Business for Shared Prosperity

By Billie Stanton, Opinion Editor
Tucson Citizen, 6/18/08

"Well, here's another nice kettle of fish you've pickled me in!"
Oliver Hardy of Laurel and Hardy in "Thicker Than Water" (1935)

Prices are high, wages are low and, as our economy sinks ever deeper, we have no choice.

PBS, 6/13/08

BSP Director Holly Sklar discusses the state of the American dream and what's needed for progress in the future.

Original show at Bill Moyers Journal on PBS
http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/06132008/watch2.html

By Kent Hoover
Houston Business Journal (and numerous other cities), 6/9/08

Five ideas to make the aging agency as relevant today as it was in 1953

By Carrie Mason-Draffen
Business Beat, Newsday, 6/7/08

New York small businesses decry health-care costs

A statewide survey released Wednesday confirmed what many small-business owners in New York already know: health-care benefits are costly.

The majority of the 400 businesses surveyed, which included nearly 60 on Long Island, acknowledge the advantage of offering health-care benefits but say the costs are prohibitive. Most of the businesses have fewer than 50 employees.

Buffalo Business First (New York), 6/7/08

More than 80 percent of small businesses in New York state believe that a public-private partnership is the best way to provide health insurance to their workers, according, to a new survey.

Albany Business Review, 6/6/08

More than 80 percent of small businesses in New York state believe that a public-private partnership is the best way to provide health insurance to their workers, according, to a new survey.

Crain’s Health Plus, 6/6/08

A new survey of New York small business owners says only 43% offered health coverage to employees, with 52% of those surveyed citing cost as the reason they didn’t provide the benefit. Among those that provided insurance, 40% paid more than $400 per employee each month.

The survey of 409 small businesses—more than half of them with revenue under $1 million—was conducted by Small Business Majority in partnership with BALCONY, AARP and the American Cancer Society. It was meant to help guide the state’s Partnership for Coverage effort.

Boston Globe
Editorial, 5/21/08

THE BELLA LUNA restaurant in the Hyde Square section of Jamaica Plain is the business equivalent of the person who puts a spouse through medical school, only to get shunted aside when someone slicker comes along. There is rarely doubt in such cases about where the loyalty of friends and neighbors will rest.

U.S. Senate Documents, 6/10/08
Senate Democratic Communications Center

The Consumer-First Energy Act, legislation to address the root causes of high gas prices, is supported by energy and economy experts as well as labor, environmental, business, rural and seniors' advocates. They agree that this bill will address the root causes of gas prices, spur innovation and development of alternative energy and reduce America's dependence on oil.

ENERGY AND ECONOMY EXPERTS SUPPORT THE CONSUMER-FIRST ENERGY ACT

By Holly Sklar
Providence Journal, 4/15/08
Axcess News, World News Network, OpEdNews.com, CommonDreams.org, Inequality.org, TradingMarkets.com, UAW At Issue. Distributed by Minuteman Media, 5/7/08. Known placements include Portland Observer (OR), Northwest Arkansas Times, Santa Rosa Press Gazette (FL), Asheville Citizen Times (NC), Watertown Tab (MA), Labor World Newspaper (MN), Daily News (Batavia, NY), Daily News (Huntingdon, PA), Champion (GA).

When it comes to cutting taxes for the wealthy, President Bush can truly say, "Mission accomplished."

Employee Benefit News, 4/1/08
By Chris Silva

The availability of affordable health care currently appears to be the No. 1 concern on the minds of most small and mid-size businesses (SMBs). According to a study of 506 California business owners with less than 100 employees, 75% rank the availability of affordable health care as extremely or very important. Fifty-seven percent see health care financing as a shared responsibility among individuals, employers and government.

By John Arensmeyer
Sacramento Bee, January 25, 2008

There are only two kinds of small businesses that don't offer health coverage to their employees: those that want to but can't afford it, and those that don't want to.

There are exceedingly few that fall into the latter category, but their voices are heard disproportionately in the health care debate, and as Assembly Bill X1 1 heads to a critical series of votes in the Senate, it's important for our leaders to understand this.

By Bill Boyne
Post Bulletin (Rochester, MN), 12/28/07

America is still the land of promise -- for billionaires.

A recent news report by Holly Sklar for McClatchy-Tribune News Service told the happy stories of those who live in the top 1 percent of the U.S. income brackets.

It noted that only two years ago, even lowly multi-millionaires could qualify for the Forbes list of the 400 richest Americans. That is no longer the case. As of 2007, only billionaires are on the list -- and there are even 82 billionaires who don't quite make the top 400.

By Ilana DeBare
San Francisco Chronicle, 12/26/07

Q: My husband and I own a small S corporation in California with net revenue of less than $50,000 per year. We struggle each year to buy minimal but outrageously costly health insurance for the two of us. If my reading of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's new health insurance proposal is correct, we will be taxed an additional 6.5 percent of our payroll to pay for uninsured citizens. I think maybe small businesses are going to be the losers in this new plan. Am I reading it correctly?

Scared in Santa Cruz

By John Arensmeyer
San Jose Mercury News, 12/03/2007

The prospect of relief from the crushing health care burden faced by small businesses has moved closer to reality in the past two weeks, as California's top legislators submitted a compromise health care reform proposal, and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger responded with a counterproposal of his own.

Letter to the Editor by John Arensmeyer
San Francisco Chronicle, 11/28/07

Small businesses care

Editor - Your cartoon published on Nov. 24, showing small business turkeys being sacrificed by the Democrats to obtain health care coverage for California's uninsured, completely misrepresents the health care needs of small businesses.

By Robert Kuttner
Boston Globe, 11/21/07

LAST WEEK, superinvestor Warren Buffett, America's second richest man, testified before the Senate Finance Committee on the subject of why people like him can well afford to pay taxes. In fact, Buffett is ceasing to be among the very wealthiest because he is giving most of his fortune away to philanthropies while he is still alive.

By Rebekah Gordon
Stateline.org, 11/19/07

LOS ANGELES – Dr. Edward Newton doesn’t bother wondering whether his patients in the emergency room at Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center have health insurance. He just assumes they all don’t.

By Chuck Collins
AlterNet, 11/19/07

Billionaire Warren Buffett testified before the Senate Finance Committee on Wednesday in defense of the federal estate tax, the nation's only tax on inherited wealth.

By Bill Gates Sr. and Chuck Collins
The Politico, 11/14/07

Congress finally has a chance to have a sober discussion about how to responsibly reform the estate tax.

After a decade of false accusations and innuendo, Wednesday’s hearing at the Senate Finance Committee provides the first opportunity to set the record straight as to who pays the estate tax, how much revenue it generates and why we should retain it.

Advocates of repealing the tax still claim that it puts small farmers out of business — but most of the world now knows this is disingenuous.