Small Business Administration...loans to Dell, Home Depot, other Fortune 500 Companies

During 2006 and 2007, DOI reported millions of dollars in contracts to Fortune 500 corporations such as Dell, GTSI, Home Depot, John Deere, McGraw-Hill, Ricoh, Sherwin Williams, Starwood Hotels, Waste Management Incorporated, Weyerhaeuser, World Wide Technology and Xerox Corporation as small business contracts.

The DOI Office of Inspector General's report is the latest investigation to contradict two Small Business Administration (SBA) press releases, which claimed that it was a "myth" that large businesses received federal small business contracts.

The General Accounting Office (GAO) first uncovered the diversion of federal small business contracts to Fortune 500 corporations in 2002. Since then, there have been approximately a dozen federal investigations that have all found Fortune 500 firms and other large corporations were the actual recipients of billions of dollars in federal small business contracts every year. Despite the series of federal investigations and over 400 stories in the press since 2002, no legislation has been passed to address the problem.

As opposed to adopting policies to stop the flow of federal small business contracts to Fortune 500 firms, former SBA Administer Steven Preston adopted a SBA policy in June of 2007 that will allow Fortune 500 firms to continue to receive federal small business contracts until the year 2012. Preston also removed all information from the government's Central Contractor Registration (CCR) database that could be used to determine if a firm was small or large. Additionally, Preston refused to release the specific names of all firms that received government small business contracts.


http://angrybear.blogspot.com/2008/07/small-business-administrationloans-to.html

she was fired.

The rule they changed also applies to Small Business Innovation Grants, a large Federal stream that helps incubate new companies and products.

The SBA changed the definition of small in Bush's first term. A "small" business went from being, err. can't quote me here, from like 500 employees max to 5,000 max. That definition is cited in other rules, in other Federal entities/departments.

They 'joint venture' with some bullshit 'small business' and go after the contracts. It happens in my industry all the fucking time. Us **real** small businesses often get to suck fumes.

Fuck the SBA. They have been less than worthless for years. And they don't police this at all. In fact, they seem to encourage it.

We're an actual small business by any measure. We are three partners and one employee. We are 66% women owned. We qualify as a Viet Nam era veteran owned company.

We have chosen to not get certified as any of that and instead go after work ON OUR MERITS. Head to head against these assholes.

We've been successful more often than not. But we **do** lose to them on occasion and it frosts our asses.

set up a FAR 51 teaming arrangement, common with HUBz, 8A's, MOBs (minority owned businesses), VOBs (veteran) and WOBs (women) you can easily pull this off.

A lot of federal contracts have "set asides" for these type of businesses and this opens up the door for the creative "entrepreneur" to work the system.

where no deparment or agency is free from corruption and cronyism . . . cleaning up BushCo's mess will take decades . . .

we were Guatemala".

And all I could think was, no, now BushCo is doing to us what they've always done to Guatemala. :(

The marriage of state and corporation is just about complete. :mad:

A few years back, I forget when, they reported that they'd run out of money for the year to disburse and couldn't even cover what they'd already agreed to cover. I guess we know how it happened then. Ugh.

The game played is not giving the money directly to the large corporation but throught a back or side door. Issuing loans to subsidiaries or an affiliated individual. I saw this game played in radio...a large corporate wanted to control a popular station but was over the limit of local ownership...they couldn't apply for the license, so they found a "third party" who just "happened" to be a minority (making it easier to transfer the license) and then to get an SBA loan that covered the purchase. It's nice to have friends in high places.

So should we be surprised that yet another part of the government has turned into a political patronage haven? All those big donations by Dell, HP (Carly Fiorina), Ebay and other "Rangers" sure got their money worth...and still are.

by robbing it blind.