During the Bush Administration I was critical of some of President Bush’s small business policies. He adopted some policies that I considered to be unfavorable to small business. But, I could get on national television and complain about it. President Obama has adopted policies that are much, much more harmful to small businesses than anything that ever happened under the Bush Administration, but you won’t see any coverage of it in the mainstream media.
A few weeks ago the SBA headed by Obama appointee Maria Contreras-Sweet proposed a new policy called the “safe harbor from fraud penalties.” Under this policy a large business can intentionally misrepresent their firm as a small business to illegally steal millions in federal small business contracts and completely avoid any penalties by simply claiming they “acted in good faith.”
Under section 16 (d) of the Small Business Act, the penalty for falsely claiming to be a small business to illegally land federal small business contracts can “be punished by a fine of not more than $500,000 or by imprisonment for not more than 10 years, or both.”
Under the new Obama Administration “safe harbor from fraud penalties” policy, firms that are caught committing felony federal contracting fraud can simply claim they “acted in good faith” and like magic, no jail time, no fines, no nothing.
It’s absolutely outrageous. This policy essentially legalizes felony federal contracting fraud in small business programs. It will obviously encourage rampant fraud and abuse in federal small business contracting programs and yet try and find any mention of it in the mainstream media. Try to find any mention of it anywhere. Most of what you will find I wrote.
On September 10 the SBA proposed a new policy that will put thousands of small businesses in the IT industry out of business. The SBA has proposed a new policy that will change the federal definition of a small business for thousands of IT firms that provide computer related products to the federal government. This policy change will make any IT firm with annual sales of over $27.5 million a large business forcing them to compete head to head with firms like Dell, IBM and Hewlett-Packard for government contracts.
It is highly unlikely you will see any mention of this blatant anti-small business policy anywhere in the press. The total lack of media coverage will guarantee it will be adopted without opposition and thousands of small businesses in the IT industry will be forced to close their doors and millions of jobs will be lost.
At the same time the Obama Administration plans to force thousands of legitimate small businesses to compete with Fortune 500 firms. The Obama Administration SBA policies have allowed hundreds of Fortune 500 firms and their subsidiaries to be considered small businesses. This issue has received only minimum coverage by CBS and NBC.
In addition to that, the Obama Administration is forcing thousands of legitimate small business out of business by requiring them to compete with Fortune 500 firms and have also adopted other policies that turned thousands of large businesses into small businesses over night.
The Washington Post was the only major newspaper to report on the Obama Administration’s anti-small business policies that legally changed the federal definition of a small business to include thousands of large businesses.
A recent hearing in the House Small Business Committee revealed the Obama Administration is giving small business contracts to firms like Raytheon, Northrop Grumman and Chevron. The most recent data from the Federal Procurement Data System provides the top 100 recipients of federal small business contracts, over 75% are actually large businesses. You won’t find this travesty mentioned in the mainstream media.
Federal investigations that essentially accused the SBA of encouraging fraud have received no coverage in the mainstream media. For example GAO Report 10-108 states, “By failing to hold firms accountable, SBA and contracting agencies have sent a message to the contracting community that there is no punishment or consequences for committing fraud.”
These are just some of the examples of the Obama Administration’s massive program to control the media and kill any stories that are critical of their administration. President Obama has implemented the most extensive campaign in U.S. history to control the media and stop any criticism of his administration.
On July 9, 2014, 38 journalistic organizations sent a letter to President Obama asking him to stop “politically-driven suppression of the news.” That story should have been on every TV station and in every newspaper and news website in the country. It fell victim to the very problem it was trying to address. It received very little media coverage and most of the people I know never even saw the story.
Here’s another example of President Obama’s massive campaign to stop all criticism in the press of the rampant fraud and corruption that has gone on during his administration. 47 Inspector’s General sent a letter to both the House and Senate Government Reform Committees and asked for their help to stop the Obama Administration from blocking their access to data in a variety of federal agencies.
This should have been a huge story but it also received very little coverage from the mainstream media.
During the Bush years when I would go on national television on a regular basis and complain about their policies, I never would have dreamed federal policies for small business would become so devastating during the Obama Administration and that it would be next to impossible to get on national television to expose it.
At lease I have the satisfaction of knowing the Obama Administration will go down in history as the least transparent administrations in history and Barrack Obama will go down as the most anti-small business President in history.
