Small business owners across the country are weighing in on the immigration debate. Their message: small businesses support immigration reform with a roadmap to citizenship.
At May Day rallies tomorrow, around the country, small business leaders will be addressing the crowds; speaking up for comprehensive immigration reform. It seems a good moment to remind ourselves where exactly small business owners stand on this issue. Continue reading
Wednesday, in his post “Has the Budget Crisis Du Jour Got You Down?” Bill Daley pointed out that if Congress were to close one tax loophole on offshore accounts, it could be enough to create a ‘job stimulus’ program the country has not seen since the beginning of the Great Recession. Continue reading
Melanie Collins, a small business owner and leader with the Maine Small Business Coalition, traveled to Washington, DC on October 19 to speak at a press conference outside the headquarters of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Her message was simple: “The U.S. Chamber of Commerce doesn’t speak for small business, and it doesn’t speak for me.” Continue reading
Members of the Maine Small Business Coalition are challenging the political intervention of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce after it announced a $400,000 attack ad in the race for the open Senate seat in Maine left by the retirement of Olympia Snowe at the end of this year. The 3,400-strong MSBC had a clear message for the U.S. Chamber: go back to Washington. Continue reading
The debate about the Bush tax cuts for the top 2 percent of income earners (with annual household income over $250,000) is heating up in Washington, DC, and with it the rhetoric about how ending these special breaks might affect small businesses.
Indeed, opponents of ending the special breaks at the top are making doomsday claims about potential negative impacts on small businesses. They’ve even funded a “study,” based on wild assumptions, to manufacture convenient figures to support their claims about possible job losses. Continue reading
Millions of small business owners, and their tens of millions of employees, will be greatly impacted by tomorrow’s US Supreme Court ruling on the Affordable Care Act. The enormous benefits that the ACA provides–expanding coverage options, lowering costs and giving consumers, not insurance companies, control over their own health care, to name a few–hang in the balance. Continue reading
Cross-posted from Main Street Alliance
Congressional testimony may seem a long ways away from cupcake baking, but not for Jody Hall. Hall, owner of Seattle’s fast-growing Cupcake Royale and a leader with the Main Street Alliance of Washington, traveled to Washington, DC on May 31 to testify about health care reform before a House committee.
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Mere days before National Small Business Week kicked off it was revealed that JP Morgan Chase and CEO wonder boy Jamie Dimon lost $2B (now $3B by some estimates) on derivative trades meant to mitigate risk. This was a stark reminder for small businesses that nearly 4 years after the economic collapse wreaked havoc on local economies and small business, there are still significant gaps in the regulatory fabric. Continue reading
From the Main Street Alliance Website:
Main Street Alliance of Oregon has been surveying business owners throughout Oregon and is finding strong interest in electoral reform. Currently around eight in ten business owners feel the Citizens United Supreme Court decision, freeing corporations to spend unlimited sums of money in elections, is bad for small business. And seven in ten would support a constitutional amendment declaring that corporations are not people and money is not speech. Continue reading
It’s tax season. And that means tax policy is at the center of the public debate. So are claims about how changes to the tax code will affect small businesses.
To separate fact from fiction, the Main Street Alliance released a pair of new “straight talk” fact sheets addressing topics relating to small business and taxes. Continue reading
