Congress: Sincere in Helping Small Clean Tech Businesses?
A friend of mine who is trying to raise public or private money for his extremely well-conceived electric vehicle start-up just wrote to me with words that ring true:
[We’ll be attending the] upcoming Annual Congressional Business Summit, and this is a point of focus for me right now. I don’t know what they will do, other than to hear them say, “Wow what a neat idea.” I guess I shouldn’t be a cynic, but the last 14 months have opened my eyes as to the two-facedness of Congress. They like to talk about how small business is the source of 80% of the new jobs, and then promptly deliver money to the large corporations that spend most of their time trying to make sure small businesses evaporate. Millions in campaign support and a veritable army of lobbyists seems to be working just fine.
Another expression of the base hypocrisy is the inflamed rhetoric about defending “small business” by extending the tax relief for the wealthy, while simultaneously blocking needed stimulus dollars targeted for actual small business (from where 60% of American jobs have hemorrhaged). Also consider their incessant whining about the same record deficit they themselves created during the last administration from the surplus achieved the previous administration. Indeed, much of that new deficit went as gifts and no-interest loans to predatory Wall Street gambling houses when a bailout of Main Street would have had a far better effect on the economy at large and still saved the high-rolling fat cats (but that would have also emancipated millions of debt slaves – can’t have that, can we).