Sunday, July 08, 2012
The economic experts are worried.
From the Managing Director of the International Monetary
Fund, to the central bankers of China, the U.K. and France, to the specialists
on Wall Street, some of the presumed “best and brightest” among us are
expressing concerns over a global economic slowdown. And the fussing got a
little louder after last Friday’s employment report here in the U.S.
These presumed geniuses, including the IMF’s Christine
Lagarde, in particular, need to understand something. Their friend President
Barack Obama has become nothing short of an enemy to one of the world’s
greatest economic engines – American small businesses.
It’s insufficient to say that President Obama isn’t
helping small businesses, or that the President isn’t “trying hard enough.” The
Obama Administration is proactively attacking small businesses, as though they
were domestic terrorist cells – while at the same time they seem genuinely
surprised that “job creation” is so weak.
Small businesses and their respective advocacy groups
have no idea how to cope with the mandates placed upon them by Obamacare, nor
how vicious the President’s army of 50,000 new I.R.S. agents will be in
auditing and penalizing them. And since 2010’s “banking reform” laws came to
pass, banking and lending institutions have been in a state of shell-shock
trying to figure out how to continue doing what they do – lending – without
getting penalized for allegedly violating the all-important reforms.
What isn’t so widely known, however, is the increased
frequency with which individual businesses are being confronted and threatened
by governmental agencies other than the I.R.S. For example, U.S. Congressman
David Schweikert (R-Arizona) tells a horrifying story about a small business
owner and his government- and it’s a story that helps explain why the economy
isn’t growing.
While visiting a local coffee house in his hometown of
Scottdale, Schweikert is confronted by another patron who asks “can you please
help me?” Turns out this other patron is the owner of Zoe Inidustries, Inc., a
small, local company that designs and sells custom plumbing fittings and
supplies (see their website at ShowerBuddy.Com).
As Congressman Schweikert sits down to listen to the
man’s story, the sickening details emerge. This small, private business has
been employing people in Scottsdale since 2000, and has earned itself an “A+”
rating from the Better Business Bureau, but is now being told that it must pay
$447,000 to President Obama’s Department of Energy.
Why would the D.O.E. know anything at all about Zoe Industries?
The Department of Energy regularly, and randomly tests new plumbing fixtures
that are bought and sold in the U.S., and a particular shower head product that
Zoe Industries designs allegedly didn’t measure up to federal standards.
The U.S. federal government requires all new shower heads
to possess what is known as an “O-ring” flow restrictor mechanism within the
shower head that - as its’ name implies – reduces the flow of water and
presumably reduces water consumption. And while all of Zoe Industries’ shower
heads have the proper O-ring mechanisms in them, the Department of Energy
believed that, in one particular case, the O-ring was “too easy to remove”
during a test.
Schweikert got to work, investigating the D.O.E.’s case
against Zoe Industries. Fortunately, Zoe Industries was able to recently
“settle” the complaint against them by their government, by paying a much
smaller fine – just slightly under $30,000.00. But this happened after the
company had engaged in over a year’s worth of “discussions” and “negotiations”
with the D.O.E., and after the company had accrued over a year’s worth of legal
bills to defend themselves against the D.O.E.
For his part, Congressman Schweikert also shot-back
legislatively, authoring and passing an Amendment to a Department of Energy
funding bill that would forbid the D.O.E. from spending any of its funds on
testing shower heads. This restriction on how the D.O.E. spends its’ money
likely won’t hold up in the Democrat-controlled Senate, but it nonetheless got the
D.O.E’s attention-after its’ passage the D.O.E. was on the telephone to
Congressman Schweikert expressing “concern” that there had been a
“misunderstanding.”
So did the D.O.E. extort Zoe Industries? Clearly, an
agency of our federal government used its own brute force to extrapolate money
out of the pockets of a private citizen. And the growing fear among business
owners is that instances like this are only a “sneak preview” of things to
come, when the I.R.S. begins policing individuals and companies for alleged
Obamacare compliance violations.
And the word “alleged” is very important here. One need
not have violated the law at all – but if your government alleges that you
have, you either must pay the fine that your government is demanding, or be
prepared to run-up potentially massive bills paying Attorneys to represent you
and fight on your behalf.
This is why our economy is stagnant right now. The
President who claims he is saving us from oppressive healthcare bills, is the
same President whose Administration is comfortable fining a small plumbing
supply shop owner nearly half a million dollars. American businesses are living
in fear of American government, and businesses owners are not in a position
(financially or otherwise) to take more risks and try to grow and expand – they
are “tapped out” just trying to survive.
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