGER BECAUSE OF ALL THAT FEDERAL FUNDING LOST TO CORPORATE FRAUD.
Medicare and Medicaid is a perfect example of this. The US has the biggest budget for public health not because of lazy unhealthy citizens getting too much health care----it is because health industry profiteering and fraud soaked our Federal budgets of hundreds of billions of dollars.
THIS IS THE BIG GOVERNMENT GLOBAL POLS ARE ALWAYS SHOUTING AGAINST.
If you spend the money and hire public employees to provide oversight and accountability and public justice----yes, you grow the size of government ----BUT GOVERNMENT SPENDS TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS LESS BECAUSE IT IS NOT BEING DEFRAUDED.
Social democracy grew Federal agencies tasked with enforcing regulations and social laws---but as a result the US economy soared---American wealth was more evenly distributed---and quality of life the best in the world====A SOMEWHAT BIG GOVERNMENT WAS SUCCESSFUL.
Obama and Bush are now rebuilding BIG GOVERNMENT based on outsourcing with the goal of soaking the Federal government with fraud and corruption. THAT IS NOT WHAT SOCIAL DEMOCRATIC BIGGER GOVERNMENT IS ABOUT.
As the article shows----now the expense in government becomes cronyism and pay-to-play taking far more funding than rebuilding Rule of Law, Equal Protection, and all that wealth streams to the richest----as with high-paid interns and consultants.
I like the Department of AG when it worked for the food quality and small farmers---today the Department of AG works overseas promoting BIG AG all over the world.
BETWEEN THE LINES
Government = fraud, waste, abuse, corruption
Exclusive: Joseph Farah tells jaw-dropping story about bureaucracy's $2 million internPublished: 08/13/2012 at 7:57 PM
Joseph Farah
Joseph Farah is founder, editor and CEO of WND and a nationally syndicated columnist with Creators News Service.
When my wife and I founded WND 15 years ago, the idea was pretty simple.
We would create a news agency that focused attention on exposing fraud, waste, abuse and corruption in government and other powerful institutions.
But make no mistake about it, unlike other powerful institutions, government actually breeds fraud, waste, abuse and corruption – especially Big Government as we have come to know it in Washington.
Try as I may to interest Americans in taking on the skyrocketing debt that threatens to destabilize – perhaps even destroy – America as we know it, the problem is so big, it tends to boggle the mind and make Americans eyes glaze over, suggesting there’s just nothing we can do about a problem so big.
So let’s cut this crisis down to size for illustration purposes.
U.S. Department of Agriculture officials spent $2 million on an internship program. Do you want to guess how many interns the program had? Before I give away the answer, let me tell you the internship program was part of a $63.4 million effort to protect the USDA from hackers.
Was the overall program successful?
Hardly.
In fact, a report by the inspector general discovered the following about how your $63 million was spent: “Specifically, we found that some of OCIO (Office of Chief Information Officer) projects did not meet the purposes outlined in the congressional request for funding or were not targeted to improve the most critical IT security risks. Additionally, some of these projects were not completely implemented, and were not sufficiently coordinated. This occurred because OCIO did not adequately plan projects and determine how it would utilize both internal and external resources.”
So, according to the report, “[T]he Department’s information systems are still at risk, even after expending $63.4 million of funding increases received in FY 2010 and 2011.”
Keep in mind, this is $63.4 million that didn’t help grow any more crops, that didn’t improve agriculture techniques in America, that didn’t deliver more food to Americans more efficiently, that didn’t produce anything of any value.
In other words, it was squandered, wasted, thrown away. And, it’s worth pointing out, it’s money the government doesn’t even have. It was borrowed – like more than $1 trillion a year is borrowed in Washington. This is money your children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren will be forced to pay.
Now let’s get back to that $2 million intern program, which was just a small part of the $63.4 million scam.
What was your guess?
How many interns were hired?
How much were they paid?
How much was spent on housing them?
Hold on to you hats.
The inspector general report found that the USDA spent $2 million on an intern program that “only resulted in one intern being hired full-time” for the Agriculture Security Operations Center.
One intern for $2 million.
That’s criminal. That’s theft. That’s grand larceny.
