What’s Killing Small Business in California?
If you are President Barack Obama, what do you do with bad numbers reporting a bad stimulus result? From the looks of it, nothing – the media will gladly pick up the effort and spin the results.
The Obama Administration’s new idea to stimulate small businesses has hit a major snag in California. And the real culprit is ignored by the state’s media.
The LA Times produced a fear-mongering, “it’s the bad economy to blame” article as the focused reason for the death of small business in California – as the Times ignored the obvious.
The headline reads, “Small-business bankruptcies rise 81% in California”, with the subtitle stating, “With credit tight and consumers still pinching their pennies, many business owners find they can’t go on.”
So the death of small business is the entire fault of the economy? That’s not what I am hearing.
How can the LA Times do a piece on small business and ignore the burden that growing government regulations place upon owners and their employees?
Before Christmas, Republican Assemblyman Roger Niello and State Senator Dave Cox held two conferences featuring local business owners speaking to the stronghold that government has over the private sector.
The vice that government uses is expensive, burdensome and manipulative government regulations that tap business owners dry, as they close up their shops, services and futures in California.
You can watch some of the statements made in Citrus Heights, California.
Come 2010, one of the biggest efforts to restore California to a land of opportunity, possibility and innovation is to remove a large portion of these regulations from the backs of business owners.
After the Christmas break, I’ll have more on this major issue that faces California’s recovery – and her future.
As a small business owner for the past 16 years I can attest to the burdensome and costly crapola I have to put up with from county and state. The sheer magnitude of forms I have to fill out is enough to make you pull out all your hair if you have any left. But its the taxes here, the fees, there that nickel and dime you to death. When the economy tanked our fees didn’t go down, they got higher! Now I really resent the burdens placed on smalll businesses by the Gov’t that drives us out of the state. Californiia is the worst place in my book to open a business. No wonder why we have lost 500,000 blue collar jobs in the past few years.
The state legislature has to be the stupidist body of Government right next to the US Senate and House of Mis-Representatives! Just get out of my pocket book and quit giving foreign counties a leg up on us with all your freak’in red tape!
Yolo County has done the same thing, so has the City of Woodland and I’m waiting for City of Davis to se what wonderful new fees they wish to impose on my sole proprietorship. My business has been trying to cope with a 20-25% loss in clients and the county and local governments seem to think I have deep pockets. I won’t hire anyone the cost is too much for cash flow. I can’t sell my house because the market is in the tank. I’ll just wait until the state picks my bones, I suppose.
Paul Smith I agree with you 100%!
From the Sacramento Business Journal;
The Senate is about to put coal in the stocking of home builders and other small construction firms.
The amended version of the health care reform bill, which cleared another procedural hurdle Wednesday morning, includes a provision that penalizes small construction firms if they don’t offer insurance to their employees. Under the bill, businesses with more than 50 employees would have to pay a $750-per-worker penalty to the federal government if any of their employees purchases subsidized insurance on their own. The new version of the bill lowers that threshold to five employees for construction firms.