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| In this issue |
May 12, 2011 |
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Corporate Boards Getting Whiter While America is Not
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"White men's already dominant control of the boards that oversee the nation's largest corporations widened during the last six years, according to a new report issued by the Alliance for Board Diversity.
In 2004, white men held 71.2 percent of board seats associated with the nation's Fortune 100 companies. By 2010, that figure had grown slightly to 72.9 percent. During the same period, the share of Fortune 100 board seats held by black men dropped from 7.8 percent to 4.2 percent. White men gained 32 board seats, while black men lost 42. And, the total number of Fortune 100 board seats held by all women, Latinos and Asian Pacific Islanders grew by just 45 seats."
"'The good old boys network is continuing to work,' said George Herrera, a member of [Wyndham] International, Inc.’s board and a former director of the Cendant Corp. Hererra is Latino.”
"'When you are sitting here and hearing the Census numbers,' said Herrera, 'and the explosion of the Hispanic community and the size of its spending power you realize that we are driving the profits and revenues of a lot of these companies. I think we have to ask if I am good enough to buy your products in services then tell me why I am not good enough to sit in your board room.'"
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Small Business Owners Demand Repeal of Bush Tax Cuts for the Rich
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Lew Prince, owner of Vintage Vinyl, St. Louis, Mo
“While congressional Republicans and entrenched corporate lobbying groups like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce -- which is holding a Wednesday meeting on small business priorities -- and the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) have been pushing hard to preserve the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy by touting the interests of small firms, much of the small business community is demanding that those very tax cuts be repealed. The tax breaks for the wealthy will add $700 billion to the debt over the next 10 years, according to the White House's Office of Management and Budget. And many small firms say that money would be better spent on direct aid to the middle class."
"'We are fed by our consumers, not by our tax breaks,’ says Rick Poore, owner of Designwear, Inc., a screen-printing business based in Lincoln, Neb. 'If you drive more people to my business, I will hire more people. It's as simple as that. If you give me a tax break, I'll just take the wife to the Bahamas.'"
"'Most small business owners make less than $250,000 and so the tax cuts don’t benefit most of us, and they’re really taking important valuable resources away from the federal budget,' says ReShonda Young, corporate vice president and operations manager for Alpha Express, a Waterloo, Iowa-based company that specializes in transportation services and snow removal.
"'We should have learned from the last decade that slashing taxes for the richest Americans is a great way to grow the national debt –- not jobs,' says Holly Sklar, the executive director of Business for Shared Prosperity, a non-partisan small-business group funded predominantly by the Ford Foundation. 'Few small businesses benefit from the top rate tax cuts, but many lose from a shrinking middle class and deepening budget cuts in everything from the Small Business Administration and education to vital infrastructure repair and modernization. The tax cuts are like termites, eating away at our economy and our nation’s future.'"
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Small Business Innovation Now in Jeopardy
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“Senator Mary L. Landrieu, D-La., Chair of the Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship, made the following statement after this morning's cloture vote on the SBIR and STTR Reauthorization Act of 2011.
'Today was our last chance to reauthorize these important programs and provide some continuity to the small businesses that depend on them,' Senator Landrieu said. 'I have to thank the many groups that went out of their way to support this bill and who offered concessions during our negotiations to ensure a long-term reauthorization was possible. This bill, the federal government's largest research and development programs for small businesses, passed out of our Committee with nearly unanimous support, but wound up hitting a brick wall when it reached the Senate floor.
Unfortunately, some Senators chose to stonewall in a self-serving effort to get their way on unrelated issues instead of letting every U.S. Senate committee do their due diligence with regulatory reform. Despite having so much bi-partisan support going into this debate, not one Republican voted for this job creating small business bill, even those Senators in states like Massachusetts, Texas, Pennsylvania and Florida, where almost 23,000 small businesses have gotten billions in SBIR and STTR projects."
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Default On Debt Could Be Doomsday Scenario for Economy
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"The United States has never defaulted on its debt and Democrats and Republicans say they don't want it to happen now. But with partisan acrimony running at fever pitch, and Democrats and Republicans so far apart on how to tame the deficit, the unthinkable is suddenly being pondered.
The government now borrows about 42 cents of every dollar it spends. Imagine that one day soon, the borrowing slams up against the current debt limit ceiling of $14.3 trillion and Congress fails to raise it. The damage would ripple across the entire economy, eventually affecting nearly every American, and rocking global markets in the process.
A default would come if the government actually failed to fulfill a financial obligation, including repaying a loan or interest on that loan. The government borrows mostly by selling bonds to individuals and governments, with a promise to pay back the amount of the bond in a certain time period and agreeing to pay regular interest on that bond in the meantime."
"If the U.S. starts missing interest or principal payments, borrowers would demand higher and higher rates on new bonds, as they did with Greece, Portugal and other heavily indebted nations. Who wants to keep loaning money to a deadbeat nation that can't pay its bills?"
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Osama bin Laden Killing Gives Obama Quick But Limited Ratings Boost
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 "In the immediate aftermath of the targeted killing of Osama bin Laden, President Obama’s approval rating has jumped higher, with big increases in the number of Americans giving him high marks on dealing with terrorism and the situation in Afghanistan.
But the new poll, conducted Monday evening by The Washington Post and the Pew Research Center, also finds virtually no movement in Obama’s numbers when it comes to handling the economy. That suggests that success on one front — even one as important as the death of the mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks — might not translate easily to other areas.
Overall, 56 percent of those polled say they approve of the way Obama is handling his job as president, an increase of nine percentage points over April polls by Post-ABC News and Pew. That is the highest approval rating for the president in either poll since 2009.”