By the way, housing that intern cost taxpayers $192,500.
This, by the way, represents just the tip of the iceberg in the USDA’s failure to manage 16 projects designed to protect the department from hackers.
But the broader question is what benefit taxpayers get from the USDA’s annual budget of $13 billion! It might even be worthy of asking under what constitutional provision the USDA even exists.
What does it do?
Does it help farmers? Does it reduce the cost of food? Those might be worthy objectives, but they are not the objectives of the USDA. Neither would they be goals justifiable under any provision of the Constitution.
You could scrap tomorrow the entire $13 billion, Cabinet-level department, like so many others, and the only Americans who would feel any discomfort would be those who are employed by it – to push papers around and impose regulations on Americans who actually grow crops. That’s not quite true. Others who might feel discomfort would be those who get subsidies not to grow crops at all. And, of course, there would be that intern who would be displaced.
By the way, did anyone get fired at the USDA because of this kind of disgraceful fraud?
No, not one.
Do you get the picture?
This is one agency of too many in Washington that does nothing but pick our pockets.
Yet no candidate running for president and few running for Congress even propose killing off this monster once and for all. Some even claim we need to raise taxes to continue this kind of madness.
There is only one solution I can think of to address this insanity.
It is promoting the idea in Congress, among Republicans who claim to believe in limited government and reducing its size and scope, to stop borrowing money and forcing government to live within its means like the rest of us.
If you agree, you need to support the No More Red Ink campaign.
It’s time to force government, which is like a drug addict, to go cold turkey on spending.
No more $13 billion paper-pushing departments. No more waste, fraud, abuse and corruption. No more $2 million interns.
_____________________________________
As any Federal agency built to protect the American people and their welfare is dismantled-----agencies rebuilt to protect corporations and their interests---mainly looking towards a Federal government fighting for global corporations internationally----having nothing to do with US businesses----and as this article shows----they are creating laws that will make it impossible for a small business startup or entrepreneur to control any process or product developed and waiting to move forward.
Notice all the fees and transparency placed on the smaller business person that would never be allowed for a corporations----
SO AS REPUBLICANS AND CLINTON/OBAMA NEO-LIBERALS ARE SHOUTING JOBS JOBS JOBS AS START UPS AND ENTREPRENEUR----THEY CREATED LAWS TO MAKE SURE IT DOES NOT HAPPEN.
It's the same as Welfare to Work while Clinton was sending all US corporations overseas creating no work to be had.
So, BIG GOVERNMENT under a Clinton neo-liberal takes away Federal agencies that protect the public interest----and rebuild larger Federal agencies getting ready to work for US global corporations overseas----and WE THE PEOPLE get to pay higher and higher taxes to support agencies working only for these global corporations
Why ‘Patent Reform’ Harms Innovative Small Businesses
By Schmidt, Jacobus & Glover on April 25, 2014
The recent “Patent Reform” bills have an insidious effect on small businesses. The proposed legislation ensures small inventors will never be able to get the best inventions to market by imposing: Fee Shifting “Joinder”, Loser Pays, Pay to Play, Covered Business Methods (CBM), Elimination of Post Grant Review Estoppel, Disclosure of All Plaintiff Interested Parties, Enhanced Pleadings and Limiting Discovery, and Customer Stay provisions that are so onerous, only large corporations will be able to commercialize inventions. The provisions will make small inventing companies “Toxic Assets” to investors. Small inventors will likely need at least $5 million in the bank, not for their own use, but to cover the infringers’ costs. This is part of the shift in Congress to cater to big money interests, leaving the middle class behind. The details of these legislative “potholes” will be explained in this five part series.
As the National Co-Chairs and Executive Director of the Small Business Technology Council (SBTC), a council of the National Small Business Association, we support the highly inventive firms that participate in the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) programs. The SBTC is a council of the National Small Business Association (NSBA), the nation’s first small-business advocacy organization, advocating on behalf of America’s entrepreneurs. A staunchly nonpartisan organization, NSBA’s 65,000 members represent every state and every industry in the U.S.
