This is at a very bad time for the United States Congress to reduce the Small Business Administration to levels of ineffectiveness.For over a decade the funding and staffing of the SBA has been getting reduced year after year.It is now reaching a level that would put it virtually on life support.Collectively, small business matters are not high on the priority list of the elected officials in Washington, DC, and entrepreneurs from across the nation are feeling the effects.
First there is Ethiopia.This nation which is second only to Nigeria in African population is land locked.This frustrates its economic growth as its exports leave the nation mostly via air which is extremely expensive or via road which is very dangerous and unreliable.Ethiopia wants a seaport and has fought its neighbor Eritrea throughout the decades trying to seize the beautiful seaport capital of Asmara.The Eritreans have proven themselves to be fierce fighters and have resisted every attempt with the last conflict ending in 2000.Lately, Ethiopia has turned its attention to war torn Somalia which has a very attractive and extensive coast line on the Horn of Africa viewing sea lanes to and from the Red Sea and Indian Ocean.
The Federal Acquisition Regulation, the FAR, is the “bible” for federal procurement practices.It is how you do business with agencies and departments of the federal government.Since the advent of contract bundling you can forget about the FAR.It has been twisted and turned and has become very much ineffective.Big business is doing what it wants to do and the federal agencies are, more or less, saying “Yessa Boss”.We now have a virtual coup in the procurement practices of the United States Government.Big business, particularly the Military Industrial Complex, is running the operation.
Oh how I remember The Draft.It was that law that rounded up many of my friends and relatives and took them off to fight for the Military Industrial Complex.Many came back in coffins while others came back with physical and mental scars that would haunt them and their loved ones for a lifetime.The Draft was racist and totally unfair.Those with money and connections could finesse around it.The disadvantaged were easy prey for a system hell bent on power at any cost (someone else’s cost).
It seems like a decade but it has only been 13 months since the major disaster known as Hurricane Katrina and the failed rescue thereafter.The City of New Orleans looked like a bombed out German city after World War II.But it wasn’t a piece of history or a victim of a world war.It was an American city that experienced the biggest administrative blunder and mismanagement in the history of this great nation.Decades of malfeasance in the levee system and a new Homeland Security Agency that was pitiful.
