Is the SBA the Next Federal Scandal?

[kerrygoddess]

Is the SBA the Next Federal Scandal?
September 13th, 2005

RJ Eskow of Night Light posed this question on his blog earlier today - Is the SBA the Next Scandal?.

According to the Associated Press, Bush’s Small Business Administration not only mismanaged the disbursement of funds meant for small businesses harmed by September 11, but publicized one audit while concealing another in order to make their record appear better than it actually was.

Republican Senator Olympia Snowe calls the situation “nothing short of an outrage.” And what did SBA head Hector Barreto do before he got this job? Why, he raised a lot of money for Republican campaigns. Obviously the SBA doesn’t play the same life-saving role FEMA does, but there are echoes of the FEMA scandal in the mismanagement of funds meant to relieve those who suffered from a disaster.

I think RJ could be on to something, because over the past two years or so since I have been blogging about John Kerry, I have paid very close attention to his work as the Ranking Member of the Senate Small Business Committee. Needless to say, I was not at all shocked or surprised when I heard that Congress was going to investigate the SBA’s Sept. 11 Loan Program.

Why? Because over the past couple of years, John Kerry has repeatedly exposed corruption and fraud within the SBA, he’s fought to keep important SBA programs afloat and chastised Hector Barreto on numerous occasions for simply put, his mismanagement of the SBA.


MORE & LINKS - http://blog.thedemocraticdaily.com/?p=547

[newswolf56]

1. The SBA is being deliberately gutted by the Bush Administration:

This is absolute proof the "Ownership Society" is a classic Josef Goebbels Big Lie because -- of all federal agencies -- the SBA is the only portal to the sort of individual success the concept of "Ownership Society" implies.

Essentially what Bush is doing is radically shrinking its operations -- business start-ups and expansions, with special emphasis on assisting minority-owned enterprise -- and dramatically boosting SBA's public-relations campaigns.

In other words -- behind a smokescreen of misleading advertising -- Bush is turning SBA into yet another hollow shell further emptied by favoritism to his cronies, a huge scam like "disaster relief."

Moreover the career SBA officials who know what is happening and might be inclined to reveal what Bush is doing to their agency are so terrified of reprisals they have been intimidated to silence.

What is being done to SBA is thus an especially vivid example of how the Bush Administration operates in malicious secrecy, and how Bush himself is methodically closing every door out of poverty even as he knowingly lies he is doing just the opposite.

It is also a vital piece of evidence confirming the notion Bush's policies are much worse than neglectfulness and are indeed a deliberate war on minorities and the poor: not just destruction of the social safety net and the conversion of social services into profit centers for Big Business, but the simultaneous elimination of all opportunity for economic betterment.

Whatever reporter is finally able to convince an SBA official to go on the record about these matters -- that and follow Bush's destructive footprints through the intricacies of the SBA budget -- will probably win a Pulitzer at least.