Small business creates about 5 times more patents per employee than large firms and 20 times more than universities.[i] The SBIR program delivers 58% more patents than all U.S. universities combined.[ii] Furthermore, small firms patents are more important (more often cited) than large firm patents.[iii]
Small technology firms employ 38% of all scientists and engineers in America (54.8 percent of all industrial scientists and engineers). Yet these nearly 6 million scientists and engineers work with only 4.3 percent of the government R&D dollars. In contrast, firms with more than 500 employees account for only 27% of all scientists and engineers, but receive 50.3 percent of government R&D funds. Universities employ 16% of the scientists and engineers and receive 35.3 percent, non-profit research institutions 9.1 percent of R&D funding, and states and foreign countries 1.0 percent of R&D funds.[iv]
The Small Business Technology Council (SBTC) believes that HR 3309 and other “patent reform” bills in the Senate will cloud patent titles, making them weaker. For small business, patents will become mostly unenforceable due to the proposed much higher upfront cost of litigation, thus making small business patents significantly less valuable. Loss of patent value constricts new company formation, chilling new investments, and choking job formation. Legislating disincentives for capital investments will result in the loss of many hundreds of billions of dollars of wealth in America and dry up the major source of new jobs, small inventing businesses. Purporting to attack predatory trolls, the bills instead attack all small companies with legitimate patent suits to protect the interests of large infringers at the expense of new business job creation. Furthermore, these bills do not specifically define or address “trolls” or “non-practicing entities,” but instead lump all patent holders together. With the current patent legislation, we have a baby and bathwater problem, we are “throwing out” our small business inventors.
HR 3309 (“Innovation Act of 2013”) is anti-innovation and anti-job, and will further raise the barriers against small business technology development by making it yet harder to win and defend a patent in the U.S. The House and Senate bills raise the costs of obtaining and defending new patents, which disproportionately empowers the largest firms while straining the capability of smaller firms. Intellectual property is a key component to make and keep good jobs in America. By raising the barriers to development and protection of intellectual property, the bills remove a key incentive to innovate, and provide large international manufacturers the ability to infringe with impunity. Patents protect U.S. jobs, and these bills are anti-patent and anti-job.
The U.S. innovation sector is responsible for 27.7 percent of U.S. jobs and 34.8 percent of U.S. GDP.[vii] According to David Kappos, the former head of the United States Patent and Trademark office, when discussing the lack of focus on Trolls in the current bills, “untargeted legislation puts in jeopardy U.S. technology leadership.”[viii]
Patents are the number one indicator of regional wealth according to the Federal Reserve Bank.[ix] Where do the best patents come from? “SBIR-nurtured firms consistently account for a quarter of all U.S. R&D 100 Award winners,”[x] on 2.5% of the Federal R&D budget. Regions that increase their number of patents gain $4,300 more per worker over a decade’s time.[xi] If these “Patent Reform” bills are signed into law, they will discourage small business patents, and the contrapositive indicates that we will be a poorer nation. Changes in the law will also adversely affect the over 21,300 SBIR award winners and their over 112,550 patents.[xii] This will become even more critical over time as there has been a shifting in engineering talent from large businesses to small businesses. (The employment share of American small business engineers grew from 6% in 1978 to 38% in 2005.[xiii])
The Small Business Administration’s Office of Advocacy has now warned what these bills will do to the economy.[xiv] This is despite the fact that HR 3309 overwhelmingly (325-91) passed the House, and the President’s indication, including comments in the SOTU address,[xv] that he will sign a patent reform bill (such as HR 3309).
The President’s statements are inconsistent and appear to be at odds with his prior goals and statements, such as:
“President Obama has said, if we are to win the future and be successful in an increasingly competitive international market, the United States of America must innovate. … The Obama Administration’s determination to promote innovation and protect intellectual property (IP) rights will harness the inherent drive and ingenuity of the American people in meeting that goal. … Innovation protected by IP rights is key to creating new jobs and growing exports. … Protecting our ideas and IP promotes innovative, open, and competitive markets, and helps ensure that the U.S. private sector remains America’s innovation engine.” [xvi]
The America Invents Act (AIA) was fully implemented about 1 ½ years ago, and its effect on our patent system has yet to be fully understood. One of the AIA’s requirements was to have a study performed by the Chief Counsel for Advocacy of the SBA on the effects of the Act on small business.[xvii] This report was to have been completed by September 16, 2012, eighteen months ago. We are very concerned that the Administration needs to be cautious before making additional changes to our patent laws, before the effects of the prior law have been evaluated.
