Main Street Small Businesses

I've been thinking about the real small businessman on 3rd Street in a small town in New Jersey. He bemoans that he does not understand why everyone says the small business community is doing so well when he isn't. Of course, this self proclaimed Independent blames it on President Obama and the fact that he cannot secure a line of credit. Perhaps his mens clothing store would be doing better if the GOP led House had been busy fulfilling its 2010 promise to work on jobs, jobs, jobs - or if the Senate GOP wasn't more worried about making President Obama a single term president. Maybe the line of credit would be easier to obtain if his community banks were given the same favorable treatment as the too big to fail national banks. Perhaps he could have heeded the Randian philosophies the GOP was adopting and realized his little town no longer needed his haberdashery and opened a frozen yogurt shop in its place.

 Instead of making it his fault for not fully analyzing the situation and the roles played by the GOP that affected his overall well-being I'd like to focus on the common misunderstanding of a single term - "small business".

This term, by many, is assumed to mean just the mom and pop type of businesses but this guy is playing in a division that includes the Koch brothers and many others we would commonly call big business. In fact, despite the Kochs not being on this list, the top 10 on Forbes 100 for 2009 had revenues between $197.8m and $181.8m - not a revenue complaint in the bunch. So when the main stream press uses the collective referred to as "small business" they do us all a disfavor by blurring the difference between the real Main Street small business man and the privately held behemoths like Koch and the publicly held companies listed in the Forbes list.

So may I suggest to the Main Street small business people that are too busy working to make the American dream a reality in their lives that they can't look at the facts on the ground. Don't be swayed to vote for Romney just because hes made a ton of money stealing other people's dreams and he talks about small businesses. Remember small businesses were on the menu for Bain Capital and that a vote for Romney doesn't fix the economy in a way that will benefit you. As long as the middle and working poor have less money to buy a new suit or frozen treat you will not benefit.

 http://crooksandliars.com/david-neiwert/evil-liberals-keep-making-republican

 http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fsb/fsb100/2009/snapshots/1.html