"The president gets big bounces on dealing with Afghanistan, with his approval rating soaring to 60 percent, and on handling the threat of terrorism, where he recorded a career high of 69 percent." "How long Obama’s improved ratings will last is, of course, an open question."
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Obama vs. Business Takes Another Sour Turn
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"After a high-profile effort to smooth things over with Big Business, the Obama administration has hit a bump in the road. The reason: A new plan that would force businesses seeking federal contracts to disclose political spending.
According to a leaked draft of a presidential executive order, the White House wants would-be contractors to report when they've made $5,000 or more in campaign contributions to federal candidates. It also wants companies to reveal money spent -- and more often not disclosed -- to sway elections. The White House has confirmed the draft as authentic, but a work in progress."
" The Chamber said the move would violate First Amendment rights and could lead to discrimination in contract awards based on political beliefs."
"An administration official told CNN Thursday that President Obama is considering the order as a way of reforming government contracting policies to 'promote accountability, transparency and competition.'
The official said the thinking is that taxpayers need to be confident that federal contracting decisions are based on merit and not influenced by political favoritism."
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Set-Aside Alert: Several Big Multiple-Award Contracts on the Horizon
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"The Homeland Security Department is planning a follow-on to its First Source set-aside contract for IT commodities, which expires next year.
According to a request for information, DHS plans set-asides in all socioeconomic categories, including economically disadvantaged woman-owned businesses. First Source II is an IDIQ task order contract. Like its predecessor, it will be the vehicle of choice for the department's IT hardware acquisitions. DHS said the new contract will emphasize value-added reseller services.
Eleven small firms were chosen for the original First Source in 2007. The contract had a ceiling of $3 billion.
Responses to the request for information [were] due April 18."
"The contract, formerly known as Consolidated Acquisition of Professional Services II (CAPS II), is a small business set-aside with a ceiling of $3 billion. Eleven incumbents are competing for task orders on the original CAPS contract. The final RFP was originally set for March, but has been postponed with no new date announced."
"A final RFP is also due this spring for the Army Missile Defense Command's Systems Engineering and Technical Assistance Contract (SETAC), a small business set-aside. The multiple-award contract will provide systems engineering and technical assistance support. It carries a maximum value of $2.75 million."
"The Navy intends to open an on-ramp this month to add contractors to its giant Seaport-e contract. Services include research and development, engineering, modeling and simulation, prototyping, software engineering, configuration management, information systems development, training, and administrative support."
Read More Articles from Set Aside Alert |
SBA Plans New Emphasis on Fraud Prevention
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"SBA wants to add 24 additional personnel to combat fraud and abuse in its contracting programs.
The new positions are included in the agency’s 2012 budget request. The added emphasis on enforcement follows a series of investigations by the Government Accountability Office that found instances of fraud in the 8(a), HUBZone and service-disabled veterans programs.
'We have taken the fraud-waste-and-abuse issue head-on because this was not an area that had been robustly attended to,’ SBA Administrator Karen Mills told the Senate Small Business Committee on March 31. ‘We had a lot of work to do.'
She said SBA will follow a three-pronged approach, as recommended by GAO: stricter supervision of the certification process for companies entering its contracting programs; improved monitoring of contracts; and punishment of wrongdoers.”
Read More Articles from Set Aside Alert
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SBA Defends Alaska Native 8(a) Contract Preferences
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"SBA's top contracting official said there is no evidence that large sole-source awards to Alaska Native companies are robbing contracts from other 8(a) businesses.
The Alaska companies took in 25% of 8(a) contract dollars in 2008, although they account for only 2% of companies in the program. Alaska Native Corporations and other tribally owned businesses are allowed to receive sole-source awards in unlimited amounts, and a few of them have won contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars, while other 8(a)s are restricted to sole-source contracts up to $3.5 million, or $5.5 million for manufacturing.
SBA has begun analyzing the impact of the preferences on the 8(a) program, said Joe Jordan, associate administrator for government contracting and business development. 'As yet we've seen no data that would say it disadvantages other program participants,' he testified at an April 7 hearing of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee.
Legislation is pending that would strip the Alaska Native companies of their procurement preferences and put them on an equal footing with other 8(a) businesses. Jordan declined to take a position on the legislation."
Read More Articles from Set Aside Alert
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Upcoming Events
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May 10-12, 2011
2011 DOE Small Business Conference
May 18, 2011
National Small Business Week
June 16, 2011
Hispanic Hero Award Gala
June 21-22, 2011
MBRT CEO Roundtable Annual Meeting
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MBRT LEADERSHIP
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Janice Bryant Howroyd
MBRT Board Chairman
Act. 1 Group Founder & CEO,
Torrance, CA |
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Andra M. Rush
MBRT Board Vice-Chairman
Rush Trucking, President & CEO,
Wayne, MI |
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Roger A Campos
MBRT Founder
President & CEO,
Washigton, DC |
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ABOUT MINORITY BUSINESS ROUNDTABLE (MBRT)
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| The Minority Business RoundTable (MBRT) is a national nonprofit 501(c) 3 membership organization for CEO's of the nation's largest and leading minority-owned companies. It functions as the vehicle for its mem bers to analyze and help formulate effective public policies that impact minority-owned businesses. Members hold positions equivalent to chief executive officers (CEO) or chairperson in their respective businesses. |
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SPONSORS & PARTNERS
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| 1629 K Street, N.W. Suite 300 Washington, DC 20006 | www.mbrt.net | Phone: 202-289-8881 | rogercampos@mbrt.net |
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