We must be certain that changes that are made should not undermine incentives for developing new U.S. patents, their robust enforcement, or the existing economic incentives for companies of all sizes to invest in research, development, and new jobs. We encourage the Administration to request the Senate to hold additional hearings on the many different aspects of the legislation and its effects on small businesses.
The current Senate bills and HR 3309 have many items that we are concerned about. These include but are not limited to:
Global pols are now trying to make sure the US does not rebuild its local economy as it uses all kinds of scam policies to make sure small businesses cannot takeoff. Entrepreneur/startups/public sector as non-profits all are geared to make sure no real market competition is rebuilt.
Trans Pacific Trade Pact is all about installing every policy that kills small business. Ending corporate taxes will always move more taxes to small business and citizens. IT RAISES TAXATION ON THE 99% OF PEOPLE.
I will talk the next few days about how all of this is tied to the 'small government' mantra----small government means a few become very powerful and wealthy at the expense of 99% of all other citizens-----AS IN BALTIMORE
'Trade tariffs are also useful to small businesses that don't have the resources to globalize. Big businesses, of course, love free trade because it gives them license to move their manufacturing overseas. However, such movement often means the collapse of local small business'.
That's right---and it is why social democrats from FDR to LBJ regulated and enforced regulations on big corporations ----and it is why Republicans and Clinton neo-liberals hate and dismantled regulations---they work for corporate power and wealth.
I like the reference to Sarbanes Oxley harming small businesses----WHILE AT THE SAME TIME CONGRESS DOES NOT ENFORCE THESE POLICIES ON THE FRAUDSTERS OF WALL STREET AND BIG BUSINESS. Could it be that the Sarbanes were only wanting to harm small business?
By Geoffrey James MoneyWatch October 25, 2010, 10:58 AM
Government Regulation is Good for Business
Last Updated Oct 25, 2010 11:04 AM EDT
Yes, you read that right. Government regulation is good for business...depending on how you define the term "business" and on how the regulations are written.
Many people (and especially the "business" press) tend to use the umbrella term "business" to mean any organization that tries to make a profit. But that usage is, like most generalizations, misleading.
There is very little commonality of self-interest between, say, a mega-billion dollar company like Walmart, and a locally-owned boutique.
Quite the contrary. Business conditions that help Walmart to be successful are almost always going to make it more difficult for that boutique to survive.
It's much more accurate to say that there are two broad segments of profit-making organizations: big businesses and small businesses.
This is an important distinction to make because majority of business activity in the United States takes place in small business. According to the U.S. Department of State:
Fully 99 percent of all independent enterprises in the country employ fewer than 500 people. These small enterprises account for 52 percent of all U.S. workers, according to the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA). Some 19.6 million Americans work for companies employing fewer than 20 workers, 18.4 million work for firms employing between 20 and 99 workers, and 14.6 million work for firms with 100 to 499 workers. By contrast, 47.7 million Americans work for firms with 500 or more employees.
What does this have to do with government regulation? Everything.
A lack of government regulation is almost always to the advantage of big businesses and to the disadvantage of small businesses. Such a condition always results in the formation of monopolies and the suppression of smaller firms, even if those firms might be highly innovative.
As the great Adam Smith pointed out: "People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices."
Does this mean that all government regulation is favorable to small business? Of course not.
In fact, government regulations are often intentionally written so that they favor big businesses over small ones. This always happens because legislators and regulators are usually "owned" by big businesses, either through campaign contribution bribery or the promise of future employment.
A perfect example of this is Sarbanes-Oxley, the financial regulation enacted after the Enron debacle.
Even though the culprits of the debacle were very much from the world of big business, the net effect of Sarbox on small businesses was to add a fixed cost (massive accounting fees) to going public, an expense that large companies could easily afford, but which was (and is) burdensome on smaller firms.
The problem is that the elected government of the United States has become like the elected government of Imperial Rome. All the forms of the republic remain in place, but the actual decisions are made elsewhere.
In this case, though, it's not an emperor that is pulling the strings, but the forces of big business. Those forces would prefer to have no regulations, but if that's not possible (for political reasons) will tolerate regulations that favor big business.
So here's the reality of today's situation: if you work for or own a small business, when it comes to government regulation, it's a classic "heads they win, tails we lose" situations. To a greater or lesser degree, it's the small businesses who are going to get screwed, no matter what.
On the other hand, there have been times in the history of the United States, where the government has enacted regulations (and laws) that help small businesses. The anti-monopoly regulations, for example, help small businesses at the expense of large ones, which is exactly why they're so seldom invoked any longer.
Trade tariffs are also useful to small businesses that don't have the resources to globalize. Big businesses, of course, love free trade because it gives them license to move their manufacturing overseas. However, such movement often means the collapse of local small business.
To summarize, here are the rules of the game:
- No government regulation = good for big business, bad for small business.
- Most government regulation = good for big business, bad for small business.
- Some government regulation = bad for big business, good for small business.
Now, if politicians and regulators really wanted to help the most number of businesses and employees, they'd enact regulations that would favor small businesses, since that's where the majority of the economic activity takes place.
However, since both parties are "owned" by big business, that will never happen, so the choice will be between the Republican idea of deregulation (which will vastly favor big business) and the Democratic idea of regulation (which will also favor big business, as shown by the laughably impotent attempt to "regulate" Wall Street).
What we won't see -- barring Teddy Roosevelt rising from the grave -- is government regulation that favors small businesses. And that's a shame, because that's probably the only kind of government activity that's likely to rebuild the middle class and create substantial numbers of jobs in the United States.
________________________________________
Please stop allowing global pols to rebrand social democracy as BIG GOVERNMENT----it worked well under enforced rules and regulations----hiring people with strong and steady salaries vs allowing corporations to loot 10 times the cost of those salaries? REALLY???????
The American people of both parties have been constantly bombarded with terms like BIG GOVERNMENT DEMOCRATS AND LOOK AT THE BUDGET EXPLODE UNDER SOCIAL DEMOCRACY.
Well, when Reagan/Clinton started the small government push they dismantled all oversight and accountability and outsourcing----- opening the door to widespread corporate fraud of Federal programs---they knew what they were doing. They took hold of Federal agencies that had worked fine for low-income citizens for decades and filled them with corporate fraud.
IT MADE GOVERNMENT LOOK BIGGER BECAUSE OF ALL THAT FEDERAL FUNDING LOST TO CORPORATE FRAUD.
Medicare and Medicaid is a perfect example of this. The US has the biggest budget for public health not because of lazy unhealthy citizens getting too much health care----it is because health industry profiteering and fraud soaked our Federal budgets of hundreds of billions of dollars.
THIS IS THE BIG GOVERNMENT GLOBAL POLS ARE ALWAYS SHOUTING AGAINST.
If you spend the money and hire public employees to provide oversight and accountability and public justice----yes, you grow the size of government ----BUT GOVERNMENT SPENDS TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS LESS BECAUSE IT IS NOT BEING DEFRAUDED.
Social democracy grew Federal agencies tasked with enforcing regulations and social laws---but as a result the US economy soared---American wealth was more evenly distributed---and quality of life the best in the world====A SOMEWHAT BIG GOVERNMENT WAS SUCCESSFUL.
Obama and Bush are now rebuilding BIG GOVERNMENT based on outsourcing with the goal of soaking the Federal government with fraud and corruption. THAT IS NOT WHAT SOCIAL DEMOCRATIC BIGGER GOVERNMENT IS ABOUT.
As the article shows----now the expense in government becomes cronyism and pay-to-play taking far more funding than rebuilding Rule of Law, Equal Protection, and all that wealth streams to the richest----as with high-paid interns and consultants.
I like the Department of AG when it worked for the food quality and small farmers---today the Department of AG works overseas promoting BIG AG all over the world.
BETWEEN THE LINES
Government = fraud, waste, abuse, corruption
Exclusive: Joseph Farah tells jaw-dropping story about bureaucracy's $2 million internPublished: 08/13/2012 at 7:57 PM
Joseph Farah
Joseph Farah is founder, editor and CEO of WND and a nationally syndicated columnist with Creators News Service.
When my wife and I founded WND 15 years ago, the idea was pretty simple.
We would create a news agency that focused attention on exposing fraud, waste, abuse and corruption in government and other powerful institutions.
But make no mistake about it, unlike other powerful institutions, government actually breeds fraud, waste, abuse and corruption – especially Big Government as we have come to know it in Washington.
Try as I may to interest Americans in taking on the skyrocketing debt that threatens to destabilize – perhaps even destroy – America as we know it, the problem is so big, it tends to boggle the mind and make Americans eyes glaze over, suggesting there’s just nothing we can do about a problem so big.
So let’s cut this crisis down to size for illustration purposes.
U.S. Department of Agriculture officials spent $2 million on an internship program. Do you want to guess how many interns the program had? Before I give away the answer, let me tell you the internship program was part of a $63.4 million effort to protect the USDA from hackers.
Was the overall program successful?
Hardly.
In fact, a report by the inspector general discovered the following about how your $63 million was spent: “Specifically, we found that some of OCIO (Office of Chief Information Officer) projects did not meet the purposes outlined in the congressional request for funding or were not targeted to improve the most critical IT security risks. Additionally, some of these projects were not completely implemented, and were not sufficiently coordinated. This occurred because OCIO did not adequately plan projects and determine how it would utilize both internal and external resources.”
So, according to the report, “[T]he Department’s information systems are still at risk, even after expending $63.4 million of funding increases received in FY 2010 and 2011.”
Keep in mind, this is $63.4 million that didn’t help grow any more crops, that didn’t improve agriculture techniques in America, that didn’t deliver more food to Americans more efficiently, that didn’t produce anything of any value.
In other words, it was squandered, wasted, thrown away. And, it’s worth pointing out, it’s money the government doesn’t even have. It was borrowed – like more than $1 trillion a year is borrowed in Washington. This is money your children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren will be forced to pay.
Now let’s get back to that $2 million intern program, which was just a small part of the $63.4 million scam.
What was your guess?
How many interns were hired?
How much were they paid?
How much was spent on housing them?
Hold on to you hats.
The inspector general report found that the USDA spent $2 million on an intern program that “only resulted in one intern being hired full-time” for the Agriculture Security Operations Center.
One intern for $2 million.
That’s criminal. That’s theft. That’s grand larceny.
By the way, housing that intern cost taxpayers $192,500.
This, by the way, represents just the tip of the iceberg in the USDA’s failure to manage 16 projects designed to protect the department from hackers.
But the broader question is what benefit taxpayers get from the USDA’s annual budget of $13 billion! It might even be worthy of asking under what constitutional provision the USDA even exists.
What does it do?
Does it help farmers? Does it reduce the cost of food? Those might be worthy objectives, but they are not the objectives of the USDA. Neither would they be goals justifiable under any provision of the Constitution.
You could scrap tomorrow the entire $13 billion, Cabinet-level department, like so many others, and the only Americans who would feel any discomfort would be those who are employed by it – to push papers around and impose regulations on Americans who actually grow crops. That’s not quite true. Others who might feel discomfort would be those who get subsidies not to grow crops at all. And, of course, there would be that intern who would be displaced.
By the way, did anyone get fired at the USDA because of this kind of disgraceful fraud?
No, not one.
Do you get the picture?
This is one agency of too many in Washington that does nothing but pick our pockets.
Yet no candidate running for president and few running for Congress even propose killing off this monster once and for all. Some even claim we need to raise taxes to continue this kind of madness.
There is only one solution I can think of to address this insanity.
It is promoting the idea in Congress, among Republicans who claim to believe in limited government and reducing its size and scope, to stop borrowing money and forcing government to live within its means like the rest of us.
If you agree, you need to support the No More Red Ink campaign.
It’s time to force government, which is like a drug addict, to go cold turkey on spending.
No more $13 billion paper-pushing departments. No more waste, fraud, abuse and corruption. No more $2 million interns.
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As any Federal agency built to protect the American people and their welfare is dismantled-----agencies rebuilt to protect corporations and their interests---mainly looking towards a Federal government fighting for global corporations internationally----having nothing to do with US businesses----and as this article shows----they are creating laws that will make it impossible for a small business startup or entrepreneur to control any process or product developed and waiting to move forward.
Notice all the fees and transparency placed on the smaller business person that would never be allowed for a corporations----
SO AS REPUBLICANS AND CLINTON/OBAMA NEO-LIBERALS ARE SHOUTING JOBS JOBS JOBS AS START UPS AND ENTREPRENEUR----THEY CREATED LAWS TO MAKE SURE IT DOES NOT HAPPEN.
It's the same as Welfare to Work while Clinton was sending all US corporations overseas creating no work to be had.
So, BIG GOVERNMENT under a Clinton neo-liberal takes away Federal agencies that protect the public interest----and rebuild larger Federal agencies getting ready to work for US global corporations overseas----and WE THE PEOPLE get to pay higher and higher taxes to support agencies working only for these global corporations
Why ‘Patent Reform’ Harms Innovative Small Businesses
By Schmidt, Jacobus & Glover on April 25, 2014
The recent “Patent Reform” bills have an insidious effect on small businesses. The proposed legislation ensures small inventors will never be able to get the best inventions to market by imposing: Fee Shifting “Joinder”, Loser Pays, Pay to Play, Covered Business Methods (CBM), Elimination of Post Grant Review Estoppel, Disclosure of All Plaintiff Interested Parties, Enhanced Pleadings and Limiting Discovery, and Customer Stay provisions that are so onerous, only large corporations will be able to commercialize inventions. The provisions will make small inventing companies “Toxic Assets” to investors. Small inventors will likely need at least $5 million in the bank, not for their own use, but to cover the infringers’ costs. This is part of the shift in Congress to cater to big money interests, leaving the middle class behind. The details of these legislative “potholes” will be explained in this five part series.
As the National Co-Chairs and Executive Director of the Small Business Technology Council (SBTC), a council of the National Small Business Association, we support the highly inventive firms that participate in the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) programs. The SBTC is a council of the National Small Business Association (NSBA), the nation’s first small-business advocacy organization, advocating on behalf of America’s entrepreneurs. A staunchly nonpartisan organization, NSBA’s 65,000 members represent every state and every industry in the U.S.
Small business creates about 5 times more patents per employee than large firms and 20 times more than universities.[i] The SBIR program delivers 58% more patents than all U.S. universities combined.[ii] Furthermore, small firms patents are more important (more often cited) than large firm patents.[iii]
Small technology firms employ 38% of all scientists and engineers in America (54.8 percent of all industrial scientists and engineers). Yet these nearly 6 million scientists and engineers work with only 4.3 percent of the government R&D dollars. In contrast, firms with more than 500 employees account for only 27% of all scientists and engineers, but receive 50.3 percent of government R&D funds. Universities employ 16% of the scientists and engineers and receive 35.3 percent, non-profit research institutions 9.1 percent of R&D funding, and states and foreign countries 1.0 percent of R&D funds.[iv]
The Small Business Technology Council (SBTC) believes that HR 3309 and other “patent reform” bills in the Senate will cloud patent titles, making them weaker. For small business, patents will become mostly unenforceable due to the proposed much higher upfront cost of litigation, thus making small business patents significantly less valuable. Loss of patent value constricts new company formation, chilling new investments, and choking job formation. Legislating disincentives for capital investments will result in the loss of many hundreds of billions of dollars of wealth in America and dry up the major source of new jobs, small inventing businesses. Purporting to attack predatory trolls, the bills instead attack all small companies with legitimate patent suits to protect the interests of large infringers at the expense of new business job creation. Furthermore, these bills do not specifically define or address “trolls” or “non-practicing entities,” but instead lump all patent holders together. With the current patent legislation, we have a baby and bathwater problem, we are “throwing out” our small business inventors.
HR 3309 (“Innovation Act of 2013”) is anti-innovation and anti-job, and will further raise the barriers against small business technology development by making it yet harder to win and defend a patent in the U.S. The House and Senate bills raise the costs of obtaining and defending new patents, which disproportionately empowers the largest firms while straining the capability of smaller firms. Intellectual property is a key component to make and keep good jobs in America. By raising the barriers to development and protection of intellectual property, the bills remove a key incentive to innovate, and provide large international manufacturers the ability to infringe with impunity. Patents protect U.S. jobs, and these bills are anti-patent and anti-job.
- By making it much easier for large integrated multi-national corporations to simply adopt new technology without consideration for patents, the resulting jobs will tend to flow overseas to the lowest-labor-cost location, rather than be held by U.S. workers defended by U.S. patents. U.S. patents are a primary defense keeping U.S. jobs in the U.S.
- Over time, these changes also reduce the incentives for American small businesses to continue their valuable innovation if their products can no longer be defended against appropriation by the large manufacturers. Small businesses create and tend to keep their jobs in the U.S.
The U.S. innovation sector is responsible for 27.7 percent of U.S. jobs and 34.8 percent of U.S. GDP.[vii] According to David Kappos, the former head of the United States Patent and Trademark office, when discussing the lack of focus on Trolls in the current bills, “untargeted legislation puts in jeopardy U.S. technology leadership.”[viii]
Patents are the number one indicator of regional wealth according to the Federal Reserve Bank.[ix] Where do the best patents come from? “SBIR-nurtured firms consistently account for a quarter of all U.S. R&D 100 Award winners,”[x] on 2.5% of the Federal R&D budget. Regions that increase their number of patents gain $4,300 more per worker over a decade’s time.[xi] If these “Patent Reform” bills are signed into law, they will discourage small business patents, and the contrapositive indicates that we will be a poorer nation. Changes in the law will also adversely affect the over 21,300 SBIR award winners and their over 112,550 patents.[xii] This will become even more critical over time as there has been a shifting in engineering talent from large businesses to small businesses. (The employment share of American small business engineers grew from 6% in 1978 to 38% in 2005.[xiii])
The Small Business Administration’s Office of Advocacy has now warned what these bills will do to the economy.[xiv] This is despite the fact that HR 3309 overwhelmingly (325-91) passed the House, and the President’s indication, including comments in the SOTU address,[xv] that he will sign a patent reform bill (such as HR 3309).
The President’s statements are inconsistent and appear to be at odds with his prior goals and statements, such as:
“President Obama has said, if we are to win the future and be successful in an increasingly competitive international market, the United States of America must innovate. … The Obama Administration’s determination to promote innovation and protect intellectual property (IP) rights will harness the inherent drive and ingenuity of the American people in meeting that goal. … Innovation protected by IP rights is key to creating new jobs and growing exports. … Protecting our ideas and IP promotes innovative, open, and competitive markets, and helps ensure that the U.S. private sector remains America’s innovation engine.” [xvi]
The America Invents Act (AIA) was fully implemented about 1 ½ years ago, and its effect on our patent system has yet to be fully understood. One of the AIA’s requirements was to have a study performed by the Chief Counsel for Advocacy of the SBA on the effects of the Act on small business.[xvii] This report was to have been completed by September 16, 2012, eighteen months ago. We are very concerned that the Administration needs to be cautious before making additional changes to our patent laws, before the effects of the prior law have been evaluated.
We must be certain that changes that are made should not undermine incentives for developing new U.S. patents, their robust enforcement, or the existing economic incentives for companies of all sizes to invest in research, development, and new jobs. We encourage the Administration to request the Senate to hold additional hearings on the many different aspects of the legislation and its effects on small businesses.
The current Senate bills and HR 3309 have many items that we are concerned about. These include but are not limited to:
- Loser Pays.
- Pay to Play.
- Fee Shifting “Joinder”.
- Covered Business Methods (CBM).
- Elimination of Post Grant Review Estoppel.
- Disclosure of All Plaintiff Interested Parties.
- Enhanced Pleadings and Limiting Discovery.
- Customer Stays.
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